The Comfort of Discomfort

I usually don't post personal things on this blog, but this is something that needs to be said in our world today.

My wife and I are taking a Gospel/membership class for our church here in Kansas City, Redeemer Fellowship. It's been sweet to hear the Gospel twice a week from the great staff there, and we really feel at home there.

But on to the juicy stuff. The content of said church.

We're talking through the main tenets of what Redeemer as a church believes. God, Scripture, Creation, Sin, the Gospel. That kind of thing.

And every week, both in the class and during the sermon, a resounding message rings through that this world, both the secular and "Christian" worlds, needs to hear.

We are sinners.

Stop dancing around the issue, stop saying different words for it, stop preaching happy sunshine meadow sermons.

Too often churches today beat around the bush of our sin so much that the bush is now hundreds of feet above them and they're in a pit they've worn in the dirt.

This is how it is. We are born into a sinful nature. Anyone who denies that is not thinking logically. What do you have to do with kids? Teach them to be GOOD. No one has to teach them to be bad.

But here's what really gets me. Their reason for not preaching about this, or glazing over it, is that they don't want to be "negative." They don't want to "depress" their congregation by preaching that we're sinners.

Which is ridiculous, because they're leaving out the second part of the message.

We are sinners (part 1), but Christ has redeemed us through His sacrifice on the Cross. (part 2)

Our Navs staffer at KU once said that our favorite word in the Bible should be "but."

Through Christ's sacrifice, we are made right with God. God is a perfect and Holy being, and therefore cannot allow unrighteousness near Him without a price being paid. Christ paid that price for us, so that we may be made righteous and be with Him forever.

Too often churches harp on one side of this. There's the sunny-happy-flower churches and the you're-all-going-to-die-and-burn-fire-and-brimstone churches.

How about just being a Jesus church? A Gospel church?

This realization grows larger as we grow more mature in our faith, of course. An example I've heard many times is that as we're more aware of our sin and more aware of God's holiness at the same time, we grow more aware of the gap between the two, which is filled by Jesus.

Wake up, churches. Don't cheapen the Gospel by not thinking about sin or dwelling on nothing else.