Where do I belong?

Recently some friends who used to regularly attend our church quit going. I assumed that they were back-sliding and encouraged them to start attending again. I found out that in fact he and his wife were visiting other churches. Our regular pastor was out for six weeks and they were not happy with the interim preacher’s messages and they had even become somewhat disenchanted with our regular pastor.

In this person’s words:” I view God as a very loving God and loving father. Our church too often (in my opinion) portrays God as a disciplinarian when you fail in life. I think that the belief of our church is you should fear God first and foremost. I don’t agree with that totally. I love my father but I don’t fear him first and foremost. I know that I will be disciplined if I do wrong, but that’s not the only thing on my mind. What’s first and foremost is that I love my father as a dad and he loves me as a son. You and I both know that we fail God everyday. I get much more comfort in knowing that God loves us no matter what and continues to love us forever, than feeling afraid of God and worried about the consequences when we sin. I like to leave church feeling good and renewed not “scared out of my pew.”

Fortunately they did not drop out of church altogether and searched for a new one. They have found a new church better to their liking and it looks like God is calling them to start attending there. I agree wholeheartedly about God’s love. I also believe the Bible when it states “That the beginning of all wisdom is the fear of God”.(Psalms 111:10, Proverbs 1:7; 9:10) I found over 19 separate verses that instruct us to fear the Lord. The Bible is full of warnings about the consequence of sin which could be referred to as the judgment of God and rightly so. Sexual immorality is a good example. Venereal disease is one consequence of this sin and will result in serious illness and/or death such as is the case with AIDS. God warns us not to engage in sexual immorality because there are serious consequences that we will face. I do not think that God is mean for telling us that, or that he is trying to “scare us out of our pew”, just the opposite. I believe that He warns us of these things because He does love us and He wants to protect us from the effects of evil. He does not want to see anyone get sick, divorced, or die and spend eternity in Hell because of evil. Make no mistake about it though, He is Holy and will righteously pass judgment on sin. I for one fear God’s judgment.

With that said, I do agree that many churches, in fact MOST churches do not stress enough of what is stressed in the Bible and that is: hope, God’s unbelievably strong love for us, and His complete understanding of our weak condition. God offers hope to us all through His forgiveness for our weaknesses through Jesus Christ. He loves us, He knows that we are weak, and He has found a way to overcome our weaknesses and yet still remain Holy and separated from sin through Jesus Christ’s sacrificial death taking the punishment for our sins upon Himself. Many pastors get so wrapped up in condemning our weaknesses that they forget to mention that God still loves us in spite of our sins and stands ready always to help us even when we do mess up.

One thing I always admired about Billy Graham as a preacher is that he never condemned his audience. I have never heard Billy Graham criticize another human being. Even when he was interviewed by Larry King about Clinton’s affair with Monica, he steadfastly refused to criticize him, instead opting to emphasize that we are all weak and need God’s loving forgiveness. He does the same when asked about homosexuality. abortion and a host of other sins. He does this much to the chagrin and criticism of his peers, who want him to condemn the man, (and not the sin). I fall into that category myself sometimes. I intensely dislike Clinton and have a hard time taking the Billy Graham approach. I should hate the sin and not the man. God’s love is perfect and pure and Billy’s approach is along those lines, (I have a long way to go).

We will never have as good of a friend as Jesus. He will never give up on us, even when society does and even when we give up on ourselves. If preachers would quit putting their emphasis on criticizing and hammering their congregations, and start telling people that EVERYBODY sins, including the preacher, and that there is hope for all of us and His name is Jesus, I believe more people could be reached.

No one wants to be put down all of the time. Many pastors are often unsympathetic to the struggles of life, and the weakness of humans when temptation rears its ugly head. Often they come off as seeming to display a “holier-than-thou-Pharisee-like” attitude. This is done in spite of the fact that the Bible clearly states that we have all sinned and come up short. A bad experience or two with this has probably turned more people away from God than most other reasons. Unfortunately in many cases God gets the blame for an attitude expressed by people supposedly representing His views, which in reality are views that He does not even endorse. The Pharisees had this attitude and Jesus condemned them for putting impossible religious demands on their congregations. They were the most religious people on the planet, strictly following the Mosaic law to the letter, and yet they were the ones who demanded that Jesus be crucified even though He was without guilt of any kind. Today there are pastors, rabbis, priests and ministers throughout the world doing the same thing. The greatest command of God according to Jesus is for us to Love God with all of our hearts, minds and souls and the second to love one another, not follow the law to the letter. (If we could follow this command however; the law would be followed to the letter.)

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Hebrews 4:15
For we do not have a High Priest
who cannot “sympathize with our
weaknesses, but was in all points
tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Let us therefore come boldly to
the throne of grace, that we may obtain
mercy and find grace to help in
time of need.