The keepers of the gates

I'm a member of a church that sure gets criticized an awful lot. Most of what I've heard the past 3 years goes beyond simple gossip and meanness, to the point where some critics doubt whether we're all actually on the same team.

Our church gets so many rotten eggs hurled in its direction not because there's a dozen or so of us out in the woods somewhere chanting, worshiping calves or waiting for UFOs, wearing snakes or drinking poison every Sunday morning. Nor does our church get vilified because it's occupied the same red-brick-and-a-steeple building (and had exactly the same members) for the past 80 years, or because it plays traditional 200 year old hymns at "reverent" volume through a pipe organ that cost more than a new aircraft carrier.

If any of those situations was the case, I feel pretty sure the critics would look the other way, find something else to distract them from preaching the gospel and leave us alone. So then what is it that keeps the critics so riled-up and firing brimstone arrows every chance they get?

Could it be because there's finally a church impacting an entire community for Christ ... and the critics-in-the-pulpits are tired of trying to figure out how to answer, "Preacher, how do you explain what's happening over there?"

Their problem is that they can't explain something they've never seen or expected before ... so criticizing someone else is the best they can do.
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Someone with four lifetimes more vision and wisdom than me pointed out that Jesus wasn't crucified by the tax collectors, lepers, adulterers, prostitutes and sinners. Christ was crucified by the religious leaders and teachers of his time, who were already convinced in their own minds (probably by serving on committees) exactly what the Messiah was gonna be like ... and in their religious, tradition-loving eyes Jesus just wasn't it and didn't preach the message they way they wanted to hear it nor did he reach people by teaching the same way they'd taught themselves to teach.

Christ's message of forgiveness and salvation through grace, not through man-made rules and procedures, turned their scrolls inside out and shook the foundations of the priest-privileges and luxuries they enjoyed.

They'd become idolaters by centering their focus upon themselves, worshiping their man-made rituals and traditions as though their rules were greater than God, and became so removed from God that they failed to recognize the message of the living God when he was standing in plain view before them.

Christ took the legalistic guess-work out of salvation, and his critics couldn't stand to hear it ... nor let him get away with preaching it.
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I've been to churches where I didn't feel welcomed. I've sat on hard-backed pews in congregations where every holier-than-thou head seemed turned in my direction with mistrust, as if trying to figure out, "What's that guy doing here?" and then went out of their way to avoid me once the service had ended.

Nobody took much interest in finding out why I was there ... so long as I didn't put my hands in my pockets after the offering plate went by.

You get a definite feeling that if someone ever stood before a congregation like that and asked them, "Do you people go out of your way to insist on keeping sinners on the other side of that door and away from God's kingdom, or not?" you'd expect to get a thunderously overwhelming "YES!" of approval.

Probably a choir-full of Amen's, too ... though what you wouldn't get would be any clapping or arms lifted toward Heaven.

Now I wonder if the same congregation would answer the same question the same way with the same jubilation and enthusiam ... if it was Jesus Christ standing there who did the asking.