IS THE CHURCH SUFFOCATING BY ITS OWN PROGRESS?

I'm old enough now to have experienced multiple generational stages.  I know what it was like to yearn to be a teen, and then a young adult, and then an old adult.  At the moment I am experiencing senior citizenry.  Therefore, I wish to point to something going on--or maybe not going on--among churches.

Each new generation tends to live with measured criticism of a past one (that's the-going-on).  Simultaneously, each new generation repeats the very same stifling tendencies as a past one so that we merely maintain the status quo of the past (that's the-not-going-on portion).  Each upcoming generation sees the failures of the past one which could and should be a healthy take by the new.  But, such a group consistently falls into the very same trap as the one they find as a turn-off.  The latter eventually becomes just as stuck as the former.

Hmmm...so the Apostle was correct when he said that whatever we are critical of, we are guilty of...Romans 2:1-5.  Yes.  A thousand times yes.

So what shall we do?  Are we to never see the need for improvement?  Should we avoid conflict?  Forever turn a blind eye to the need for change?  No, this shall never be.

What we shall do--and every generation will always need this--is to remember with assurance that while we see how things could be improved, we are always in the mix of the problem as well as the solution.  When a generation lives in full-powered criticism of a past one without the slightest awareness that we, too, are guilty of such, we are a perpetually blind civilization destined for religious mopery.

The solution to and for all generations is singular.  There needs to be an obsession with Jesus; not patterns of past nor preferences of future.  Every age range remains in constant need to know the One who lives within each of us in Spirit form.  Of this, we all have much to learn; very much to learn.

We must awaken to the truth that we are suffocating ourselves by carrying on the very identical approach as all other generations; being critical of one another.  As we become more open to our own personal and detrimental flaws an unusual--even holy--form of unity will be set in motion.  Yes, unity by way of humility.

If you are driven to stand for something, try standing for confession of your own sins because when we do this, we tend to notice that the sins of others weren't as big as we had previously believed.  Oh, take the log out of our own eyes?  Jesus did bring that up once, didn't he?