Why Do We Need To Cry Out To God?

I saw a post pop up in my feed on Twitter the other day that I found amusing.  The tweet related a (probably fictional) story of a person who was sitting in a church service when their cell phone rang, disturbing all of those around them.  The pastor immediately paused his sermon and reminded everyone that they should be extra careful to keep their cell phones silent during the service.  After the service, several members scolded the individual for allowing their phone to ring during the service.  Several others glared and whispered their displeasure behind the offender’s back.  Embarrassed and hurt, the individual stopped at a bar on the way.  However, while drowning in their own self-pity, they carelessly knocked a pitcher of beer off the table, and it shattered on the floor.  Horrified and further embarrassed the person jumped up apologizing profusely.  However, no one in the bar seemed upset.  People from nearby tables pitched in to help clean up the mess.  The bartender told the individual that accidents sometimes happen and that no real harm had been done.  He even presented the person with a free beer while other patrons gathered around and began telling stories of their own mishaps in the bar.  The individual never stopped going back to that bar for the rest of his life.

The moral (and I attribute the message of the story quite loosely to a moral) is not lost on me.  Christians sometimes forget that Jesus Christ Himself was teaching in the temple and was interrupted by others who dragged a woman in (obviously against her will) and threw her at His feet accusing her of being caught in the act of adultery.  And Jesus did not scold her for interrupting His teachings.  He did not make a statement that others in the congregation would later use to harass and embarrass her.  Instead, He told her that He did not condemn her and sent her on her way asking her to sin no more.  The church is designed as a place of refuge where people find mercy and grace and love and forgiveness.  It should not be a place of shame and condemnation.  And when the world offers love and forgiveness where the church does not, people will leave the church and begin to frequent the bars of the world.  I am pretty sure this is the message that the tweet intended to convey.  And it is a fair message, but the example that was used is somewhat flawed.

The responses to the tweet were also interesting to me.  They were primarily either defensive or dismissive.  There were responses that relayed stories of cell phones ringing during church services where the pastor either joked about it or just ignored it.  There were replies that such an event would never happen at their church.  And there were replies that pointed out that perhaps those in the bar would not always be as forgiving as the story portrayed.  And all of these were valid replies, if one were responding to the message that the story seemed to tell.

But I find the story itself interesting.  It provides a picture of inappropriate behavior in the church of God.  And whether it does this as a means of saying Christians are hypocrites, or whether it intends to provide meaningful instruction by illustrating bad behavior within the church (or even behavior with unintended consequences), the story still clearly painting the church in a bad light.  And then the story contrasts this bad behavior within the church to good behavior within a bar.  Clearly contrasting the church, a place we think of as good, with a bar, a place Christians think of as bad.

And I find this a useless comparison.  Why?  Because we tend to build arguments in our minds that create holy ground, and then, by extension, all other ground is evil.  And the problem with this is, we take God out of the picture.  Does anyone really believe that there is no bad behavior in our churches?  Really and truly?  Of course, there is bad behavior in our churches.  And does anyone really believe there is not good behavior in bars?  Of course, there is bound to be some good behavior in some bars somewhere.  However, this does not mean that there is not good behavior in our churches and that there is not bad behavior at the bars.

Both the people at the church and the people at the bar need to start measuring their behavior against God’s standards, not our own arbitrary ideals.  And when we start doing this, we will find we are all woefully inadequate.  We are all sinners, deserving of an eternity in Hell.  The bad behavior in churches doesn’t condemn us for we are already condemned.  And the good behavior in bars doesn’t save us for we cannot save ourselves through good works.

In The Greatest Pleas Ever Made I make the case that all of humanity is in peril and needs to cry out to God for His mercy, and His grace, and His love, and His forgiveness, and His salvation.  It is only through God’s eyes that we can truly begin to make sense of our condition and our needs.  When we view ourselves through our own warped world views, we begin to see evil where we expect good, and then we see good where we expect evil.  And that causes us to make inappropriate judgements.  But when we see ourselves as God sees us, we begin to understand that even our best behavior is not enough to win us favor with the Creator, while even the tiniest amount of bad behavior is enough to separate us from His for all of eternity.

The message is not about bad behavior in our churches or good behavior in our bars.  The message is not even about finding good or bad behavior in any activity in the world.  The message is that the world needs salvation.  The whole world.  The people in the churches.  The people in the bars.  And everyone in between.  We all need to cry out to God for His grace and His peace and His mercy and His love.

And because we are a creation in constant need of replenishment, I believe we probably ought to make those our pleas each and every day.