Started on a new devotion book "4Life - God's values for Living".
It's a book meant for a mentor and mentee, guiding the mentee from the embryonic stages of their faith and guiding them to the mature stages.
Though I would consider myself a long-time, mature Christian... there are still MANY MANY things to learn. Let's say, I'm on chapter 3, and I've already been challenged and already chewing on some concepts.
As the title of this post says: "Redefining church".
Just finished Chapter 3 "A new family". There's the cliche; "the church is the 'gathering of people', not the building."
But cutting to the chase, the book asked a simple question and provided some answers you can check off...
What's your experience of church?
o A friendly club
o A distant organization
o A committed family
o A bunch of hypocrites
o Other:
I chose; a friendly club, committed family, and a bunch of hypocrites.
After choosing the last one... I paused for a moment to churn over what I selected and questioned my reasoning behind the choices. This is what I came up with...
My own personal experience of the the church is the people are friendly and are a committed family. But Kevin Chong always looks at both sides of the picture. I am well aware of what the people outside the church think of the church... and one is: hypocrites.
Don't Christians get labeled as that? Say this, do another. Judge this and that, but does this and that. This is what the Bible says about that:
"Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It's easy to see a smudge on your neighbor's face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, 'Let me wash your face for you,' when your own face is distorted by contempt? It's this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor."
- Matthew 7:1-5 (The Message)
My honest belief: Hypocritical "christians" do more damage to the Church than the any intelligent atheists or whateverists could ever do.
Something to ponder, how does this even relate to 'church'? Until next time... until next time.
that devotional book does sound like you will be challenged in the days to come
ReplyDeletein regards to the choices of what the experience of the church is, i think i will choose all of them and may even think of more
maybe its just the experiences i have had and that there so many sides to everything since it is impossible to actually encounter all in one's life time
but the verse u quoted, i want to say that i have had time i criticized a fellow christian because i wanted them to actually know the severity of something because i feel affected by it, maybe im being hypocritical but then again, i dont like to just let thing pass if it may grow into a bigger problem
and to the question you wrote at the end, i think it does relate to church!