Evil within Us

Read this article online today on Reuters. Here's an excerpt of it:

LONDON - Elton John has said organized religion should be banned because it promotes homophobia and turns some people into "hateful lemmings."

"I would ban religion completely, even though there are some wonderful things about it," the British singer said in an interview with the Observer newspaper on Sunday.

"Religion has always tried to turn hatred toward gay people. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it is not really compassionate."

The singer, who tied the knot with long-term partner David Furnish in a civil ceremony last year, said he admired the teachings of Jesus Christ, but disliked religious bodies.

"The reality is that organized religion doesn't seem to work," he added.

Articles like this make me really sad. It's difficult for me to see the church attacked in such a way, because in many cases, the accusations are true. There's a lot of hypocrisy and sin within the church, and too often we don't keep in line with the teachings of Christ as we ought.

I'm reading Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Willard with Cat and we just finished a chapter on evilness. I'm convinced that one of the barriers for Christians to pursue the character of Christ is our inability to wholly accept and recognize the extent of our fallenness, or as Calvin states, the total depravity of man. There is a certain pride in us that undermines our admittance that we are incapable of goodness and righteousness on our own. This is reflected in our use of the word brokenness: we say we're broken to communicate how our experiences have left us downtrodden and weary, almost implying that we are somehow victims. Yet, brokenness really is talking about the inherent evil within us as a result of the fall. We are not victims to the circumstances we have in life. We have by nature evil within us that inhibits us from worshiping God fully. Willard points out that one of the things that is hardest to swallow about Christianity is the importance it places on the human individual. We are created in the image of God and it is our greatness that makes our evilness so tragic.

For anyone who has talked to me lately, one of my struggles is finding when I compare my "Christian friendships" to my "secular friendships," I find more realness in the secular friendships. This shouldn't be the case! I think it's because a lot of Christians, especially young adults my age, have this expectation of spiritual growth and maturity that becomes a barrier for us to truly accept one another and ourselves for who we are. I feel that too often we put up a front because for the most part, we know right from wrong, and we hate admitting that we can't live up to that. I feel there is a certain superficiality created from this facade of spirituality.

We're broken people. We're fallen. And although we need to spur each other on toward growth and striving for perfection, we need to also accept each other for who we are: broken, fallen, evil people caught between our fallen nature and the glimpse of the Heaven we've received through Christ's blood. If the church can be honest about its brokenness and focus on being sinners supporting each other through the grace of God rather than being this sanctuary of holiness amid an evil world, what a witness that will be!