The Perfect Church part 2

There is a terrible misconception about the Church today that is far from Biblical truth. It is the belief that the Church is perfect. It can do no wrong. To speak against things that it does or certain attitudes or doctrines is quickly branded as "Church Bashing."

If someone is a bit angry or a bit fiery about an atrocity or gross error in the Church, they are accused for it. If someone, under the power and direction of the Spirit rebukes the Church and calls a pastor out on the carpet to challenge these things, they are considered rebellious and not under authority.

One of the biggest things that has killed the Church today is relativism. What this does is renders the prophet or the sage useless. Those of us who know the truth and fight to defend the truth are neutralized with "Well that is your belief and we disagree, now stay positive and quit attacking the Church."

I will hear things like "Let's just agree to disagree." All of a sudden, truth has lost all meaning and everything is relative and arbitrary. Suddenly when a man receives a degree from seminary and has prayers of ordination said over him, he is flawless. He can do no wrong. Everything he speaks is the word of God and cannot be challenged.

When I discuss the evils in churches that I have seen, people always clam up and say "Well, not my church. My church is different." I have come to the conclusion that no matter what I say to whatever Christian I am addressing, that will always be the same response.

There is a mentality that comes from the days of the tyranny of the Roman Catholic Church that says that the Church is above rebuke and correction. That somehow the leaders are flawless and to bring about a challenge, rebuke or correction is to be labeled a heretic.

The apostles saw things differently. Paul had no qualms about speaking against the sins and evils going on in the churches he wrote to. John, on the isle of Patmos had no problem speaking very bluntly the words God had for the seven churches. If you read through the address to the seven churches, the language used is not nice and happy and positive. If they were said today of churches, John would be labeled a "church basher" and be told to make it positive and nice sounding.

I tried this experiment with my poetic and symbolic "Dear Laodicea" Drawing directly from the spirit and sometimes the exact words used in the Bible to bring to attention a gross condition in America's church today. As could be expected, it was not received. I was attacked and on the martyr's block for simply speaking what God had put on my heart to speak.

Today we are dealing with a dynamic not even considered by early Christians or the Bible. We are dealing with thousands of different denominations. This renders the truth irrelevant and the truth is whatever the pastor of whatever local sect one attends says it is. And after all, the pastor has a degree and the "annointing" from a seminary so who are we to challenge?

If the Church cannot be rebuked, If the Church cannot be corrected, If Church leaders are flawless and cannot be shown the truth, what is the point of church? It is no longer run by God Himself, rather it is a cult of personality. the most charismatic, congenial, or even authoritarian pastor is the one who gets the job of sitting on the throne making all the calls. The people are expected to sit up straight, behave and not say a word.

The problem with truth, when it is spoken, is that it NEVER applies to the person or group you are speaking to. Everyone is so quick to say "Not me, not me, not my church, it's someone else."

We have the image of the perfect church on TV and in our experiences in our local gatherings as I spoke of in part one of this topic. And we believe what we see and hear, that what goes on, what takes place is perfect.

Jesus got into a few tussles with religious leaders of His day who thought the same way. He called them "whitewashed tombs filled with dead men's bones." And He had no qualms about speaking harshly to them.

I say if the Church isn't open to rebuke and correction. If it isn't open to discipline and to seeing the gross errors going on, then the Church is powerless to expect the rest of the world to do the same. The Church becomes weak and a ranting fool with no power to do any real good or exact any change in the course of things.

As I mentioned in another previous blog, we become a slave to the comfortable. We like our comfort, our routine and such in our worship and church services. And when someone or even God Himself comes along and wants to shatter that comfortable prison, we fight tooth and nail and we are convinced that it is the works or the words of Satan.

As long as the prophet speaks soothing words that agrees with the comfortable prisoners, he is accepted as being of God. When the prophet brings change and hard rebuke and correction, he is silenced, called angry and dismissed as being an enemy of the Church. Well at least the good thing about all of this is we are no longer burned at the stake for it. We can just go on and start our own church and repeat the same problem until there is no place left for those who wish to live the truth and gather together.