Quit Pointing

In the book, Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an amazing theologian who was imprisoned and executed by the Nazis for his active work against Hitler, an extremely solid point is made that I feel deserves some recognition.

“But if not, let him nevertheless guard against ever becoming an accuser of the congregation before God. Let him rather accuse himself for his unbelief. Let him pray God for an understanding of his own failure and his particular sin, and pray that he may not wrong his brethren. Let him, in the consciousness of his own guilt make intercession for his brethren. Let him do what he is committed to do, and thank God.”

            

You see, Life Together is about living as a community through Christ, and the section that I just quoted warned against the believer criticizing the body of Christ. This is something that stood out to me as something I have often struggled with. As Christians, we tend to get this vision, a dream of sorts in our brains of what the “perfect” Church and Christian community should look like, not realizing that we are all innately flawed and God has a plan for His body of believers that is often much different than ours. When His plan differs from ours, or there is an error or sin committed in the body (which will happen, because, you know…even while saved we’re still sinners), we like to brutalize the body, becoming critics of it.

           

This was something that I had to force myself to stop doing, and I’m still guilty of it from time to time. Let me put it simply: the Church is not going to look how you want it to. God’s plans outrank ours on every level, and His ways are mysterious, so of course the community He has designed it going to look differently than what the human capacity of our brains comes up with. We like to forget that the body is still made up of sinners; He knows this on an intimate level and has designed community in light of our flaws.

            

Instead of pointing fingers at the Church when things don’t go according to our plan or the community is different than we’d like it to be, let us take the words of Bonhoeffer to heart. We need to look inward to find out what is going on in our own hearts and souls to set us at odds with our brothers and sisters, and intercede with the Father on behalf of our Church and community. I know that at times there are problems within the Church that most definitely need to be addressed and taken care of before they become toxic to the body, but let us stop this habit of pointing fingers at the Church. Let us hold our brothers and sisters in the light of Christ, and love the Church the way Christ loves it.