Here’s an interesting reality: lots of people want to love God today.
That’s what they say. Check out the polls regularly printed in USA Today,
for example, and you’ll find that most people are not in fact hardened
secularists waiting to pounce like a hyena on any Christian they can
find. You may pick up that impression from the news media or talking
heads on TV, but that’s not how many people represent their desires.
Many folks want to get in touch with God. Of course, they don’t know
how, and many don’t really follow through. Without God’s redeeming
grace, our sin gets in the way of our best intentions.
But the point stands: a good number of folks would at least say that
they want to love God. I think you would baffle many people, though, if
you extended the question to this: “Do you want to love the church—an
actual, real, existing local church in your area?”
It’s at this point that a lot of people would drop out. They would
argue that they’re “spiritual,” but not really religious. They believe
in a living relationship with the Lord, not a ritualistic one. They can
worship God anywhere, and they don’t need to be confined to a building.
Perhaps, in fact, this voices your perspective. Maybe you’ve been burned by a church. You don’t associate
the local church with a place of joyful worship where you encounter the
transcendent Lord of heaven and earth. In fact, there are so many
people who have had negative experiences that I think it’s worth saying
what the church is not:
- The local church is not a social club for gossip, albeit with pews and a slightly odd smell.
- It’s not a place where you go to observe a whole bunch of weird rules that have no connection to everyday life. Continue at Owen Strachan
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