Here's the Church...Here's the Steeple!

Open the doors and see all the people!!!

I ended my last post with, "more on what that looks like in another article!"  What does a "baptized" church look like?  For me, baptism was a beginning.  I had read that my immersion was a death, that my old self would be dead and gone and I would be new.  It wasn't long before I realized that I was still me.  I had the same struggles, the same attitudes, and the same thought processes and desires. Not sure what I was expecting!  Maybe I thought that my personality would be altered somehow or that my outlook on life would be framed differently.  I certainly believed that my life would be better, and I would be happier but that was certainly not the case!  There were, however, some differences. For example; I felt a greater sense of purpose, like I had found a direction that was missing. I felt a new sense of belonging that I hadn't felt prior to my immersion.  But other than those changes, nothing else was really different. I still struggled with "fleshly desires", and I still felt hatred and anger and frustration and hurt.  I was still the same person, with only a few barely-noticeable changes.  So what was different?  I knew that I was saved by the grace of God!  I knew that no matter what I had done, was doing, or was going to do that God's grace was sufficient.  The water was only water, apart from getting wet the only change that occurred was in my soul! Almost imperceptible to any other person. I've been a Christian for 23 years, a minister for 15 of those, and the changes of my death, burial and resurrection are still well under way!  I guess I would say that I'm a work in progress.  

When I talk about the death, burial and resurrection of the church I can't help but compare with my own personal transformation.  What does it look like?  It is not much different than what it is now except for an internal, imperceptible change of heart! It is from that change of heart that the imperceptible grows over time and ultimately becomes apparent!  The problem lies in us believing that the change is instant and comes in the form of morality or doctrinal theology.  This is then compounded by personalities conflicting over opinion and programming under the presupposition that we have somehow arrived at our destination. Then, ultimately, the change of heart and soul is washed away by human nature, arrogance and relational discord. I've said it before that if we want the church's problems to go away, all we have to to do is get rid of the people! After all, the people are the most complicated part of this whole equation. 

ALL THE PEOPLE!

It is the mystery of the universe that many have spent their lives trying to understand. Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, William Glasser and the like have worked hard to figure out people.  Myer's Briggs, the Holland Codes, Jungian Typology, Socionics, HEXACO, DISC, Keirsey Temperament, HumanMetrics, etc...etc...etc. Oh, we've got it figured out!  A simple test and we know what kind of people we are, how we work, and who we interact well/poorly with. As long as we've been alive, we've been mastering exactly what this "human" thing is about! Bask in the enlightenment of our ability to understand! People! Introverts, extroverts, logicals, ethicals, sensitives, intuitives, aristocratic, timocratic, oligarchic, democratic, tyrannic, analytical, artsy, objective and subjective, rational and irrational, open minded, closed minded, arrogant and humble, ego, super-ego, id...ugh!  People! Psychology! Typology!

The word "Psychology" can be parsed out and extracted from it's origins.  It is derived from the Greek words "Psuche" and "Logos".  Very literally it means "soul of word" but can be simply translated as "a thing said of the soul"!  While there are arguments about this from differing personality types, it seems obvious to me that it is the desire of people to know how we work!  

So, what words would we use to describe ourselves?  The old sunday school rhyme goes "Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people.  Close the doors and let them pray, open the doors and they've all gone away!"  With a few hand gestures, and the right meter this little poem pretty much sums up the most common perceptions of church. Open and Shut!  

The beauty of it is in the fact that we are all in the same boat, cut from the same cloth, made of the same dirt! One thing that we do know more than anything else, is that from the time of the Garden we have been hungry for something more.  We are looking for deeper meaning, and purpose!  We are longing for direction and value, and this because of the one and same human nature that we all possess!  No matter how we try to hypothesize and summarize the kind of people we may be, the truth can be reduced to this one simple thought; we are lumps of dirt!  

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that "God has set eternity in the hearts of people, yet from beginning to end we cannot fathom what God has done!"  2 Corinthians 4 says that we have a treasure inside of us that comes only from God.  In Genesis we're told that God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed life into his creation.  That breath is in us!  That eternity is in us! We are all looking for it in everything we do!  Psychology, typology and personality tests are not necessary for us to know that we are lumps of dirt longing to understand the eternity that God has placed inside of us!  

The best part of all of this isn't that we'll ever fully understand it, but that we no longer have to!  We have been given a hope that fulfils our deepest human nature, that no matter how dirty, muddy, dusty we are God has given us a "treasure"!  

Now, if only we could stop looking at each other, judging each other like we should be more than lumps of dirt.  If only we could recognize that, as imperfect as we are, God has put in us something perfect!  Not based on our actions or morality, not based on our doctrine or theology, but entirely rooted in the truth that we are His lumps of dirt!