16/08/2020
Do we really need church to be spiritually healthy?
I posted this in response to the spreading declaration of the church as a non-essential organization. With this declaration has come restrictions on the times and size of what were normal public meetings held by the church to function as an organization.
I do believe strongly that the church is essential for the potential of being spiritually healthy, as defined in the Christian Bible. However, perhaps not all of what is known or seen by society as the church is genuinely essential, not only in its understanding but in light of the Bible itself.
It was about 150 years ago when the church began to accede its role as arbiter of life’s issues from a biblical worldview position, to the naturalists and humanists who claimed secular science as the foundation for al knowledge and all life. The church was being pushed further and further into a corner where it could practice and promote a morality and its beliefs in a spiritual God. Departing from its small world required entering into and accepting the rules of the natural world.
The church has slowly, but steadily, lost its place in the core beliefs of society. The rise of post-modernism is, in my opinion, a direct result of Christianity’s inability to engage the issues confronting life with a coherent philosophy of life. The consequences of this abrogation of giving meaning to all existence have become very clear in the past 2-3 decades. We have come to the place in history where truth is what one decides it is. Chaos is accepted as order. Power is the only foundation for rule. Life exists, but to what purpose is individually chosen.
After decades of rendering the Christian faith to a privatized personal spirituality, how can there be any surprise when society declares the church as non-essential during a time of supposed crisis and places limitations on its existence?
To complicate matters, the church, itself, virtually across the spectrum of theology and ecclesiology, has accepted the principle of the private personal spirituality. Yes, there is Scriptural foundations for the choice of an individual to become a follower of Christ. Scripture is also clear that such a decision made, places the believer in a group of other believers that is called the church and referenced as the body of Christ. No individual disciple of Jesus is the church. The church is the composition of the number of humans who are born-again (this is not just a term used exclusively by Protestant evangelicals, but is the terminology used by Jesus in his discussion with Nicodemus as recorded in John 3:1-21). They are born again by faith in the salvation work of Jesus, the Son of God, who was sent to save the fallen world.
To be spiritually healthy requires being an integral and active part of the church. Early in the history of the church, some monks sought spiritual health by removing themselves from the world and seeking isolation in the deserts. They discovered such isolation failed to realize the work of Christ in the world. Part of the work of the Holy Spirit is to disperse spiritual gifts among believers and unite them in the purpose of being the body of Christ, functioning to minister reconciliation to the world as he did in his time on earth. No individual is the complete body. No one. I can only be spiritually healthy when the rest of the body is spiritually healthy.
