I'm still in shock

I found out by reading my hubbie's blog that a church in Texas let an atheist join their fellowship. you can read about it here. This to me seems so very wrong. The pastor of that "church" says that he is building connections. I read that and I think...yeah..building connections with what Satan?

The church, yes I know, the church visible does not only contain Christians BUT!!!! It is considered to be a representative of God. How can one justify letting someone join your church who doesn't even think that God exists? Isn't that a paradox?

And the church that I am a member of, the denominational body has ties to this church. It just makes me shudder and wonder if anyone in the higher ups will see how very wrong this is and sever connections with the PCUSA. I really, really hope so.

Enough of being in shock, and yes I know, in today's day and age I probably shouldn't be so shocked, but I am, and it makes me just a teeny bit angry that people think that this is okay, because we are "building connections" after all. They are impunging the HOLINESS of God by doing this.

Makes me think of the last sermon I heard my hubbie preach. He's going through the 10 commandments right now and the last one was on "do not kill". One line he used made an impact on me. We must be careful about how we treat others, because how we treat them is how we are treating God. (my paraphrase) That sat with me and I asked him about it later. He said that we are made in the image of God so when we treat others poorly, we are treating God poorly. It makes it even more important how we treat others in the body of Christ. Fellow Christians have CHRIST residing IN THEM. So when we treat them poorly then we are right away treating Christ poorly. Makes me really think about how I live my life and treat other folks then.

I don't know. All this stuff seems jumbled. I want to be angry at the pastor of this church that allowed an atheist to be come part of the visible body of Christ. it's so wrong. But then I think, if I'm so angry with him, then I'm being angry with Christ. How do I then separate the two? All I can see is that I can be angry about the action and the effect that it has, but I still need to see the pastor as a man who has made a grievous error in judgement and pray that he sees the error of his ways. I can also I suppose write to the head offices of my denomination and say hey guys...take action on this. Don't allow our body of believers to be associated with this sinful action. That I think is the best approach I can do to continue treating the image of God properly. What think you?