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Love Jesus, Hate the Church

OK one of my co-workers mentioned to me the other day that she and others at her Baptist church are doing some sort of study called "Love Jesus, Hate the Church." I *think* she said THE Church. She could have said just church in general. But I don't know. I will have a hard time working with someone who teaches others to hate a particular group of people with different beliefs, especially when they're mine. Part of this study is to study Buddhism, Hinduism, things like that.

Has anyone ever heard of something like this before?? I know there is a book called Love Jesus, Hate Church. But the review sounds kind of favorable of Catholicism. So I don't think that's what they are doing. I just hear that Baptists teach this kind of thing, to hate the Church. Is this true?? If that's the case, I will need to add her to my prayers. And if that's the case, then I really am a bad judge of character. She used to be Catholic until her family was *saved* a while back by some rambling preacher. They left the Church after that. But we have been able to discuss that part of her life and move on, knowing that I love being Catholic. It was just weird that she said that to me the other day. I didn't quite know what to say. It caught me off guard.

Anyway, I'm rambling on here. I haven't been able to find anything on the net about any such *study* so I thought I would ask you ladies if you had heard of this kind of thing.

Thank you so much and God bless.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Michelle Reitemeyer on February 24, 2010 at 6:50am

I have not heard of this, but I do know of people who have "home-churched" which is pretty silly sounding. The premise seems to be the same: no need for an authority figure in your life. It takes a lot of humility to accept the authority of a priest, bishop or pope. If you are raised by devout Catholics, it becomes instinctive, but if you were raised by people who question authority (and I was), accepting the Pope (and Church hierarchy) is very difficult.

If you are Protestant, you have already rejected the authority of the Church. It is not a big leap to then reject the authority of your minister, especially if you shopped around to find the church that appealed to you the most. My guess is that this group is more of a rejection of formal religion, than the Catholic Church. I could be wrong, but I wouldn't jump to such a conclusion without more evidence. Of course, rejecting churches and formal religion naturally extends to the Church as well, but Protestants rejected her authority 500 years ago.

You are correct in that a Christian should not use the word "hate" in conjunction with anything unless it is evil. I would ask the co-worker if the premise of the study is that church (and/or the Church) is evil. Point out that the apostles had formal worship (don't call it Mass, or you might offend her), that Jesus preached to crowds and charged his disciples to go out and preach to the crowds, and that it says in the Bible "where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am." The Bible is clearly in favor of formal worship and people gathering together in His name (that would be a "church"), so church can not be "evil."

Permalink Reply by Karen Cross on February 24, 2010 at 1:00pm

Michelle that was great! Thanks for this!

I want so badly to ask her about this, but I'm so afraid to. It's almost like I don't want to know what she is teaching other young minds. This was a study for the teens I think!! I was so taken aback that I just didn't know what to say. I'm hoping it will come up again when it's supposed to. But I do kind of look at her differently and I don't want to do that, especially if her intentions are good. I don't know what kind of good could come out of something with the word *hate* in it, but....

I'm just hoping and praying that this will work out how it's suppose to. Until then, I'm trying not to hold this against her, but it's so hard. Oh maybe I do need to ask her. Oh so confusing!

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