Awareness, thank you. I agree with you.
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Originally Posted by awareness
Christians killing Christians, or killing anyone, prove that they aren't Christians at all.
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The only exception is when Christians defend their own lives or lives of their friends, relatives, and neighbors. To kill is still a sin. But sometimes of two evils Christians have to choose the less. (Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15:13) Anyway, that does not excuse any warmongers even if they are Popes, priests, pastors, ministers, or avid churchgoers.
One of my best friends is Irish. He was born in Belfast, in a Catholic family. He was a schoolboy when they had violent clashes between Catholics and Protestants. These two groups were killing each other day and night. One of his classmates was shot dead by a stray bullet. Probably, it was time when my friend started to lose his faith. And now he is looking for any proof to support his anticlerical and anti-religious views. So he knows a lot about crusaders, bad priests, child molestation, dead Irish orphans, and other negative things.
I don’t want to advocate any evil-doers, be they Catholic, Protestant or Eastern Orthodox. But from my point of view, the Church is neither a business corporation nor a hierarchical organization of clergy. On the one hand, as a building, it’s the place where the Holy Spirit dwells richly. A church is the physical place of continuous communion with God. On the other hand, God’s Spirit dwells in every Christian and all Christian believers are the temple of the living God. This means we are all members of Christ: "of His flesh, and of His bones." (Ephesians 5:30) In other words, it’s Christ and every faithful Christian who are the Church. When we see child molestation, sex scandals, power abuse, etc., they are not sins of the Church. They are man’s sins against the Church.
What can we do? Our responsibility is to be faithful to the Lord, not to take part in the sins and always fight for the truth. Christ is the head of the Church. He will deal with evil-doers. They can stand in the church or even take some clerical positions but evil-doers don’t belong to the Church. They can’t enter the kingdom of God. As for us, we should know where the church ends and where the “anti-church” starts. The church ends where the evil starts. It’s absence of God’s Spirit and denial of Christ and His message. Remember Judas? He was one of the 12 but he betrayed his Savior. People like Judas may enter and live in the church but they don’t belong to her not now, not ever (unless they repent and be forgiven). Therefore, it does not make sense to judge the Church by Judas and his followers. We should not be focused on their sins. We have our own sins. Our task is to be members of His Church, live with Christ and through Him restore our union with God.
To me, the Church is a mystical thing. On the earth, we can see only visible part of it. It is the smallest and the lowest part of the Church. The biggest and the most real part of it is in heaven, with Jesus, apostles, saints and all good and faithful Christians who lived before us. Christians are members of the Church that is not limited by the earth and our material world. It is here on earth, but mainly in Heaven and always in eternity.
Therefore, I believe we should not take sins against Christ’s message and transgressions against God’s law for the sins of Christianity. We don’t judge Christ’s life and His church by Judas and his followers. They are not the sins of the Church but the sins against her.