The church is beautiful and Christlike when it cares. But here are five things we do instead …

One of the most beautiful and wonderful experiences I’ve had in my life has been being part of a healthy, thriving church.

The the love of Christ unleashed in the fellowship of a local church, and the stunning care for one another that fosters, is staggering in the beauty of Christlikeness it creates.

Sadly, it’s hard to find a church like that.

Why?

There might be as many reasons as there are churches, but let me share with you five attitudes all too commonly propagated among many people who profess to be Christians:

1. We worship the idols of individualism and independence. For far too long in America, “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” has nearly been elevated to holy writ as if it had been chiseled into stone by the finger of God.

It hasn’t been, and it isn’t biblical.

What is biblical, and what is the model of the New Testament church, is a healthy, holy “one body” of Christ and living interdependently. No, that isn’t socialism, it’s the New Testament church.

2. We perpetuate the argument of “Am I my brother’s keeper?” In Genesis 4, when God called out Cain over committing the first murder (of his own brother, Abel), Cain tried to deflect his guilt by answering God with that question: “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (v. 9).

Yes.

Yes. We. Are.

“Keeper” isn’t the right word, but we have a responsibility to care for the well-being of each other — especially family, as these two were biological brothers — but Cain wanted to argue Abel wasn’t his care.

We do the same when we don’t want to care.

“I’m not my brother’s keeper” we tell ourselves.

We may not be, but we’re supposed to be. That’s the problem.

3. So we downplay the painfulness of surviving. People who don’t have to daily, or least regularly or even often, have to struggle just to survive often downplay just how great the pain of “surviving” actually is for those people who really are struggling to survive.

For some, this is because they don’t understand and don’t have a personal reference point to understand the experience of “surviving,” along with its difficulty and pain. Instead of downplaying it, then, reasoning, “Well surely it isn’t as bad as X makes it out to be,” you might want to give the suffering person the benefit of the doubt about the level of pain they’re experiencing.

After all, they are experiencing it!

4. We consistently argue against any concept of being a “victim.” Okay, some people may fudge a little here and say you could be a victim of a crime, or something like that, but suffering people are often accused of having a “victim’s mentality.”

That’s because many people ARE victims!

While there are some things we have some level of control over in our lives, there’s much we don’t. Many people have been/are actual victims of a variety of things, from spiritual attacks from the enemy, to cruelty, neglect, and a lack of love and care from people who should love and care for them. Many suffering people experience hurts, wounds, and even harm at the hands of other people — that makes them a victim.

Even YOU — there have been times in YOUR life that you suffered from something that was beyond your control. That, in its simplest definition, means you were a “victim.”

So why do so many professing Christians chafe and fight against that very word and idea?

Because just as in the biblical story of “the Good Samaritan,” where there is a victim there is a need to care and to serve and to help. We would rather be like those who walked by, rather than be the Good Samaritan (that costs us, in more ways than one).

5. So we prefer the label of “community” over a family identity. Oh, we’re happy to be called sons or daughters of God, but when you explain that means we’re family, we belong to each other, we’re connected in one body of Christ, well that brings us back to the issue of interdependence and being responsible for one another. If you’re just a “community,” you’re only “loosely connected” without having the kind of responsibility family members have for one another.

But those wonderful, beautiful churches that lavishly displayed the love of Christ and His likeness were churches that got these issues right (even imperfectly so): They saw themselves as being the family of God, belonging to one another, loving and caring deeply for one another, living interdependently with each other, seeing the pain of suffering and “surviving” among those who were in need and then doing something about it.

Can you imagine being a part of a church like that?

That happens when each Christian sees themselves as being that kind of disciple of Jesus.

Is that you?

Scotty