By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
I don’t know a whole lot of people who don’t go to church. I went online to see what people who don’t go to church are saying about church.
It led me to some interesting Reddit conversations.
Last week I wrote about how church is perceived as boring by many who don’t attend any longer. And truthfully, they had some valid points.
I also came across the following comment: “Honestly, it’s crazy looking back at everything from the other side of it all and realizing how unhealthy what we were learning was.
“The idea that you’re broken and in need of saving, that you’re dirty and worthless and deserving of hell without Jesus.
“I’ve struggled with healthy self-esteem for years, and now that I look back in retrospect, I have [a] feeling Christianity may have played a role in hurting that.”
And, like saying church is boring, I can see some truth in this person’s statement. We are lost sinners in need of saving. And we will end up in hell if we don’t repent. And every one of us is broken.
Those are true statements. I would hope that they were taken out of context where the truth of Jesus’ love covers our sin and makes us whole again. But I wouldn’t wager much on it.
It scares me to think that a church might teach that we are “dirty and worthless and deserving of hell without Jesus.” But I know too many teach just that. But that is not biblical truth. God’s word says we are created in his image, Genesis 1:27, 31:
“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them… God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.”
What happened to “we are made in his image”? And God called his creation of man “very good.” We are created perfect. Could God do any less? True, some of us are born with physical and mental defects, but our spirit is whole, complete and perfect.
And “worthless” seems a strong statement. Think how valuable we must be to God that he would provide a way for our souls to be remade perfect after sin enters.
A way that cost him so dearly. John records it like this: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:16-18)
And then there’s John 1:12: “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
There’s nothing about us that is deserving of hell except our refusal to accept the freedom from sin bought and paid for by Jesus.
It’s a shame we harm so many with incorrect explanations, or at least without full ones. Father, forgive us and restore those whom we have harmed.
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Mike Kelly is the founding pastor of Bryan’s Grace Community Church (retired) and Board Chairman of Bryan’s Sanctuary Homeless Shelter and Williams County’s Compassion (free) Medical Clinic.