Clueless Church People Vomiting GOD's Wrath

       With all due respect to the late  R.C Sproul, with whom I vehemently disagreed with on many points, has some really great points in some of his better sermons. I chose this picture to illustrate the point of my title.  Church people are clueless when it comes to relating to non-church people.  I was not a church person for the first twenty-six years of my life, so I remember well living outside the walls of the church without the great Translator, the Holy Spirit.  I know what it's like to hear "greek" when a born-again holy roller said something.  Most church people are the type that have been sitting in a pew since they were in their mother's womb. They don't get us and we don't get them.   When I refer to church people, I'm talking about the ones who know nothing other than the morality gospel.  The word gospel means good news, the morality gospel is not good news.  The morality gospel says, "You people outside the church are dirty sinners, and you are all going to hell, unless you conform to the likeness of us,"  PERIOD.  Beside the fact that hell is a fictional place, the doctrine of eternal conscious torture and torment was made up by the church, (a topic for a brand new post that I'm waiting to write), church people usually use the Bible and Scripture as a weapon and not for healing.  Jesus came to heal, not to condemn.  I know this, because after over two decades as a church person, I did the same thing. It was after a period of being a prodigal, I remembered what it was like to live on the outside.  I wish church people on the inside would get that using Scripture as a weapon does not bring life, but kills instead.  Most of them are too busy bathing and being baptized over and over again in their own self-righteousness that they have lost the entire purpose of the coming of Jesus to bring us to the Father. 

   

    Maybe I can give you another example of if you haven't worn their shoes, you can't walk in them. I've never been a drug addict, henceforth, I do not know their struggle because I've never walked in their shoes.  With that being said, as a cancer survivor who was on some serious pain-killers during radiation hell, I do understand slightly what withdrawal is.  While I was getting enough radiation in both sides of my head to put me in an early grave, and swallowing razor blades 24/7 for three months, I was put on not only Fentanyl patches, but I was given straight up Percocet, without the Tylenol.  I was on some serious pain medication. It did not take the pain away completely, it just made it manageable while they burned the snot out of me, pun intended. About two weeks after the last treatment, I noticed some alleviation in the pain, hence, I took off all the patches and threw them in the trash.  BIG MISTAKE!   No one warned me about what was to come next.  About a day later, I was down in my living room bawling my eyes out.  I wasn't in pain, I was just crying.  I couldn't understand why.  The next day, I woke up, and I wish I hadn't, because I was freezing and sweating at the same time.  I was as sick with the "flu" as one could be without actually having the virus.  I tell people that I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, even the butter knife laughs at me. I had no idea that I was going through withdrawal until someone pointed it out to me.  Going off all that pain medication in one instant like that was the equivalent of going cold turkey off Heroin after being on it 24/7 for three months.  

      It was then that I got a whole new appreciation for their struggle.  So, to say I can relate to a drug addict is only in the sense that I get what withdrawal feels like, but I never had the desire to go back to pain medication after that.  I didn't understand how people who get clean fall back into it, because I had no desire to do that, but I could relate to the physical hell on earth, just not the psychological hell. I can empathize only partially. Church people can't empathize at all with those who never heard the good news for decades.   

  

  Now, to many, I may come off that way as self-righteous, and I'm sorry for that.  I believe we should obey GOD, but I don't demand it of non-church people.  I do expect more from those who sit in a pew every week proclaiming the morality gospel though.  I especially do to those who sit in a pew every week because the pastor makes him feel good about himself, regardless of how he's living.  In other words, if you're sleeping with the flavor of the month and going to church every Sunday, you have created a god in your own image, one you can accept instead of the One who wants to accept you.  Stop going to church, because He hates a hypocrite.  Let me explain what the true and proper "fear of GOD" is, and it's not what you think.  We devoted ones aren't afraid of his wrath, what we are afraid of is the dreaded "wooden spoon" from heaven, maybe y'all from the south would understand the "switch" better.

  This metaphor Mama is going to give you a scenario you may be able to understand. If you are Joshua D. Smith, a minor, and your father is Joshua S. Smith, you are in his family. He is your father and you call him Dad. It's his job to train and teach you, guide you and discipline you, if needed.  If you take a rock and throw it in your neighbor's window just for kicks, OR to get back at your neighbor for parking in your spot in the street and your father finds out, it is your father's obligation to teach you how that was wrong, either by grounding you, taking away a privilege, or another creative way to make it sting.  In other words, if you do not acknowledge GOD as your Father, then He isn't going to train, guide, discipline, or work with you. When you acknowledge Him as your Father, then He takes a serious interest in your best interest and development, besides what you can add to His Kingdom.   I wish church people would actually learn the loving character of GOD and not the wrath of GOD.  

     

      Now, let's take this to a new level.  If you are Joshua D. Smith, and you hit that "legal" adult age, you are no longer a minor, hence, you are no longer under the authority of your father, Joshua S. Smith.  He is your biological father, and nothing will change that.  He is still your father, but not your authoritarian.  You now become his offspring.  It is your choice to continue to follow his guidance and advice. If you choose to say, "Take a hike, Dad, I know better, I don't need you,"  then Joshua S., if he is wise, will not retaliate, or try to force you back into his family. What he will do is let you go, pray for you, and welcome you back after you realize that you don't know everything, life is hard, and maybe his years in this life may have gained him some wisdom you haven't acquired yet.  If after you have fallen far enough, you then re-acknowledge his role in your life as father and mentor, He will welcome you back with open arms.  If you choose never to go back to being the son of Joe Smith, and you decide to change your name and identity, breaking off all contact, then he is not obligated to keep you in his will to receive the inheritance.  He won't tell you when you are about to fall off that cliff, because you don't want to hear it.  

   What is so sad about the ineffective evangelism of the Christian church is that these people raised in it don't understand those who are not.  Only the Holy Translator Who speaks all languages can. The best and only thing one can do is love them and pray for them, because if God wants them, only He can do what it takes to win them. Let GOD convict them instead of you trying to convince them.  The only thing a human does by trying to convince and outsider to live by insider rules is to push the outsider further outside.