Question: How can God be viewed as a loving God if the church, itself, is full of sinners? One can take a look at the burning of heretics and witches, torture and then the molestation of young boys by priests and scratch his head.
Answer:
When you say “the church,” I assume you mean the organizations that gather in a building, such as Catholics and Methodists. That being the case, then yes the church has a long and bloody history, but it would not be fair to judge God by the actions of people who claim to be His.
One big reason for what you see throughout church history is that not everyone in the church is a Christian. It does not matter what kind of church you go into you will find plenty of non-Christians that are there for social or other reasons and they often end up in leadership. Over time they may even make up a majority of the church members, depending on how healthy or strong the church is. Once in leadership, as non-Christians they will sway the church to act in ways that are not loving, and not examples of Godly behavior.
Think of it this way, let’s say you had a job with some employer and as part of your job you had to wear a uniform easily identifying you as an employee of that company. For this example let us assume that your company is overall a good company, and made up of good people. Then some other employees do some horrible things that smear the good name of your company. Whenever someone sees you in the uniform, they now assume you and the rest of the company are bad people because of the actions of some bad apples. It is no fairer to judge you by the actions of others than it is to judge God by the actions of people.
There is a more accurate definition of the church, which is that the church is the collective body of Christians, regardless of national, political, racial, or any other division worldwide. This group is much smaller than the group of people that belong to the various denominations around the world. This group will tend to act in a more God-like way, and they are much better, but never perfect, representatives of God.
Throughout history the church has done many great and powerful works of charity. Christians out-give the world in money and charitable acts. Great organizations like The Salvation Army, and many others came out of Christianity. We do have many bad apples among us, but that is no reflection on the God that loved you so much He sent His one and only son to die in your place and take your punishment so that you did not have to.
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[ Created as part of my service at GotQuestions.org ]