By Pastor Joel Lawler

I live in a neighborhood that has a Home Owner's Association. Before we purchased our house, there was this HUGE contract that we had to sign basically saying that we had to live by the rules of the HOA. In fact, my HOA made the national news. A guy in my hood put up a flag pole to display his American flag. This was against the rules so they made him take it down. He took them to court and lost.

The good thing about a HOA is that there is uniformity and for the most part, everything looks nice. It is also cool that home values stay steady. When a house sells, it sets the market value for all the houses on the street because they all are very similar.

The bad part is the HOA can get a little overzealous. My wife left a Christmas wreath on our door past January 15th. We got a letter about it.

Every Saturday morning the HOA inspectors walk through our streets with their clipboards in hand. I was standing out front of my house with one of my neighbors. After they had passed, my neighbor  clicked his heels and shot up his arm in a Hitleresque salute.

The HOA is all about appearances and conformity. They really don't care what

goes on inside the house as long as it is not visible from the sidewalk. As someone with a very strong libertarian streak, I am very happy that they do not concern themselves with what is going on behind closed doors.

Unfortunately, I see the same pattern with the church. There is a great deal of emphasis on conformity and appearances. The objective is control. There is very little if any regard for what is going on inside of a person. The goal, much like the HOA, is to keep it buried behind closed doors. The rules and obedience to them is what is valued. The individual is only as valuable as their ability to adhere to the rules created by the church.

Jesus had some very harsh words for people who only concerned themselves with the externals. Matthew 23:25-26 "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean."

The pastors and Bible teachers of Jesus' day were caught up in a faith system that was nothing more than a way to control and manipulate people to act the way that they wanted them to. They were not concerned with the hearts of others. Their own hearts were evil. They looked really good. They did and said

all the right things and appeared very righteous but they were rotten at the core of who they were.

When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was he said: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

Loving someone takes a whole lot more effort, time, patience and tolerance than controlling them. God never gave us the power or even the responsibility to change others. It is not our job to "clean up society" like a Home Owner's Association cleans up a neighborhood. The truth is that we cannot even change ourselves. That is God's job. He did command us to love and it is not an easy thing to do but it is what God called us to do.
.