When the church divides, part 1

Mt 10:35 For I have come to turn
‘A man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
36 A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’
37 Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me;

Mk 10:28 Peter began to say to Him, “Look, we have left everything and followed You.” 29 “Truly I tell you, said Jesus, “- no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for My sake and for the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundredfold in the present age—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and fields, along with persecutions—and to receive eternal life in the age to come.…”

We heard passages strangely often at my former church, and there was a pride in choosing church over family members who weren’t ‘in the church.’ The church, we were taught, was our real family. Family members and friends ‘in the world’ (who weren’t members) could begin attending if they wanted to see us. I didn’t realize at the time, but this was a huge red flag as to how they would treat those they disagreed with IN the church. We were as dispensable to the pastor as the family and friends he taught us to leave behind. And we were learning to simply dispense people even as we were led to believe we were following Christ by doing so.

Putting church before people made sense at first. But Jesus wasn’t saying that a man should leave his wife, or a son or daughter should no longer honor their parents, and he certainly wasn’t saying that he had come to break up families…

When the church divides, part 1
When the church divides, part 2
When the church divides, part 3
When the church divides, part 4

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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.

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