Patrick Grant on the church

I am sad now about things related to Christians and the church…

I believe Patrick Grant’s take on the church embodies my yearning as related to the church:

“As a cultural institution, the church preaches its own deficiency while promoting the good it safeguards. The institution protects, but in embracing the anawim it also becomes defenceless and insecure. This is because a church preaching the cross and resurrection preaches against the saving efficacy of religious observance and law; Jesus crucified outside the city wall shows that religion and the state do not save. Yet Jesus also upheld the law, which He came to fulfil and not destroy. The church carries both messages: the message that laws and walls protect and that they do not save.”

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Grant, Patrick. Out of Contradiction: Meditations towards a contemporary spirituality. (The Pentland Press 1994) p. 28