Professional Christianity
What is it? It's the addiction to self righteousness and judgement. What does it mean to be Professional about your sin? It means to hide it. Professional Chrisitanity means you have a reputation to maintain at all cost, even if that cost is dishonesty. You want to go back to being an amateur, but you're too experienced for that. You have to search to find your sin. You have hidden your sin so well for so long you have to search to discover where you put it. [from the book Confessions of a Caffienated Christian by John Fischer]
I believe this to be a big problem among church leadership. The underlying pressure to "always have it together" and the unwritten code of "you better not mess up, the cost is too great" feeds this need to hide sin. But, "We encourage our leaders to be real people and honest about their struggles", you say. Well, I hate to tell you this, but, Christians are sometimes the FIRST to shoot their wounded. Somehow we get it backwards and protect the 99 while abandoning the 1. We know we are hypocrites. We just like to only admit the hypocrisy that's acceptable to us. The longer we hide our sin the more numb we become to it taking place in our life and it's effect on us and those around us. Further fueling pride and the addiction to self-righteousness and judgement. And all the while Satan is strengthening his grip around our life and taking us deeper and deeper into bondage and further into sin. We must confess our sin, bring it into the open, ["confess your sins, ONE TO ANOTHER"....not just to God in your head] and into the light where God can heal it and bring restoration. The consequences may be great but there are consequences to sin unconfessed or not. Amen? "...You may be sure that your sin will find you out", Numbers 32:23. Bringing our sin into the light allows God to heal it and free us from Satan's grip. And the life experienced on the other side (not hiding, ignoring, denying, lying, or pretending everything is fine) after confessing our sin, is SO MUCH greater than that spent in the tormoil and bondage of hiding and lying about it and "playing church." Don't we want Christian leaders who are willing to stand up and confess their sin, be real about their humanity, and allow God to heal them in front of us and not just talk about it? Aren't these the kind of people that we want to follow, we can relate to best, and admire most for having courage and integrity?? Unfortunately, giving grace is more complicated for us than that. It seems to me that our congregations understand what it is to "be the church" more than the leadership does. Example: The body gives grace to the body....The body gives grace to the leadership....The leadership gives grace to the body....BUT the leadership doesn't give grace to other leadership. Therefore releasing and hurting a lot of good leaders when they could have chosen (at very least) to give them grace and restore them.
For a long time I equated being a Christian with being good. That meant as a Christian leader I not only had to be good. I had to be better. Now I realize being good is the least important thing about being a Chrisitian. I'm a Christian because I'm NOT GOOD. I'm a Christian because I found out the fantastic news that God loves me anyway. [same book]
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