Is the Church a corrupt institution?
Jul 23, 2007
For the last several Sunday’s, both The New Vision and The Monitor have run front page stories that detail specific cases of corruption in the church, a graphic testimony of sodomy and the shocking, but somewhat comic, arrest of a so-called pastor with a gadget capable of delivering 12 volts of el
By Andrew Rugasira
For the last several Sunday’s, both The New Vision and The Monitor have run front page stories that detail specific cases of corruption in the church, a graphic testimony of sodomy and the shocking, but somewhat comic, arrest of a so-called pastor with a gadget capable of delivering 12 volts of electric current, I presume, to convince his congregation of his ‘supernatural’ powers.
Whilst these stories are newsworthy, the prominence given to them will invariably have the potential of presenting the modern church as fundamentally flawed and an inherently corrupt institution. I think not. It is like saying that because some politicians are corrupt, all politicians are corrupt; or because divorce occurs in some marriages, therefore, marriage is a failed institution.
What we are witnessing is a representation of man’s transgressions from what God’s moral law constitutes as righteous conduct. This moral law is the ‘sense’ of right from wrong, the nudge that makes us opt for the choice of a right decision; and when we make a wrong one, convicts us. This ‘sense’, is in the design of our human consciousness, woven in our very fabric and established as a standard of what is right from wrong. It is an internal marker continually and gently encouraging us to make the right decisions in any given circumstance. To know that something is wrong one must have an appreciation of how it digresses from what is right. This is not something that we necessarily know through learning, rather, it is intrinsic and imprinted in our being.
For Christians, Jesus Christ is the manifestation of that moral standard. The One who lived by the standard of love — righteousness — and died for our sins because of that love. Jesus defines this standard as a commandment when He says: “Love your neighbour as you love yourself.â€
This is the standard and the ‘law’ by which we measure our walk in God’s purpose for our lives. If we love others as we love ourselves, we will do no harm to others, cause no pain to others and in effect, only do to others the things that we would like done to us. Jesus illuminates God’s purpose for man to live a just and meaningful life, a life that is greater than man’s subjective material needs. I sense that this is why the experience of Christ giving up His life for the sins of humanity — in effect, paying a debt he never owed — is fundamentally challenging and difficult for many to comprehend. Our prideful nature rebels against selfless love — such is the fruit of selfish materialism. The Psalmist once wrote: “surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely, you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.†Christ is God’s inner truth, the standard of love and the key to being born anew of a righteous value system.
We, humans, are fallen and corrupt creatures. Therefore, we do not need to scream at the sin of others in order to justify ourselves. We should rather visit our own dark closets and seek forgiveness and redemption for our own transgressions. We shall stand or fall by our own conduct, not by the censoriousness by which we judge the sins of others. Our world today has become consumed by suffering, violence and the pornography of immorality; this attests to our aggregate sinfulness and the conscious denial of God’s moral standard in our lives. We think we are a testimony of modernity borne of a great human advancement, but therein lies the delusion. Our world attests more to the ‘religion’ of corruption than the corruption of religion.
The writer is the CEO of Good African Coffee
For the last several Sunday’s, both The New Vision and The Monitor have run front page stories that detail specific cases of corruption in the church, a graphic testimony of sodomy and the shocking, but somewhat comic, arrest of a so-called pastor with a gadget capable of delivering 12 volts of electric current, I presume, to convince his congregation of his ‘supernatural’ powers.
Whilst these stories are newsworthy, the prominence given to them will invariably have the potential of presenting the modern church as fundamentally flawed and an inherently corrupt institution. I think not. It is like saying that because some politicians are corrupt, all politicians are corrupt; or because divorce occurs in some marriages, therefore, marriage is a failed institution.
What we are witnessing is a representation of man’s transgressions from what God’s moral law constitutes as righteous conduct. This moral law is the ‘sense’ of right from wrong, the nudge that makes us opt for the choice of a right decision; and when we make a wrong one, convicts us. This ‘sense’, is in the design of our human consciousness, woven in our very fabric and established as a standard of what is right from wrong. It is an internal marker continually and gently encouraging us to make the right decisions in any given circumstance. To know that something is wrong one must have an appreciation of how it digresses from what is right. This is not something that we necessarily know through learning, rather, it is intrinsic and imprinted in our being.
For Christians, Jesus Christ is the manifestation of that moral standard. The One who lived by the standard of love — righteousness — and died for our sins because of that love. Jesus defines this standard as a commandment when He says: “Love your neighbour as you love yourself.â€
This is the standard and the ‘law’ by which we measure our walk in God’s purpose for our lives. If we love others as we love ourselves, we will do no harm to others, cause no pain to others and in effect, only do to others the things that we would like done to us. Jesus illuminates God’s purpose for man to live a just and meaningful life, a life that is greater than man’s subjective material needs. I sense that this is why the experience of Christ giving up His life for the sins of humanity — in effect, paying a debt he never owed — is fundamentally challenging and difficult for many to comprehend. Our prideful nature rebels against selfless love — such is the fruit of selfish materialism. The Psalmist once wrote: “surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely, you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.†Christ is God’s inner truth, the standard of love and the key to being born anew of a righteous value system.
We, humans, are fallen and corrupt creatures. Therefore, we do not need to scream at the sin of others in order to justify ourselves. We should rather visit our own dark closets and seek forgiveness and redemption for our own transgressions. We shall stand or fall by our own conduct, not by the censoriousness by which we judge the sins of others. Our world today has become consumed by suffering, violence and the pornography of immorality; this attests to our aggregate sinfulness and the conscious denial of God’s moral standard in our lives. We think we are a testimony of modernity borne of a great human advancement, but therein lies the delusion. Our world attests more to the ‘religion’ of corruption than the corruption of religion.
The writer is the CEO of Good African Coffee