Now before you jump to conclusions, let me explain. This morning I read an article titled, “Lover or Prostitute?” It started out by explaining the history of Christianity. Christianity started in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise. The definition of enterprise is a business or company. The writer was teaching this history lesson to a group of teenagers and one of the women asked a simple question. She said, “A business? But isn’t it supposed to be a body?” His response was yes and then she said, “But when a body becomes a business, isn’t that a prostitute?”
I didn’t grow up in church, but I did attend with friends every chance I got. I loved it there. Everyone was so loving and welcoming, something my home life was lacking. I quickly learned that people in church were different. Their families were actually happy, or so they seemed from the perspective of a 13-year-old with such a dysfunctional one of my own. So as an impressionable young girl, I related happiness with church. And with that I also assumed that all people who went to church were good people. This mindset led me down a very destructive path, although I didn’t recognize it until it was way too late.
At 15, I started dating. The boy was perfect in my eyes because of one thing. His family attended church. For some reason in my mind it never occurred to me that just because people go to church, doesn’t mean they are without flaws. Fast forward three years and I am now dating a different person with the same mindset. I fell in love with him because of his family. They were everything missing in my life. In a mother and father that were still married, I saw perfection. They not only attended church, but his grandfather was a preacher. I honestly felt that God placed this man and his family in my life to give me what I was missing for so long. I now had the mother and father I had always dreamed of and their Godly son by my side.
Fast forward a few years and I am married to that man and I discovered that just because people attend church and know the bible does not mean they are any different from the world. I learned that people can put on a mask and pretend to be whomever they want to portray. I made the bold statement that I use to support prostitution because I supported things that were against everything Christ stood for. My ignorance allowed me to focus on the wrong things in order to try to gain the things of Christ. I did eventually gain the things of Christ and I continue to learn more with each new day, but I took the wrong path to get there.
It not only took me 15 years of growth to gain the courage to stand up against the wrong that was taking place, but it took me even longer to realize that having a relationship with Christ is nothing like a business. I use to think that in order to grow in Christ I had to attend every church event, volunteer for everything I could, teach the younger generation, etc. I had bought in to the body becoming a business because I had a mental checklist of things that must be done to reach the my desired goal.
When the body of Christ consists of people that don’t really know Him, there is no way they can love Him. Loving someone unconditionally requires knowing them. Knowing what makes them tick, why they are who they are, their hearts.
As the body of Christ, I think we better stop and check our hearts and our motives. Because if the majority of us that call ourselves Christians are out there prostituting the body of Christ, we who call ourselves the body are defiling the very nature of the one who gave His life for us on the cross.
Shannon Vaut 