THE REMNANT

There is a line between church and not-church. It exists…somewhere. But how wide is the line? Big enough for a whole person to stand on? For a whole group? For a whole generation? And how blurry is it? Blurry enough for us to maybe not know where it begins and ends? Sure, there are some people who are definitely not in the church and some people who definitely are, but don’t we all know people who are somewhere in the messy middle?
It’s like the ocean. There’s a part where you are certainly in it, and a part up the beach where you certainly aren’t. But then there’s this space in between where you can walk that’s always shifting with each wave. That space is so holy that it doesn’t even really have a name, but everyone can observe it and knows what it is. In terms of Christianity, it’s an area where a person can exist in a messy middle somewhere between acceptance and rejection. It, too, doesn’t truly have a name.
In the Bible, whenever God brings down a wrath of some kind, he always leaves behind what he calls a “remnant”. That word appears some 67 times in the Bible, as early as Genesis with threads all the way to Revelation, but mostly in the Old Testament prophets. It represents a piece of the population left over after a great calamity. This remnant often arrives into something they wouldn’t have ever recognized or even imagined—a new nation with a new king and a new culture, a new way of living altogether. No one was left unchanged by it, regardless of their piety or previous position. This remnant was left behind in a place that always presented choices. Will they commit themselves wholly to the new reality, regardless of what it means about their previous identity? Or will they stalwartly stand on what they used to believe even to the point of total rejection? Or is there a third option, something in the messy middle, something along the shore between ocean and land, a place where they can both assimilate into the new culture and yet hold on to their prior principles?
It is little secret that the Christian church in the United States has suffered such a calamity. Just like the Israelites of old, it was a calamity of our own making. We pursued the idols of greed and power-lust, and God, just like he did with Israel, knocked us down to our knees, leaving behind a wake of people who find themselves in that messy middle, with one foot inside their old faith and the other in a wholly secular culture. We don’t blame you for your position there. If anything, we greatly respect the mental and spiritual perseverance it takes to exist as you do. You have stretched your mind, heart, and soul to maintain your faith to some degree, even as you live in doubt and sorrow over the loss of the church family to which you belonged for so long. You probably feel worn thin, and you may be coming to wit’s end as to what and how to choose how to live, or wondering if you even have to.
You’re not alone. You see, we’ve been in this place, too.