As I was pondering Halloween this week, I began to think about evil and it's place within the Christian journey.  Honestly, we try not to think about evil that much.  We would rather focus on the good feelings from Christianity and how to be better people.  We leave evil for conversations about the world.


We must be careful to walk a fine line in our journey.  On one side of the line is looking at Christianity as something that solves all of our problems and where only happiness should be found.  On the other side, if you talk about evil and sin too much you could end up glorifying it.  So we must walk the middle and have a healthy view of evil and good and how all of that works within the kingdom.


We cannot truly appreciate our salvation, the goodness of God, the sacrifice of Christ, unless we have a healthy respect and understanding of sin and evil within our world.  It is never a "fun" Sunday to take time to lament or confess or even recognize the brokenness of our world.  However, if we only have fun on Sunday then we miss the point of why we point to Christ.  Why do we point to Christ?  We may answer that our lives are better off with Jesus.  We may answer that worshipping God gives us a good feelings.  We may answer that without Sunday we cannot make it through the rest of the week.  All of the answers are more about us than Christ.  We point to Christ, because in the cosmic war of good versus evil or angels vs. demons or Christ vs. Satan, Jesus Christ sacrifices his divine nature to live in this world, and then later sacrifices pain, anguish, and ultimately sacrifices his life so that we can have a perfect, ultimate conqueror to follow.  When Jesus overcomes evil, so do we!           


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There was a time in my life and maybe yours too where the answer to not going to Hell was making sure you attended church.  There are so many things that are wrong with that ideology that we must unpack the thought then concentrate on a better ideology.  First of all Heaven and Hell should not be made the designated multiple choice answers for everything theological and faith oriented.  Jesus never made Hell the negative motivation to follow Him.  And in fact, Jesus never made Heaven the positive motivation to follow Him.  Jesus simply made the Kingdom now of greatest importance, which was to follow God and honor Him by honoring his word, his people, his creation, and his call.  If we try to make Hell the enemy of the church, then in essence we are making the church Heaven and I'm not sure anyone who has ever been in relationship with any church would be willing to give it that tag.  Second, attendance with a church does not give a free pass for everything else in this world.  There are great positive things about church attendance and frankly I'm a proponent of church attendance.  However, just because we attend church doesn't mean we live sin-free lives and are conquerors for the kingdom.  It simply means we made a concerted effort on Sunday to join others who made the same effort.  Sometimes it will mean we have walked away with great insights, warm emotions, or even full stomachs.  And sometimes it will mean we feel we have wasted our time, the minister's time, and God's time.

If Hell is the scare tactic that is coercing people into a building to praise God...

This is the question so many are asking today.  And to be honest, why wouldn't they be asking this question.  I am not so sure we have been promoting a strong sense of what church really is or we have made church something it's truly not.  


I have heard through the years that a church must decide whether it is a "Sanctuary for Saints" or a "Hospital for Sinners."  Why these two statements do stress the fact that we use our Sunday assembly to both encourage and heal, they miss the point of who the church really is.  The church is a group of people who together are finding their way on the journey with Jesus.  Now all of that sounds somewhat like Christian Jargon and doesn't help us practically with why we should invest ourselves in the church.  We can be a people on the Jesus journey without stepping foot into the building each Sunday.


Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola have put some language to a new thought about what it means to be the church. I hope to draw on this language so that we can think through the purpose and power of the church for the next few weeks
       "The church is Jesus Christ in corporate expression.  So, properly conceived, the church is the reassembling of Christ so that He might be made visible on the earth...We see Him, hear Him, touch Him, taste and smell Him through our sisters and brothers within whom He dwells.  Genuine church life is born when groups of people are intoxicated with a glorious unveiling of their Lord.  Jesus Christ is the only foundation upon which an authentic church can be built." (Jesus Manifesto, 143)

In the next two weeks I want to talk about what it means to be that corporate expression and the dangers of using church as a means to a specific end.  Join me in the conversation with your thoughts, complaints, questions using the comment section.