Mad at the Church

 The person who rejects organized religion doesn’t then have no religion. What he has is his own religion that he has organized around himself, where he is the center of it all instead of God.

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God doesn’t in His Word pretend that churches are full of sinless people, and He doesn’t suggest that we should pretend that. He’s very open in His Word with His rebukes toward the churches in the New Testament as well as Israel in the Old Testament when they were sinning wickedly. We see this in the New Testament especially in 1 Corinthians and Galatians, as well as in the letters to the churches in Revelation 2-3. God is as angered when people sin against us as we are, and he doesn’t want us to be naive about how evil people can be.

Whatever anger or disappointment you may have toward ministers, church leaders, or other believers for mistreatment you may have suffered from them, God is in agreement with you. He is shares your anger and disappointment.

Nonetheless, the Church was created by God as the means by which He ministers to individual Christians and demonstrates His grace and power to the watching world. While some local churches may become so wicked that they can no longer be considered a part of the universal body of the Church (Rev. 1-3), that never happens to every local church. Some sin will always exist, there are no perfect churches, and yet God always maintains His presence and witness throughout the world through groups of faithful but flawed believers.

It is the duty of all who profess faith in Jesus Christ to join and attend a local church that teaches the Bible correctly and that seeks through all its ministry to be obedient to Scripture. To be a part of a local church is, very simply, what it means to be a Christian.

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Anger towards God, and distrust towards God, aren’t things you can just ignore until they go away. They don’t just go away. There’s only one option in dealing with them: you have to go to God in worship and prayer and study until you have the thing dealt with for good. If you don’t, they will just hang around and mess up your life until you do.