The Church as Samson

Now that I've found my voice it's time to say something!Reading "A Peculiar People" by Rodney Clapp for one of my classes has provoked some interesting trains of thought about the Church (meaning the universal body of believers). He argues that the Church has grown so ineffective as to be almost useless. I agree with some of his statements, but was generally turned off by his judgmental tone.The Church reminds me much of Samson. Samson, like the modern Church, told the secrets of his strength to a harlot by the name of Delilah. The Church has traded the power of God for the pleasures of the world. We wonder why the Church has become helpless to the influences of culture, we bemoan the fact that the Church is infiltrated by all the things of this world. It's because we have opened the doors of our faith and invited the world into our bed. Like Delilah, the world has used that against us, to destroy us, to weaken and break us, to blind us and make us it's slaves.The Church has so little power now because we've given up the power that God promises us over and over again. It is His own power that he offers to every believer, to use in the strengthen and building up of His Church. That is not to say that the Church is without hope. Just as Samson's hair grew back, after he prayed to God for a chance to right his mistake, so God offers another chance. If we will confess our wandering hearts and return to Him as His people He will do mighty and powerful things through His Church once more. But the crucial question is, "Will she?" will the Church respond to the offer of forgiveness or will she continue to sacrifice the power of God for momentary pleasures and general acceptance from the culture. If she refuses then she will only grow more ineffective, irrelevant and archaic, unable and unwilling to proclaim that the Kingdom of God is at hand, to invite sinners to repent and believe and be saved. And she will have failed in the most important task she was assigned, "to be witnesses to...the ends of the earth."