Today I will resist the election discussion and continue to look at how the church in America got to the place it is. Once again I am brought to the word mediocrity. There is one phrase I associate with mediocrity more than any other in the life of the church, "As long as you are doing it for God, it will be good enough." Can we imagine what might happen if God just decided to do things as good enough? What if as God created the earth instead of good, He settle with good enough, or even at the creation of humanity which was deemed very good
The church established a pattern of going through the motions, do the same old thing time and time again, and after a while, the pattern lost its meaning as well as its excellence. Our current culture does not like to have the excellence discussion. There are policies which bend our thoughts away form excellence, like No Child Left Behind. Rather than encouraging excellence, it invited everyone to settle for mediocrity as long as you can pass the test. Years ago the church adopted its own no child left behind policy, and it is alive and well.
Fear of being seen as judgmental, or as rigid has caused us to not strive for excellence in anything we do or the beliefs we state. We would rather boil things down to the lowest common denominator so all can agree, than challenge, encourage and teach so that all could reach for the standard of God. Basically the acceptance of mediocrity in the life of the church has run its course well and now the church is full of relativism, and anything goes.
Understand this is not about conservative or liberal. This is not about any one social issue. Churches which are willing to take a clear and defined stand about their understandings of God can come from any perspective. When damage is done is when any perspective is simply embraced regardless of what is believed to be true.
No comments:
Post a Comment