The Un-Spiritual Gift of Destruction

 The Un-Spiritual Gift of Destruction

We live in the age of take-downs. We like to see the mighty fall. We hear the stories of a giant’s faults, and then we tell them over and over, whether or not the story that we heard was true. We learned this skill, this unspiritual skill, from the media. But then, we already know that they, in large part, are not Christians. Why, then, do we as Christians, in large part, go and do the same thing?

In fact there is a whole “Christian” industry dedicated to examining the faults of Christian leaders and Christian organizations. I won’t mention any names, because I don’t to give them any more notoriety, but I believe that what they are doing is un-spiritual.

There is a wonderful word in the Bible for building people up. It is called “edification.” That is, you find someone who is built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ, and you seek to “edify” them, to build them up through teaching and encouragement and perhaps some face-to-face correction. But that would be the opposite of what I have described above. The opposite of edification is destruction. Christians practice edification. Destruction is the work of the devil, and I have drawn the conclusion that this “Christian” internet industry of the take-down of brothers and sisters in Christ is the work of the devil.

This is not to say that Christian leaders and organizations are not to be held to account. There is a wonderful place for that to happen, described in the Bible, and it is called “the local church.” We all need to answer to someone. And the trouble is, some have gotten so large, people with common sense and Biblical sense are no longer in charge. Pastors of large churches are no longer accountable to the congregation, and instead answer only to a Board of Directors. They may be called “elders,” but if the pastor is “too big to fail,” that is, if your weekly attendance and cash flow depends upon the pastor’s continued popularity, then the elders will most likely act more like directors, and then, there goes the New Testament.
Para-church organizations are worse. Built like corporations, they start with a Board of Directors whose main job seems to support the “face” or “personality” of the organization who keeps the machine humming. It is a problem, and it needs to be corrected, but where? And how?

Not on the internet. Not by self-appointed faultfinders who themselves answer to no one, and who can traffic in all kinds of half-truths, leaving the rest of us to religiously read their garbage and repeat it at our church fellowships. Like I said, unspiritual.