SIN IN THE CHURCH

I think I know why many people avoid church.

Too often, church has become a place for people who pretend that life is merry and good.  Meanwhile, their lives are actually miserable, lonely, falling apart, chaotic, addicted, desperate, confused, etc., etc.

Now, I confess that I don't know and experience the church everywhere.  However, what I've seen has lost the concept of  confession. 

It's interesting that we don't want people to know our weaknesses.  This is a prideful culture!  At all costs, we want people to think things are going great - even when they're tumbling apart. 

It's akin to our daily greetings:  "How are you?"  "Oh, I'm fine, thanks."

"No!  If you really want to know, I'm hurting deeply and need a true friend!"

But that doesn't happen.

When did we begin to feel that we must 'have it all together' so that people will think well of us?

Sometimes, in the church I lead, I feel like I'm the only one who struggles!  I think people take some kind of vicarious satisfaction out of my public sharing.  But I rarely hear someone else admit to weakness, pain, or struggle.

Several years ago one of the men in our church sent me a letter including his confession.  He spoke of indulgence in alcohol, ignoring God's Word and other personal issues.  He welcomed me to share the letter with our congregation.  When I did, there was hardly a dry eye in the sanctuary!

My study of great revivals indicates that almost every major revival began with a confession of personal sin.  Hmmm...

Of all the authors I've read, Brennan Manning speaks most powerfully to this issue.  If you're unfamiliar with him, he's a former Catholic priest and recovering alcoholic.  Here's a sample:

     Any church that will not accept that it consists of sinful men and women, and exists for them, implicitly rejects the gospel of grace.  As Hans Kung says:  “It deserves neither God’s mercy nor men’s trust."  The church must constantly be aware that its faith is weak, its knowledge dim, its profession of faith halting, that there is not a single sin or failing which it has not in one way or another been guilty of.  And though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinners at a distance.  If the church remains self-righteously aloof from failures, irreligious and immoral people, it cannot enter justified into God’s kingdom.  But if it is constantly aware of its guilt and sin, it can live in joyous awareness of forgiveness.

     …There is a myth flourishing in the church today that has caused incalculable harm – once converted, fully converted.  In other words, once I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, an irreversible, sinless future beckons.  Discipleship will be an untarnished success story;  life will be an unbroken upward spiral toward holiness.  Tell that to poor Peter who, after three times professing his love for Jesus on the beach and after receiving the fullness of the Spirit at Pentecost, was still jealous of Paul’s apostolic success (Galatians 2:11-21).    [The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning, pp.30-31]