Should We Love a Faithless Church? (Part 1)

By Kyle Strobel, Op-Ed Contributor Thursday, February 02, 2017

Kyle Strobel is the assistant professor of Spiritual Theology and Formation at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University.

I remember the first time I heard a pastor lie to a congregation. Or, rather, I remember the first time I knew he was lying. I felt nauseous inside. As I watched him wield his rhetorical savvy and passionate persona, smiling widely at his people, I remember wanting to stand up and walk out.

But I also remember my own response being far from Christ-like. I remember fostering a deep and abiding anger in my heart, looking for ways to criticize and attack him. I remember, as a young man, thinking I was the one people needed to hear, and therefore threw myself into speaking the truth, even if I didn't have the maturity to do it in love.

But this experience in the church hasn't been isolated. I have experienced neglect and rejection in the very moments I needed care and comfort. I have seen people emotionally abused and dehumanized in the church. I have witnessed the church emotionally and spiritually manipulate people rather than shepherd them in truth and in love.

And I have even taken part in some of these failures. I have sought to wield my flesh for the sake of the kingdom — trusting in my own savvy rather than the Spirit of the Lord and the way of Christ. I have cut off relationships and sowed division in places where I should have sought reconciliation and unity.

The Blemishes

I see these failures too clearly.

As a professor, I take time every Summer to peruse my student evaluations. This past Summer, one, in particular, took me off-guard. A student wrote that they found my class difficult because I was so negative about the church.

In the academy, we can sometimes take it for granted that we should be able to speak in a detached manner in our critiques, but when it comes to the church there is never really a "detached" way to address these things. We are called to speak in love and truth, but most of us are good at one and not necessarily the other.

I tend to speak truth, and maybe try to pick up the pieces afterwards in the most lovingly way possible! But that, itself, might not be loving.

As I meditated on this comment some more, and recalled conversations I've had with students over the past several years, I recognize a problem we have talking about failure in the church. But maybe even more so, as a people we struggle knowing how to love the church well when she fails to be faithful.

Discovering the Beauty of the Bride

The book of Hosea is helpful in this regard. Hosea is called by God to enact a prophetic representation of God's relation to Israel. In particular, God calls Hosea to marry an adulterous woman to represent to his people that God views Israel as an adulterer. What is particularly interesting about this is God's marital devotion to his people. We are told that God "will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her" (Hosea 2:14). It is clear that God's marital devotion is profound, but since Israel's actions are seen as adultery, this means that God has grounds for a divorce.

But God wouldn't do that right?

When God has Hosea name one of his children "Not My People," one is left wondering if God has had enough. But Hosea's calling is to represent something else. Hosea's devotion to a wife who has sought after other lovers, and his steadfast love in the midst of faithlessness, unveils the depth of God's marital love.

Jesus, of course, is the second Hosea. Jesus is the bridegroom who has married a lover who goes off with other lovers. Jesus is God's ultimate response to Israel's faithlessness, by giving himself ever-more fully to his people in love. Jesus is the faithful husband to his church, and therefore the church's value is not based on her beauty or perfection, but on Christ's. This means that we should not love the church because she is lovely; we love the church because she is the beloved of God.

Our devotion to Christ's church, therefore, is part of what it means to imitate Christ. Jesus has called us into his own prophetic representation, where we also love God's beloved even in her faithlessness.

This is why God's people are to be known by their love (John 13:35), because they abide in the one who is overwhelmingly lovely, whose faithfulness and devotion make his beloved beautiful.

This is why it is impossible to love Jesus but not love the church, or follow Jesus without giving oneself to his people.

The notion that we can desire Jesus and not his people is to long for a Jesus we never encounter in the Gospels. Jesus calls us, in him, to be little Hosea's. We are called to love the same adulterous wife, just as we are called, as that wife, to repent and seek our Lord with whole hearts.

But this is the way of weakness against the way of power found in the world. But it is also the way of Jesus, and the way he calls us to.

Check out "How Do We Love a Faithless Church? (Part 2)."

Kyle Strobel is the assistant professor of Spiritual Theology and Formation at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, and author of several books including The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb.