RELIGION'S RUB

There is a vast gulf increasing within communities over the concepts of God and what such might entail.  While this isn't good, it is correctable.  I know because at one time I was against the very things I now live in with incredible enthusiasm.

It seems that both sides--believers and unbelievers--blur the truth about God by our confusion of which is Christianity and which is Churchianity.  Are we called to follow Christ or are we merely wrapped up in following our church?  The answer makes a difference to all who are pondering becoming believers in God.

Christians have slipped into a deadening pattern anytime we believe we are going to change our lives and "now go to church".  Going to church is not the definition of a believer in God.  It surely includes it; but there is very much more.

Churchianity focuses on how the church is doing; where it stands, what it believes, how it looks, what are the attendance numbers as well as the contribution count.  Christianity focuses upon the lost and the poor and the downtrodden and the dying with hopes of offering legitimate new life which is only embedded in Jesus.

Churchianity shuns dark sinners while Christianity embraces us.  Churchianity builds borders to keep people out while Christianity opens her arms wide without criticism and invites us to come in.

In my younger years I wanted nothing to do with church.  But I was mistaken.  I now want everything to do with it.  The transfer came when I learned that church isn't God.  God is.  I am to worship God; not my church style.  And one of the best things I have learned during thirty-eight years of ministry is the truth about my own sinfulness. 

Until I realized this one fact about myself, I was busy trying to build the church.  When God finally broke me down as to my own arrogance, all of a sudden the desperate need for Jesus has remained renewed. 

My mission is different.  My purpose is different.  Judgment and criticism of others is subsiding and I am discovering a whole new life right in the center of my inward focused church.  It is called Christianity.

Religion's rub is that people equate the shallowness of church building with the brilliance of God.  This must be corrected for it is keeping the masses at bay when God wants to draw us into Him.