As I was thinking about the tragedy the Amish faced a year ago, which I blogged about yesterday, I realized that my Bible reading for that day was the Sermon on the Mount. Which when you think about it the principles taught by Jesus there was exactly what the Amish demonstrated. And that is exactly the kind of image the Church should portray.
But instead we often times do stupid things or things that just drive people further from the Gospel. Like when church leaders call out their friends, who are also church leaders, and saying in a public setting that the things they have been teaching is heresy. Instead of doing the Biblical thing and going to them and trying to do what you can to correct them, if they indeed do need correcting. And I think we just do ourselves and the church more harm. Perhaps we should heed Jesus’ warning and do what we can to make sure no one is caused to stumble or walk away from God all together because we can’t do things the right way.
And in the same token, I hate it when I hear about a pastor or person from one church telling people that they should not go and visit another church because it is a “cult”. And a vast majority of the time this is said because that particular church doesn’t like the style of the other church, not because they actually know that it is a cult. I recently heard a podcast from a church and the pastor was saying in his talk that someone his wife had met in a grocery store said that she was thinking about attending their church, but someone told them that it was a cult. Why do we do that? I just don’t get it.
Instead we who identify ourselves as Christ-followers should instead be going about telling people how it is that God wants them to live. Do you know how they train people to find counterfeit money? They have them feel the real stuff all day long, so that way when they touch the fake stuff they know it right away. And that is what the Church should be doing, instead of giving them counterfeit stuff and teaching about how you can tell it is counterfeit, why don’t we let them get to know the real stuff so they will know the fake stuff when they come across it? I think that is the better way to do things.
