Church

"If a Church lose the Spirit of God, there is no depth of corruption to which it may not rapidly descend; and a degraded Church is the most potent factor of national decay."
---The Preacher and His Models, Yale Lectures 1891, by Dr James Stalker

A devastating quote, really. One that hits hard. In today's day and age, much like Stalker's time, and the times before that, what the Church does, says and thinks is literally deadly important. If the Church is corrupted to no longer be following the Word of God...all is lost.

The thing is...the Church is not its own being. We, each of us, make up the Church, the Body, and it is our sin that poisons our bodies as much as methamphetamine destroys physical tissue. Sin cripples our spirit and body as quickly as the images of meth users show the damage of such strong toxins.

When one studies the Word of God, one has to take in the context of the verses. One has to consider the verses in the Old Testament and the New---every part of the Scriptures is telling a very important story; a multi-layered story. A story of our Fall, and best and most important, the story of how God never gives up calling to us, providing salvation.

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
Hebrews 4:12
However...the Scriptures also give us directions. Directions for honoring God first and foremost; as we do those things, our lives may or may not be better. Knowing we bring glory to God, feeling His arms wrap about us, lending us His strength, His joy, His incredible Spirit is indeed worth much more than sin. 

Sin is incredibly tempting. It entices us to not read the Word. To be "lazy" and listen only and not check what our teachers are saying, whoever they may be. Remember Acts 17.11: "Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."
How many of us do this? Are we blindly accepting what we read in "pious" books or from TV, Radio or our own teachers? We must always remember (and I tell this as much to remind myself) that reading "pious" books is NOT enough. The Word is a enormous gift, lasting all these generations to today, and we should take advantage of every moment to study it. Remember that until the printing press people did not have Bibles, and that for years our ancestors in the US treasured the one copy of a Bible that they might have
The Word is alive, it is our direction, our love letter, our pointing to Christ. It is our discipline from a loving Father, pointing out what we shouldn't be doing so that we might honor Him and show ourselves light and salt.