Discerning Discontentment
There is a wave of discontentment sweeping across the global Church today. Many believers are awakening to the reality that ‘church life’ has substituted ‘kingdom living’. Religious hypocrisy that distorts godliness, celebration of men (their traditions which are mostly set as doctrines, and their ‘church empires’), loss of down-to-earth relational fellowships, and outright inability of the system to produce true mature believers, whose extent of spirituality is not dependent upon their ability or inability to stay on point with religious activities, are some of the major factors contributing to the discontentment many feel today.
There are two categories of people experiencing discontentment:
Those in the first group of discontent believers do not even realize that what they feel or where they have arrived at is a state of discontentment. They are still given to believe that this state of discontentment is akin to questioning their pastors, and hence consider it a bad feeling. This group try very hard to let go of their discontentment, preferring rather to stay loyal to their ‘churches’ and their pastors, even to the detriment of their own feeling of contentment. Furthermore, since discontentment is not a place that we arrive at by a conscious decision, such feeling of discontentment is easily thought to be an indication of ‘backsliding’; as the individual ceases to find pleasure in routine activities that have once given him a false sense of high spirituality!
Those who fall into the second group of discontent believers recognize that their discontentment means that no matter how hard they try, they cannot continue to pretend that the system of the Church today is what it should be. They have come to the realization that the system is incapable of producing the desired spiritual reality in them or even in others. People in this group have identified what is wrong but may not know what to do about it or indeed if anything can be done about it. These guys are fed up with ‘playing church’ day in, day out and watching helplessly as the Church continues to lack in impact but rather shaping into what the world expects of her.
For this people, what is today referred to as ‘church service’, is a process that is increasingly becoming a one man routine show and does not give room whatsoever for building real relationships amongst believers, after all, “iron sharpens iron”! The terms ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ (also known as bro and sis), have become polite ways of putting people at arm’s length and removing the informality that is encouraged by simply calling people by their first names.
Worship, a permanent state of spiritual consciousness towards the almighty God, and which every believer should be engulfed in every second of the day has become a temporary period of singing what is popularly known as ‘worship songs’ and in a setting that encourages pretence in staging the state of worship (eyes shut, hands raised, face squeezed, etc) – a state that the ‘worshiper’ can switch in and out of at the instance of a single change in the tempo of the beat (even when the change from slow to fast tempo, or vice-versa, is still on the same song, with the same wordings)!
The Church is today in a place where many have replaced the reality of the fellowship of the ‘called out ones’ for buildings... worse of all, billions are spent on church buildings, while, unlike the first century Church described in the book of Acts, where believers were in one accord and strengthened each other spiritually and materially, today’s church knows only how to take from believers to enable them sustain these buildings and their mostly self-styled pastors. By the way, of all the biblical records showing even the most hardworking of apostles working to earn their keep, today’s pastors have chosen rather to do ‘full time’ pastoring – a term completely alien to first century extremely driven Church! Many of these pastors have themselves experienced one stage of discontentment or the other, but for the same reason that many did not leave captivity in Babylon to return with the children of Israel and rebuild the true kingdom and the habitation of the almighty God, these pastors have also invested heavily in the way things are today, there is too much to lose! After all, they will reason, it was God Himself who sent the Israelites into captivity with a command to “build houses, plan vineyards and give the sons and daughters in marriage”!
Whereas the first century believers gathered together 'from house to house' virtually every day and as the need to relate (fellowship with each other) dictated, that informality that enable true fellowship to happen has today been replaced by a hype-led tradition of ‘dressing up’ and "going to church" – a system which is almost akin to switching temporarily from one’s normal self to a pre-defined and faceless spiritual person, albeit for a short while before getting back to being ‘normal’ again. Fellowship has become an act, and the spirit of togetherness in God’s presence has been replaced with programmes, programmes and more programmes. The way the Church is headed, we may soon see some ‘churches’ hire professional event managers to manage the process of service even more rigidly and to add even more glamour!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with being discontent with the state of the Church. What is wrong is to be discontented and yet do nothing about it. Discontentment can only suggest the presence of a feeling of ‘more possibilities’! Discontentment NEVER means ‘too much’; it’s a feeling that’s always present where ‘less than possible’ is being experienced. Discontentment isn’t synonymous to criticism; rather, discontentment leads to criticism. While criticism is a conscious process, discontentment isn’t. Also, criticism in this sense is a positive thing if the critic is not remaining a part of the problem, but rather, of the solution.
Nehemiah reached a state of discontentment in which he couldn’t keep on with the status-quo any longer…
… to be continued.
