On Seeking Medical Help

"The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital sinners."

Like many quotes, this one has apparently lost its original owner. Do a Google search and you'll quickly find a long list of people given credit for its wisdom. I think I know it from Brennan Manning, but that's neither here nor there.

And like many quotes, I'm wondering if it is at times losing its intended meaning as well.

Its message of grace is indeed a needed one; that's why it brought me close to tears the first time I read it. It reminds us of our brokenness, the need for vulnerability and transparency, and--in view of God's grace in our own lives--the act of extending grace to those around us, opening the church's doors to people from all walks of life.

And of course, Christ himself agreed in speaking with the Pharisees, saying, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

But in our day of you-don't-know-me!'s and you-can't-judge-me!'s, sin is tending to become more and more of a non-issue, where we'd prefer to politely ignore its presence. Taken a step further, we start using our "hospital for sinners" analogy to forgo vital biblical practices like holding one another accountable, exhorting and admonishing one another, and--the dreaded conclusion--practicing church discipline.

Too many people want a foot in both camps. They want the feel-good results of being part of a church, the part that some of our western society says will make you a more well-rounded and generally-good person, but they also want the autonomy that comes without the church, the pleasure of entertaining selfish desires and egocentric motives.

Sooner or later, if the church is practicing (what I believe to be) a biblical approach, these people will be confronted, held accountable, exhorted, admonished, and even disciplined. And I fear it is in these cases--when these people trying to straddle the fence begin to feel some sort of discomfort--that our "hospital for sinners" analogy is applied as an only defense, but in a tragically incorrect manner.

You see, people who want to use the analogy in this way are forgetting one simple, obvious, important point.

You go to the hospital to get better. You see a doctor because you want help.

The church, then, is a place where sinners go to get help. And they can stay as long as they want their health to improve.

But some of those sinners come and take a seat, and the receptionists keep calling their names, but they refuse to leave the waiting room to see the doctor. They claim they're sick, but they're obviously not too worried about it, because they go on refusing to have their vital signs checked. They want no advice, they want no medicine. They prefer to spend their entire lives in the waiting room sitting on the bland and sterile furniture with the terrible light jazz over the crackling intercom speakers and the magazines full of celebrity gossip and FoxNews on closed captions on a small table in the corner. And you know as well as I do that they sure won't start feeling better any time soon just sitting out there.

Eventually they'll be asked to leave, because who wants to come to a doctor where it appears as though you're made to sit in the waiting room all that time, never getting any better? That's not what the place is for! But when they're asked to leave, they protest and call the doctor names.

"Don't you know this place is a hospital for sinners?!" they ask with hostility, which only reveals their sickness even further.

Indeed, the church is not a museum of saints, but if people are refusing help, they'll turn it into a museum of sinners.

A quick skim of the Bible reveals that was never Christ's intent.

{{Agree? Disagree? Balancing points? Cautions? Additions? Please share.}}