Imagine you are one of the children of Israel wandering through the wilderness hungry. God has promised to provide food for all of you. One morning you wake up to find that Josephus has lots and lots of manna. He tells everyone that God is providing manna to him for everyone.
Josephus sells manna to each family every day for whatever they can pay. He takes food, jewelry, animals, or anything of value.

Before long Josephus starts telling everyone that God has spoken to him and gave him a new set of laws and commandments. He says God has instructed him to only give manna to those that are following the rules he has set before them. Guess what everyone does? They follow Josephus new laws and commandments. After all Josephus is the one that God chose to be the food supplier to all the people of Israel.

Josephus quickly becomes the most wealthy and powerful man of all the Jews. He has replaced Moses as leader.

One night you wake up in the middle of the night to use the nearest tree. As you walk out you notice the ground all around you is covered with manna. You decide to check this out just as soon as you finish doing what brought you out of your tent in the first place. While taking care of business you hear voices and notice that Josephus and his whole family are walking around and picking up all the manna.

The next night you stay up to see what is going on. You notice that manna falls from the sky over the whole encampment and again Josephus and his family are collecting it. You suddenly realize that manna has been free for everyone all along. However, Josephus has led you to believe that the way to get manna is through him. Josephus is a middleman where one is not needed.

How would this make you feel? Would you feel misled? Would you think you had been deceived? Would you be angry? What about resentment?

Allow me to ask one last question. When you read this story do you see an analogy to the modern church? Here’s a hint. Josephus equals the church. The manna equals access to God.

At the end of my last post I said I would be talking about the problems I have come across in this new walk with Jesus. However, I’m struggling to get the things I want to say to come out sounding right. So, if you came looking for that I apologize. I will get to it soon. I hope. Instead I want to go into more detail about something related to the depression I talked about in my previous post.

Alan Knox from “The Assembling of the Church” blog left a comment on my last post about the the terrible reaction of today’s Christian culture to depression in it’s ranks. It got me thinking. Let me tell you some of the reactions I received from Christians concerning my depression:

• It was because of a lack of faith on my part (the same reason Alan mentioned)
• It was because I had unresolved sin in my life
• It was because I didn’t attend Church enough
• It was merely an attack of Satan and if I would just bind him in the name of Jesus he would have to flee and my depression would be gone

There were others, but you get the idea. Eventually I found out my depression did have a cause. An incompetent doctor induced it with faulty treatment for a legitimate medical issue I had. Please understand medically induced depression is just as real as any other. The incredible pain and loneliness simply cannot be described or understood by someone who has never experienced it. The bottom line is my depression was due to something totally beyond my control. Yet every Christian I ran across had a reason for it, and a cure for it. All the reasons blamed me. All the cures involved a church.

I didn’t receive love, grace, and compassion. I received love along with condemnation. I received grace with a side of accusations. I received compassion with a healthy helping of disgust. I received all of them with the need for stronger commitment to church. People told me more than once that they were simply showing me tough love. The result of all the tough love along with the downright ridiculous attitudes displayed by Christians was that I gave up on God at that time. God had been my only hope. I had been clinging to the idea that God was the only thing that was going to pull me out of my depression.

When I couldn’t find God in those whom should have been displaying him I lost hope. I lost the desire to fight. I nearly ended my own life.

Why am I writing this? I merely ask that you think about what I have written here. Not because I want your pity. Not because I want you make apologies or excuses for the actions of people who should have known better. It is because there is a good chance that you are going to run into a person or even more than one person in your life that is depressed to some extent great or small.

When that happens they don’t need your snap judgments, Christian psycho-babble, condemnations, accusations or quick fixes. They need to see love, compassion, and grace. Truck loads of them. In other words they need to see Jesus, and they need to see him in you. If not it may be the last time you see them alive. I know, because several years ago when I couldn’t find Jesus in those around me I was mere moments from that person being me.

It seems a very nice young couple recently reserved the local church they attend for their wedding rehearsal. They made this arrangement several months in advance. It turns out their “reservation” was withdrawn at the last minute so a local community college could rent out the church for some type of ceremony they were holding.

Would you care to guess the reason, or should I say lame excuse they were given as to why the promise made to them to was rescinded without so much as a notice, much less without getting their approval?

“We hadn’t heard anything from you the last few weeks so we just assumed you didn’t want it anymore.” How’s that for an excuse? It sounds like a cop out to me.

My first thought was to question why someone from the church did not call them to make sure of their plans before just pulling the rug out from under them. Is this the only church in North America without a phone? Somehow, it wouldn’t surprise me if that was their first thought also. They chose to be gracious and not make an issue of it when they would have been justified if they had.

My concern is what kind of example this sits for these young people about to start their life together. I can’t speak for them. I don’t know what they are thinking. However, I can tell you what I would be thinking in their shoes.

I would wonder why the commitment my church and those running it made to me suddenly couldn’t be honored when money got involved in the situation. I would be giving serious consideration to finding a church that cared a little more about me.

Am I being too critical? Or does this whole situation turn your stomach too?

Let me start by apologizing to anyone who may be offended by reading this post.

In the church I used to attend there is a lady that I have spent more time than I should have spent trying to figure out her ’style of worship’. That is the nice way of putting it.

Let me describe her worship in the most blunt way I can. She wails. I don’t mean one of those quiet cryers either. The best analogy I can think of is to imagine what it would sound like if the siren on an emergency vehicle got stuck. Yes, it is one long monotonous shrill moan that only stops long enough for her to draw a breath and start again. Although the length of times she can go in between breaths in staggering. Her lungs must be HUGE.

The volume of her wail would put any siren to shame. I knew a rocker type guy that had one of those shirts that said “If it’s too loud, you’re too old”. After sitting in front of her one Sunday morning he went home and burned it. True story. OK, not it’s not, but it makes the point about how loud she wails.

I can attest from personal experience that sitting near this woman is a guarantee that you will leave church with a headache. Many people have simply moved, usually across the church from her. Some people have actually got up and walked out. Once or twice people have even asked her to tone it down. Nearly every time a baby is anywhere close they too begin to wail. I’m pretty sure they hear her and believe she is issuing them a personal challenge.

It also helps to understand when she wails. During the whole song service . . . she wails. While the rest of the congregation is singing words to all the songs she on the other hand is wailing her megadecibel monotone shrill noise. During times of prayer . . . she wails. If it is corporate prayer the wailing is at full volume. If the pastor is leading a prayer while everyone else is silently praying she wails at a volume only slightly louder than that of the pastor. During the altar call . . . she wails.

I hope you can imagine this. If you find yourself thinking it can’t be as bad as you are imagining it I can tell you that it really is. This has all led to some questions that I would love to get some opinions on from anyone who reads this.

1) Is this a legitimate form of worship?

2) Can anything which is a distraction to everyone else around you really even be considered worship?

3)Should the leadership of the church put a stop to this? (they seem to be hesitant to do so)

4) Couldn’t something that causes this much confusion, discomfort, and even pain actually be classified as the opposite of worship?

Over on the Free Believers Network there is a blog post entitled Freedom From The Tree.  This is one of the best pieces I have read about the real freedom that we have in Christ.  It is a little lengthy, but I guarantee it is worth your time.   Click the post title above and read it now.