Somebody Must be Sick

By Harry Middleton

Physical ailments seem to be impossible to eradicate. About the time medical science produces a cure for a disease, another takes its place.

That which is true physically seems to be true spiritually. About the time a specific spiritual malady is corrected, members of the church seem to "come down" with another spiritual ailment (1 Cor. 11:29-30).

Physical sickness is sometimes produced by what has been eaten. What we eat spiritually will also make us sick spiritually unless we are very careful. Spiritual food that is contaminiated with denominational error will give one spiritual food poisoning. Too much denominational theology with too little of God's Word will produce spiritual sickness. From what is seen, heard, and read today, there must be a great amount of sickness in the church of our Lord.

Somebody must be sick to declare that the biggest problem in America today is the problem of racial prejudice.

Somebody must be sick to engage in Bible chair work for the church of Christ and not be positive about his faith in the virgin birth of Christ.

Somebody must be sick to have published in a daily newspaper a sermonette in which it is declared that God has children in other religious organizations than the church of Christ.

Somebody must be sick to teach that social drinking is a matter of Christian liberty.

Somebody must be sick to teach that the five acts of Christian worship: singing, prayer, teaching, the Lord's Supper, and the contribution; are matters of tradition rather than matters of faith.

Somebody must be sick to suggest that we meet denominationalism half-way, and that we engage in a program of compromise in order to have religious unity with religious error.

Spiritual sickness seems to be prevalent among some members of the church of Christ, especially those who are caught up in a movement of liberalizing and modernizing the church, and the docrinte of the New Testament. Many of those who are sick are as those who have gone before, "sick unto death." Many of them will recover from their spiritual illnesses and will be able to become useful servants of the Lord. But, they must accept and apply the prescription of the Great Physician.

- Harry Middleton works with the Lebanon Road church of Christ in Nashville, TN. Adam Faughn serves as the pulpit minister for the congregation, and he may be contacted through the congregation’s website at: http://www.lebanonroadchurchofchrist.org