Hans Deventer ([info]phineasb) wrote,
@ 2005-08-14 19:20:00
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Hospital or firing squad
Sometimes, I think the church is often more like a firing squad than a hospital. "Behave, then belong", so to speak. Which in reality means, you're okay unless where you happen fail can't remain hidden anymore.

So we are in the business of hiding our pain and failures, in stead of opening up and finding healing. The other day, someone wrote me "When we are open about who we really are, Christ is actually healing us." That seems only too often a dream in stead of reality. And thus, we stumble around in our own hidden darkness, pretending all is well.

Okay, this is the analysis. How to change things? Ain't it scary to be open? Sure is! Don't we derive much of our value from what people say about us? Yeah, we do.

So it's about making choices. Who are you and I going to listen to? Who knows you inside out and loves you all the same? As Christians, we should know the answer to that question.

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Totaly agree!
(Anonymous)
2005-08-16 11:00 am UTC (link)
Guess it goes with what I said in my Blog, integrity is soo important, and we christians often come short! I agree folks HAVE to fit in to most churches, maybe thats the reason many dont bother to attend?

Ian Gentles.

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Not hospital
(Anonymous)
2005-09-08 07:57 pm UTC (link)
I wonder about the hospital analogy. It has been used often (even by me) as
a metaphor of how the church should respond to a lost world. "Rescue station"
is another metaphor. But now I wonder if in deed that is what the Church
should be like.

Saving the lost is not our responsibility; ours is to proclaim the gospel
and to make disciples. The Holy Spirit convinces, Jesus saves, and God makes
holy.

Interestingly, if the job of the Church is not saving souls (that is, saving
souls is a byproduct of what it should be doing), then how should the Church
behave? If it proclaims the truth, and it engages in disciple-making, it is
not analagous to a hospital that coddles the sick back to health or makes
dying a bit less painful.

To your point about the firing squad, there is little doubt that the Church
has its elements who are quick to judge and condemn, which probably stems
from proclaiming the truth without love, or proclaiming what one only thinks
is the truth.

If the Church was analagous to an army, then discipline might be its
characteristic trait.

Personally, I like the Church as Bride metaphor that the Bible uses.
How a bride behaves to her bridegroom is something we should deeply
consider as members of the Body of Christ.

Mark

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Re: Not hospital
[info]phineasb
2005-09-09 11:01 am UTC (link)
Mark,

Saving and healing come from the same Greek verb. The difference isn't all that much. I like the hospital metaphor because it says first of all that we all are sick. And we are! Second, we need healing. And we do. And third, we are all in the process of being healed. Even those that have been there for all their lives and help in the healing process, are still wounded healers themselves (as Henri Nouwen said). So the ultimate Healer is God.
Healing is becoming holy, is getting saved, is making disciples. Because our disease is alienation from God. And being brought back into a right relation with Him brings us life, in fact to know Him in the Biblicals sense is eternal life (John 17).

Having said all this, there is obviously nothing wrong with the image of the Bride.

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