Monday, November 5, 2018

The temple deserving of destruction

"... The woman’s devotion is undoubted. But we have taught her, in part, to increase her poverty in the name of God. “They kill the widow and the stranger...” (Ps 94:6) Families are destroyed by husbands at too many meetings and working bees, or wives working too long in the church office. Except it is not the husband or the wife, it is the church. Young women are destroyed by the structures; it has been happening all my life and I am only finally seeing.
.... In this picture of a more fundamental corruption, those “inadequate people seeking power” (Loader) are often tolerated, and even encouraged,  by other inadequate people seeking an inadequate God. Great is their rage and destructiveness when they see they have idolised God and gotten only a poor minister.
And in the middle of it all those who are true become the “collateral damage” of the church; the ones we deny we have destroyed.
I once saw a man stand firm under fire and give everything he had. What an appalling thing if the widow was doing this, too, with her two coins, and it turned out we had built a temple which turned her love into a lie!
It would deserve its destruction."
Andrew Prior (from https://www.onemansweb.org/theology/a-difficult-day-of-the-lord-mark-13-24-37/the-trickle-down-theory-of-church-mark-12-38-44.html)

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