Comment Highlight: Trusting man rather than God
Georgia Ana left an amazing comment on my post “Exercise for a Healthy Church – Trusting.” I wanted to highlight this comment because it is a great addition to my post, and it demonstrates a danger to the church. As I responded to Georgia Ana, true leaders among the church will never demand that people trust them. Instead, they will always encourage people to trust God.
Here is the comment from Georgia Ana:
One of the most grave dangers–personally, physically, spiritually–the individual Christian and the collective Body faces is that of trusting in man rather than in God. The demand of ‘leadership’ that it be trusted as if it were God-in-the-flesh is what leads to so very much abuse. I could make a list of abuses based on this single theme — beyond those that have made the news or the court system in the past two months — that would stagger the minds of most. Love is a gift — we can widely and broadly affirm this in the Body relationships — but Trust MUST be earned. The Master has taken the time and pain to prove Himself trustworthy, but the first rule of trusting others inside the Body must be: Trust and Verify. If we fail to do this, we make a place for the flesh of some to dominate the spirits of all and to replace God as the sole and worthy source and object of trust and faith with that of fallen persons. My work with women, children, families damaged by religiously based/demanded ‘trust’ burdens my heart for the wider Body each day of my life. I would like everyone who speaks to the hearts of those who might at some time exercise ANY level of proper, truly loving, deeply respectful, non-controlling spiritual authority-for-service in the lives of others to keep in mind that Trust in God is not trusting in any human at his/her/Scripture-taken-out-of-sanity-context behest. Let us be vigilant in protecting the weakest among us from the flesh that would demand trust that belongs only, only to God.
Alan,
What an amazingly appropriate word for these days.
Speaking for myself,that attitude was the most frightening thing I experienced as a pastor.
I was honored by such trust, but, regularly told congregations, “You are very foolish if you believe everything I teach without checking the Scriptures for yourself.