It is no secret that I have many grievances with the institutional church. I have few reservations in saying that I think it barely breaks even in doing good, versus doing harm to its own and the world who needs to hear the Gospel.

As I read in Romans 15 tonight, Paul talks about his freedom to now come and visit the church in Rome since his doors for service in his own region were coming to a close. So, to better understand the passage, I read from Matthew-Henry’s classic commentary on the text. And one short phrase stood out and left a very bitter taste in my mouth.

It is justly expected from all Christians, that they should promote every good work, especially that blessed work, the conversion of souls. Christian society is a heaven upon earth, an earnest of our gathering together unto Christ at the great day.

Christian society is a ‘heaven upon earth’. In other words, the corporate church is a heaven upon earth.

Well, yes, perhaps in isolated places. Perhaps even in Matthew-Henry’s time this was true. It’s hard to say, really. But for me, in my experience and the experience of many others, this sentiment does not resonate whatsoever. There is little more charity in the institutional church than in the world at large. But, in the church, there is far less acceptance or ‘love’—even patience or forgiveness.

But I do notice that Matthew-Henry deliberately uses the word ‘a’ in order to describe this present ‘heaven’. Of course we cannot attain here what we will truly have with Christ, there.

Nonetheless, the church ought to be something like a heaven on earth, in certain respects. And while the institution will never be perfect, we cannot accept the flaws by that virtue. Much like our own personal pursuits of Christ, we have to continue to tear down the flawed structures and at least attempt to rebuild stronger, more effective ones—regardless of the ‘cost’.

In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses warns the people not to make an image of any god. But he prefaces it by reminding them that they heard a voice, but they didn’t see anything.

“…watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth.”

The fact that the people saw nothing was the ground Moses used, in this instance, to condemn the making of ‘carved’ images. After all, they did not actually see God, how could they possibly make a carved image of him, unless they filled in a lot of blanks with their own flimsy speculation.

Over the course of generations, that could be tragic. People might begin to neglect the the words they heard from God, and pay more attention to the form they’d created for him from their own minds.

As I read this this morning, it dawned on me that, in a way, we break this commandment quite regularly. Although, not quite in the way that Moses laid it out.

Today, while we have the complete Word of God, much of the church has a habit of going beyond what the scriptures actually say in an attempt to fill in gaps that God intends would remain open.

We have to be careful to remember that—like the Israelites who were permitted to make ‘carved images’ in one sense, they were not allowed to place them in the position of any kind of deity (especially God)—we also are allowed to speculate on spiritual things. We are even allowed to use our best judgments to make decisions and find the right path. But, we’re never allowed to elevate these speculations to the level of authority that the Word of God exclusively holds.

For the Washington, DC area, the national weather service is advising us to be prepared for a major snow storm this Saturday. About two feet of snow is what they’re predicting. That’s pretty significant. And as I was reading the scriptures today, it reminded me of the Noah and flood.

Only a few verses before the story of Noah and the Ark in Genesis 6, God is noting that the people are multiplying and becoming progressively more and more wicked. Then, he declares that the number of man’s years will be 120.

After reading it through several times, doing some word-research on my own and then hearing from the puritans (John Calvin, in particular), I feel pretty confident in saying that God was giving humanity 120 years before wiping almost everyone out with the flood. If that is a reasonable interpretation of the text, then that’s pretty amazing.

Though things were in sad shape and getting worse, God left them with over a century to turn. Of course, they didn’t, and that sucks. But, God’s grace and mercy in that are beautiful.

It keeps us in the tension between eagerly waiting and praying for Christ’s return, yet at the same time praying that God would have patience and mercy and bring in many, many more who don’t yet believe. And that’s just where we are. Waiting for the ‘flood’, knowing it will come, yet hoping that God will wait and more will be saved.

That’s pretty cool, I think.

Romans 6:19:

“…For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.”

There’s an important truth embedded here that I sometimes overlook.

“Lawlessness leading to more lawlessness…” Sin leads to more sin. Have you ever been stuck in a series of habitual sins? Have you ever told yourself that quitting cold-turkey would be too hard and so you thought you might try and ease yourself out of your sin pattern? I definitely have. It’s never worked for me and I’m betting it didn’t work for you either.

That’s because sin begets sin. When we sin, we sin more. That’s the problem. If we want to break our sin-patterns, we’ll have to stop more than that sin in specific, but focus on Sin as the grand tyrant it is.

Has anyone delivered a compliment to you which you accepted and felt good about, yet simultaneously knew was simply inaccurate? I know that I have.

Matthew-Henry’s father, Philip (also a Puraitan) said this:

“Be as much troubled by unjust praises, as by unjust slanders.”

This is apt. When someone with a distaste for our personality speaks ill of us for no notable reason, we’re usually at least frustrated. But more likely angry. But, few people have such qualms about someone speaking highly of them when it’s undeserved. This is a real problem.

When someone slanders us without cause, we are broken down and our person is hurt. But, when someone builds us up with false information, God’s person is hurt. We accept praise on false grounds to bolster our pride, which inevitably robs God of glory which is due to him. This is much worse.

I try to correct people when they offer compliments on false pretenses. But I am guilty as well. I just wish I could be half as worked up about it as I am when I’m unfairly criticized.

Community on NBC is my favorite new comedy to come along since The Office. Smart, Witty and delightfully dumb. Plus, it’s generally pretty tame in its sense of humor. In other words, most jokes are about pop-culture, not sex—which I appreciate.

The most recent episode, the Christmas episode, made a point to poke fun at religion in general, which each member of the ‘community’ having a different, stereotypical religious belief. There’s the Jewish girl, the middle eastern Muslim boy, the African American Jehovah’s Witness, the feminist atheist, the born again Christian woman, the older liberal man who’s in a cult but doesn’t know it, and the main character who’s an agnostic.

When they introduce everyone’s belief, the main Character reveals that he is agnostic. The others scoff at him insisting that he’s too ‘lazy’ to decide what he believes. It was a comical discussion, but it got me thinking about the Church’s various theological makeup.

An extremely large portion of the church finds itself as a sort of “agnostic Christian”. Of course, not in the literal sense of the word.

Religiously speaking, an agnostic is “a person who claims that they cannot have true knowledge about the existence of God (but does not deny that God might exist)”. In Christianity, many people take the complexity of theology and conclude that we simply cannot know the right answer and sit non-committedly in ambiguous belief. They’re mostly unwilling to place definitions on God, or on the way God works.

But, this is simply wrong. We are able to look at scripture and draw confident conclusions about God and how he works. While we shouldn’t scoff at anyone’s belief, we should encourage our brothers and sisters not to rest in ‘agnostic Christianity’, but to seek the scriptures and draw conclusions.

I strongly believe that it is important to know what we believe and why. Even if that belief isn’t necessarily ‘right’, knowing our beliefs about God is important and much healthier than giving up because we think it’s too complicated.

Psalm 16:11 is one of the most compelling verses in all of scripture, I think.

You make known to me the path of life;
   in your presence there is fullness of joy;
   at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Whatever this thing is that we’re engaged in with God, it is to be enjoyed. It shouldn’t be burdensome or woeful. We shouldn’t look at the worldly pleasures we’re constantly learning to leave behind with regret over the loss of that satisfaction, but look for the genuine and superior pleasures found in our walk with God today.

I suspect that if I do this, I will experience life much differently.