What if I told you I was divorcing Beth because she burned dinner or shrunk my shirt or failed to properly greet me after work one day, explaining that I married her with the understanding that these things were unacceptable. You’d tell me I was being stupid, that my expectations were based in a silly fantasy that has no business regulating my decisions.
Similar fantasies corrupt our attitude toward the church.
Listen, I’m as critical of the church as anyone. I’m no half-baked Lutheran who thinks Christians never really become less sinful. I believe the church is God’s appointed means of displaying what life looks like when God is rightly honored as King. I believe Romans 7 describes the struggle people experience before they meet Jesus, not after. I believe we can know freedom from sin so that we actually desire and do good. I hold the church to high ideals because I believe God’s Spirit indwells us and constantly renews us into Christ’s image.
But if the church ever finds itself full of mature and radically devoted disciples, the church has failed. The church exists in a state of compromise because the church welcomes people at all levels of immaturity and ungodliness. If all the hypocrites go home, no one would be left to serve coffee or teach kids or lead worship or preach.
To paraphrase Bonhoeffer, if you love your idea of the church more than the actual people who make it up, the problem is you.
. . .
NOTE: In light of my 30th birthday and in honor of the guys who have all the fun, I’ll be offering thirty reflections in thirty days starting December 19th. Today’s post is #9 (see the so-far list here). The only rule is that I have 250 words to make my point. After that just stop reading. Thanks for making my blog part of your internet experience.
Pingback: 30 for 30 – Contents & Schedule « to tell the truth
Kaleb Heitzman said:
Ha! I posted something very similar about a week ago. Maybe this will be a revolution among those in the church! Checkout http://htz.mn/vkJAMi
Heather said:
Church is for sinners, if it was for perfect people no one would go. I love the parable in the bible John 8.7 where Christ said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” and everyone left . None of us are perfect. We need church, we need Christ. Through him, we can live with him again. unfortunately all church/beliefs have haters. It is sad but the world wouldn’t be what God created with out opposition. Some have been offended, others have lost his spirit, some Satan has entered their hearts. Your a great writer.
Michael DeFazio said:
Thanks Kaleb, we can hope!
So true, Heather. And thanks!
jondavidjohn said:
Not sure I completely follow who you are talking to… From your marriage analogy, I assume you’re talking about people who attend church, but complain about the way the worship minister’s voice sounds… To which I would agree… But I doubt you’d commit a blog post to such a trivial bunch…
But if your point is to those who have concerns about the way the church operates today. Believing it is, both functionally and structurally, diverging from what someone honestly and truly believes is represented in scripture, I think a more accurate analogy would be that Beth has been swayed by the mormon belief system (and is now a practicing mormon). In that case I think you would agree that you would have a very legitimate issue to contemplate. I would be hesitant to liken (minimize) most criticism of the church to be equivalent to burning your dinner…
Also, I’m not sure that I would be so quick to agree with Heather… Wasn’t Luther a “hater” of his time? Was it Satan that entered his heart? or God?
It seems very dangerous to disqualify and dismiss critique of the church as Satan inspired or from those who have lost his spirit (whatever that means).
Michael DeFazio said:
I don’t want this to sound mean, but I’m not sure if you got what I was trying to do in this post. I’m not saying we can’t critique the church, but all critique should come from a certain spirit and without improper expectations, such as the expectation that the church is going to be anything but always in a state of compromise to some degree. It’s more about critiquing maturely than whether we can critique at all. It’s about critiquing from the standpoint of being rooted in and actually loving an actual, down-on-the-ground, petty, frustrating, all-over-the-map-spiritually, semi-Christlike group of people. Bonhoeffer is a perfect example of the tension I’m teasing out.
So no, I’m not talking about trivial complaints. And just to clarify, I’m not sure why you chose to pick on Mormonism but I think it’s crazy to suggest that I’d have a legitimate reason to leave her. There was no additional clause in my wedding vows that said “for better or worse unless you diverge from the belief path we’re currently on,” much less in a way that still rightly places quite a bit of emphasis on Jesus Christ.
Again, I hope I don’t come across as mean. I just want to clarify more of where I’m coming from. Thanks for commenting!
Oh, and as far as who I was talking to in this post, I was talking to me.
jondavidjohn said:
This post is not about marriage, nor was my response. You’re making your analogy the point, which now causes me to spend a paragraph defending my views on marriage… You’re suggesting my stance is that divorce is acceptable if your spouse becomes a Mormon… Which even in my attempt to communicate via your analogy I did not state. To quote myself a few pixels up I say that you “… would have a very legitimate issue to contemplate.” Would you not have issues to work out? Especially when compared to her burning your dinner!?!? You’re missing the forest for the trees here, again let me quote myself again. The point I’m making is that “I would be hesitant to liken (minimize) most criticism of the church to be equivalent to burning your dinner”. And I picked (on?) Mormonism for the exact reason you state, it’s divergence from it’s roots in Christianity.
Now that’s out of the way, I do see more clearly what you’re trying to get across, but It’s still fuzzy exactly what you deem “good critique” and “bad critique”. Is this post simply about the motivation behind the critique?
I think an important perspective that Bonhoeffer misses in your paraphrasing, is that to critique the church you don’t have to be critiquing the people… his (your) statement seems to attempt to strap the people to the institution in an attempt to keep people from critiquing it.
In my mind the greater institution and organization should be continually criticized, refined, and challenged.
Michael DeFazio said:
Huh? I want to be careful because I can’t read your tone and you can’t hear mine. Let me try to clarify again.
In my first paragraph I’m responding to your comment as a whole. I’m glad it seems a little clearer, but I understand that it is still a bit unclear because I’m not really trying to define good and bad critiques in this post. All I’m saying is that sometimes people expect too much of the church, and when the church doesn’t meet their ideal they get angry and say mean things about it and/or leave it altogether. All I’ve tried to say in terms of the good/bad question is that no critique is good that doesn’t come from a place of love for actual jacked-up people. To be honest, I don’t think most people who bemoan the church actually love the people they’re griping about; I say this because I myself have been there.
Here’s the actual DB quote: “Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.” I’m sorry if mine made it seem more like people have no right to critique the church, that’s not what I intended. I promise.
And I am not making this about marriage. Marriage was the analogy I used in the original post, specifically connecting the act of leaving my wife to people walking out on the church because of unrealistic expectations. When you said something about having a legitimate issue, I (wrongly) assumed you were speaking in terms of that original theoretical possibility (as in having a “legitimate” reason to “contemplate” what I hypothetically did in the post, i.e. to leave a marriage). Apparently I over-read what you were saying. Sorry about that!
Blessings.
jondavidjohn said:
I think we are coming closer to a shared understanding here, I am still trying to nail down what you’re saying we (the church?) shouldn’t do..
“All I’ve tried to say in terms of the good/bad question is that no critique is good that doesn’t come from a place of love for actual jacked-up people.”
I’m not sure that this is quantitative… are you saying we should have the correct motivation when we critique the church?
To play off your title, is the point to make sure we are _lovingly_ hating on the church?
Another thing I think is getting mixed up in this conversation is how we define “the church”…
I see a clear separation between the people that make up the church, and the institution of the church.
An example would be that I don’t agree with the seemingly bureaucratic hierarchy of Catholicism, but that is in no way related to how I treat or feel about Catholics…
I just don’t think we should shield the church (as an institution) from constant examination and critique. And I don’t see how critique of the church as an institution has anything to do with how you feel about the congregations…