The Community is Morally Superior
Christians are sinners just like everybody else. If you’re expecting a perfect utopian environment of honesty, generosity, kindness, respect and inclusive love within Christianity—prepare yourselves for heartbreak.
Churches, Christian organizations, spiritual leaders and the people representing Christianity will eventually fail you.
Christian communities are far from ideal. Many enter churches assuming that everyone is going to be supportive, wonderful and your new best friend—but the reality is harsh.
This is the seventh post on the misconceptions about Christianity as reported by Stephen Mattson. It should be obvious to any of you who have been following this blog series here at RJ’s Corner that Stephen lets us know that as far as he is concerned Christianity is a messy business. Given my life’s experiences I totally agree. The way we humans have put Christ’s church together I’m sure is full of errors and misconceptions. Given that none of us are without sin and that most of us seem to stubbornly cling to a small fragment of Jesus’ words and somehow treat it as the total truth nothing else could have happened. We just can’t seem to get our minds around the total concept of Jesus. Does that mean you should give up on all this Christian stuff because it is so tainted? Absolutely not..
Here are some final words from Stephen to wrap up this post.
Churches, Christian organizations, spiritual leaders and the people—and things—representing Christianity will eventually fail you. It’s going to happen, so prepare yourself for the inevitable letdown.
Becoming a Christian doesn’t make you any better or more valuable than anyone else. Many falsely believe that identifying as a Christian elevates them above the rest of humanity—self-righteously judging, alienating and condemning others.
Ironically, Jesus says being one of His followers requires extreme humility and meekness—not necessarily attractive qualities within today’s society.
Overall, Christianity is filled with many wonderful blessings, and there will be times of happiness, peace and encouragement. But we need to be careful not to stereotype our faith and turn it into something it’s not and was never meant to be. Christianity is complex and doesn’t fit into a neat compartmentalized formula—it’s time we stop treating it like one.
RJ's Corner - Old Version 
To be honest, from my new perspective, looking at the church from an uninvolved view, it is really not worth it in life to attempt to figure out the un dynamics of churches. Far better, to live your life in reflection of God’s love in Jesus Christ. I think churches were established in the “early days” for other reasons than what they are good for today’s new world. It takes a special minister to understand the people in his area and to adapt his mission to their needs. Successful churches have ministers and church leaders that understand the community and how to minister to the people there. I served five churches and most were missing the boat with leadership.so, it goes…..
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Thanks for the comments Mary. Yeah, I agree with you to some extent that the current leaders have lost focus. But part of that is due to denominational rules that seem to exclude more people than are invited to know Christ. I think that is why the number one ‘denomination’ are all the unaffiliated churches. Notice that most of the mega-churches make up their own rules. But then again that is what causes so many to fixate on one tenet and throw the rest away.
Yeah, churches are for the most part pretty messy but if you find the right one the fellowship with like minded believers is a valuable thing. Do you need a church to be an avid follower of Jesus? No but it does help to have some form of moral support.
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I agree that it is good for developing a strong relationship to have a church home and family. We are looking…….
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I agree Mary. We must realize that any church we find will not be perfect or even up to our expectations and that is ok as long as they are truthful about their desire to actually follow Christ. That is the secret to me….
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