An excellent reflection on people’s perception of the Church. Stanton’s statement about the Bible calling the church a whore is both wrong and unfortunate. God does not call Christ’s Church a whore. God calls Israel a whore because she was faithless and failed to live up to her calling as God’s called-out people to bring God’s healing love to his good but broken world. That is why God came to us in Christ–to be the true representative of God’s people, Israel, and to accomplish its mission.
Sadly, the Church is also unfaithful at times because we too are as broken as anybody else. But (and this is critical if anyone is to understand the nature of the Church) we are made clean by Christ’s blood shed for us on the cross. That doesn’t excuse our brokenness or means that God is happy with our behavior all the time. Rather Christ’s blood redeems his Church and explains why it is not a whore in God’s sight. That notwithstanding, the overall gist of Stanton’s article is spot-on. From Christianity Today online.
If you want Jesus, you have to take him for who He was. You can’t re-construct a stripped down, organic anti-corporate version of what you think He should be. Jesus’ gospel is a scandal to all of us, the hipsters and the geezers. It’s different than your fabulous pair of pre-worn skinny jeans.
James tells us about religion, that there is some religion that God is quite big on.
So it’s not a question of Jesus and religion or Jesus minus religion. It’s Jesus and what kind of religion. And this is a bit of the problem with the “Just give me Jesus” and the “Jesus Plus Nothing” approach to faith. We’d like to make it all that simple. Jesus never did. He just didn’t. He gives His church certain trappings for good reason.
Does the system of religion (of belief and practice) take you regularly to Christ, compelling you to cast yourselves before him in adoration and upon him in desperation? Or does it give you a false sense of your own self-sufficiency and superiority based on the system itself because it fits with your sense of right?
One is what each of us need. The other is rooted in the original and devastating sin of pride. So no, religion is not the problem. Our rewriting the script is.