Writer Henry David Thoreau said, “The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.”

We live in a wounded world. If we’re not careful, we can find ourselves adding insult to injury shrouded in the justice of our causes. Allowing ourselves to become caught up in the affairs of this life, we’re capable of decimating others just because they’re different.

We judge ourselves based on our intentions and we judge others based on their actions. This pitfall permits treating others in the most contemptuous manner possible. As if one person, capable of becoming so other than another person, somehow stops being a person all together.

This “us” versus “them” maladaptive thinking is a far cry from the truth and has been used to justify the most heinous mistreatment and alienation of people who we think are different than we are.

Think it’s not possible for this kind of savagery to sabotage our civilized world? Think again, because this brutal mindset is alive and well in places that deserve better than our modernized versions of vigilante mob justice.

You would think Sundays would be free from these injurious injustices, but oftentimes it actually epitomizes them. Thank God there are exceptions to every rule and places can be found, in the body of Christ, where people postpone judgment for understanding; knowing it’s not their right to judge the actions of others based on their good intentions.

But we all know exceptions prove the rule exists. Statistics show around 1,500 pastors leave the ministry each month and 1,300 were terminated by the local church each month, many without cause. And as much as 80 percent of pastors’ children report they no longer attend church because of the impact it had on their parents.

And what about families who might have a child with autism or an intellectual disability? How and where do they fit in on Sunday?

And what about segregation on Sunday? Schools in America might no longer be segregated, but churches are. In fact, Sunday during church you will find segregation alive and well testifying to the truth of how we really feel by who we fellowship with or without.

For regular church attenders, take a look around you this Sunday and notice whose not there.

If you so choose, you can justify your good intentions by accusing my actions of just being excuses for writing candidly to you about what’s really going on.

Unfortunately, these are not excuses. They are real reasons.

Sunday is rapidly becoming Done-day for a growing majority of Ameri­cans. One report states 80 percent of Americans are finding more fulfilling things to do on the weekends.

For those who care, I don’t believe this is an instance of what’s happening as much as it’s an instance of what’s not happening. By in large, we no longer act like the body of Christ as much as comptrollers of church buildings.

Healthy competition is the American way and ambition can help you build more than castles in the sand on these shores. Before you continue judging my actions with your good intentions, let me share a bit of truth with you empowering us all to handle the fruit that’s suppose to bloom on Sundays differently and with more delicate care.

The church is a body, not a building. It is community to be engaged, not a competition for attendance.

The church was a community of believers who gathered with one another to engage in communion and to celebrate what Christ had done for them. It wasn’t about property and buildings, it was about loving people and becoming believers.

This was a community movement bigger than any building.

The household of God and the church was preserved by the delicate handling of the blooms of its fruit. Believers in Christ, abolishing all barriers, became the family of faith.

Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book, “Life Together” said, “Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”

So how does judging my actions based on your intentions proliferate justice as it relates to expanding Life Together and building genuine Christian community beyond church building borders?

Dr. T.J. Kimble of Radcliff is a clinical pastoral counselor. He can be reached at tj@yourbestlifenowcounseling.com.

Church, we have a problem. We’re in a place where we achieve successful re-entry into society, reclaiming our place as salt and light of the earth, or risk being incinerated by the atmosphere of our culture and ultimately seen as obsolete and irrelevant. Most people I speak with minimize the issues downplaying their severity.

It’s like someone’s given them a sleeping pill and they’re half awake.

Other generations have undergone similar cultural re-entries and navigated very volatile experiences.

During World War II. Dietrich Bonhoeffer headed an illegal seminary for the Confessing Church, a congregation of believers who refused to sign an oath of allegiance to Hitler and the Nazi Party, and ultimately would be martyred for his faith.

Concerning the condition of the culture and the church of his time, he said, “And yet the cultured cannot go along wholly with the Confessing Church in an honest way because of their spiritual traditions. In their isolation, their doubts, their external temporizing and their internal loss of foundation, they are the sacrifice of Cultural-Protestantism.”

And today, not much has changed.

“Cultural-Protestantism” cannot go along with the truth, honestly, because of their spiritual traditions.

What’s the result of this re-entry meltdown pervasively reshaping the foundations of modern church experience? A mass exodus from the traditional church.

Think the case for modern “Cultural Protestantism” is being overstated?

Then consider these facts:

• A majority of 20-somethings — 61 percent of today’s young adults — had been churchgoers at one point during their teen years, but they now are spiritually disengaged, according to researcher George Barna.

• Another survey from Answers in Genesis of 1,000 20- to 29-year-olds found 95 percent attended church regularly during their elementary and middle school years and 55 percent attended church regularly during high school. But of the 1,000 surveyed, only 11 percent still were going to church during their early college years.

The two-thirds problem was confirmed by Barna and USA Today, which found 70 to 75 percent of Christian youth leave the church after high school.

From the inside looking out, having the privilege to talk with young people in crisis, I have some findings of my own.

Young people don’t feel safe asking questions that challenge the status quo. If you cast doubts about certain fundamental doctrines or denominational traditions, you could be ostracized. Questions don’t feel safe and having doubts doesn’t seem allowed.

The 20-somethings I talk with say some pastors seem overly dogmatic and controlling. Some issues of faith always will be cut and dried, but what about the gray areas where pastors and leadership pressure you to conform?

These are such things as healthy boundaries and diversity, but telling parishioners how to think and believe about non-essentials of the faith, run their financial affairs, or where and how long to be away on vacation seems to be an overreach.

Research for the book “Unchristian” found 87 percent of Americans label Christians as judgmental.

Many have left the church because of others acting as judge and jury over trivial matters. Often, attempts to judge end up being misjudgments at best and alienate others from the faith all because they’re not just like you.

The more insecure people are, the more they fear others who are different. That fear, and not faith, drives them to convert others into proselytes who look and act just like them.

People who have passed through my office have expressed a deep desire to feel included and not lectured. If there are inner circles in churches where favoritism is shown to certain families or groups, people began to feel alienated and disenfranchised from the community of faith.

Insiders often don’t see these established inner groups, but visitors pick up on them very easily.

According to Barna, only 44 percent of people who attend church every week say they experience God at church.

People want a relevant community of believers to share meaningful relationships. They don’t want to feel like a pawn on a church chessboard that’s manipulated around to be a sacrifice for “Cultural-Protestantism.”

Church, we have a problem.

Absenteeism is growing on Sundays in America because people don’t want pontification. Rather, they want to personally participate in the process of re-entry, avoiding being incinerated to death by the same worn platitudes.

People want participatory experiences contributing to meaningful relationships, where they share in the process of being salt and light in ways that reshape themselves and transforms “Cultural-Protestantism” into a community of faith experiences far more meaningful than any one-way, Sunday-morning conversation ever could be.

Let us be the saints or we will become the aints. Let us be the confessing church or let us perish.

Dr. T.J. Kimble of Radcliff is a clinical pastoral counselor. He can be reached at tj@yourbestlifenowcounseling.com.