To the world outside the Christian church, modern megachurches and smaller denominational churches are beginning to look a lot like the Catholic Church, where the priestly child-sex-abuse epidemic was first exposed to the public. Perhaps the main difference is that the Catholic priests preferred boys and the Protestant pastors, girls.
The Catholics were just the canary in the coal mine. The problems will be worked out within the legal/judicial system, and money will flow from parishioners' pockets into victims' settlements. And with that, what the world sees as justice will be done.
The world today is filled with meaningless theological arguments. They are meaningless because they are meaningless to God. I know, because I've spent my share of time wallowing around in them.
Sometimes, you can only understand the end of something by going back to its beginning. Mankind's original condition was continuous communion with God. Adam and Eve walked in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the morning with God, who had created them. They talked with one another.
Our ancestors' original sin was believing Satan's lie over God's truth. Thus Satan became the god of this earth, a choice freely made by one man and one woman (because God gave us free will). Satan's authority over the earth prevailed until Jesus died on the Cross ("the lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world").
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Early in Bible history, God chose Moses to lead the Jews out of 400 years of slavery in Egypt. God also showed up periodically, but the thunder and lightening surrounding his presence frightened the rank and file. They quickly appointed Moses to go up on the mountain and talk to God. "Find out what he wants, tell us and we will do it!"
Moses brought back the Ten Commandments from God, but the Jews had already fashioned a golden calf to worship. Moses became enraged and broke the stone tablets, which held God's handwriting.
The commandments prevailed until the time of Jesus. The religious leaders of that age fought tirelessly to preserve not only the original commandments but the thousands of rules that had grown up around the original 10. Jesus maintained there were only two commandments upon which all the others were built: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Privately, the religious elite even agreed that Jesus was right, but they had too much invested in the old rules-based system to let it go. Instead, they plotted to kill Jesus.
But the religious leaders failed to see that God was no longer in the rules. He was in Jesus. And Jesus said that if we joined with him, God would be in us as well. Thus the world had a new race of people: the Christians.
The new church began with a bang, as God's Spirit showed up in power and strength. The building shook. Thousands of people began to follow Jesus, whose death and resurrection is what enabled the return of God's Spirit to indwell men and women. Through his Spirit, God once again spoke to men and women.
But the modern church finds God's Indwelling Spirit speaking to believers individually a frightening prospect. And so it can be, if the Believer has not learned how to distinguish God's Voice. Should that not be the first thing new Christians are taught?
The modern church prays and praises and preaches all about God. They just don't know God on the personal level that He seeks to know us. Too many view earth as a veil of tears and heaven the reward afterward. They fail to recognize that we are all eternal beings and that the path from this life to the next one is a continuum. God wants to be present with us in both.
But the church on earth continues on, trying to change the world in its own power, and to recruit others into its own powerlessness. The buildings and the programs become ever-more important, as the leaders imagine they are building up treasure in heaven during their fateful march back to Moses on the mountain. The faithful fill the collection plate week after week, listen carefully to the message and pray that they, too, might learn more about God and finally one day meet Him.
Against all odds, some inside the modern church do find God hidden underneath the pile of rules, weeping for what might have been. Perhaps they are the ones He treasures the most and gives himself to most wholeheartedly.
Perhaps each of us finds Jesus, uniquely. There are some interesting accounts in Reconnaissance, Behind Enemy Lines and Absolution.