Illusions again...

Ok, so back to the illusions of what church is or isn’t... often I find that the illusions come in pairs. The big pair that was thrown up to me not too long ago was that the ‘Church is full of perfect people” and then within a couple of breaths the idea “that the church is full of hypocrites”. So which is it really?

Well the reality is both and neither. Let’s take the second one first; ‘The church is full of hypocrites’. Aye too right too often. But are they really hypocrites? I am learning that many of the folk I know are not hypocrites so much as just struggling Christians that really need to learn what the Bible says we are to live like. We act wrong because too often we believe wrong. We somehow think if we are ‘good’ then God will love us more and be nicer to us. Truth is God loves us and will love us no matter what. But still we try to be good to get something better and God says ‘I love you so be good because you love me back.’ But it looks like hypocrisy because we are trying too hard to ‘DO something’ and we don’t always ken what it is we are to do, as much out of ignorance as anything.

The ‘Church is full of perfect people’ one is really the same problem but looks different to some because people are doing to make God be nice to us and to love us more. So we look good and smell good but have the wrong motivation too often. And then we end up talking like we have it all figured out and it ends up all show and no go.

So the church ends up in too many people’s minds to be full of perfect hypocrites... oh the joy...

Now to the reality; the church really just has normal ordinary folk who mess up. The church is full of exactly who you would expect it to be full of; liars, cheats, thieves, gamblers, drunks, adulterers, losers and well violators of all the Ten Commandments. HAH you shout with glee---‘I knew it’ all those goody goody folk are exactly what I thought they were... too right. The good news is for many of us that there is a wonderful not so wee clause that says that Jesus came to pay the debt for our sins so we can be forgiven. There is in the reality a bunch of folk who are trusting not in our ability to be ‘good enough’ to be better but rather trusting in God to change us, some days just a wee bit at a time and sometimes in bigger steps. We don’t have to live the lives we really represent, we can do good because it is the right thing to do.

It is about grace, not about doing. But if we get the grace right then we sometimes get the doing right as well... but some days we just do what you do and mess up and have to go back to that glorious well of grace for a new cup of the living water... Yes, church is for imperfect people, but ones who want to be changed by grace.

Loving Grace, because I am neither perfect nor a hypocrite,

Rev. Jon Bergen