Why is the Church responsible for so much injustice? - Phil Whittall

So we're in a series of looking at some objections to believing in Christ.

What are the things that might stop people from thinking or investigating more

about the claims of Jesus and who he was and what he did?

And we're helping us trying to understand some of the beliefs and the problems, the barriers.

What are the things in the way for people or our neighbors and colleagues from

believing in God? And so the question

for today is, why is the church responsible for so much injustice?

So before we get into that, I'm going to read from Matthew 23.

So if you have a Bible with you, either on your phone or you have one of these

old-fashioned paper things called a book, then we're going to read from Matthew 23.

And I'm going to read the first bunch. I'm going to read the first 20-something verses.

Okay, Matthew 23, starting at verse 1.

Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat,

so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do,

for they preach, but they do not practice. Amen.

They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and they lay them on people's shoulders,

but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.

They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries

broad and their fringes long,

and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues

and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.

But you're not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher,

and you are all brothers.

And call no man your father on earth, for you have one father who is in heaven.

Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.

The greatest among you shall be your servant, and whoever exalts himself will

be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces.

For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and

land to make a single proselyte.

And when he becomes a proselyte disciple, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourself.

Woe to you blind guides who say, if anyone swears by the temple, it's nothing.

But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, well, he's bound by his oath. You blind fools.

For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred?

And you say, if anyone swears by the altar, it's nothing.

But if anyone swears by the gift that's on the altar, well, he's bound by his oath.

You blind men, which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift secret?

So whoever swears by the altar, swears by and everything on it.

Whoever swears by the temple, swears by and by him who dwells in it.

Whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God, by him who sits on it.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.

You tithe, which is to give a bit of the mint and the herbs.

But you've neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, faithfulness.

These you ought to have done without neglecting the others.

You blind guides, straining out a gnat, swallowing a camel.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

You clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they're full of greed and self-indulgence.

You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the plate,

that the outside also may be clean.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like a whitewashed tomb.

Outwardly, it appears beautiful, but within, you're full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.

You also outwardly appear righteous

to others, but within, you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

It's cheery talk, isn't it?

Good to start with something positive.

When the missionaries came they had the Bible and we had the land and they said

let us pray we closed our eyes and when we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

That's an African proverb about the experience of Christian missionaries coming

to Africa, bringing the Bible, taking everything away from the people who had previously been there.

One of the biggest objections and barriers to believing in Christianity,

One of the biggest problems is the actions and attitudes of people who claim to be Jesus' followers.

One of the biggest problems is not theoretical. It's not about whether God created

the universe or anything like that.

It's about what they've seen in front of them, done by people who claim to be religious.

From the Crusades, the Inquisition, slavery, colonialism, sexual abuse scandals,

time and time again, horrific evil has been committed in the name of God and his son, Jesus Christ.

In many Western cultures, Christian sexual ethics have been seen as offensive

and hurtful, damaging towards people's identity and freedom to live out their

lives as they want to. It confuses people.

How can a religion of love seem to be so judgmental?

And I want to be honest, I'm not going to resolve all of those issues in one

short talk this afternoon.

But the objection deserves real conversation, not just kind of pushing to one side.

Jesus disagreed with almost everyone he met about something,

but he still had time for them, stopped to eat with them, and eventually died for them.

So when we consider the history of Christianity, all the way up to and including this present moment,

where people who would claim and be seen on social media to be Christian would

seem to be anything but by their actions.

So we can sympathize with this Indian philosopher who said Jesus is ideal and

wonderful, but you Christians, you're not like him.

Ouch Ouch,

So there are three objections Which kind of come in here The first objection,

Is I don't want to become a Christian If it means being on the same side as Those people,

Or I don't want to become a Christian If it means I'm ending up that I'll become

Like one of those people Like, that's not what I want.

That doesn't look like the best vision of myself is to become like that.

But the third and the most powerful objection is the message of Christianity

can't be true because of those people.

I can't believe in God. I can't believe in Jesus because these people seem to be anything but.

Firstly so let's let's not deny right the truth

of the problems let's not pretend they don't exist let's

not try and whitewash history and let's not try and minimize all of those failures

and all of those evils by trying to compare them with something worse as if

it's okay that christians did slavery because Stalin murdered more people or whatever.

