How can God be good when the Church is so bad?

There is no escaping the reality that a shadow hangs over the Church. 

Within our culture, whatever moral gravitas the church once possessed has been hollowed out by a litany of sacred crimes: the crusades, Spanish inquisitions, European wars of religion, colonial complicity, celebrity pastors gone wild, the religious TV charlatans fleecing the poor and the dreadful sexual abuse scandals. 

The extent of these evils has kicked out any remnants of Christian triumphalism. And for doubters, Christians behaving badly has become a serious barrier to becoming one. Why would you want to worship a God if some of his followers perform such outrageous acts? If Christianity is true then shouldn’t we expect Christians to be better?

There can be no room for any answer to a question this raw that does not begin with tremendous sorrow for those who have been harmed, closely followed by a deep protest against these evils.  But, what I find fascinating about the Christian story is that there is no attempt to airbrush out the reality of religious evils.

God never sweeps religious hypocrisy under the rug. Rather, what’s weird about the Bible is that it seems to expose Christians behaving badly. 

Nearly every prophet in the Old Testament, and letter in the New Testament was sent to address a serious shortcoming in the beliefs or behaviours of the early Christians. People who needed to be called out for not framing God right in the eyes of a watching world. That these evils were dealt with publicly, memorialised in Christian Scripture, speaks to God’s commitment to drag evil out into the light, so that it has to be dealt with for the good of all. The truth is there has never been a more vocal critic of religious hypocrisy than Jesus.

Jesus saved his strongest warnings about judgment for those who were misrepresenting God, and exposed some religious leaders as whitewashed tombs, where the renovated public image was really just masking the stench of the moral corpse inside. So if you are protesting the evils of the church, were you to read the gospels, you might be surprised to find you have an ally in Jesus.

But Jesus wouldn’t say that Christians behaving badly should stop you from becoming one. Why? Because the Church exists for something beautiful. Jesus launched the church to be the epicentre of God’s work in the world. To be the hands and feet of God’s love. To be the carriers of the Christian story. To play the sublime tune that Jesus composed with his own life.

At many times across history, when Christians have used their freedom to follow Jesus’ script, the Church has been beautiful, and has bequeathed immeasurable goods to the world. Jesus vision for the Church is worth believing in.

Which is why the litany of sacred crimes, then, although perpetrated by Christians, is a betrayal of Christianity. 

The problem is not that they were being Christian, it’s that they weren’t being Christian enough.

Here is the crux of the problem: Freedom. When you become a Christian, God doesn’t remove your freedom. And since God’s endgame requires that we be transformed to become wise moral agents who can rule the new creation with Jesus, that future depends upon our free participation. So God cannot remove our freedom and still achieve those ends, even if it would circumvent religious evils. And so the problem of a bad church somewhat mimics the problem of evil. So I don’t see a bad church as evidence against the truth of the Christian story.

In a tragic way, Christians behaving badly ends up being a kind of dark evidence for the truth of the Christian story, since one of the central claims of Christianity is that despite being created for good by God, all of us have become damaged by evil. We all fall short of who we were created to be. Evil is not a uniquely Christian problem; it is a universally human problem.

This is where we get to the heart of the gospel. Christianity is not about being a good person. It may result in that, but being good enough for God is no gospel. Rather the opposite is true; Christianity is about God loving bad people. Where through the cross God invites bad people to experience the transforming power of grace.

Which is why the Church is no showroom for perfect saints; it is a hospital for sinners.

When I look at my own heart, I’m glad there is no good person entrance exam. So as much as we may wish the Church was perfect, doesn’t it make sense that recovering sinners sometimes fall back into old habits, or give in and do evil? And if you are tempted to thing that the Christian story is impotent, or that experiencing God doesn’t change people for the better, then can I invite you to listen to the myriad stories of those I know, who, having come to terms with the evil in their own hearts, have had their lives turned upside down by Jesus.

Now if you are reading this and have been hurt deeply be religious people. I’m so sorry. I wish I could undo what was done to you. But you are not alone in your pain. Jesus knows intimately how you feel, since it was the religious establishment in his own community whose dark actions of betrayal and injustice led to his brutal execution. So please, don’t judge Jesus based on those who have misrepresented him.

As for the Church? Jesus is not done with her yet. As broken as she can sometimes seem, Jesus loves the Church, and is committed to making her beautiful and a beacon of hope for the world.

In the language of C.S. Lewis, God’s love is inconvenient. He loves us enough to accept us as we are, but loves us too much to leave us as we are, so that if the Christian story is true, the Church’s future is something worth believing in. And in the meantime, God uses our protests to expose what needs to change.