As we approach a new year, and knowing I have more behind me than ahead of me, it becomes ever more important to own who I am. I am a child of God saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ my Lord. Much of my life found me chained to a legalistic doctrine that sapped my faith, hope and love and encouraged doubt, discouragement, fear and judgment.
Once I escaped (and it was a true and traumatic escape) I found a God of love and peace that I left behind many years ago in my quest to perform my way into salvation. There is NOTHING I could ever do to earn a place with God. Jesus already did it all and proclaimed it finished! Like Paul, I do not see this as a license to sin (realizing also that what I wear, my hair style, and where I go are not sin unless they are sinful) rather a knowledge that we are saved by faith in Christ alone, not by works, lest any should boast. The bottom line is and has always been God is Love and to be His disciple is to have love for Him and for one another—that is a bottom line where we find REAL peace. May God richly bless each one as we walk by faith into a new year with Him.
When your salvation depends on what you do rather than what Christ did, it is not salvation at all but just another doctrine of men. When your church promotes pride in identity of their own brand rather than the love of God to all mankind, it is not of God.
When you are taught to shun, look down on, attribute rebellion and bitterness to those who leave your particular group, it is not the family of God. When your leaders are held in awe, elevated above the membership, seen to stand in God’s stead, paid to perform, they are not men of God. When your church loves money and demands it of their members including the widows, the poor, the indigent while your leaders live in luxury, it is not following God’s plan. When you are afraid to question your church, your leaders, your organization, you are in the wrong place.
God is love, he embodies all the attributes of love, he is no respecter of persons, his mercy endureth forever, he looks on the heart, not on the outward appearance, he died that we might live, he proclaimed the two greatest commandments are to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and love thy neighbor as thyself- that all else is based upon these simplistic commands. Love is the missing factor in the ‘religion’ I grew up in as well as many other institutional churches in our world today. There is peace, joy, . . . . . . . In living by faith in God’s love and grace.
There is a children’s song that goes: Have faith, hope, and charity, that’s the way to live successfully. How do I know the Bible tells me so….
I think one of the most devastating attributes of an unhealthy, legalistic church is that they weaken ones faith, take away hope and contaminate love.
Faith that begins as a result of acknowledging amazing grace, soon weakens when taught to rely on performance or adherence to arbitrary standards as a gauge of salvational standing.
Hope that begins with a belief that all things are possible is limited severely when tied to a dependence on human performance or actions seen as directly impacting ones status or relationship with God.
Finally love that begins as an all consuming feeling of caring, kindness, and a desire to give to others as you experienced the love of the almighty is corrupted by an attitude of self righteous judgement that permeates the entire movement in these legalistic, performance based, unhealthy church organizations.
I can remember a time as a new believer when nothing was seen as a negative. Lack of money or possessions just held little importance compared to the knowledge that God was real, He loved me and I had hope for eternity.
Then, as time passed, the cares of life- spouse, children, elderly parents . . . .wanting a perfect life for those I loved challenged my faith, my hope for the future, the purity of my love for all, rather than a love limited to those demonstrating a deservence of my love.
The unhealthy church engendered a skewed world view that limited my faith in amazing grace and attempted to define that faith by my own ability to believe or perform. Hope for the future was replace by fear of not measuring up to some hazy, uncertain standards.
Love was superficial and quickly withdrawn from those not in compliance with the group.
It became clear that I no longer had an uncompromised faith, hope, and charity and it was very doubtful I ever would regain these within this unhealthy church.
Leaving did not immediately bring me back to a healthy outlook and relationship with God. It is a journey. However, my faith is restored. God is almighty. He is in control. We need not fear. I have hope in a better future but echo apostle Paul in his statement that if in this life only I had hope then I would be of all men most miserable. This world seems hopeless but my hope rests in the Creator.
Since leaving the unhealthy atmosphere of self-righteous judgement, I can again see the love all around me. In many ways my faith and hope is restored by that. God is love! Unhealthy, legalistic churches distort that love into a system of rewards and punishments based on our inescapable human frailty. God’s love has no such constraints. Our love for others should be equally without constraint, loving our friends and our enemies and all those in between, loving ourselves and our neighbors because on this commandment to love rests all the law according to Jesus Christ. It does not rest on laws created by ill intentioned or even good intentioned men who would ignore God’s commandment to love and replace it with long lists of rules.
I never could get that little ditty right no matter how hard I tried, it just never made sense so I couldn’t get it to stick in my mind. Kinda like the legalistic, unhealthy church doctrine. So much of it was mumbo jumbo and wasn’t even consistent from church to church, but was still proclaimed the Word of God and heaven or hell importance in each particular group/building.
This can be tremendously confusing. I wonder how God keeps it straight? No wedding rings in this church, no hair barrettes in this one, no bracelets or necklaces here but wedding rings and barrettes ok, no mustaches here but no mustaches or beards here (does that include old lady mustaches?) 🙂
No pants on ladies here but over here culottes ok, sleeve lengths are anybody’s guess but you better get it right if you expect to make heaven your home.
The CREATOR, The Great I AM, The Father, The Intercessor, The Savior, The Son, The Spirit, The Comforter…
In my former religion, it was said we could define God with the following explanation: I am a father, a son, a husband but my name is John Doe. How arrogant!!!! YOU are not God!!! You didn’t create heaven and earth and the sun, the moon and all there is! You are not the great I AM! You cannot die for lost souls or save them from hell!
Can you define love in a neat little package of words that is a final, clear explanation? Can you define eternity so that our human brains can actually conceive it? And yet you provide a neat little packaged definition of the Almighty that equates Him with what you are!?
He that cometh to God must believe that He IS and that He is a rewarder of them who diligently seek Him. There is no demand or need to define Him to fit neatly into a theology so as to exclude others who also believe that
He IS.
His thoughts are far above our thoughts. Yet He provides us with a simplistic way of salvation –Believe. Faith is counted as righteousness. By faith . . . . . .
I don’t pretend to have a better understanding of God or what the UPC terms the ‘Godhead’ but I can read His Word and I can understand what He has made so plain that a wayfaring man though a fool need not err. God is love. He has made His plan for whosoever will believe on Him. He is not willing that any should perish but that all should have eternal life.
There will always be discussion and agreement and disagreement about the many aspects of God, His nature and His plan. The thing that is clear is that God’s love is for whosoever and that surely meaneth me. . . and you!
******** Shop at our Amazon store! As an Amazon Influencer, this website earns from qualifying purchases.
