Comments on: The Leeches.

By: backgroundbob

backgroundbob — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:37:22 +0000

Jamzah: I don’t think I’ll ever be against ‘loving your neighbour’, regardless of circumstance – love isn’t the issue here, the church should always make an effort to love everyone. But love is NOT the same as acceptance, it’s often exactly the opposite. The phrase, “real friends stab you in the front” is what comes to mind, meaning that we as the church are often the only ones who will risk saying to someone, “your lifestyle is destructive to you and those around you, and while we’ll do everything we can to help you solve your problems, it isn’t something we can let slide under the carpet.” Yes, it’s unfair to expect people to be perfect, but if our churches are full of – and run by – people with problems that affect its mission, people unwilling to address these problems, then it will ultimately be a poison in society and an institution that attracts poisonous people because they know they can get away with it.

Paedophiles in the clergy, racist/sexist/homophobic Elders in the evangelical churches, brainless creationists in the Bible Belt, ‘prosperity gospel’ moneymakers in the American megachurches – the list goes on and on of people who see an easy chance to gain and abuse power because the Church fails to police its own. You say it is, “not the business of the church to dicern intentions for membership.” If not the Church’s, then who? Matthew 18 reads, “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be confirmed. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” [Matthew 18:15-17 NASB]

It is time, I think, that we started loving people who are in trouble by not letting them get away with the things disrupting their lives – ‘Gentiles and tax-collectors’ doesn’t mean they’re turfed out of the Church, it simply means that the Church recognises they cannot be part of the Kingdom People of God until they’ve experienced a change of heart. People come to Jesus as they are; they enter the Kingdom of God completely changed and renewed. It’s time we stopped bypassing the transforming grace of God, and started showing people how to be transformed.

Thanks for your input.

By: Jamzah

Jamzah — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:00:10 +0000

Your critique of the church and her all embracing philosophy often even to her own detriment, only aproaches the problem of a decline in membership in church today in a particular way. Indeed you fail to address the divine datum which Jesus gives to all his followers to “love God and to love neighbor” no matter what background and circumsstance. It is not the business of the church to dicern intentions for membership because the church is not a tennis club neither is it an all exclusive country club where the criteria for membership is met with the strictest scrutiny.

By: Rachelle

Rachelle — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:52:30 +0000

Wow. I’m impressed. You’ve definitely hit the nail on the head. We seem to have forgotten that Christ never promises a life of ease, that He never promises that we will be popular, and that He commands us to love even the unlovable. As my dad says, I won’t surprised if the Rapture comes and most of the American churches are full the next Sunday!

By: Deacon & Usher

Deacon & Usher — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:04:37 +0000

Love most of what you say. The church you describe is not the church of the 1st century.

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Tue, 20 May 2008 03:44:01 +0000

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