Last Wednesday, I had the privilege of joining a panel of people to answer questions from students in our church’s high school youth group. First of all, I want to congratulate you parents on raising serious-minded and thoughtful students. Some of the questions they asked were doozies!
I’ve been thinking in particular about one of the questions as it relates to this Christmas season and our upcoming family celebrations. A student asked: “Can I live a Christian life on my own with just God? Why do I need to go to church?”
There are thousands of grown-ups out there asking that exact same question!
People who have been burned by the church. People who have seen corruption and victimization, abuse of power and abuse of children within the church–and they have concluded that they want none of it.
It’s a pretty compelling argument to be honest.
Yet it’s not God‘s best for us. And there are several reasons I could give. But here’s one:
There are simply too many commands within the Bible about how we are supposed to behave with other believers within the church to conclude that God thinks it’s okay for us to be isolationists. The Bible is full of these “one another” instructions.
He doesn’t want us to just cut people out of our lives because it gets hard.
If in our relationships, we establish as a baseline only people who have never deeply hurt us, taken advantage of us, deceived us, or disappointed us, before too long the only one left really would be God.
The reason I’m thinking about this in terms of Christmastime is that you are likely going to find yourself in close proximity these next few days with people, imperfect people, who have let you down. People who have hurt you, abused their power, been corrupt, or just been flat out mean.
You’re also likely to interact with people in these next couple of weeks who remind you of the many times (maybe long ago or maybe not so long ago) when you yourself were flat out mean and a disappointment to others.
What are we gonna do about that? Live in a cave?
I believe the reason God calls us into community as families, and as church families is for us to practice both graciously forgiving others, and behaving more like Christ. It’s hard work to forgive. It’s hard work to be kind. We wouldn’t do it unless we had to.
This week, my own beloved children will begin arriving back home for Christmas. There has been a deep longing in my heart for many months to have them home again. And yet I know myself well enough to know that it won’t be very many hours after their arrival when my sinful, ugly, selfish nature will begin to rise up.
There are going to be shoes left in the middle of the room that I trip over. There are going to be dirty dishes left on end tables and coffee tables that I wish were in the sink. There are going to be grocery items missing from my fridge that I need for a recipe. There’s going to be loud music and loud laughter and loud podcasts when I’m trying to have my quiet time.
All of these things are the evidence of the goodness of God bringing my dear children back home to me. Yet instead of giving thanks and praise, I could become irritable and grumpy. I don’t want to be that way!
We need to be around one another in order to sand off those rough edges of our sin nature. We need to see ourselves becoming short tempered over silly things in order to be reminded that there’s still a long way to go before we look like Jesus.
So this season when you find yourself stretched out of your comfort zone and surrounded by various “one anothers” who are bringing out the worst of you, may this be a good reminder that bringing the worst up and out of you is exactly the point of sanctification. This is exactly the way we become conformed to His image.