This pastor, he dresses too hipster, so I don’t like him. His priorities are whack.

This other pastor thinks that God will provide for all his needs. Doesn’t he know it’s wrong to ask God for a car? Especially a nice car?

And then there’s this guy who has more than 10,000 people in his church and mega churches, they're just gross.

A lot of Christians talk bad, whether they mean to or not, about the Bride (of Christ, that's us, remember). I found myself included in this gang of truth mongers. That’s why I’m sharing. Because I was too cool for school, man, and I thought that if you weren’t doing church right, you were doing it wrong—obviously.

Then I was reminded: You’re thirty. You have no idea what you’re judging. All my efforts towards church correction are wasted breath. What we should really be wasting time on is love. Waste all your time on love. If it’s all you ever do. Do love.

Excuse my digression, I meant to say this:

The church doesn’t need your correction. You may not even have the right to correct.

Here’s why:

She’s the bride, not just a turd with a veil on it, like many of us sweet little judgmental cool guys like to think of her. Oh man, the church is so messed up and bad. Phew, I’m glad I’m here to point this out to everyone. Hey Jesus, aren’t you so glad that we don’t understand anything?

Back to that love thing. Let’s start with loving the bride. Which we are a part of. It’s not me and all the people I find relevant and right, and then there’s some weird people I don’t understand over there, and there’s some legalistic old white guys over there. No we’re all together, in the palm of His hand, united.

Loving is not seeing the church for what she isn’t.

This is who she is, Jesus’ perfect companion. A group of people captivated by His abundant love who have sacrificed their own lives to help others, to spread the gospel, to put all of their hope and strength into faith in Jesus Christ. And yes, sometimes we act like turds in lacy veils because we forget who we are. But this forgetfulness might have something to do with our fellows telling us we smell awful and continuously trying to wipe us with toilet paper.

But to Jesus we are perfect. Since He is in eternity, He knows us, the Bride, on the reckoning day and we are altogether lovely. So lovely, we are worth dying for.

If we saw her this way, saw each other this way—both saved and about to be saved—that would be the clearest form of love, to treat people for who they really are, not for what we see them as now.

If you don’t see her the way Jesus does, you don’t see her. Now I encourage you to spend time in Paul’s letters. He loved, loved, loved the church. Even though, to us, she really was turdy at times. He saw her, and that is what we must do.

BUT—you are screaming—if I’m not the "church police" things will go from bad to worse! Welp, stop screaming because I’m right here. I just want to remind you, my love, that the Holy Spirit is the church police. You’re off the hook. Sure it looks right now like He’s letting some things slide, and we don’t know why, but Jesus is King.

Ultimately, if we love our beautiful King like no other generation, if we love others like we love Him, then there will be nothing to police. We will be a living, breathing movement of united redemption, healing, and beautiful, holy, righteousness.

We must take our place as the Bride now, because in eternity we are already there.

About the Author:

Dana Dill lives in a cool town in Virginia where she writes freelance, drinks lots of coffee with her Doctor Husband, and watches over her youngins and the homestead. She went to CU Denver for creative writing and while she was at it, learned a little French too.