It doesn't work. Wrong is wrong. Evil is evil.

Let's call these things what they are.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to begin with that last objection.

That Christianity can't be true because of the actions of many people who claim

to be Christians and then went on to commit awful, evil deeds.

And this isn't just theory for me, because there are men who I have prayed with,

listened to them teach from the Bible, who've led in worship,

who are currently sitting in prison for crimes that they committed and hid.

It's deeply confusing when you realize that someone would say this and then do that.

There are people I know who right now are in prison for awful, horrendous crimes.

They're rightly, justly, properly in prison for the crimes that they have committed.

So I get it. This is a problem. So what does Christianity teach?

Perhaps the first thing we need to consider is that if you believe Christian

teaching at all, is that this shouldn't actually surprise us.

Because the Bible explains time and time again, almost from the very first page,

right up to the very last page,

that people and our hearts are continually and powerfully drawn towards actions

of self-interest and ultimately destructive things.

That people can take anything that's good and corrupt it.

People can take anything that's beautiful and spoil it.

People can take any kind of truth and twist it.

That's what people can do.

The Bible teaches this twisting, this corrupting, this damaging and destructiveness,

that's what the Bible calls sin.

And the Bible teaches the reality of sin, not just in some people's hearts,

but in every human heart to a lesser or greater extent.

It's there in all of us.

And for some people, that sin grows and grows and ends up controlling in such

a profound and destructive way that it leads them to commit awful crimes.

The darkness has got so dark within them, they can't even see what they're doing

and how evil it is until some justice comes.

And the Bible is also disarmingly honest. When you read the Bible,

you see that every single major character is a flawed one, a broken one.

Jacob was a cheat. Abraham was a liar.

Moses was a murderer. David committed adultery.

Peter was a coward. Paul persecuted people.

Every one of them, in some way or other, had a flaw.

And what Jesus, from the passage I read, the word we use for this is hypocrite.

A hypocrite is someone who's inconsistent. Someone who isn't always living up to their own ideals.

We'll say one thing and we'll do another thing.

And then we maybe will try and put up a front. We'll justify ourselves why it's

bad for them, but it's okay for me.

And do you know what? The honest thing is, there are people like that,

inconsistent people who are sometimes hypocrites who are in churches.

You know what? Sometimes that's me.

I know my thoughts, my words and attitudes, And I know that no matter how hard

I try, I don't always live up to my own ideals.

I'm not always as compassionate or as generous or as kind or as forgiving or

as patient as I want to be.

I'd love to be more of all of those things and sometimes I'm not.

So the only honest thing for me to conclude is that sometimes I am a hypocrite.

My ideals and my actions don't match.

My words and my aspirations, my dreams, they don't match.

So I think that's just the honest thing to say. I hold my hand up.

And I wonder if maybe I'm not alone.

Maybe none of us is as patient or as kind or as generous or as loving or forgiving

as we know we should be or want to be.

If there is so much desire to self-improve, then that says maybe where I am

right now is not where I should be.

There's room to grow. I could get better, which means where I am right now isn't where it should be.

And because of what I read from scripture, we can see this isn't new.

This is not like a new problem. This is not a 21st century issue.

This is a human issue.

Jesus confronted religious hypocrisy. In fact, his words, I hope you heard it

in the way I said it. It's really forceful.

You blind guides and hypocrites.

This is what Jesus said.

But these religious leaders don't do what they do.

They don't practice what they teach.

Jesus is up front and owning the issue. He's saying there's a problem here.

You're in religion, amongst religious leaders, people like me.

I can imagine this is what Jesus is saying to me. You shouldn't copy what this guy does.

Maybe what he says, that might be okay, but don't copy his life because he's

not practicing what he's teaching. Ouch!

Later on in the New Testament, Paul says, Christian leaders should be people that you can imitate.

The leaders of churches should be people whose lives you can look at and go,

that's a good example for me.

That's something I should follow. When I want to know what it's like to follow

as a Christian, I should look at their life and think, that's worth copying.

Jesus here is pointing out the problem that it's not always so.

Look at this. They're like a tomb that looks beautiful on the outside,

but it's full of death and filth.

Excuse me. Looks righteous, but inside full of hypocrisy.

