Is There Something Wrong With Us?

Some might think this blog title has something to do with the fact that we took on 2 extra kids this weekend. Actually it doesn't. Yes taking on 2 extra kids when you already have 5 is not the smartest thing to do. And to all of you who don't have many children the saying "What's one more kid..." doesn't always work. The 2 we have right now are not bad. They do add to our craziness, but overall it's been a blast.

So I have often talked about how there is something wrong with the church. I don't care what church you go to I feel that most of the churches just have lost something. I read the following story from Philip Yancey's "What's so amazing about grace?" the visual edition. If you have never seen the visual edition I highly recommend it.

"A prostitute came to me in wretched straits, homeless, sick, unable to buy food for her two-year-old daughter. Through sobs and tears, she told me she had been renting out her daughter- two years old!- to men interested in kinky sex. She made more renting out her daughter for an hour than she could earn on her own in a night. She had to do it, she said, to support her own drug habit. I could hardly bear hearing her sordid story. For one thing, it made me legally liable - I'm required to report cases of child abuse. I had no idea what to say to this woman. At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her face. 
'CHURCH!' she cried. 'Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They'd just make me feel worse.'"
What struck me about my friends story is that women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift? Evidently the down-and-out, who flocked to Jesus when he lived on earth, no longer feel welcome among his followers. What has happened?

Philip Yancey has a great question...What has happened? I wish that was an easier question to answers. I mean in a way it is easy. We have gone from being a family who ate together and meet together daily...to a club you need to become a member of. We have gone from a family who encouraged one another daily...to a meeting where we sometimes talk to one another weekly. We went from taking the Word of God seriously...to hardly picking it up and reading it for ourselves.

But yet in a way sometimes it's a hard question to answer. My husband came up to me the other day and said this. "If we think something is wrong with the church and we feel that really we (as in people) are the church...does that mean that something is wrong with us?" And what a thought provoking question. Is there something wrong with me? How is my wrong view of God effecting how the church is viewed? How is my wrong view of God effecting other's views? Really it just makes me what to dig into the Bible even more to find out. I hope it's something you want to do too!