Our Dying Ecclesiology

I have been thinking a lot about church and talking to people who don't go to church. I hear comments like, "Churches are just full of hypocrites," and "I haven't found a church that works for me." These are comments I hear all the time from people who have given up on church and I have to say that it makes me want to give up on church too.

I am wondering if what people are describing is going to church and feeling judged by people who are no different than them. I notice that our churches have incorporated moralism into their DNA in a way that only focuses on part of the law. The sense of hypocrisy comes because churches have eschewed the whole law for a smaller set of "house rules" that everyone has subconsciously agreed to. These "house rules" are simple enough for the in-crowd to follow, but exclude a majority of people who walk through the door.

This is how pharaseeism works out in our churches today. We pick and choose from the law and create not a place for sinners to find comfort and rest, but a place for those who are not-gay, not-liberal, not-conservative, not-divorced, or not-sleeping around. Those who call it home find their own way of putting on the right face and everyone else just goes away angered by the hypocritical institutional church and when it turns out that one of their number is not living up to code, they are shamed until they leave too.

The church becomes a place for similar sinners as opposed to forgiven saints. We no longer need to be forgiven, we only need to continue living up to the local law. Our self-righteousness reigns. In fact, we reject no one more completely than the very savior who tries to tell us we are not righteous by our own merit and that we need help. How else does the Son of God who came and died for us end up becoming simply a "good moral teacher." Moses was a good moral teacher, Jesus was the savior of the world.

The church has to maintain the whole law because everyone who enters must stand condemned together and thus be in need of the same grace. Anything less than the whole law simply excludes some and makes room for others who can live up to some small set of rules. It is the whole law that crushes all equally. Everyone, from Hitler to Mother Teresa, stands in total violation of the whole law. It is inescapable in its crushing totality.

Church can either be a place where we find comfort, grace, and the word of forgiveness and adoption in the death and resurrection of Jesus or it can be a place that reduces the law to an "achievable" level that excludes all but the Pharisees and Scribes who are deluded into thinking they measure up.