So the Bible, it teaches us the reality of sin, the reality of imperfection

and flaws and brokenness.

And so the Bible would confront us and say that actually every person sitting here right now,

is someone that the Bible would say is a sinner who has this kind of brokenness,

this ability to twist and to spoil and to fall short.

And in fact, the only way you can become a Christian is by first admitting that that's your problem.

The only way you can become a Christian is by owning up, fess up and say, you know what?

That has been me. I have twisted and spoiled and broken.

That's me. And if you've never admitted that that's you, then you might not

be what the Bible says is a Christian.

Because that's where it all starts.

One American theologian said,

it's not slanderous to the charge that the church is full of sinners.

As in, that's not a lie.

But it should be taken as a compliment.

Such a statement would only compliment the church for fulfilling her divinely appointed task.

The point is, is the church is supposed to have broken people in it.

The church is supposed to have sinful people in it.

That was why Jesus came. The Son of Man has not come for the healthy, but for the sick.

The Son of Man hasn't come for the righteous, but for those that know they're not.

He's come to seek and to save those who are lost.

So if you never thought you were lost, and never thought that you were unhealthy

in your heart, then you don't need Jesus Jesus didn't come for you he came for

the people that were willing to say that they were.

But Jesus acknowledges that this problem is present in the religion of his day,

just as in ours, because it's a problem within people.

All people, in all places, at all times, have this problem that the Bible recognizes.

It's a universal fault and one that requires a universal solution.

And so Jesus' response to the first two objections,

that I don't want to be on the same side as those people, and I don't want to

end up like those people is an uncomfortable response because he would say, too late.

You already are on the same side as those people.

And in fact, judging them as beneath you is exactly the sort of thing that they

are doing. And so you are being just like them.

We're already like those people. And so we're all standing on level ground here.

Nobody walks into church because they've got it together.

We walk in because we don't.

The church is not a showcase for people who've got it all right.

It's a hospital for people who haven't.

The problem is that sometimes we forget that we forget that the church is meant

to be a place of healing and restoration and that starts with us being,

uncomfortably honest with ourselves and then with God and then with other people,

so when we discover that the church is full of people who are broken and flawed

who do broken things and cause harm well just like outside of the church,

and that Christianity I suppose like any other ideology or political system

whether secular or religious can be co-opted it can be taken and can be twisted and used for evil ends,

So if Christians are no better than anyone else, and Christianity no different

than anything else, in that sense that it can be twisted just like any other

philosophy, then why believe it?

Why believe it at all? If we're not any better, then why become a Christian?

And if the Christianity isn't better in that sense than anything else, why trust her?

Well, the answer that I would suggest that the Bible puts forward and that I

believe to be true is simple.

Jesus. It's the difference. Now, I know how that might sound.

It might sound like I'm saying, don't judge Christianity by Christians,

judge it by Jesus, which is like a convenient thing for a Christian to say.

It's like a get out of jail card.

But think of it this way. Someone shows you a forgery of a painting by Rembrandt

or by da Vinci or by... Someone pick a painter for me.

Monet. You get shown a fake Monet.

You wouldn't conclude from the fake Monet that Monet couldn't paint.

What you would do is you'd go look at the real thing.

You'd go look at the genuine article because forgeries only work because there's an original to copy.

And every crime committed in the name of Christ only really makes sense as a

betrayal because there is a real Jesus against whom we can measure it.

You can't call the Crusades unchristian without having a Christ for it not to be like.

And if Jesus is the Son of God, then we have to take his teaching seriously.

And if he's not who he says he is, then why should you care?

If he is the Son of God, if Jesus was raised from the dead, then you should

definitely pay attention to what he says.

And if he wasn't, why bother?

But it's because of Jesus, because of Jesus, we can judge whether the actions

of his followers or anyone else for that matter are right and wrong.

Every crime I mentioned at the start, theft of land, abuse of people,

slavery, murder, jealousy, pride, greed, not only condemned by Jesus,

but it's shown in stark contrast to the life of Jesus.

And in fact, our world, the Western values of justice, dignity,

care for the vulnerable, the universal human rights, they're all Christian in origin.

The Roman world of Jesus' day wasn't anything like our world.

They were happy to throw babies out on the rubbish dump. They were happy.

