Two amazing facts about the Church in history…
Jul 18th, 2010 by ljkim
In an interview for a documentary, Tony Campolo mentioned a quote from Augustine. Augustine had said, “the church is a hoar, but she is my mother.” So on the one hand the church has been atrociously unfaithful to God, often getting into bed with politics, race, the crusades, and all sorts of things it should have stayed away from. One can’t understand church history without delving deeply into its sins and flaws. To try to cover over them or rationalize them is almost worse than the sins themselves, the way trying to rationalize evil and greed and bigotry is actually worse than having done these things and repenting of them…
But on the other hand “she’s also my mother.” She gave birth to me. Without the Church of history I would never have known God. This broken and sometimes wicked mother is the one to whom I owe my life and existence…
Those are the two main mistakes Christians make when it comes to the church. Either we hate “the Church” and try to make a break from it – until we find that our little sect is infected with sin also – and make a break to ever smaller sects while vilifying others… Or we emulate the faults and shortcomings of the church – or our small part of it…adopting some un-Jesus-like act as a badge of faith…
What Augustine is saying is: on the one hand I can’t just accept the way things are – but on the other hand, I can’t vilify her either. God calls us to love the church – but at the same time we can’t sugar coat her sins, instead we need to repent of them. I think this is one of these fundamental Gospel lessons… loving sinners well…starting with ourselves.
Let me know what you think…
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I’m gonna have to remember that quote (which shouldn’t be too hard since it’s pretty darn memorable!).