The Submerging Church

So shall they fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him. (Isa. 59:19)

The Church is dying. I suppose I should weep. In fact, it is not emerging; if anything, it is submerging. Every day the news I read and the accounts people share bring this home to me. It is not just the organized churches that are dying. The entire Church is dying, and what’s left of it is maggot-ridden.

Let’s see—going back a few years. I began to leave the churches in 1985 and finally broke with them in the early 90s. The walk was lonely. The Christian faith was not popular in the circles in which I traveled daily. I moved to another town where the Christian voice was neither so silenced nor so “mega”. Plain folks they were. Regular people, in fact. So I attended a few places and even liked some of what I saw—for a while.

The politically correct agenda began to seep in and the effect it had on me was similar to when Rip van Winkle awoke after sleeping 20 years to find that all had changed. “God save King George!” he let out with a cry only to find people eyeing him like he had stepped off another planet. And so it was when I declared the centrality of the message of Christ to be “I am the Way.” No one believed it any more. The ground had shifted.

People I knew who would never have stood for such nonsense were no longer the people I had known. There were many ways to come to God and who were any of us to judge? Many ways to the Christian faith? When did that happen? I found myself completely and utterly alone. Some might say that’s as it should have been—that I did not move with the times. The Church simply moved ahead and I did not keep up. And yet, some things never change.

For I am the LORD, I change not (Mal. 3:6a)

I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: (Isa. 45:5a)

Some assert that we are merely coming to understand things about God that we never understood before. Others immerse themselves in the writings of the early church fathers in a bid for authencity. Often the endeavors take place in the same space, but the teachings seem strikingly different if you follow the PC crowd and the early writings to their logical conclusions. Whereas the new, inclusive and politically correct Church tries to adjust its past abuses by embracing every stupid notion that comes down the pike, the early Church never believed much of the newthink being promoted today. Where some see progress, I see confusion and a people that has lost their roots. They are like a man who sets off on a journey and half way there he can’t remember where he is going or why he set out in the first place.

If anything, today’s Church is more powerless than ever, more watered down in its message, more inclined to ask, “Hath God said?” What is this strange thing called the Church? I don’t recognize most parts of it any more. The only things familiar to me are a few corners and crevices. If the real Church still exists, it impresses me as cowering in fear of what others think of it. It looks very like the world, thinks like the world, and feels sorry for the world much the way a co-dependent wife feels sorry for an alcoholic husband and enables him while complaining all the while. If the old Church could be accused of hypocrisy, today’s Church is a joke. Before outside influences came to direct its attitudes, works and general path, the understanding of who God is, our relationship to Him and what He desires were completely different. Its posture and present hypocrisy remind me much of this scripture.

For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.
And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. (Gal. 2:12-13)

Is this what happens when a people loses its vision? We are told that they perish (Psa. 29:18a). This leads naturally to the topic of false conversion. We are so ripe for those at this time in history and I believe they are happening. Just who or what is a Christian is completely unclear in our day. I have just finished reading an astounding number of personal accounts of people who chose paganism or other philosophies over Christ. And the more I read of them, the more I notice the same dimwitted reason that people have given throughout history: people are hypocrites or somebody offended them. There is nothing new here.

But then I wonder: who hasn’t been offended by someone in church? This opens a whole new perspective, because every Christian I have ever known has also been offended by someone in church. Unbelievers don’t have a leg up on this complaint. In fact, I don’t know of anyone who hasn’t been offended by someone on the job, in a chapter of the Eastern Star, or some other organization. But for some reason, the favorite reason for either not “going to church” or not believing is that someone offended them.

So now the churches are doing the “sensible” thing. They are making it easier for people to become Christians without the fruits of repentance. This way no one gets offended. I’d like to know why it makes sense that all the rest of us had to repent and believe, but others just get to “transition” from one philosophy of life to Jesus who, naturally, receives them under their own terms and not His own—repent and be baptized. Clearly, we have slipped a lot of notches.

The same lawlessness in the world afflicts the Church. For sure, many leave the churches for reasons of this lawlessness and hierarchical conquest of the people, but when they leave, they generally find there is still no vision. Unfortunately, many develop an attitude that they don’t want anyone telling them what to do—not even legitimate criticism from any corner. So they leave the lawlessness and they return to it by a different route. We have become like Israel in the days of the Judges.

In those days [there was] no king in Israel, [but] every man did [that which was] right in his own eyes. (Judges 17:6)

Freedom is good, but what is freedom? Surely not license. And if you haven’t noticed, the American church is back in the headlines again with a new scandal. I won’t even mention the names—it doesn’t matter, there have been so many. I’m convinced it’s just another result of the lawlessness/conquest tension that has characterized the Church for too many years. It is so pathetic that even the detractors who hate God don’t have to have intelligent arguments anymore. All they have to do is point and feel superior that at least they have nothing to live up to.

There is no open vision in our day. Don’t even look for it in any corner. It’s not that God doesn’t have one, but He isn’t going to share it until the time. But this is our reality. No longer shall any of us be afraid when a prophet declares doom and gloom because we know he can’t see or hear squat in our day.

And the word of the LORD was precious in those days; there was no open vision. (I Sam. 3:1b)

Am I saying there shall never be a word from the Lord again? No—only that we in our self-centered ideas about how the Church should be reordered to serve the world’s interests don’t have ears to hear. We have become pathetic and twisted in our so-called “spirituality”, so much so that the Wiccans and Buddhists have actually got something to offer people in our stead.

The church masses are scattering and no one knows what to do about it. Many are finding that they have fled a battlefield and have now taken refuge in a house of mirrors where truth has become an uncertainty. Some of us have taken to flying by instrumentation, that is by the sheer witness of the spirit in our everyday lives, since we can no longer trust anything we see or hear.

A friend brought up the topic of “simple church” today. He was surprised that a few of us have heard the term already. He referred to it as a new “buzz word” for house churches. (Except that I think it may be a little broader, actually.) He informs me that one of the Christian universities is now offering a course on how to start and organize a “simple church”. Is that an oxymoron?

Someone else mentioned that one of the big cities recently had a big conference for the “simple churches” where they offered “leadership” training. Is there something odd about that picture? People flee organizations to find organic faith and are then rounded up and organized again. Wasn’t it human hands and agendas that messed it all up in the first place? You may recall a few posts ago that a house church site with all sorts of ideas to run things contacted me with the offer that if I will link to them, they will link to me. We cannot outrun these people who are constantly trying to either organize or merchandise us.

Admittedly, I do sometimes find something good in a Christian bookstore, but it’s rare. Perhaps the difference between merchandise now and then is that back in the old days when so many Christian classics were written, no one was trying to sell them. They were usually better than what we have now, maybe because the writers had more time on their hands. Nowadays you get a sudden thought and someone is packaging a book and seminars out of it.

After that little encounter with the merchandisers, I seriously wondered if I should have stayed more in the background with this site. Perhaps I’m not anonymous enough. God knows, I haven’t advertised it much and only a handful of people even read it. It’s always been just my little corner with a hope that if God sends them, they will come. I sometimes toy with the idea that, like Galadriel, I should diminish and go into the west. If it calls for it, I am all for diminishing that He might increase.

Jesus said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” Might the Church share a similar fate? After all, as the master, so goes the disciple. But if the Church dies in Him, She will be raised anew in Him. May Jesus Christ be a light to us all in the present dark age.