They were fine with the sexual abuse of minors, of children.

They had no problem with it. In fact, they had it embedded in their system.

The reason we think it's wrong, the reason anyone thinks it's wrong,

is because Christianity changed the whole moral system of the world.

And all of these things, these failures, they're a betrayal of Christianity's deepest logic.

And so when the church fails, it's not failing against some sort of universal

human ethic. That doesn't exist.

It's specifically failing against Christian ethics.

These objections against Christianity, that has been unequal,

coercive, cruel, which it sometimes has, are themselves Christian objections.

There's a historian called Tom Holland. He points out, he's not a Christian,

but he points out that human rights, the dignity of the individual,

care for the weak, equality before the law, the idea of human progress,

they didn't come about despite Christianity.

They came about because of Christianity.

If you think about it, slavery was undone because Christians won the argument

that slaveholders were being sub-Christian.

They weren't being Christian enough.

The abuse of children, as I said, was normalized in the ancient world.

It was Christianity that said that this child bears the image of God,

then you shouldn't do that.

Racism is a sin because scripture insists that God's called people from every tribe and tongue.

These aren't secular achievements that Christianity baptizes later.

They're Christian achievements.

There was one often at great cost.

And the reason that Christians fought for them, taught them,

and died for them was because of the example of their founder, Jesus Christ.

We can see that Jesus is the standard by which we see how far his followers sometimes fall.

He's the one we measure everything against.

But Jesus also claims to be the only way by which people can be given a life

that will set them on a path for freedom and victory over our greatest failures.

How can you be a different kind of person? All the anxieties you feel,

all the fears you have, all the shame you sometimes feel.

How can you be free from those?

How can you overcome yourself when you are sometimes your own worst enemy?

Jesus points us to the way.

There was a conversation Jesus had with some disciples.

This happened around the first Easter time, and they were walking on the road

to Emmaus. and Jesus appears to them and he takes time to show them that all

of the scriptures were pointing towards him.

The Bible was from all about the Messiah, the Christ.

Now you see, we can read the Bible as if it's all about me.

And if you think the Bible is all about you, what you must do and how you must

live, well then you don't need Jesus. all you need are rules.

Follow the rules and what you must do to please God and be a good person.

That's one way of living, and it's one way of reading the Bible.

In fact, most religions operate on this principle. If I live as I should, God will accept me.

But that's not how Christianity works. In fact, it works the opposite way.

It says, if God accepts me because of what Jesus has done, then I will try to live as I should.

It's not what I do that God will accept me because God has accepted me because

of something someone else did for me.

Well, as a response to that, I should live the way he wants me to.

See, the Bible is actually all about Jesus. It's not all about you.

It's about what Christ has done for you. So what has Jesus done for you?

Well Jesus was willing to sacrifice his own life so that those who follow him

could be in good relationship with God,

Jesus on a cross took all the sin all the pain all the wrong things we're talking

about everything that has ever been done wrong Christ was willing to take it,

and take it to the grave and bury it and because Jesus was a human person it

means he can represent you He can be someone you would choose to,

who might I choose? I need a person.

I need someone else who's human like me to stand in my place.

But because Jesus, we believe, is also God, he's able not just to carry one

person's sins, but the sins of the whole world.

So I know if you've ever wondered why the symbol of Christianity is not a golden

throne, but a wooden cross.

It's a strange symbol to choose, like that there.

The symbol we would choose is the thing that someone dies upon. What a strange choice.

Symbol of death and torture and unimaginable pain.

Because it's not just the place where Jesus died it's the place where sin dies

and it's the place where death dies,

we don't remember it just because Jesus died on it we remember it because when

Jesus died on it some other things died as well.

All that's in me can die there. All that's bad, all that's twisted,

all that needs forgiving, that can die there too.

Because the story doesn't end with a death.

It ends, or at least goes on to, a resurrection.

On the third day, God raised Jesus to life, showing people that he's victorious.

The victory over sin and death hasn't just kept him there. He's won something.

And so the way to life, the way to forgiveness, the way to being made right

in my heart, the way to my soul being healed is through Jesus.

There's another deeply flawed hero called Martin Luther.

The National Church of Sweden is a Lutheran church. So this is the founder of,

but he was a deeply flawed hero. And he said this though, all of life is repentance.

