"You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a
prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the
coming of the Righteous One." - Acts 7:51-52
The Jews have always been afraid of the radicals of God. They have always
dwelled in the safety and understandings of the past and fear the effects of these
radicals. But when these radicals like the prophets arrive, they persecute them
because they are uncertain about the truth. An example is when the Jews didn't want
to believe Stephen in Acts 7:56-58, " Look,' he said, I see heaven open and the Son of
Man standing at the right hand of God.' At this they covered their ears and yelling at
the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and stoned
him."
A lot of potshots have been taken at the Church over the years. In spite of its
obvious imperfections, the Church is the means that has been chosen to carry the
message of the Gospel to the world. One wonders why a better system could not have
been devised. Then one realizes that any system that has people in it is going to be
imperfect.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote in the Gulag Archipelago that it was in prison
where he learned that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, not
through classes, not through political parties, either, but right through every human
heart and through all human hearts.
When we give ourselves serious evaluation, we find things hiding in our hearts
that, if we could choose, we would remove. Our hearts have been described as "a zoo
of lust, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds." Yet
the
Church, by its very nature, must be made up of the likes of us.
"Imagine yourself as a living house," wrote C. S. Lewis. "God comes in to
rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is
getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on. But presently He
starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to
make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building
quite a different house from the one you thought of -- throwing out a new wing here,
putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you
were going to be made into a decent little cottage; but He is building a palace."
And thus is the message of the Church. The gospel is carried to imperfect
people by imperfect people. Then those imperfect people are to band together to help
one another grow to spiritual maturity, Salvation in Christ, and growth to Christian
maturity. Warts and all.
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