Church

No score and three years ago
I came to the Bible Belt
Where churches are custom as Scions
And as holy, Catholic and apostolic
As Gander in Turkey Creek.
Smiling faces, all from Atlanta, line the bookshelves,
All wearing ties
With seven simple stupid steps
To finding God’s will for your life.
I never knew it was lost;
The red letters must have missed something.
After all, Jesus was only a man.
Too many are chained not just to sin
But to an altar call at age eight,
A cultural Christianity,
A simple prayer lost in the decades of addiction,
Freed from righteousness.

At this crossroads, some would want a new foundation,
A new sensation to ring in the tribes, tongues and nations.
I want the old one,
The one crying in the wilderness,
The one of glorious, green, groaning, growing gardens of Creation,
The one of parted seas,
The one of Calvary’s tree,
The one of Golgotha’s altar bloodier than the blot red altars of Leviticus’ priests,
The river from His hands, His head, His feet
Like Moses’ plagued Nile flowing anew,
As Watts once wrote, “Did e’er such love and sorrow meet?”
God gets no glory out of your best life now
But out of this:
To take the curse and blot out my shame,
Holy God in perfect love became
Perfect man to bear my blame.
The wrath of God towards sin in one man,
While still sinner, Christ died for us.

The stone the Bible Belt builders have rejected
Has become the cornerstone.
Lay that, and you’ll find one holy, Catholic apostolic Church.

Well, apparently they never left. However, the problem of indulgences has returned in a less offensive way. The Catholic Church recently announced they will be offering plenary indulgences in celebration of the Pauline Year¹. These indulgences cannot be bought like the ones back in the 1500s, yet they can be earned by a person’s “participation in events connected with the jubilee year.”

Of course, most have always known that indulgences never went away, or at least the idea of them. The Catholic Church has always offered some sort of works-based guarantee. In the case of indulgences, you can get a certain number of years cut off your stay in purgatory based off good works such as how many Hail Marys you say, how many pilgrimages you make to Rome, etc. It is usually a problem of “purification,” not a problem of salvation. However, this new emphasis on complete absolution of sin will have new and greater implications beyond the skewed doctrine of purgatory.

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1. For those of you who don’t know what “plenary” means, neither did I. I looked it up; it means “complete.” [↩]

Hey, I am new to B2C. I thought I would start out by pondering Church based on its full meaning as presented in the Bible. The word used in the Greek is ‘eclessia’. It strictly refers to a called-out assembly. This begs to ask what are Christians called out from? What are they called out for? I find these verses very helpful in understanding ‘church’.

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” 1 Peter 2:9-10 (ESV)

The church is also called the pillar and buttress of truth (1 Timothy 3:14) through which the manifold wisdom of God is displayed, according the eternal purpose carried out in Christ. (Eph 3:10-11).

How do you believe that the church, a called-out assembly of believers, should declare God’s excellencies and His manifold wisdom? How do you think the ‘church’ is failing to proclaim God’s wisdom and excellencies?