Church as a religious cushion
Kevin de Young has written a great piece about the temptation for church to cushion us from our own sin and the need for salvation.
The temptation, subtle and strong in every preacher, is to preach to other people’s sins. And so our sermons rail on emergents or homosexuality or Richard Dawkins. … But the sin we should hear about most is our own. Just as the iniquity I should most disdain is mine.
He quotes John Miller (Outgrowing the Ingrown Church, p. 26):
Among conservatives and evangelicals, its [religious cushioning's] primary mission all too often is to function as a preaching station where Christians gather to hear the gospel preached to the unconverted, to be reassured that liberals are mistaken about God and hell, and renew one’s sense of well-being without have a serious encounter with the living God.
Pray for me, that I don’t succumb to this temptation.