The Church of Limited Jesus

There's a pervasive problem in the thinking of America's current unbelieving Church. They know Jesus is in the Bible, and consider He's inside their church' walls. They don't really believe Jesus is in the world...even though they'll make a big pious deal in a couple months of celebrating that God came to earth in human flesh.

But few believe that fact in the scriptural sense: that it changes their daily operative thinking.

It's easy that they see Him in the natural world. Many quote the scriptures about God's power being manifest in creation, and smugly marvel that unbelievers can't see Him there. But man is also God's creation, and bears His "image" in a way nothing else does. The Church' unbelief is that it cannot see His image there.

The Church is spiritually blind to Jesus' Presence in the "world" of human society. Indeed, following the teaching of their "Christian" and political mis-leaders, they view "the world" as irremediably evil, and its people as flesh-and-blood enemies. It's one of the major ways these deceivers have fostered their thinking in the Church' heart, thinking contrary the mind of Jesus.

I see Jesus every day. He's more often in "the world" than in the Church' superficial religious club. It is Jesus when the parents of a murdered child tearfully forgive her killer: it cannot be any other. When a drug-addict of 40 years turns from that destructive life, it is Jesus. When the convenience-store clerk returns an overpaid quarter, a man smiles and stops to talk to a filthy homeless person, a child spontaneously hugs a playmate: that's Jesus, whether or not any of the people themselves are formally members of the Christian club.

He is not among individuals only. He rules over all human works as well. When a journalist busts his ass to make sure he's got the facts right, a judge agonizes to make a decision that is both just and merciful, a scientist spends his life trying to discover how nature truly works: their standard is Jesus. But the Church, as it's been taught, hates "the media," hates government, and despises science as anti-Christian.

Jesus is here. He's among people, between people, and IN people. But the Church' "Christian p.c." thinking blinds their spiritual eyes to seeing Him.

How then can the Church worship One Who is not in their hearts ? More to the point, how can they follow Him they can't see ?