Cosmic Warriors

When churches become institutionalized, the life of the institution becomes more important than the lives of people. When an institution becomes primary, people are overlooked, overrun, and a “gospel” evolves that fits this point of view. There was a woman whose experience well illustrates this truth. She gave herself faithfully to the church for more than sixty years. She had a thirst for God and longed to be nearer to Him. She made rededications of her life in efforts to satisfy her inner restlessness. Her church gave her positions of leadership, but this did not satisfy her deeper needs—it only satisfied the church's need for organizational strength. She was in turmoil within. Her father had been a strong disciplinarian who ruled his household by the volume of his voice. She had grown up in his house gritting her teeth and swearing that when she married there would not be a man ruling over her. She tried to usurp the masculine role in her marriage and became manipulative and domineering. It became an infection to her marriage and a wedge of separation between herself and her son. The churches to which she gave herself were not geared to lead their people to journey within, discover themselves, and present their broken beings to God for healing. She died in her eighties without ever receiving help. She became the victim of religion, which is most concerned with its own life instead of being concerned about the lives of its people. Churches, enamored by numerical growth alone, with compromised ideology, and driven by the need to satisfy the purposes and needs of their own organization, will reduce human personality to the sum of one to be added to and counted as grist for the institution’s mill. Such behavior is personality murder that will do great harm to humanity. A young woman in a retreat lamented: “I felt a need for relationships. I was lonely and felt rejected and isolated. I sought for a church to meet the longings of my wounded spirit. I visited several churches hoping to find the one that was right. One of those churches responded enthusiastically to me. They visited me and reached out to me. After I joined that church, no one seemed to care about me any more.” Then, with tears in her eyes she asked, “Doesn’t anyone love and care about me?”