Why is the church so chock full of phonies?

It is my habit when asked “Why is the church…” to look for what is often the obvious answer. The problem is always people, and never exclusive to the church. This is certainly true in this case. Not only is the church full of phonies, but so is the world. The world is full of phonies because the world is full of people and we people are phonies. One could argue that the astonishing success of various social media outlets is driven by this reality. These all exist to fill our need to present ourselves to the world as better, happier, more wonderful than we are.

The church, however, has an added impetus to phoniness, as well as a sound reason why phoniness should not ever be found there. The church has become that place where we display just how good we are. We ought to know better. The Bible warns us time and again about this propensity. Jesus describes the scribes and the Pharisees as those who parade their spirituality with all the demure spirit of a carnival barker.

And we, because we are Pharisees, thank the Lord that we are not like them. Friends, these rebukes against them are not there so we can feel better about ourselves, so we can look down on Pharisees, but so that we can see our inner Pharisee. To apply the wisdom of Paul Washer, He is talking about us.

In the church we want everyone to know not how many followers we have on Instagram, but that God is on our side. And so we have to keep up the illusion of having it all together. Oh, we do it in our casual clothes, showing our brothers that we’re not like those shallow people who care about such things. We do it without being judge-y, like those horrible judge-y people over there, you know the ones. But we do it nonetheless.

And we are without excuse. For the very door into the church is repentance, our confession of our brokenness, our sinfulness, our ugliness, our inability, our instability, our fears. The very sign and seal that God is with us is not our success, but our acknowledgment of our failure. We come to eat the body that we confess we broke, for we know without it we would starve. We come to drink the blood that we spilled, for we know without it we would die of thirst. We are not the ones who have it together, but the ones who wander off.

Our pretending is not merely comically absurd, like the emperor with no clothes, but is the worst affront possible to the Emperor who has dressed us in the righteousness of His Son. Phoniness is not some petty sin that we can laugh about. It is instead an implicit denial of our need for His grace. Does it take courage to shed our phoniness? It does. But it is foolhardy not to. Let us lay aside our attainments, our cheap masquerade masks and run to our Rescuer.

This is the seventeenth installment of an ongoing series of pieces here on the nature and calling of the church. Stay tuned for more. Remember also that we at Sovereign Grace Fellowship meet this Sunday October 27 at 10:30 AM at our new location, at our beautiful farm at 112811 Garman Road, Spencerville, IN. Please come join us.