What Scares Me

I have many blogs in my head regarding reverse culture shock, but the one that is most consuming on my mind and heart is this one. 

The things I have seen and heard and witnessed since being back scare me. Literally scare me. Among them:

Consumerism

Materialism

The constant pursuit of the newest, latest, greatest ______

Insecurity

Obsessive worry about what others think of you

But the thing that scares me the most? The state of the church in America. 

Before I say the things that are on my heart and mind, let me throw out the disclaimer that I know Christ loves His church and will always preserve His church. I also love and appreciate the ways He has used His church in my life, and still does. He has very much used His church as tools in His hands to mold and shape me into the person I am today. And He will continue to do that. 

However, what i have heard and seen since being back scares me. I looked around me today as I experienced my first church service in America in 2 years, one of the two services I've experienced in English in the last 2 years. As I looked around, the only word that came to mind was DEAD. Now, I certainly have nothing against these people or this church. I love them. I love the pastor. Dearly. And I don't claim to know people's hearts or where they stand with Him, and I know not everyone in the building with me is like this, but I had this eerie feeling of death as I saw very few people singing, and those who were singing were mostly singing songs that were focused on us instead of on God. It's like the building was filed largely with people who have been passed Christianity (or some semblance of it) from their parents and grandparents, and they continue in it because that is what the good American is supposed to do. But it's religion. Dead ritual. Meaningless going through the motions of entering a building once a week, bowing their heads, closing their eyes, standing when they're supposed to, sitting when they're supposed to, singing songs about themselves, and listening to a message that really seems like they are gritting their teeth through counting down the minutes till it's over (either that or sleeping through). 

Don't we realize Who the Holy God Almighty is that we are standing before?!

Don't we realize what He's done to remove religion and make it so that we can stand holy before Him, apart from any merit of our own?

Just Who do we think we are coming before? 

We have allowed Satan to deceive us into thinking we are okay with God just because we enter a building every Sunday and pray, sing songs, and listen to a guy talk for awhile. 

Then there's the treatment of the Word. The sermon I heard today was biblical and stuck to the Word. He nailed the point of the passage, and focused on the main character, who is God. Awesome! I was rejoicing :) But that is rare to find, at least from what I've seen and heard, both before I left and since I've been back. The Word often gets sugar coated or watered down. We don't want to offend people, so we make it more palatable. And those passages that are hard to swallow? Well, we'll just skip over them and pretend God didn't say that because after all, how could God be like that? He loves us; He would never do anything like that! 

We need to get over our "all about me" mentality and kick it out of the building and people we call church. NOTHING is about us. It's all about Him. It's all from Him and through HIm and to Him. To HIM be all the glory!

And we need to stop thinking that everyone who sits in those pews every week are actually believers because many are not. Many, I'm convinced, have sat in pews for decades and played the part-- some very well-- yet have never repented or truly surrendered their lives to the King. I listened to a sermon by David Platt last night on Matthew 13, where it talks about the parable of the different kinds of soil that the seed falls on. He talked about counterfeit Christians, people who pretend to be Christians, who keep up appearances, who fool many people into believing that they're a child of God, who oftentimes have even deceived themselves into thinking that they're okay with God. But they're not. Matthew 7 and 25 assure us that when Jesus comes, many will say they did all these things for Him in His name, but He will say, "Depart from Me, I never knew you." 

Let's stop sugar-coating the Word and let's preach the GOSPEL to the people who sit in the pews week in and week out. Who cares if it's offensive? Jesus was offensive most of the time He opened His mouth! Plus, I doubt they'll care when they realize what Christ wants to save them from and where they're headed apart from Christ! Let's proclaim repentance to the people who claim to be the church, and let's pray that Jesus purifies His church and brings those who are counterfeit to their knees before Him in TRUE repentance, belief, and surrender.