Recapping, the posts of this series aren't offering any sort of answer or solution to the many failures of the church. I've just been collecting some thoughts I had that helped me during a moment of despair.
This last reflection comes from Karl Barth's The Epistle to the Romans.
I was reading The Epistle to the Romans during my season of reflection regarding the church, and I got to Barth's chapter on Romans 7. In this chapter of Romans Paul is describing the impact of the law upon sinful humanity. Paul says, "I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law." The law makes sin visible in history. When the law enters history it brings the reality of sin into our lives. As Paul says, "when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died."
Barth uses these reflections from Romans to make the observation that religion is exactly that place where sin becomes visible. Religion is where "sin abounds." Not that sin doesn't exist everywhere in humanity and history. Only that, outside of religion, sin is invisible as sin. By bringing humanity and God into contact, religion does nothing more than to highlight the contrast between God's holiness and human sinfulness. Religion is no solution to the sin problem. Religion just makes the sin problem visible.
If so, then it's no surprise that when we look at the church what we see is sin. Religion makes sin salient and obvious.
For Barth, as mentioned, religion has this effect because it brings humans and God into close contact, and that contact highlights the "infinite qualitative distinction" between God and humanity. And while I agree with this formulation, you really don't need to bring out all that heavy metaphysical firepower. From a purely human perspective, the church is a group of people who espouse and preach ridiculously high moral aspirations: "We love everyone" and "All are welcome here." Christians say they exist to love everyone in sacrificial ways. Morally, the church is shooting for the moon. Christians claim for themselves impossible standards of conduct. But all those aspirations do is highlight how Christian's don't live up to their lofty ideals. Moral ambition makes moral failure more obvious and visible. No one cares all that much if some random bloke is unkind. But when you're a Christian people notice your unkindness. They mark it. They hold you to your standards. In the words of Paul, sin is being "reckoned" to you. All you've done in declaring yourself a Christian is to make the sin in your life publicly visible as sin. And the worse your sin, the more visible your failure before the world.
So, why would anyone want to claim the name Christian or join the church? Well, because when the reality of sin becomes visible we have the opportunity to encounter grace. By making sin visible Christian life points beyond itself toward the grace of God. The church is, thus, paradox and burden. Burden because we make sin visible in our own lives. Paradox because in our sin we point to the saving grace of God. Church is both failure and hope.
Here is Barth making some of these points:
Religion is aware that it is in no wise the crown and fulfillment of true humanity; it knows itself to be a questionable, disturbing, dangerous thing...
Religion must beware lest it tone down in any degree the unconverted man's judgment. Conflict and distress, sin and death, the devil and hell, make up the reality of religion. So far from releasing men from guilt and destiny, it brings men under their sway. Religion possesses no solution of the problem of life; rather it makes the problem a wholly insoluble enigma. Religion neither discovers the problem nor solves it: what it does is to disclose the truth that cannot be solved. Religion is neither a thing to be enjoyed nor a thing to be celebrated: it must be borne as a yoke which cannot be removed...Religion is the misfortune which every human being has to endure, though it is, in the majority of cases, a hidden suffering.
You might not find this very comforting, but I do. When I enter the church I enter that space where humans try to make contact with God. But in the event of that contact, all that comes into view is utter failure and ruin. All I see is our sin. Now visible for all the world to see. And yet, the "burden" and "misfortune" of that exposure becomes the very gateway to grace. Our need and dependency come into view. Our nakedness and helplessness are exposed. And in that exposure Grace can now have its say.
As Paul says in Romans, where sin abounds grace abounds even more.
