That was a good conversation. I don’t know if you really understood what I was trying to say or not. I will leave it to you. I trust enough in God’s grace that I believe He is working in your heart and mind. Over the years, God has brought me from my once argumentative persona to desire more genuine conversations. I thank Him for working that out within me. Most people never mature enough to reject the need we have as creatures made in God’s image to prove ourselves correct all of the time. God had to ruin that in me so that His strength and perfection in all things would be made evident.
There is a moment when the conversation leads to epiphany and epiphany leads us to ask many more questions. What is the church? Is it permissible to consume alcohol? Has my whole life been a sham? Is God calling me to do something more with my life? Can I understand God more deeply? Which religion, if any, correctly describes who God is? I know I have given my life to Christ and I believe that I am saved, but how is He saving me? When we have relationships with people, we care about them enough to know them more. We want to know their desires, likes, dislikes, and passions. It is natural that we would want to know more about God. My generation spent time learning the difference between a riesling and a moscato, a scotch and a bourbon and straight Tennessee. We learned how to make our own cocktails. We’ve seen the destructive power of alcohol and we have learned its health benefits. We have not learned much about God. Part of that reason is that the organized church never encouraged us to ask the deeper questions. “You must have faith,” is what they said, but they never told us what faith was. We were left to inquire of our friend, Google. Some found Christ, but so many of us found the clutter instead. I apologize. They tried to dumb things down for the most educated generation in the United States and we rejected it. What were we supposed to do? The secular world invested more in us.
You listened patiently to my words, but I don’t know if you really understood. You have responded by saying that there is only one church. You are correct. This one church is composed of people. People exist in local communities. There are, therefore, local churches that exist as part of the one church. To reject the local church is to reject the one church. If we reject the church that Christ is building for Himself, what have we insinuated about our own love for Christ? Have we fooled ourselves in order to justify what we are doing? That was why we rejected the faith of our fathers, and here we stand doing the same thing.
They will reply, “Yes! What he said!” We are not off the hook. Those who are responsible for causing children to fall will be held as such. What was that Christ said about it being better for them to have a millstone tied around their necks and their being cast into the sea? Oh yeah, we aren’t supposed to talk about that stuff… I have to apologize for how most of the Bible was ignored during our upbringing, too.
I desperately hope that you have accepted my apology and my apology. I desperately hope that your pursuit of Christ is reignited. I desperately hope that God will use this basic apology to ignite within you a need to know God more and understand Him more deeply. I have not sought to answer the great theological questions of our day, here. We can have another conversation about that over a cup of coffee or another drink of your choice. This is only the beginning, and God does not desire that anyone perish but that all come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9).