You didn’t see this coming. You didn’t expect it at all. You still may not be sure what happened. You may feel guilt and shame, along with grief, exhaustion and pain.

All you know is: You had a “tribe,” a church culture. And now you don’t. Oh it may still appear that you do. You may still tell yourself that you do. But something has dramatically changed.

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If you have not experienced this kind of trauma, you may be shocked to learn how often it occurs.

I was clueless too, until I found myself reeling, and desperately seeking to know what was going on.

Whether you’re aching for answers, or simply willing to see, can we look to God together? He is urging us to ask:

Lord Jesus, show us when the church
is not the church.

Hating Jesus

The night before his crucifixion, Jesus told his followers something hard to hear but important to know. He said:

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it [the world] would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. (John 15:18-19)

What we may have assumed

Six times in those verses, Jesus said, “the world”; in Greek, kosmos, an ordered system. Here, he was not speaking of the physical earth. He was talking about people – and how people act in the systems we create, apart from God.

Jesus spoke to those who had left everything to follow him. He had just talked at length about love. Here’s a snippet:

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.

Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:9, 12-13)

Abruptly, Jesus changed the subject. “If the world hates you … it hated me first,” he said.

Reading John 15, we who “belong to the church” may picture those who “belong to the world” as people out there, people not us, people different from us and easy to identify – like the Samaritans, Gentiles and sinners in the Gospels. We may expect everyone “not us” to be against us.

Yet Jesus did not contrast people who “belong to the world” with people who “belong to the church.” He indicated, rather, that the opposite of belonging to the world is belonging to HIM.

And also: At the same time Jesus described the world as hating him, he spotlighted those he had caught in the act.

If I had not done the works among them that no one else has done, they would not be guilty of sin. Now they have seen and hated both me and my Father … [as prophesied] in their law. (John 15:24-25 CSB)

Who, then, were “they”? The people that the religious called “sinners” had not persecuted Jesus or raged against him. Rather, they were drawn to him.

What we may not have seen

So who in the Gospels hated Jesus? Who rejected and persecuted him, and actively sought to erase him?

Ah, that would be the religious leaders, who were supposed to lead people to know and follow God.

“On the outside, they looked like godly men, but on the inside they were greedy, power hungry, and full of selfish ambition.”¹

Determined to defend the status quo, they hated anyone they perceived to be a threat to their system and their place in it. In the name of serving God, they led their followers to reject God.

There were exceptions, of course, people who bucked the system. But that’s the point. Those who dissented were few, and to do so, they had to act counter-culturally.

What our Lord emphasized that night, we may not have seen:

“The world” includes
any religious system
that purports to lead people
to love and follow the one true God,
but instead leads people to hate him –
by choosing themselves
over him.

How slow I was to see! Even when I knew the truth about the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, I didn’t yet see the toxicity that surrounded and compromised me. I had no clue that I was “actively involved” in a church system competing with God for my heart.

Blinded to the truth

The world, as Jesus used the term in John 15:18-19, operates opposite from the kingdom of God. Instead of love, it runs on such fuels as:

• arrogant pride;
• greed;
• power-seeking;
• people-pleasing (aka “fear of man”);²
• envy and resentment;
• immorality and excess;
• violence (emotional, spiritual and physical);
• idolatry and witchcraft;
• hate.

The world in church clothing operates in the same ways. It runs on the same fuels.

Blinded by illusion

We might think: Where such evils rule – and especially where they have invaded the church – they would be obvious. We would know!

Yet evil deceives – profoundly. It teaches us to deceive ourselves.

And thus, wherever the world wears church clothing, the façade may fool us. Evil motives and tactics may be cloaked, hidden, denied.

People look at the wolf, and see a shepherd – especially those expecting, and desperately wanting, to see a shepherd. People run with the wolves, and participate in the savagery – yet cling to the belief that they’re following the One who so loved the world that he laid down his life.

In Christ, we have the capacity to see through deception and to stand against it. By his Spirit in us, we have grace to choose light and life. Yet the Scriptures that urge Christ-followers, “Do not be deceived,” tell us:

Christians can be deceived.
All too often, we are.

Until we have eyes that see,
we will be fooled by the illusion of goodness and godliness
that hides what opposes the Lord.

Blinded by immersion

We might think that involvement in a church protects us against deception and sin.

Yet the opposite is often true. Immersed in a church culture, we may begin to equate our culture – its perspective, its dictates, its ways – with God. We may begin to count everything approved by us as right and holy. We may count everything disallowed by us as bad and wrong. Seeking to follow God, we learn to choose against him, and not know it.

I was there. For decades. When I finally began to look behind the façade, I came to realize what had primed me not to see.

