When I was a kid, I was a committed Christian and I was really into science fiction. It didn’t take me long to see the tension between the two. My favorite science fiction writers (especially Isaac Asimov) were atheists. Their vision of inter-galactic travel and settlement of the universe had no place for God.

So I dreamed up in my own mind a vision combining the two. What if a group of Christians could settle another planet somewhere and establish it as an outpost of the kingdom of God? In my mind, I pictured a screening process which would make sure that all the settlers were true Christians. Thus, we’d start our settlement with only the good people. Then, if anyone later decided to reject Christ or if they persisted in sin, or if they committed serious sin, they’d either be sent back to earth, or else face the death penalty (I mean let’s get serious, right?). In other words, specifically the words of Jesus in the parable of the wheat and the weeds, we would first uproot the wheat and transplant it elsewhere; and then we’d uproot the weeds as they sprouted up.

There were several problems with this vision, however. First, it didn’t take seriously the sin in my own heart - the benevolent founder and dictator of this colony - let alone the commoners I’d take with me. Even good Christians carry enough sin with them to infest another planet quickly. Second, my vision assumed that it is possible to set up a screening process to tell real Christians from fakes and outright sinners. It isn’t. One day the Lord will make the judgments - and his judgments will be right. But until then, we cannot do so.

The third problem with my dream of a Christian planet was that I didn’t realize that such things have been tried many times and have almost always failed. I’m currently reading a book called Illusions of Innocence about early-American religious movements (mine included) that tried to restore the primitive faith and sometimes (as with the Puritans) attempted to set up “Christian” colonies. The lessons? People who try to establish a utopian community by separating the good people into a village away from the sin without quickly see their utopia destroyed by the sin within.  The pride, the lust, the petty jealousy and legalism reveals that the wheat and the weeds aren’t really all that different in this age. In the OT, God separated his people into an isolated nation, and made it very clear by outward practice who was part of it and who wasn’t. And yet that chosen and separate nation didn’t often behave in a holy fashion. Sin infested Israel much as it did the surrounding nations.

All of this is to say that it shouldn’t surprise or discourage us to find sin in church. Of course we have to confront it (see Matthew 18:15-17). But we can rest in the knowledge that we don’t have to make church into a sin-free zone. God will handle that at the end of the age.