Clarity

I've been going to church as long as I can remember. I use 'church' as a collective and generic term encompassing all manner of congregations, from faux-High Anglican in Bishop's Waltham as I was growing up, to a Baptist fellowship in New Delhi; from eating doughnuts and playing Weezer covers in a smelly school gym in Fair Oak, to sitting in a converted bowls hut in Guildford discussing apologetics (and/or cinema).

The one thing I've noticed, though, is that in all Western Church services (encompassing all the above and many more besides), there is almost always someone preaching/teaching/guiding the discussion and sharing their ideas. What I've also noticed, especially after attending the less sit-and-listen type meetings, is that quite often we over-complicate stuff.

Earlier I was reading Romans 7, which is all about sin, why sin is so attractive, and why we struggle to stick to God's laws. I'm not going to lie, I think it's a flipping hard passage to get a grip on, and I struggled to get my head around what Paul is saying. More to the point, I've heard a fair few talks over the years on this same issue, but none of them have summed up a reason in even a short paragraph, let alone a single sentence. This is where we come back to my earlier comment about over-complicating things.

At the end of that passage, however, Paul/God does a pretty good job (I think) of explaining it, in this simple wording:

". . . I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature, a slave to the law of sin."
– Romans 7:25b

For me, that one verse has summed up a concept that I have struggled and wrestled with for most (if not all) of my Christian life.

I think it goes to show that no matter how good preachers/church leaders are (and please don't get me wrong, I think teaching is a valid and necessary part of church life), it is always always ALWAYS worth looking through God's Word before trying to explain a concept through our own power.

j.r.