“Nowadays in the church sober-mindedness has won the day. Evangelicals are responsible citizens whom most people appreciate as neighbors but don’t want to spend much time with. Theologians with long faces lecture on ‘the imperatives of the faith’. Television evangelists with every hair in place (often dyed) confidently name the Antichrist, predict the end of the world, and announce how to have a prosperous and healthy life meanwhile. The religious right calls for moral regeneration, and ordinary Christians point to temperance, industriousness and achievement as primary proofs of their faith. Could it be that Christians, eager to point out how good we are, neglect the basic fact that the gospel sounds like good news only to bad people?

I have had to forgive the church, much as a person from a dysfunctional family forgives mistakes made by parents and siblings. An irrepressible optimist, G. K. Chesterton proved helpful in this process too. ‘The Christian Ideal has not been found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried,’ he said, The question is not “Why is Christianity so bad when it claims to be so good?’ but rather ‘Why are all human things so bad when they claim to be so good?’ Chesterton readily admitted that the church had badly failed the gospel. In fact, he said, one of the strongest arguments in favour of Christianity is the failure of Christians, who thereby prove what the Bible teaches about the fall and original sin. As the world goes wrong, it proves the church is right in this basic doctrine. ……..

For this reason, when people tell me their horror stories of growing up in a repressive church environment, I feel no need to defend the actions of the church. The church of my own childhood, as well as that of my present and my future, comprises deeply flawed human beings struggling towards an unattainable ideal. We admit what we will never reach our ideal in this life, a distinctive the church claims that most other human institutions try to deny.”

—Philip Yancey, “Soul Survivor: How my Faith Survived the Church.” This quote comes from the chapter on G.K. Chesterton (pages 55-56)

The old adage states, “To err is human; to forgive, divine.”

But what about this statement, “To err is human; to confess, divine”? That one doesn’t sound right. Many would balk at this— if God is perfect, God has nothing to confess, right? There are places in the Bible where God seems to come pretty close to confessing and apologizing. Immediately after the great flood, and in interacting with Elijah in I Kings 19, the text feels like there is a “Sorry” hidden there between the lines. Still, God is not really our model for confession. That is because we are the ones that need, most of the time to confess. Dogs don’t need to confess or apologize— although we often try to make them look apologetic. Plants don’t need to confess or apologize. It is us to confess. Perhaps an adage could be made— “To err is typically human; to confess is ideally human.” I think this statement is more true than to say that being ideally human is not to err.

We do… and we are not good at it. Genesis 3 has the first humans in paradise and they have disobeyed God. What was their immediate response? They tried to cover up and hide. Then when caught, they shifted into blame others and excusing self. We haven’t gotten better at this over the millennia.

The church— assembly of the faithful— is at its best NOT when it doesn’t fail. The church has failed. The church fails, and the church will continue to fail. I watch a lot of Youtube of people who have left their religion. Some are Mormons or JWs or Muslims who have left their faith… but a lot of them are people like myself— raised in a flawed and failing church. Many became disenchanted by the church— by its members. Some walk away to other religions. More tend to drift rather to “Spiritual but not Religions,” “Skeptical Agnostic,” or “Soft Atheist.”

I don’t blame those people— and you shouldn’t either. They have seen the church fail— they have seen every flaw. All the while the church is pointing its fingers at other churches, religions, ideologies, political partisans, and so forth. They seek to show the flaws of other groups while pretending to lack problems themselves. Let’s be honest. WHO WANTS TO HANG AROUND WITH PEOPLE LIKE THAT? Even as one who takes his Christian faith seriously, when I bump up on the “Seven Mountain” Christians— I can’t help but think that the world would be a much better place if these Christians were driven off of all seven. (You can look that up if you don’t know.)

We are to worship God, not the Church, because the Church is so completely unworthy of worship. It is, however, worthy of confession.