They would, from time to time, look around in puzzlement as to why things weren’t going as well as expected, for they had tried and tried in their camps to be as loving and gracious as inclusive as they could figure out how to be, and still, such things had not produced the church of their expectations.
But failure ought not give one pause where faith is concerned, they thought.
So they barreled ahead with their religion, assuming themselves among the accepted,
even though they had repeatedly ignored his many calls to repentance, caring only to sit with the cool kids, and to go to Heaven, of course
And it was with this heart—and not a heart like his own—that they would read their scriptures
and misinterpret half the meanings, never figuring out that the writings are designed not
to yield up all their treasures to the defiant, the incorrigible, and the halfhearted. That is, to the very ones the camps are so eager to include with their Just As I Am bent that makes a mockery of the repentance required by the real Jesus, and with their incessant promises that he loves them and accepts them, even though he himself was adamant that he actually hates some, finds them repulsive, and will eternally reject them, based on their failure to repent from their sins.
But they would continue to spin and spin, expecting him never to call their bluff, but actually, to congratulate them instead—even as they are were blocked from the kind of success they expected at church and from the fruit of the Spirit that they assumed they already had in sufficient measure.
And so they stood between God and the sinner, promising a different kind of grace than what God gives, so as to satisfy those who would be satisfied—as they were themselves—with something less than the real Jesus who demands repentance.
There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
Luke 13:1-5. ESV
46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.[c] 49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”
Luke 6. ESV
