I don't think much of the idea, I told him.

I know someone else who wants to kick out of the church everyone who takes the occasional beer or glass of wine. Another feels that way toward those who attend movies or dance or smoke. If you've had an abortion, heaven help you, you're out. In fact, if you have committed a sin--the bad kinds, of course, which are on some Pharisees' list of no-nos--you will not be allowed to remain in their church.

If you start kicking people out of your church because of sins and failures in their lives, I have a few questions:

• where do you start? 
• where do you end? 
• who's going to decide? 
• how are you going to do it? 
• and maybe most of all, how are you going to get anything else done in the Kingdom for spending all your time protecting the purity of your church membership rolls?

"If the Lord should count iniquities, who would stand?" (Psalm 130:3)

Nothing speaks to me on this subject stronger than the second parable of Matthew 13, the one we call "The Parable of the Tares."

Briefly, when the farm hands saw that the enemy had sown bad seed in the field they had freshly seeded for a good crop, they asked the owner for permission to invade the field with their hoes and rakes to uproot the tares. The owner was horrified. "You might also uproot the wheat with them," he said. His counsel was to leave them alone and let both continue to live. At harvest time, they would be separated.

This story answers a question that has dogged and hounded (love those canine verbs!) the church from the very beginning: "What about the hypocrites in the church?"

The enemy put them there, Jesus said. No, you are not to try to uproot them. In doing so, you will injure many who are faithful. Leave them alone. I'll handle them in due course.

That's so hard for us. We want to take matters into our own hands.