"Log?!" we say. We do not see the log in our own eye for several reasons:
 
We do not clearly see who God is and who we are. The Lord our God is holy, holy, holy. We have been made the righteousness of God in Christ. We belong to the Lord. We are utterly new in him. His name is on us. He himself lives within us. We see the evils of a culture shaking its fist in God's face and, by comparison, our evils seem mild. But God sees our evils in light of the capacity for righteousness he has put within us - a capacity beyond all we can ask or imagine. The world is doing what its DNA demands; we are rejecting what our DNA demands. Even worse, our sins profane God's holy name, for we - not the world - are identified with him.
 
The sins riddling American church culture are generational, as well as corporate. Our physical and spiritual forebears agreed to enter into these sins. Each generation since (including ours) has tacitly or actively endorsed this agreement. Many Christians in the US do not understand how to deal with generational sin issues through repentance, renouncing, forgiving, blessing and coming in the opposite spirit. Many Christians, in fact, consider the whole idea of generational sin suspect. Even those who have dealt with generational sin issues in families have generally not dealt with generational sins passed down through their spiritual bloodline. It is these accumulated, undealt-with spiritual and physical bloodline issues that are doing us in.
 
Further, these generational, corporate sins have permeated our church culture - rural and urban, evangelistic and charismatic, regardless of race, denomination and location. If "everyone else is doing it," it doesn't seem so bad. It seems like something we just have to accept as the church being human. When the sin-roots do produce destruction we cannot ignore, we tend to see the sin issue as isolated, immediate (that is, not connected with any previous sin) and generally fixable by moving people around.
 
We decide, for example: "The pastor needs to leave." OR, "I need to change churches." OR, "If the head deacon would resign, everything would be all right." Yet, because of the pervasive and generational nature of the sin we need to expunge, the rearranging of people in the churches at best only provides temporary relief of symptoms.
 
For example, sometimes certain individuals in a church align themselves with these sin roots in a way that causes much destruction. Abruptly, they leave, and the church breathes a collective sigh of relief. Yet before long, as if out of nowhere, others of like mind rise up, creating similar or worse issues.
 
Other times, believers who are truly seeking to follow Christ leave churches or denominations because they have encountered devastating displays of one or more of these corporate sin issues. It is good to follow Christ when he says, "Come out! Be free!" Yet, because individuals have not seen or renounced the entirety of their enmeshed iniquitous roots, they carry their agreement with these iniquities into the believing communities where they go. Also, because the corporate Body of Christ has not renounced and turned from these sins, the individuals who relocate find that the enmeshed roots have preceded them there.
 
There's another key reason we haven't seen the log in our own eye: Sin in our midst embarrasses us. Because a primary root issue is pride, because we consider ourselves the Good Guys in the battle between good and evil, because the last thing we want is to be embarrassed, we've convinced ourselves that corporate repentance will bring shame to Christ when, in fact, the opposite is true.
 
And so, not seeing the log, we haven't pulled it out.
 
Beloved of the LORD, that log has been planted in our church culture, blocking our vision, long enough to develop very deep, very snarled roots.

Early in US history, the church entered into a tangle of corporate sins that grieved and quenched the Spirit of God, halting the Second Great Awakening and prematurely aborting or sabotaging every revival in the US since then.
 
From that day until this, the enemy has successfully focused the eyes of the church on selective personal sins (often those outwardly visible and manageable by outward control) and on the corporate sins of the "nation" (sins we primarily associate with and blame on the unchurched), while keeping us blinded to the depth and height and length and breadth of the church's root sins. When we have recognized any of our corporate sins, we have tried to deal with each sin individually. But because each is deeply enmeshed with a number of other sins, we have seen little, if any, effect in overcoming even the select sins we have acknowledged and repented for.
 
During the season that the church in this young nation made a series of wrong choices, snuffing revival and inviting bondage and impotence, the church in the South BOTH identified itself with biblical Christianity AND actively opened itself to every sin that formed our web of iniquitous roots. While pointing fingers at everyone else, calling ourselves the only true church and terming the South itself "Zion," our spiritual forefathers led the way in normalizing the cohabitation of what God adores and what He abhors.
 
Today, the evangelical and charismatic church culture in the US can trace many of its roots - both good and bad - back to the Bible Belt. We've assumed that, if it came from the Bible Belt, it's a good root. As a result, we've anchored ourselves in things that cannot produce good fruit.
 
God is saying to the US church culture, "Discern between the good roots and the bad. If you would strengthen the good roots, if you would bear much good fruit, you must acknowledge and pull up iniquitous roots."
 
We cannot successfully remove one worthless root, for the tree will re-grow it. We cannot successfully remove one thread in a web, for the spider will re-spin it. We must demolish the entire web and the spider at its center. We must pull up the entire iniquitous root system.
 
Further, we must do what Colossians 2:7 urges: "Have the roots [of your being] firmly and deeply planted [in Him, fixed and founded in Him], being continually built up in Him . . ." (AMP, italics mine). We must draw our life solely from Jesus Christ, who said, "I am the Root" (Rev. 22:16).
 
All of which is impossible, of course - unless the Spirit whom we have grieved and quenched fills us and accomplishes it through us.