Member-only story
Why Do Sinners Not Flock to the Church the Way They Ran to Jesus?
Have we gotten what it means to be Christian backward?
“Church? Why Would I Ever Go There?”
In his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, Author Philip Yancey shares a heartbreaking story about a woman living on the streets of Chicago who was “renting” her two-year-old daughter to sexually perverted men in order to support her drug addiction.
The story was related by a friend of Yancey’s who worked with the down and out in the inner city who says, “I could hardly bear hearing her sordid story. For one thing, it made me liable — I’m required to report child abuse. Further, I had no idea what to say to this woman. At last, I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her face as she responded, ‘Church?! Why would I ever go there? I am already feeling terrible about myself.”
For some reason, she expected the church to be a place of judgment and condemnation, not mercy and safety.
Here’s my question.
“Why don’t sinners flock to the church the way they ran to Jesus?”
During the earthly ministry of Jesus, child-abusing, drug-addicted women like this —…
