Giving up on the church is giving up on ourselves

The following is a slight modification of a column I wrote for Christian Courier in March 2000:

When I was a young man some three decades ago, I was quite certain that the christian community in which I had been raised was hugely deficient in any number of ways. I had only recently become aware of the biblical commands to do justice. Since childhood I had heard John 3:16 and Romans 3:23 and knew that salvation is in Jesus Christ. But I hadn’t read Isaiah or Amos. I hadn’t known – or at least it hadn’t yet sunk in – that God calls us to do justice to our fellow human beings and that scripture has much to say about the ways rulers treat their subjects.

This was the era of Watergate and the final years of US involvement in Vietnam. Moreover, the struggle for racial justice in America was still very recent, and it was less than a decade since Alabama Governor George Wallace had stood for the presidency on an openly segregationist platform. I was embarrassed by the fact that many believers had voted for Richard Nixon, had supported the bloodletting in Indochina, and had even been slow to embrace civil rights for American blacks. In short, Christians were on the wrong side of these watershed issues, which was nothing less than scandalous.

I never stopped attending church altogether. I loved worship too much for that. But for a while I did have difficulty praying, particularly in public settings. I could no longer listen to the preaching of the word with an open heart, because I was certain of being surrounded by so much hypocrisy. Surely all this preaching about salvation and sanctification concealed the cynical self-interest of people who on election day would vote their pocketbooks rather than vote for justice, particularly for the poor and disadvantaged.

I am now ashamed to say that at the time I was more than a little arrogant. If others might be guilty of the sin of hypocrisy, then I had fallen prey to pride, which is arguably the root of all other sins. Obviously this is not something I look back on with satisfaction, though perhaps I can plead that my youthful inexperience blinded me, not only to the full complexities of life, but to the sin in my own self. Unable to see the church as the body of Christ – the community of the redeemed – I saw it instead filled with bishops supporting corrupt Latin American oligarchies, television preachers extolling the “American way of life” – warts and all – and comfortable middle-class pew sitters piously condoning their governments’ oppressive activities abroad while quoting Romans 13.

I have never lost the passion for justice sparked in me during my late adolescence, though I am less willing now to accept that all justice issues are a simple matter of defending the oppressed against apparent oppressors. Where I have changed most, however, is in my attitude towards the church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote that God hates visionary dreaming. Those engaging in such dreaming are fired with a vision of what the church should be but cannot bring themselves to love her for what she is. After all, the church is composed of ordinary, fallible human beings for whom Christ died. God loves us, not because we are virtuous, but precisely because we are sinners standing in need of grace. Yes, the church contains hypocrites, as well as dishonest entrepreneurs, people who vote their own self-interest, and even arrogant youth. But we dare not give up on the church, unless we are willing to give up on ourselves and on the God who has redeemed us with his love.