I'm a church administrator, and I've spent ten years maintaining the machine - bylaws, budgets, policies, enforcement. I've been good at keeping the organization running 'right,' and I felt proud of that.
This verse wrecked me: 'For it is time for judgment to begin with God's household.' Peter is saying that God's first concern is whether the people within the faith community are actually living out the faith - not outsiders, not the secular world, but US.
I looked at our church and realized we had excellent policies about sexual harassment, but we didn't actually reach out to people who'd been abused. We had a great missions program, but we were terrible at loving our own LGBTQ+ members. We looked good to the outside world because we had all the structures right. But inside? We were failing people.
I brought this to our leadership and said we needed to actually examine ourselves before we critique the world. We spent a year listening to people who'd been hurt by our church. It was painful and humbling. We changed some things. We admitted some things. We apologized. And our church got smaller and poorer and angrier and more honest.
Peter's right. Judgment has to start in God's house, with the people claiming to follow Jesus. Only then do we have any credibility speaking outside.
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