1 Corinthians 6:4 If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.
Do you ever feel insignificant? I've felt that way most all of my life. I could go into why, who, how, what and when but I won't. I'll just tell you that sometimes it's the insignificant people who tend to inspire the significant ones into moving mountains. Prophets and kings. You seldom find both in the same package.
So why do you think that Paul designated the insignificant people in the church to judge the others? I think it's because most people will do their best to impress the Pastor, the biggest church donors, the pillars of the community who own businesses or those born into money and prestige. Those same people will treat their "underlings" like, well, underlings. Which means that the least esteemed person in the church knows who the people REALLY are. They know who has a word of kindness and acknowledgement and who snubs them and looks at them as though they shouldn't have the audacity to speak out.
That means they can make a sound judgment on matters pertaining to this world.
I went to a church one Sunday in desperate need of friends even though I'm not the best friend in the world to have. I'm a mental patient and I live in a small community. The first time I went they were all welcoming and it was a wonderful experience. One of the women I'd seen before but I couldn't remember where. The next time I went, they all looked through me or ignored me completely. I remembered I'd worked with the woman at a factory which was my last job. It was before I was on medication and I'd been admitted and lost that job on account of it.
I didn't go back to the church until the pastor invited myself and my children to an outdoor activity they were all having. I still got ignored. Things were a little better for the children but not much. Then I heard the pastor talking to the woman I'd worked with before. He called her sister fruitcake. She was stunned and then he said, "Is that how you want to be known? As sister fruitcake?" She nodded no. Then I had a complete understanding of what had happened. I never went back again.
At a church before that one, I'd attended every Sunday with my daughter and one Sunday my daughter said she wanted to be Baptized. We talked to the preacher and he said that would mean she would be a member of their church. I don't know why they wouldn't just Baptize her so she would have made her public profession of faith that she was a member of the body of Christ which is the church. I told him that I would join the church as well. I could tell by the way he addressed this with the church that my reputation with some of the members might not have been so welcomed there. He was doing his best to prevent any dissenters.
The Sunday my daughter was baptized, the sermon was about tithing and what happens when people don't pay their tithes. My Sunday school teacher was sitting a row ahead of me across the church and her daughter kept the books. I never gave in an envelope because I never claimed my giving on my taxes like some people do. My giving had gone down the previous few weeks because my family was buying a house. She sat there staring at me through the entire sermon and I was pretty sure she'd dictated to the preacher what he needed to preach that Sunday. You see, new testament giving is to give as you purpose in your heart, tithing was something Israel was required to do and the rules for it are incredibly different than what the churches teach. Churches who say you are not under the law.......well, except for that tithing part. Her hostility kept me out of that church from that day forward. It was not a church, it was a country club for her family. Even the preacher was a guest and not a policy setter. That's when I realized how some small churches, and maybe even some big ones, tie the hands of the preacher and dictate what he will and will not say behind the pulpit.
Neither of those people treated me with love or acceptance and both were totally ambivalent to the effect that their attitudes had on three children. My three children.
Are you a big shot in church? At work? In your social clubs? Go back to the top and read that verse and consider it. This is why I, personally, turn to God instead of you. Life is a sequence of learning and being molded........an obstacle course to find out what you are made of so the Lord can decide if you belong on the new earth and in the new heaven. You know, even the law is mostly about how you treat other people and the rest is how you relate to God. I'm one of the few who realize that God is not to blame for what people do, ESPECIALLY when they are people who don't belong to him. But what about those who only see God through those who proclaim to belong to him? Pews are empty because of the teaching of the tithe, as though Jesus had never taught the lesson of the loaves and the fishes........
I FIRMLY believe the day will come when someone will go through the IRS papers to see who the Christians are in this country so they can re-educate them. You better hope you make it to the rapture and aren't left behind if you've been using your religion as a tax shelter. They did it in Germany, don't think they wont do it here...........have a nice day.
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