Forgive me while I climb up onto my little soap box, but I have been thinking a lot about the reputation of the church lately and after hearing this story on the news I just have to share these thoughts before they consume me.
Here’s the basic outline of the story: there was a 4th grade teacher at a private, Christian school who became pregnant and went to the director to talk about maternity leave. When she gave him her due date, he added up the dates and asked if she had become pregnant before her wedding. She answered truthfully that she had indeed become pregnant 3 weeks before the wedding. Upon learning this, she was fired for violating the moral standards of the school but it didn’t stop there. For some reason, the head of the school thought it wise to publish why she had been fired to all of the school staff and all the parents of her students as well. The teacher is now suing the school for personal damages and has been interviewed on the today show as well as other news outlets. Her students’ parents are outraged about the whole situation and are unhappy with the school for letting go a teacher who they loved and trusted for reasons that had nothing to do with the classroom.
Here’s the thing, should she have been engaging in pre-marital relations? no. However, she continued with the marriage with the father and was 100% honest about it when asked when she easily could’ve lied. I do not think that the school was outside of their rights to have moral standards and enforce them, but did they really need to spread the story around and put this woman in the position of public scrutiny? Guess what the result of that is…the public opinion of the church and Christians in general being lowered….again.
Here’s a brand new thought, it’s called compassion. The way it works is this: we stop acting like sin is a virus that unless caught will spread through the ranks like the plague and start caring about the people behind the sin. Have we come so far in our holiness that we have forgotten who we were without Christ? This lack of reaching out to the ones who really need Christian (as in Christ-like) love has left the church ineffective in a lot of situations. It really is no wonder why the world looks at us with a bad taste in their mouths. We have left our calling to reach out and show the love of Christ in order to protect ourselves from being tarnished. Shame on us!
Christ specifically said that He did not come to be a physician to the healthy and we find Him teaching in places where the church officials of that day criticized Him. His job on earth was to live a perfect life and yet we do not find Him being afraid of catching the “sin virus”. Instead, we find Him showing mercy, extending forgiveness, healing, and caring for those who were even publicly known as sinners. How much more effective could the church be if we stopped priding ourselves on how holy we are and started digging into the real work of the great commission? Could our generation change the public perception of Christianity as a whole if we stopped looking down our noses at them and starting reaching our hands out to show them how much we care?
My prayer is that we would not become a part of the world but begin to move back into it and allow God to reach out through us and our testimony of love. It is my greatest goal to be set apart in my actions and attitude so that my testimony can not be mistaken for anything else while still maintaining a demeanor that invites people in instead of blocking them out.
Wow. Shocking yet not surprising. We Christians make such fools of ourselves when we forget Christ’s teaching that sin is not just actions we take, but a part of our human condition. Sin is as much a part of us as our internal organs. Jesus constantly emphasized the condition of our hearts that led to our outward sins, i.e. lust being a cause of adultery therefore lust=adultery. I’d like to know if that school administrator ever had a lustful thought. If he has, according to his standards those lustful thoughts need to be publicly exposed and he removed from his position in the school, because according to the teachings of Christ, that administrator is guilty of the sin of adultery.
Side note: I’d like to know when Christ licensed Christians to go out and effect social change in any way other than leading a harmless, godly life and preaching the gospel in simplicity and truth. He didn’t tell us to preach moral standards to others to make them change. The gospel preached in its purity leads to the salvation of those whom God has called. And those who are not saved are under no obligation to follow the Biblical code, so why do we sometimes insist on it (for example, insisting that America act like a CHristian nation as if our nation itself is God’s chosen nation)?
How refreshing…people who get it. Now getting other people to get it too!
They will know we are Christians by our Love – not our rules & regulations, although those have a place if they are biblical. Mercy tempered with justice – the way God gave, is how we should give also. Forgiveness & restoration are all but dead among many Christians. Tragic, since that is the crux of our belief system, right? The best illustration is the unforgiving servant who had been forgiven so much. We see what his punishment was, which should make us quell in fear if we have an unforgiving spirit. Forgiveness & restoration go hand-in-hand.