By Elaine Baldwin| @elainehbaldwin

Cling to what is good. Romans 12:9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good.

Love and good just don’t go together with evil. That should be obvious, but regrettably it isn’t. Lines of truth are blurred and absolutes are out of focus for many in our culture today. We call evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20) and love is lost to hypocrisy and pretense.

Instead of clinging to what is good we go down the evil path unaware love and good cannot follow us there. I wonder if we realize we are leaving love and good farther and farther behind the closer we get to evil. It is a slow separation because we take love for granted and don’t take the time to nourish and cherish good. We lose our resoluteness to love without hypocrisy and cling to what is good.

So then slowly, over time and without fanfare we embrace evil rather than abhor it. We don’t even miss love or good. We can barely remember what they look like or how they feel. We believe our own lies and exchange holiness for hypocrisy.

Don’t believe this really happens to Christians? Think again.

Any churches in your area split up in the last ten years over carpet selections or music choices? How much love and good do you see during your church business meetings? Does half your congregation worship the ground the youth minister walks on while the other half prays he will go away?

Let’s bring it closer to home. Do we laugh at the crude jokes shared over lunch? Do we demurely smile when blasphemous content splashes on the big screen in the waiting room? Better yet, do we tell our kid it’s not nice to gossip about the “fat girl in class” then turn around and ask for prayer for poor Sally who has obviously gained another ten pounds? I mean did you see how tight her jeans were! Poor thing!

The Body of Christ didn’t just wake up one morning with divorce rates as high as the secular world and suicide rates that aren’t far behind. We didn’t roll over in bed one night and tell our spouse, “I think I’ll cause a huge raucous in the business meeting this Sunday.” Nor did we create a marketing plan to push away thousands of teens and college students from our church doors.

What The Church has done is cling to evil and abhor good. This flip flop has one inevitable outcome.

Hypocrisy! And no one is fooled but us. The Western Church has lived in hypocrisy for so long we wouldn’t know Genuineness and Relevance if He walked in our church doors…namely, Jesus.

It is time to for those who claim the name of Jesus Christ to release evil and cling to what is good. Only then will our hypocritical shells fall off and allow the love of Christ to shine through us, His chosen people.

Photo By: Margaret Richards

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