Does our church is a fraud?

Does our church is a fraud? And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul: neither said any of his own that had nothing, but they had all things common. And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all and them. So there was not a needy person among them, because those who owned lands or houses sold them and brought the money from the sales and put it at the feet of the Apostles, and they distributed to each according to his need. (Acts 4: 32 to 35)

It seems sometimes that that would be the more appropriate term to define a church that does not comply, in our view, the expectations we or we want or desire to serve. Many times we think that our failures in life and our personal goals were not reached because of the church in which we have chosen to live our faith, the Church irresponsibly projected guilt that does not belong. We believe that we have cause, in the Presbyterian Church in Venezuela and Venezuelan other evangelical denominations, many disappointments, especially in these times where the political situation puts us in an existential and spiritual crossroads that deserves our timely and relevant . We have failed to be responsible with our prophetic mission and have become mere spectators of all that happens around us. Or Protestant Evangelical Church in Venezuela, has remained virtually silent about what is happening in our country. Some people have chosen to exercise their political from their own sectarianism and biases that we have faced and divided us irresponsibly. We have failed to live as preached unity amidst diversity, which became a mandatory subject of discussion and reference in the eighties, from a perspective that claimed to be truly ecumenical, but was stopped halfway, because of our fear and mutual distrust.

We tend to live our political and religious experiences without establishing boundaries between them, we have not evangelize politics nor properly and adequately to politicize religion. We become mere political operatives and have not been able to discover the true prophetic and evangelical role that we live in theological unity in the midst of our political and ideological diversity. Did not we live in tolerance, harmony and respect, above our political differences, economic and social? The voice of Jesus calls us to love one another, each other, although the largest differences as people might have. The demand of Jesus to love, is extremely radical. He commands us to love even our enemies and enemy because love covers a multitude of errors, omissions, or resentment. If this is not possible, then the Church as such as we have conceived today, is truly a fraud, not because someone tells you from the inside of our institutions, but because they perceive the world around us.

When the Church, in which we are not able to accept each other or the other when they are different from our paradigms of how it should be the people who must conform to our congregations, then our religious institutions and organizations are a big fraud, that does not God's fault, but we and us. That's a learned behavior of the Company and not the Bible or of historical Christianity. Our Church, have become a fraud, when we did lose his theological thinking by going after the easy solutions offered exacerbated fundamentalism and conservatism. Theological relativism, doctrinal and liturgical, has led us by strange paths of syncretism denominational. We turn to our faith communities in a real Fraud When we are not able to accept others as they as they are, to begin with them and work them pedagogical and therapeutic two-way healing and learning, which nourish the Church society and one another within a daily learning tolerance, respect and solidarity. Jesus came to seek and save what was lost, who were excluded from the society of his time for being, prostitutes, tax collectors, homosexuals, thieves, adulterers, criminals, and many other things.

With them and ate them, visited them, in them and they exercised their ministry of love, solidarity and tolerance. The Church rejected for fear of sin into it and away from their true ministry of Compassion, thus hiding their best talent that is really visible to the God of Love, among people who truly need it. If we are not able to follow the example of Jesus, God incarnate among the rejected, then we are truly a big fraud, before the world and before God. Do not we realize that we live a Kairos moment or special opportunity that we have not been able to interpret as a blessing and an opportunity to live fully the unity of the body of Christ, that the world may believe. Latin America and much of the world, living large social, economic, political, ideological, but the church still does not understand their mission in unique circumstances and perhaps unrepeatable on our continent. The church institution-hierarchy, tends to have an irrational criticism and confrontation against these changes, because it threatened their power and influence over the masses, who has exercised a power handling for five centuries in our continent.

Some Protestant churches, living in a situation of handicap and irresponsibly chose not to take sides about what is happening in American society and the world at large. Condemn or support personally and individually, without experiencing the process of discussion and reflection that are necessary. Our churches have become silent and silenced real institutions, wrongly claiming not take sides. They do not realize that their supposed impartiality, are being complicit in all those forces that threaten the independence, dignity and liberation of our peoples. We live in society, but we are not incarnate or embodied in it, we are a church with a social, but without any social commitment. We have no choice and we have disabled our own Karisma. Every time we seem less to the Church of Jesus and become an institution that projects under its vision, the vision of Christ. We are committed, but not converted. The XXI century, we found no option, or definition, we are increasingly apathetic to social issues, but we are committed more liturgical doctrinal relativism. We moved away more and more of Jesus, to commit an eclectic religion and undefined, which has led us down the path of a religion devoid of any true biblical-theological content.

It is the religious metaphysics of the end times that attempts to turn to God in a single god, spiritual pleasures without meaning, prosperity and religious doctrinal relativism and Jesus in a non-incarnate be denatured. The Holy Spirit has become for many, a technology package, a computer program and liturgical uniforms us emotionally, closing the way to a true spirituality, becoming automatons cultic worship mass-produced standardized and clearly the purpose trade. The Church is not a fraud, lies in us and we ecclesial fraud, is upon us and upon whom falls we all responsibility for the witness we give to the world. About us and we bear the huge responsibility of keeping the total deposit of the unity of the body of Christ and to persevere our testimony, that the world may believe. Do not blame the Church of our disabilities, or our personal frustrations, let's assume our historic responsibility and learn to live the true Church in Unity, solidarity, tolerance, love and respect, from a theological perspective real-Doctrinal that lead us on the actual path taken by the real Jesus.

Obed Juan Vizcaino Najera. Valencia, August 29, 2009.