On Facebook, someone lamented that the church is often a place of “bad news and judgment”. A commenter responded:
O.K., my turn to defend the church. The other side to this is that people are afraid to walk through the door of the church because they might be confronted with their own dark side. They are afraid of accountability and personal responsibility of living within the righteous standard of a loving and forgiving God. I see it every Sunday. In the meantime, the Joel Osteens of the world have purged their preaching of anything using the “s” word (sin). The “s” word offends and requires something the church is rapidly abandoning: repentance, confession, and reconciliation. The only scripture verse the average Generation “X”er and “Y”er can quote is “Judge not lest ye be judged.” They heard it somewhere and it matched their hand-picked personal theology of a God who NEVER judges and always accepts them and their screwed up lifestyle.
So it really doesn’t matter what tact the church takes in reaching the world for Christ — She will either be condemned by the “judge not” generation OR by a scripture that calls for repentance and regeneration. We need to remember that the Good News IS the fact that we can repent and find forgiveness — NOT that God will accept and smile down on any crap we call a lifestyle.
Part of my response to this comment was: I just want to say—I like Joel Osteen. What’s wrong with encouraging people to do good, rather than beating them over the head for not being perfect?
If this guy responds to my comment, he may point out examples in Scripture in which a messenger of God uses harsh language to get people to repent. The prophets weren’t the most tactful people in the world, and Jesus lambasted the Pharisees in Matthew 23.
I admit that there may be times when God needs to be harsh, in order to shake people out of their sinful complacency. I think of Edie on Desperate Housewives: she could give a convicting speech that guilted people into doing the right thing (see “If You Do Not Come to Boot Camp…” and First Desperate Housewives Post in a While). But there are also times when such an approach can build resistance. When I’ve been put down, my impulse is usually not to go out and change, especially if the person criticizing me makes no attempt to understand where I’m coming from, or offers no specific tips on how I can do things better.
There were a few times when Paul felt a need to criticize the Christian congregations to whom he was writing. But, by and large, he didn’t put them down. Rather, he encouraged them to do the right thing. I think that’s a better model than using the rebukes in the Bible as a justification for being a complete jerk, as some Christians like to do.
For an edifying post on this topic, see Alise’s Who loves you, baby?