Intro and symptoms

I used to have a blog where I spelt out my spiritual teachings and annoyances but decided to remove it for reasons I can't remember anymore. I have however recently been thinking certain major thoughts about being a Christian with all it entails and thought I needed somewhere to write it down so it is not forgotten.

My first post is about symptoms and causes. If someone catches a certain virus, their skin can break out into a rash. If they go to the doctor, the doctor does not diagnose a skin complaint and issue skin cream, they perform certain tests and diagnose the cause of the skin problems so that they might prescribe an injection or tablets to treat the virus causing the problem. It is appropriate that we diagnose and treat the causes of problems rather than their symptoms.

When we look at church, various underlying problems cause certain symptoms. The symptoms might be a lack of attendance of our members or people feeling bored and unmotivated by the contents of a service. Although these are symptoms of various things, we often try and treat them and ignore the cause. For instance we try and make the service more fun or 'appropriate' so that we boost our numbers or increase enjoyment. The problem of course with this approach is that instead of providing a long term reliable solution, we provide a temporary solution (if we are lucky) that becomes broken again because we did not seek the underlying reasons. Part of our problem I think is that many of the underlying causes of problems are spiritual, both related to the spiritual life of individuals but also related to the reality of the spiritual world, both of which we are mostly ignorant of. On the other hand, the symptoms are mostly physical or emotional and we think we understand these better so our solutions are often emotional or physical.

The only answer I can think of is for leaders of churches to literally be on their knees in prayer constantly to seek a better understanding of causes and their correct remedy.