When it Started

What with all the conversations I've been having lately about what (who) is the church and how we "be" church as opposed to go to or do church etc., I got to thinking about how I formed by worldview on the matter. When or why did I come to the belief that we, the church, are somehow separate, or to be separated from the "others". Even before I read scripture that told me not to unequally yoked with an unbeliever, I had a sense of "us" and "them" and have never liked it.

It was the summer of 1977. I had turned 14 that spring, and even earlier, that winter, had heard the gospel for the first time and was still in the blushs of early love. The euphoria from my profound salvation experience had not quite worn off though it was fading fast. My uncle ran a camp for boys. The province sent them up to the camp instead of into youth detention and my sister and I spent a couple of weeks that summer at the camp.

Initially, the idea was that we'd work in the cookhouse but the health department showed up and wouldn't allow it - something about us not being able to prove we had our shots up to date, so instead, we worked alongside these juvie boys hammering shake shingles on the washhouse roof. Some of these guys were tough with rough stories to tell. I related well, having just come out of my own rough story. For the first time I felt the joy of sharing, and connecting with others, both believers and unbelievers, through and in Christ, and it was very very cool. Then.....the teacher who worked at the camp took my sister and I aside and proceeded to give us a lecture...it went something like this...

"You have the Thompson River, it's crystal clean, pristine blue, and very pure...and you have the Fraser River, it's muddy, filthy, dirty...(he proceeded to draw a sketch in the dirt depicting the area in BC where the two rivers join, and went on...) here the rivers join, and here is the key to what I'm telling you...the mud and filth of the Fraser River overpowers the clean pure Thompson and eventually, the one joined river is muddy and filthy...the clean pure Thompson does not wash the muddy Fraser clean...no, it's the other way around..the filthy Fraser pollutes the Thompson...I'm telling you this because when you hang out with these boys, you risk being made dirty".....

Being all these years later you have to appreciate these weren't the EXACT words, but something very very close.

And it clouded by world view ever since....I was a brand new believer and came to believe this "godly" man who told me that I have to separate myself from unbelievers or their filth and dirt will make me unclean.

Lord, forgive me.

Did not the monks of old have that same view? Hence, they cloistered to escape the corruption of the world. When we build our four walled buildings and make our churchs a sanctuary against "them" aren't we cloistering too?

Seems to me the people Jesus raved against were the cloistering "us" versus "them" self righteous types. He moved out among "them", lived with "them", healed "them", loved "them" all before "they" became "us".