Christian Reformed Church

This evening, since FaithWorks is not having evening services right now, I headed over to Christian Reformed Church (CRC) to check out what was going on over there. I was informed that their Pastor was on vacation and that an elder would be speaking. I was also informed by a member that the evening services are more "conservative" than are the morning. Traditional hymms were sung following a quite orderly liturgy. I believe there is nothing wrong with a liturgical service but I believe it restricts the flow of God in many, many (if not ALL) ways. The speaker, for example, read an entire sermon wrote by someone in Ontario. Not one word he said came from his own preparation. The text the sermon came from was Luke 23:44-49. A lot of the message consisited of how God is responsible for EVERYTHING. Sickness, poverty, depression, etc as well as health, prosperity, and happiness, etc. There is not one thing which is outside His sovereignty and outside of His 'loving' hand. A lot of the hymms however, spoke of telling sorrow "away" and such. There is a major problem already.

1. If God is responsible for making you sick in order to teach you something or to bring you closer to Him, then asking Him to remove that sickness, or depression, or whatever, before it's appointed time would actually place you OUT of God's Will and plan for your life. Such a state would be worse than being sick!

2. Is it really God's Will for 50% of the kids in Mozambique, etc to die before the age of 5 due to malaria? If it is, then would supplying them all with malaria medication place them out of God's Will for their lives? (Problem here is that according to the sermon, it's God's will if they're sick, and, at the same time, it's God's will if they're healed. This leads to confusion about God and an indifferent attitude towards the Great Commission.) Is it really God's plan to have untold numbers of children aborted each year? I do not believe everything happens for a reason. Well, yes, I do. But not because it's all God's reason. I believe it is because of man's reason. God is sovereign, yes, but He has given Man free choice and will not take that away lest He condemn us to an existence of puppetry. God hates all the pain and sickness in the world, He really does, but fixing it all in one divine act would not really fix it at all. God fixed the world through Jesus. He fixed the world but kept the law of free choice paramount in our lives. Crazy, that took some thought effort! Anyways, I'm off on a rant.

But, the place was packing about 100 people, 40% of whom must've been under 25 yrs. Amazing. We're lucky to get 20 for an evening service at FaithWorks. Makes you wonder. I would give CRC a second chance, but I would definitely make sure I went back in the A.M. Conservative Christianity is worse than "Christianity" in general! Religion is bad, I wish it upon no one.