So it's not just like a one-time deal, not a box you tick on the way in,

repented, done that, which means repent, by the way, if I'm walking this way,

to repent means to turn around and walk a different way.

It means if this way is all the things I'm doing wrong, I'm going to turn my

back on it and walk a different way. I'm going to follow a different path.

I'm not going to go my way. I'm going to go Jesus' way.

That's what repentance means. It means a turning.

And this is the way we base our lives daily, turning, turning to Jesus,

which means the most authentically Christian person is not the one who has it the most together,

but the one who's most keenly aware that they don't.

And that's not lowering the bar, that's understanding what the bar actually is.

And it's the Jesus that helps us overcome it.

See, the heart of Christianity is the revelation of God who surrenders all his power.

God who surrenders everything so that the least deserving person could find life.

That in Christ, God takes all that belongs to you, all your sin,

your old identity, all the things, all the worries, the fears,

the anxieties, the shame, and gives what belonged to Jesus to you,

his name, his life, his righteousness.

So the effect of the Christian message is that we get changed,

we have a new identity, defined by what God has done for you in Jesus,

and what God thinks of you in Jesus.

An American called Tim Keller put it better than I can, he said,

we're more sinful and flawed than we ever dared believe.

But we're more loved and accepted in Jesus than we ever dared hope.

The problem is deeper than I ever knew. The solution is more amazing than I ever realized.

And because of these twin truths, this new identity in Jesus should show itself,

in the attitudes I have towards other people. First, I should be humble.

Humble enough to know that I'm not perfect nor expect the other person to be perfect,

but also compassion towards the poor and the oppressed, towards people of differing

political views or religious beliefs, people of other races and classes. They're not my enemies.

They're people who Christ died for.

So that Indian philosopher was right. We're not like Jesus.

But the extraordinary claim of Christianity is that he, Jesus, became like us.

So that one day we will be like him.

So has Christianity has committed injustice? injustice, what's the title of the question?

The question is, why is the church responsible for so much injustice?

Because it's full of sinful people.

What is our hope? The same that it's always been, that in Jesus Christ we can all be changed.

In a moment, we're going to do what Christians have been doing since Jesus was

talking to the disciples.

We're going to go and use some symbols, bread and a small cup of wine.

And these things are symbols. So if you've never done this before,

then I'm just going to explain it to you.

If you're not sure about your relationship with God through Jesus,

then in a moment, just feel free just to sit where you are and observe what other people are doing.

But if you trusted Jesus or you want to trust in Jesus, you think maybe he is

the life, then you're welcome.

This is a moment because it's an act of faith.

No one's doing it out of religious, like this is just what we do.

If that's where you're thinking, please just stay in your seat,

it's fine. If you trust in Jesus, you go, you know what?

God, I know maybe not everyone knows what I'm like, and I'm not sure I want

to tell them what I'm really like inside.

But you know, and I know that I need you to be transformed, to be changed, to be forgiven.

And that's what the bread, because it represents Jesus' body,

and the cup, which represents his blood, is full.

It's to show us what we're trusting in.

We're seeing both the gravity of sin leads to death, Jesus' death,

but also in Jesus' death, it's the way to life. It's the way to renewal. It's the way to hope.

It's the way for things to be different.

There's a verse in Romans, I'm just going to spend just a moment just to think about what it says.

Romans chapter 5, let me find it.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

While we were still weak, so maybe just have a think, do you feel weak?

Have you ever felt weak in your soul, in your heart?

While we were in that place.

While we're in that place of weakness and brokenness Christ died for the ungodly.

Rarely will anyone die for a good person for a righteous person perhaps for

a good person someone might actually dare to die for someone who's good,

but God proves his love for us that while we were sinners,

Christ died for us when you were at your worst,

God saw you and still said I'll die for you to take your worst from me,

if while we were enemies,

we were reconciled to God through the death of his son.

How much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life?

More than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

through whom we've received reconciliation.

We come and take bread and wine because God is, this is what we put our hope in.

That our rightness, our standing with God is through Jesus.

And it's only through Jesus that we have life.

And we say, this is what I'm putting my trust in.

We hope that this sermon has encouraged you. If you'd like to learn more about

us, visit us online at gracechurch.se.

Thanks for listening.