Sunday, July 03, 2005

The Attractiveness of the Church

Why is it that the Church we find in Acts of the Apostles is so attractive? It's full of these guys whose main purpose in life is to serve God. And nothing can get in the way. That's the way it should be. But the water is always purist at the source of the stream. That's why God decided to capture that source for us in scripture, I think. So we'd always have an image of the purity the Church ought to possess. The water will always get muddied, since it exists in the world, but we must seek ways to prevent that. Those who are thirsty will seek the stream, but they may turn back if they find it full of mud. I guess it depends how thirsty they are. We should probably seek to be a Church that attracts those who are not only severely dehydrated, but those whose mouths are slightly dry. Only clean fresh water will attract all.

Just because pure water will attract all, however, we cannot conclude that all will then drink. After all, we see many rejecting the Gospel in the early Church. But the Church always did her part. The problem was not in the Church, but in the souls of the lost. Perhaps they prefered soda pops, or Kool-Aid, or coffee? But that stuff just won't hydrate you as well, and may actually dehydrate.

Well, the Church, and all in the Church, must be blameless, in order to attract all. Once blamelessness has been achieved, then failure on her part simply won't happen. I guess that's my main point here. This principle can be applied not only to the Church as a whole, but to individual Christians, or individual groups of Christians.

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