it's about perspective ...

 An interesting thing happened this week.

 Two friends from a previous church family reached out to me about my blog post on Easter morning [<click there to read it]. And both of them were offended, but for very different reasons.

 The first person thought that the post was all about me 'judging' them.  Which it wasn't.  That person never even crossed my mind when I wrote it.  

 I wrote it while watching a Maundy Thursday service which portrayed the Last Supper in play form with each of the attendees talking about their role in Christ's life ... before, during, and after He was hung on the cross.

 But there was something that person read from their perspective which convicted them.

 The other person who messaged me today also wrote from the perspective (their conviction) that I was taking a public stand against ONE person and the church and that my "public display of displeasure hurts the Church of Christ."

  I cannot control how words that I write will be perceived by someone else.  It is the most dangerous thing about writing or texting, and something that I am very cautious about.  There have been times when I deliberately have written in anger or hurt, and those words ~ just like words that are spoken with the same emotions ~ they can't be taken back.  I know that the things I wrote and spoke to my brother contributed to why we are estranged, and it is something I will always regret.

 But that post on Easter morning had less to do with any one specific person or church, and more to do with how Christ must have felt that week.  Knowing He was going to be betrayed, knowing that someone He loved was going to lie to Him.  How alone He must have felt.  It was also about how even as alone as He was in those days, God was still with Him.  As He is with all of us.

~*~*~

 What I will say now, about ALL churches, is that when a member cannot voice their concerns, displeasure, or questions about the leadership without being condemned and shunned as being misled by the enemy, it opens up the door to deception, corruption, and abuse, whether it be sexual, emotional, or the abuse of power.  Pride.  Arrogance.  Bigotry.  Gossip.  It all adds up to what destroys a church.  

 It's not the enemy on the outside that destroys a church, it is the enemy on the inside.  The one that sneaks in on the "nudge, nudge" or "wink, wink" conversation over coffee or lunch about other members, whether it is true or not.  It's the one that slides up the aisle like a snake and becomes the example in a sermon that details everything about your confidential counseling session except your names.

 For example, why else do you think there were so many decades of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist churches?  Because members, and leaders, were discouraged from asking questions and voicing concerns.  Things were covered up, and hidden, and those who were doing things they should not in the eyes of God AND man, were enabled to continue their actions.

*~*~*

 The church of Christ was never about a building, a denomination, or any man other than Himself, His Father, and the Holy Spirit.  When a place, church, denomination, or a worldly man forgets that, then that is the reason to question whether or not it really is a church of Christ.

Image Source: Facebook

 That has always been my issue with "churches" and/or denominations.  They are created by man, and for man. They become large, powerful, and sometimes become less church and more cult when they try to dictate the lives of the members to conform to their needs, and the promotion of "them."

 If you want to find God, find Him in your heart.  Find Him in the beauty of nature.  Find Him in the glory of the galaxy.  Find Him in the fellowship of friends, in the words of the Bible.  God is all about love.  His love for us.  You can find God in a building filled with people who love.  

 But just be sure that their love is for God, and not money, property, and prestige. When the sins of man overtake the church, love is lost.

~*~*~

 After I wrote Trooper's Run, my ex-hubs called me, angry that I wrote a book "about" him.  I had to remind him that my life no longer revolved around him and aside from using some of the things he said and did to me as things one of the main characters Owen did to his wife, after the first few chapters, there was nothing Owen said or did that was related to my ex.  But people were asking him if he was as dangerous as Owen was because in their perspective there was a resemblance. I told him that if they thought he was like Owen, then he needed to check himself, and not blame me.

 My post on Easter, and this post, are the same thing.  If you see something in my words that makes you think of your church, or yourself ... take a look in a mirror.  Don't blame me.