By Ben Graydon

Those words cut. Unfortunately they are far too often true. A man typically goes about thinking of himself first, living in an imaginary world where others think of him as he thinks of himself, then he is shocked to discover a different reality wherein no one truly cares for or about him. It’s just the cold hard fact that (almost) nobody cares.

From the world outside of the Body of Christ, it is an attitude to be expected. But what of God’s people? For many of them don’t care, either. It should not be true in the church as people envision it to be, but it is, for the church is an institution, incapable of feeling or caring. But not caring about others CANNOT be true in the ecclesia. We who are the Body of Christ, though we are still subject to fleshly limitations, have inside of us the love of Christ that must mark us as different in the eyes of those living in the world where it’s “dog eat dog” and “every man for himself.”

In fact, if you find yourself in a religious setting where it is clear that nobody cares, that would be strong evidence that you are dealing with church (man made) more than ecclesia (the Body of Christ – God made). This is one of the worst errors of denominationalism and “local church” focus: while some may look out for their own, they have near-total blindness for the issues and needs or fellow members of the Body of Christ outside the walls of their own fortress.

God’s people – His ecclesia, the Bride of Christ – are to be marked as different by our love for one another. In the book of Acts, we read about how early believers shared everything with each other, how nobody called anything his own but all things were shared equally. Some ignorantly dismiss that practice as an early form of communism that failed as communism must always fail, but such dismissers are wrong; God’s people ARE to be known for such self-less love. (Love is, by definition, self-less.) Fellows in the Body ought not to ever go hungry or homeless or helpless in any way, if others in the Body of Christ are nearby and know of their circumstances. Ever.

Sometimes people in the church care too much … but about things that are either none of their business or that are long past and under the blood of Christ. Satan points at the failures of our past, which of course remain failures in our present because they’re still there … right there in our memories where he can point his finger at them, remind us and accuse us again and continually. But we have an Advocate Who sits at God’s right hand interceding for us, with Whom there IS no past – only the present and a glorious future, to which we are already connected thru Him.

There is ONE Who cares for you the way that you care for (think of) yourself … the way that you just assume that others should and do care for and about you (and the way that you should care about others), and that is only God above! Now, that Godly caring is one based on truth, seeing past the self-deception that is also present, but He knows that we are dust and prone to think too much of ourselves as children do and He loves us as our Father, regardless. The closer that others are to Him, the more that they will share in that love and the closer they will be to that standard of care for others. That is why scripture is clear that the way the world can tell us apart from non-believers is by our love for our ecclesia siblings.

In over 50 years of observation, this writer can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that true Christian love has proven the presence of ecclesia within the strictures of a church. Sometimes it starts to show up, but then the walls of the church, manifesting as policy or tradition or other rules of men through love into the back seat while the driver’s manual of man’s ways takes over and the “love” ends. This is more proof that the church must be trashed when it gets in the way of the ecclesia, the true Body of Christ.

Let it not be said of us, my ecclesia brothers and sisters, that nobody cares.

Let go of the rules and let the love of Christ abound!

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