I have just finished reading a comment posted on another blog and I am torn between being appalled and chuckling at how human we all are in our ability to think we know what direction the lives of other people should take. Reading the letter was deja vu to me....back to the days of yore when my Baptist church friends were terrified of being sullied by exposure to the charismatics, when my Orangemen Irish relatives were terrified of being sullied by exposure to the Roman Catholics. Each had the truth and the other group was going down for its apostate beliefs and practises.
In this instance the letter was written by a person who left our particular denomination in the church to join up with a break away group. Now of course the rest of us must prove our love to God in the same way: repent of being apostate by remaining in the "mother" group and join in the new adherence to the REAL church of God.
The letter struck a chord in me because since leaving the evangelical churches to return to a mainline denomination I have heard so little of this sort of rhetoric, the sort that contributed to my leaving the evangelical churches in the first place.
I have no doubt at all that the person who wrote the comment has the purest of intentions in wanting to save the rest of us from our walk into heresy. Unfortunately when we feel we have to save others from their perceived errors we tend to assume that we are speaking to them with the voice of God Herself (or the Universal He, Him-self....suit Your-self). Since we feel we have been led to take a certain path in our spiritual lives or church then "obviously" everyone else claiming to be servants of God must also follow along with us. Somewhere along the line we become so very sure of what we are saying that we cross the line of God's love into whining, nagging, belligerence and develop a most self-righteous attitude. We berate others who are not doing what we are doing and tell each other outright that our way is the only way and everyone else who does something different couldn't possibly be receiving direction from God. We so quickly change from love to smugness, from love to anger, from allowing our brothers and sisters to find their own direction from God to assuming we have some sort of special communication from God that separates us from the common rabble who are missing out on the True Way.
How quickly the power of darkness can inflitrate even our best and most loving of intentions to turn concern for others into a demand that they obey what we assume is the correct direction for their lives. How blind we become as we assume the role of God and judge while still thinking we are acting in love. Honestly, all of us who try to serve God, or at least most of us, have been guilty of thinking we know what is best for others in the Church; maybe we haven't voiced it, but we have thought it.
People uninvolved in the Church do not see our internal intentions, they only see our outward actions and flee as quickly as possible before becoming victims of our "loving judgements" toward them.
No wonder the reputation of Jesus has been sullied in the eyes of onlookers who do not know him and have only his disciples to watch and listen to. For centuries we have messed it up, confused love and self-righteousness, peace of mind and smugness, true discipleship and personal politics. The person who wrote the comment I read this morning is not alone.
Even God's own people are still so very human......forgive us and deliver us Lord.
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