'Consider this one piece of evidence: millions of people who have spent years attending church, and yet don't know God. Their heads are filled with stuffing about Jesus, but they do not experience him,---.There are millions more who love Jesus Christ but experience him only occasionally, more often stumbling along short of the life he promised, like Lazarus still wrapped in his grave clothes'. 1
I've met one or two of them. The women in their eighties who have been to the same church for 50 years and don't know why -'Well it was the respectable thing to do then'. The one who first told me this, said that she went to that church because her friend did. The friend had long since gone but someone gave her a lift so she might as well go. Another threw her hands in the air saying 'Oh I wish I had some teaching!' (She took happily to large print Bible reading notes). One said 'I thought it was time I tried to read the Bible so I started with 1 Kings but made nothing of it' (She found W Barclay's commentary on John's Gospel instead!). In a church of a non-liturgical tradition one confided 'Well we've heard all this before haven't we?' Week after week, year after year they listen to sermons- and that's it!
I think it was Dallas Willard who said that the church exists for the Spiritual Formation of its members but few have developed an agenda to achieve this. Another preacher referring to Peter's questioning a Christian group about whether they were baptised with the Spirit or only had the Baptism of John suggested that far too many churches had stuck at water baptism only.(See Acts 19:1-7)
Pointing out that it was the religious leaders who opposed Christ violently, Eldredge quotes the 'Scottish prophet George MacDonald who asks "How have we learned Christ? It ought to be a startling thought that we may have learned him all wrong.--That must be far worst than not to have learned him at all: his place is occupied by a false Christ, who is hard to exorcise." Hard to exorcise indeed, because religion gives the impression of having Christ, while it inoculates you from experiencing the real thing. Most wicked. If you want to destroy an economy, flood the market with counterfeit bills.' (1p.8-9)
My Grandparents were respectable chapel goers for most of their lives, although Grandmother, once widowed, went and got herself confirmed in the Cathedral and then took her rightful place in the second front pew of the Village Church behind the Vicars wife ! My Mother grew to hate the whole thing as hypocrisy and pointless, and never went near a church until the end of her life when I think she found Jesus on her deathbed.
Church leaders who never learned Jesus themselves have much to answer for.
1 Eldredge J BEAUTIFUL OUTLAW experiencing the playful, disruptive, extravagant personality of Jesus.
