Acts 11:1-18 | the Church Will Criticize You. Don't Criticize It.Sample

Here’s the dilemma. The church is filled with sinful people, and that’s the way God wants it to be.

On the one hand, the church is meant to be a radiant bride of Christ – holy, pure, righteous, and exuding all the attitudes and behaviors of people sanctified by God. On the other hand, it’s made of sinful people whom God is still making holy, pure, righteous, and who are still figuring out how to adopt Christ-like attitudes and behaviors as people still being sanctified by God. Because God wants all people to be saved, to come to a knowledge of the truth, to repent, and to follow him. And as we know, this is more often a process than an event.

When we criticize the church over something that has happened to us, we’re implicitly saying that the only people who should be allowed in churches are those who are no longer sinners. Really?

This statement is not written lightly. Some people have suffered deeply at the hands of others in the church, be it shame, distorted teachings that have skewed our attitudes towards God and life, abject neglect or cruelty, even abuse. There’s no excuse for it. But it would also be wrong to think that God condones it, God approves it, that everyone in the church is that way, to avoid all churches because of it, or that that’s what Christ’s church is supposed to be.

Each of us has to keep a careful separation between “the church,” and what some people do inside the church or in the name of “the church.” They are not always one and the same.

And yet, the church is sinful and unclean. Because the church is made up of sinful people.

If you think you found a perfect church, you’re just not looking hard enough.

If you expect people to be perfect in a church, you’ve missed what the church actually is.

If you ever find a perfect church, don’t join it. You’ll only mess it up.

Which means if you go all in, you’re going to eventually get criticized by someone—what you do, what you believe, what you assume, maybe even hurt. And at some point, you’ll be guilty of doing the same.

It’s going to happen. You are not alone.

St. Augustine is attributed as having once quipped: “The church is a whore, but she’s my mother.”

Not quite, but it does have a ring of truth to it. His actual quote is this:

“Let us honor the catholic Church, our true Mother, the true Bride of her Husband, because she is the wife of so great a Lord. And what shall I say? How great is that Husband and of singular rank, that he discovered a prostitute and made her a virgin. Because she should not deny that she was a prostitute, lest she forget the mercy of her liberator. How can it be said that she was not a prostitute when she fornicated with demons and idols?” (Augustine, Sermon 213).

It's hard to love someone who is imperfect. Welcome to the way of God. Welcome to the way God treats you.