woodlief0822Perhaps most churches are part hospital and part courtroom. In other words, to differing degrees many welcome the wounded, offering comfort and healing, and with just as much variation, many mete out judgment. Maybe there is a place for both, but the danger, as always, is that we can taint the church with our own predilections, rather than letting it be a Spirit-filled manifestation of God’s kingdom on earth.

Many of us are familiar, for example, with Philip Yancey’s story, in What’s So Amazing About Grace?, about a desperate, drug-addicted prostitute. When asked if she’s gone to a church for help, she replies that she feels bad enough already. Going to a church, she says, will only make her feel worse. She has, in other words, a Courtroom view of church, as do many who have been on the outside of Christianity.

This is due in part, no doubt, to movies and television programs that portray Christians as pharisees. But it is also due to the fact that too many Christians behave as pharisees, treating the church as a courtroom, with themselves as stand-ins for the Judge.

At the other extreme, some people have a Hospital view of church. It is a refuge for the broken and lost, but we are so afraid of offending them (or our softer-hearted members) that we dare not breathe a word of Law, for fear it will be heard as judgment. This is a cruel hospital indeed, witholding as it does the very medicine that can heal, the very water that will end thirst.

There is a cultural element here, and a theological one. They are, of course, interrelated. Those in an Anselm- and Augustine-inspired faith tradition (i.e., most of the Catholic and Protestant West), believe that sinners owe a debt to God the Father, which Christ the Son dies to pay. They are theologically more inclined toward a Courtroom view. Grace only matters, by this view, when we consider the terrible wrath of God awaiting those who either choose wrongly or aren’t lucky enough to be Elected.

Christians in the Eastern tradition (Orthodoxy and its offshoots) view sin not as a debt but as a sickness. They are inclined toward a Hospital view of the church. Christ’s blood is not a ransom paid to God, but spilled out to redeem His people from bondage to sin and Satan.

Most of us are probably not steeped in the complete dogmas of our sects and denominations. Many Presbyterians, for example, are unfamiliar with Calvin’s belief that the vast majority of humans are necessarily damned to eternal hellfire, i.e., that God will save only a few. Thus while churches may have theological roots that predispose them more toward either the Hospital or the Courtroom end of the spectrum, as we become less familiar with our doctrinal roots, we afford individual churches more room to grow toward one or the other extreme.

So I’m curious: would you characterize your church as leaning more toward a hospital or a courtroom? Perhaps more important, what would an outsider say of it? Should it be decidedly one or the other, or should it be some of each? And how do we strike the balance?