I meet people all the time that have been hurt by the church. I understand. I’ve wrestled with a love/hate relationship with the church most of my life. I read these words the other day and they really challenged me.
“When we have been wounded by the Church, our temptation is to reject it. But when we reject the Church it becomes very hard for us to keep in touch with the living Christ. When we say, “I love Jesus, but I hate the Church,” we end up losing not only the Church but Jesus too.
The challenge is to forgive the Church.
This challenge is especially great because the Church seldom asks us for forgiveness, at least not officially. But the Church as an often fallible human organization needs our forgiveness, while the Church as the living Christ among us continues to offer us forgiveness.
It is important to think about the Church not as “over there” but as a community of struggling, weak people of whom we are part and in whom we meet our Lord and Redeemer.”
What do you think? As part of the church what can we do to help those that have been wounded by our actions? For those of you that have been hurt, what do you think about forgiving?
