This is too good to let go without a parting comment.

This strange looking screw —a security torx head screw— has been a real burr in my saddle for the last week. I’ve been on the verge of taking a hammer and screwdriver to a highly sensitive piece of equipment and banging the crap out of it because of this previously unidentified screw.

It didn’t matter how ingeniously I attempted to “encourage” the screw to unscrew, it wouldn’t cooperate. Had it not been essential to unscrew it, I would have simply cut my losses and walked away from it, never to have looked at it again.

And it is here that I think we have the perfect illustration of the world’s disgust and lack of interest in what we are peddling under the guise of “Christianity.” It doesn’t fit their lives. It’s strange, they have no “wrench” to use and it’s frustrating to them. They know intuitively that there is “something” more than what they have. And they may have even tried the church to see if that was “it.” And it wasn’t.

Not because it isn’t, but because of what we have made it, which is different from what God made it. The church, us, is supposed to interact with people. We aren’t supposed to set up rules, regulations, traditions and other barriers to keep people from God. We befriend them and let them see Him through us. We show them how desirable He is because of what we have become. Then they want to be a part of what He has put together in the church.

Perhaps we should stop being a security torx head screw to those around us and simply become a phillips head screw that everyone can benefit from.