“Women shouldn’t wear stretch pants ever. They’re just trying to attract attention.”
“How can anyone call themselves a Christian and still vote for ___?”
“You don’t pray [a certain way]?!?! I pray.”
“The Bible says you should pray/study/have quiet time/worship a certain way/go to church [a certain way]….”
These statements remind me so much of the legalism in my former church. Some are prideful, revealing a person’s belief that they are right — and that they are the ONLY ones right. No other perspective counts. Others are fearful; they think, perhaps, that they have to say something because they have been taught a certain way and to believe anything else must mean that they are lost. All lack love for the other person, and all reek of judgmentalism.
How different are these types of statements from what we heard in legalistic churches? We were taught what to wear, how to vote, how to pray, how to study, when to go to church and how often, how to worship, and so forth. And when I hear these things now, I cringe. None of the people I hear these things from considers themselves legalistic or prideful or judgmental. They all consider themselves spiritual and faithful to God… and yet their words make me so angry. I left a legalistic, unhealthy church. But I can’t seem to get away from legalism. It’s in the fiber of so many “Christians”… and being around them, hearing that, makes it much harder to believe in God.
********
Shop at our Amazon store! As an Amazon Influencer, this website earns from qualifying purchases.
Please follow and like us:
Author: Through Grace
I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12).
I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ.
1 John 4:7-8
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
View all posts by Through Grace
