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Daily, in America, there are countless people who enter into hollow, meaningless buildings, seeking comfort, shelter, and healing. These people walk out of these buildings, disillusioned, angry, and sometimes hurting more than they were when they first walked in. The buildings these people are walking into are not hospitals or even psychologists offices, they are churches.
The American church today has become filled with propagated religious rhetoric that have no spiritual power or basis to them. Everyday another scandal rocks the nation when another pastor, deacon, or evangelist is found having an illicit affair (mostly homosexual), stealing money from the church, beating up on his wife, or dealing/doing drugs. These are the things that we speak out against on a weekly basis. In our Sunday morning services and in our Wednesday night services.
Many Christians are on their knees daily, begging and pleading with God to save and protect and bless His church. To heal the American church. Some are asking Him why He has forsaken us. However, the Early Church did not suffer in the same way that we did. Could it be that our lax, "tolerant" view of sin is the reason that our church suffers so? Could it be that our desire to be "all things to all people" has blurred or even completely erased, the lines between holiness and sin? Paul stated it best when he wrote in Romans 12:1 "Do not conform to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds."
God has not forsaken us, we have forsaken him, because we took Him out of the Church and made Him an afterthought. We have no one to blame but ourselves for the state of the American Church and our nation. For in other countries, the church is not so completely rocked by scandal, on an almost daily basis. Why? There is a hunger and a thirst for righteousness that is not apparent in America. We have it all, so we want for nothing, and since we want for nothing, we do not turn to the Father as our forefathers did. We no longer seek the Master’s face when faced with hard decisions or temptations, but rather rely on our own strength or that of our fallible pastors, who often have received their ordination based on “fly-by-night” courses at a secular university.
We have lost our desire to experience God, therefore, we have lost our experiences with Him, which means that you have untrained, unsaved, unknowledgeable pastors and ministers teaching about a God that they don’t know to people who don’t care. Then we sit around in shock when another pastor is caught in a scandal. We could save ourselves the trouble and do one of two things, appoint pastors who are trained, saved, and who have experienced the Father (as did the Early Church), or we can stop being so shocked when another pastor falls into scandalous activity. It’s our decision and our choice to make. Unfortunately, given our track record, we will probably choose the wrong thing.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
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