Five More Mistakes

 Another of Constantine’s big mistakes, theologically, was to make the Church a building.  We do it because that’s what we’ve done for centuries.  Yes, some churches are humble and plain.  But many are ornate and beautiful.  And yes, if you go to the Old Testament, you find the building of the Temple, twice, which was magnificent, by all accounts, one of the most beautiful of its age.  

But does God want us to worship him in a building?  Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 3:16 "Don't you yourselves know that you are God’s temple and that the Spirit of God lives in you?” That is the only book in the Bible where it explicitly says we are God’s Temple. However there are many suggestions that we are not meant to worship in an ornate cathedral:

• Three of Paul’s letters talk about being members of the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians, Ephesians and Colossians).  

• John 15 has the passage about abiding, specifically 15:4 “Abide in me, and I in you.” 

• Acts 2:46, “...breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts”.  

• Even in the OT, starting with the Exodus, the Israelites worshipped God in an elaborate tent, which continued for four hundred years after they conquered the Promised Land.

Obviously, God instructed the Jews to build the Temple, so I can’t say it wasn’t according to His Will.  I do see, however, that it was not the original plan.  The big building requires a staff to keep it up and a staff needs a leader.  The leader, by definition, tells everyone else what to do.  It did not take too much stretching to turn some of Paul’s writings into a system that elevated men and relegated women.  This also created a hierarchy, which became a tool for politics and oppression.  “You’re going to Hell unless you do X (give your money to us, go kill the Muslims, etc).”  From the Middle Ages to the present day, pastors of all denominations angle for higher positions, often at the expense of their flock.

Reason 1B, is wealth.  How can the Church have so much wealth when there is one person in the world who will die from starvation today, much less the 24,000+ who actually will?  (Yes that is a real number How Many People and Children Starve to Death Every Day.)  Over 3 million a year under 5 years old die of hunger.  James 2:16, “If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?”  

Second: despite 1B above, many churches, like mine, now are funded by endowments.  This is the opposite of living on faith.  It is not trusting God to provide.  

Third, the Church as a building negates the message that our very hearts are the place where He resides.  For far too much of my life, I have relegated God to Sunday Morning, content to leave Him in that building and go out into the “real world”, where Faith, Hope and Love often seem far less relevant, but actually matter far more.  

Furthermore, if God resides in my heart, He must also reside in the hearts of all believers.  And every person who does not know Him is still made in His Image and has the potential to have Him abide in them.  Shouldn’t that change how I treat them?  

You may be saying, “why go to church then?”  If so, maybe I overdid it with all this.  For me, church is a largely agreed-upon understanding of who God is and what it means to follow Jesus.  I am sure that without going to Church regularly, I would be lost in my sin.  Probably divorced.  Likely one or more of my kids would be in some kind of trouble, whether with the Law, substance abuse or some other bad track.  And I would not know Jesus as my Savior.  So yes, I think going to Church is important.  But maybe we are doing it wrong.  

Certainly worship is best done in communion with one another and with God.  Some talk about this using the Cross as a metaphor.  Too much emphasis on the “vertical” part makes one “so heavenly minded he’s of no earthly good”.  And too much emphasis on the “horizontal” without vertical and we tend to forget what it’s all about.