Playing church or radical, transforming faith

I had a pretty vivid imagination as a kid and let’s pretend was a favorite game. I would pretend to be and do all sorts of things. I have noticed however as I have gotten older that we adults still play let’s pretend but our pretending is more subtle and about different things than when we were kids. One of the places that we unfortunately may pretend whether knowingly or not is church. Are we just “playing church”? I have been thinking about this for a long time and sometimes a series of sermons or a good book helps focus the thoughts enough to put them down on paper.

Some claim that Hitler and the Nazi’s were a Christian movement. While there is no doubt that Hitler and his minions claimed many things to many people to gain political power, they are most definitely NOT a Christian movement. So where were the German Christians in that era? The book Bonheoffer by Eric Metaxas has been a fascinating read. In reading about this man and his times, I have learned that one of the reasons that the German Christian community fell under the Nazi spell is that many of them were just playing church. Even a few who were not playing church failed to fully realize the evil they were dealing with until it was much too late. Years before many pastors apparently decided the Bible was not the inspired word of God and in matters of doctrine little compromises soon became big compromises. They failed to teach their congregations sound doctrine and how to apply the Word of God to their everyday lives. Consequently, many of the people thought that they were ok with God because they had been baptized as infants but in reality they had never personally sought out Christ for forgiveness of sins. Confirmation became a rite of passage rather like getting a driver’s license or getting married-it was just something one did. In short, they were playing church. Church and faith were Sunday things not all week things. Faith was a private matter and shouldn’t have any impact in the public sphere of one’s life unless politically expedient or popular. Faith that permeated and ordered one’s life was considered radical. Sound familiar at all? Bonheoffer had a radical faith, which lead him to radical places, and he paid the ultimate price.

So some questions for all of us to ponder about playing church. Faith is the starting point to stop playing church. If The Faith is not your own, until you make it your own you can never truly be a follower of Christ. We should each examine our hearts and know the answer to “Is Christ my personal Savior and have I made a conscious decision to follow Christ”? Or do we think we have some sort of free pass to God because our parents are Christians? Because of baptism, dedication, confirmation, being raised in the church, church membership, belonging to a certain denomination? Our nationality? Our own perceived lack of sin or our own perceived morality? If we can answer, “Yes, my faith is my own and it is a personal faith”, are we able to give an accounting of our faith to those outside the church? The scripture doesn’t suggest that we be able to defend our faith it commands us to be able to defend our faith. So we need to know what we believe, why we believe it and why it is important. Then our faith should permeate our lives much the way the odor of fresh baked bread makes an entire house smell so amazing! Thankfully at our church we have a Pastor who is teaching us the Truth. We have others who are also teaching the Truth as well. But becoming a follower of Christ is not something we can relegate to one hour a week on Sunday morning or even two hours on Sunday morning and one hour on Wednesday night. We are to search out and study the scriptures ourselves. We are to talk to God frequently and not just to ask for stuff. Following Christ is not a passive thing it is an active, sometimes hard thing. Following Christ can end up being a daily and sometimes hourly thing. So are we just playing church or do we have a radical, transforming faith?