Love vs. Truth

Every week on Thursday the staff at our church gets together for what they are calling the Brouhaha. It used to be called Staff Devos but they have spiced it up. The reason for the spicing up is why I am writing this.

Our church has a problem. The problem is love. Most of the folks here are not concerned with love but are more concerned with what’s right and wrong. I think that this mentality plagues churches everywhere. I often state what I am not saying, so here it goes. “I am not saying that there is no one that loves or that the pursuit of right and wrong is bad.”

Take a look at Ephesians 4:14-16
14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.
15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.
16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

It is the job of the church to speak the truth but in love. Without love we are sinning. We are speaking truth but the container sucks. No wonder the world hates the church and talks about hypocrisy. They are not seeing the love of Christ. They are not seeing pure motives.

Another aspect that really gets me going is the whole idea about evangelism that we have been taught our whole lives. We have been pushed and prodded to get out there and have “redemptive relationships” just so we can get the “lost” folks to come to know Christ. How about this: Why don’t we just get to know people (really know them, not the surface crap) and let God create the opportunities to share with them when the timing is right.

I feel as though there is an enormous pressure to convert people and if we don’t, we have guilt that we walk around with daily. We need to realize that it is not us who converts them! We are God’s hands, not God himself.

A lot of it really comes down to your view on Predestination. If you believe that the church on a whole is predestined then, yes there is a lot more pressure on the Christians to bring people to know the Lord. If you believe that it is a personal predestination, that some are chosen and some are not, then the responsibility is on God. I would much rather have the responsibility on God than a fallen man like myself.

Fallen,
~Hosh~