• One denomination had become for me a primary place of belonging.
• It offered me significance – while ever holding out approval like a carrot on a stick. When significance and approval come from a system, and not from Jesus himself, there are always strings attached.
• Pride taught us our denomination was best (maybe even the only true church). When our leaders mentioned other Christian groups, they conveyed disapproval and disgust.
• Leaders also belittled, cast suspicion on and even labeled as heresy, beliefs that are well in line with the foundations of the faith but did not match “what we believe.”
• Since “our denominational distinctives” were counted “the closest to the New Testament church,” we could not bring up other views, even views based in Scripture and evidenced in historical Christianity.
• If anyone did try to question anything our leaders said or did, they were silenced and shamed.

Now I know:

→ Trusting any group of humans
to know all truth
wipes out our discernment
and leaves us wide open to being deceived.

→ Relying on control – rather than love –
to create order
binds us to toxic systems, not God.

→ Controlling behavior can hide in plain sight.

Seeing and reeling

Ah, but some things bring controlling behavior out of the woodwork. Things like people in the system who begin to see.

Here’s a story that plays out again and again. Perhaps it’s similar to your story. If not, imagine yourself there.

You’ve been involved in a church culture for years, maybe a lifetime. You know it’s not perfect, but you think you’re all pretty much on the same page with each other and aligned with God.

Then, you begin to see something troubling, something decidedly amiss. Perhaps you come upon behavior in the church that does not reflect the love and faithfulness, holiness and truth of the Lord. Eventually, to your shock, you realize: Prominent people are acting in ways opposite to what they themselves have called godly and good.

Hesitantly, you approach leaders you think will set things right. Instead, they become patronizing, defensive, hostile. Meanwhile, the wrongs continue, and cause greater harm. So you approach someone else, with the same result.

In short order, a few leaders influence the whole group and, ultimately, you witness a collective choice. Actively or passively, pretty much everyone in your church world joins in defending and/or covering up grievous sin.

What’s more, they rationalize, minimize and deny their behavior, even to themselves.

At the same time, they all begin to avoid you, to exclude you, to whisper behind your back, to snub you to your face, to disappear from your life.

You’re left reeling. You never dreamed that being “hated by the world” might include being shunned in the church.

How? You wonder. How have people I know and love turned on me so quickly and completely?

Coerced by threat of exile

Jesus said:

The world hates me because I testify that its works are evil. (John 7:7)

John wrote:

Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

Certainly, Christians sin. Christians collude in sin. We may also dig in and continue in sin, and hide from the light.

But such behavior does not characterize the church of the Lord Jesus. By his Spirit within us, we have desire and power to humble ourselves and to see, confess and turn.

Relentlessly, the world in church clothing denies and covers up wrongs. Swiftly, it punishes any member who wants to see. Insidiously, it spreads the lie:

Anyone who sees, and tells,
what we have forbidden
threatens all of us
and rebels against God!

Frightened, incensed, people committed to the group rise up to defend it, believing they’re defending God. In a thousand covert ways, they may convey to “the troublemaker”:

“We are good Christians! Led by godly leaders! If you dare to embarrass us, you are the problem. You are against us! If you do not shut up and get back in your place, we will oust you and erase you.”

In other words, “If you testify that any of us has done evil, we will hate you.”

But overtly, the world in church clothing will often smile and intone:

“Dear one, you’re confused / angry / wounded / crazy / unsubmissive / negative / pitiful. But we will help you if you let us.”

Observing all that, other sheep who might be tempted to question the shepherds know: If I dare to speak up, I will get blackballed too.

Following Christ

The Lord Jesus tells us the only way to be his disciple is to choose HIM above everything and everyone else. Holy, faithful and true, he says, “Follow me. Remain in my love.”

Disguised as righteous, determined to control, deftly threatening exile, the world in church clothing wars against our seeing the truth, loving one another, going with God.

When you do not fit where you used to fit – when you’re spurned and shunned where you once belonged – the Lord may be exposing the world, posing as the church.

If we will choose him, as we choose him, he will pour out the superabundant grace we need, to walk in truth and love – with him, and with others who have left everything to follow him.

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The original version of this renovated repost was published August 4, 2018.

See also

• Illusionists! The abusers we have not seen
• Adulthood and the church
• Checklists, idols and loving God
• Witchcraft in the church
• When Christian leaders reject God
• Journey to a divided heart
• Bucking the system: Shunning, submission and Jesus

Posts in the series, To the exiles scattered

• To the exiles scattered (by abuse in the church)
• The world in church clothing
• Shunning in the church
• A promise of real belonging
• The most freeing thing
• A future filled with hope
• And the future starts now

Footnotes

1. Quoted from the post,  “What is the World? John 15:18-25,” at gfcnj.com. This very short article is worth a read. ↩︎
2. See Galatians 1:10; Proverbs 29:25; Isaiah 51:7, 12-13. ↩︎