Church is difficult. I think we see in Scripture an ideal of how we are to live with one another in step with the Holy Spirit, and we look around and see all the ways this ideal isn’t being realized. But we also see in Scripture that the early Christians had to deal with all the same stuff: greedy leaders, false teaching, hypocrisy, loneliness, etc… Reading Eusebius’ church history we see the same thing — one story that stuck out to me was of a mega church pastor named Paul (not the apostle) who set up a throne for himself at the front of his church and lived with two younger women.

Concurrent with all these problems, lots of churches and Christians do an incredible amount of good in the world.

It’s important to leave authoritarian and abusive churches and find a relatively healthy church, but even the healthiest churches will be far short of a heavenly ideal.