Who is Tucker Carlson to call the church a mess?

OPINION:

In his ongoing campaign against American conservatives, Tucker Carlson has repeatedly shown that he doesn’t understand Christianity or the Bible.

The latest example of his ignorance comes from a recent podcast in which he said, “One of the reasons that I have a lot of trouble going to church is [that] all these Christian leaders are so flawed.”

Frankly, the suggestion that the church is not worthy of him because it includes people who are sinful should leave anyone with even a Sunday school understanding of Christianity slack-jawed.

Christian leaders throughout history have written about the imperfection of the church. Mr. Carlson would do well to read what they have said.

J.R.R. Tolkien refused to abandon faith over flawed Christians. He understood that the church is about belief in Christ, not the failings of priests or parishioners. “I should not leave the Church [because of flawed people],” he wrote. “I should leave because I did not believe … even if I had never met anyone in orders who was not both wise and saintly.”

Charles Spurgeon argued that hypocrisy validates the church rather than the other way around. “There could be no hypocrites if there were no genuine [Christianity],” he said. “No one would try to forge banknotes if there were no genuine ones.”

G.K. Chesterton commented extensively on this issue of hypocrisy in the church. In “The Everlasting Man,” he wrote, “The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do.”

He then noted that Christianity gets rejected not because it is false but because it is hard: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”

Chesterton admonished that rather than flee hypocrites, we should try to see our brother’s faith beneath his flaws: “We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.”

C.S. Lewis viewed church attendance as essential for his spiritual growth, even amid his hypocrisy and that of others. He likened the church to a “hospital for sinners rather than a museum for saints.”

He said he went to church because Scripture commanded it and grace flowed through its imperfect gatherings. Lewis emphasized that the church was not for perfect people but for the imperfect, for flawed pilgrims pressing toward Christ. He wrote, “True Christians … stagger forward on the road to becoming like Him, picking up many scrapes and bruises on the way. They aren’t perfect, but their Master is.”

For Lewis, hypocrisy didn’t disqualify the church; it proved that it was real. Jesus came for sinners, not for saints. Lewis even suggested that criticizing the church over other people’s sins was demonic. In his seminal work, “The Screwtape Letters,” Lewis portrayed the Master Deceiver as saying, “Let [the Christian] judge his mother [i.e., the Church],” arguing that such pride masquerades as discernment when it is actually little more than self-satisfaction and, thereby, proof of one’s own sin.

A.W. Tozer dismissed using other people’s sins as an excuse for condemning the church and suggested that we would all do well to look in the mirror rather than the pews. “Hypocrites in the church? Yes, and in the lodge, and at home. Don’t hunt through the church for a hypocrite. Go home and look in the mirror,” he said.

Chuck Colson believed that because we all need redemption, we must support the church rather than abandon it. The church exists for sinners needing forgiveness. He understood that accusations of hypocrisy assume a moral standard of which we all fall short.

He wrote that “the next time someone says, ‘I don’t go to church because the church is full of hypocrites,’ remember that hypocrisy requires a moral standard,” which is very poorly defined without the church.

Finally, Colson concluded that the church is essential precisely because we are all flawed. “None of us is thoroughly good. … Christianity doesn’t depend on someone else’s behavior: Whether or not Christianity is true does not rise and fall on the subjective experiences of human beings.”

In other words, the church teaches truth, embraces grace and fosters growth, despite its members’ flaws.

I could go on and on, and on, but here is the take-home: If you really want to understand the church, then the best thing to do is to stop looking at everyone else and start looking at Christ.

I don’t know about you, but I go to church because I’m the one who is flawed and I need Jesus.

• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com.