Category Archives: Christianity

My Evangelical Friend…

Posted on by RJ

I just went another short round with my radical right gun totting evangelical friend on helping those less fortunate than us.  Here are some of his words replying to a post I made on FaceBook.

The root cause of most of our deficit problems is still those that work and produce must pay for the existence of all those that do not work or produce goods and services. Few functions in the government produce a good or service worthy of a salary.

My conservative evangelical friend very very often shouts that there are just too many “free loaders” in our country who are purposely living off the government instead of going out and getting jobs. His solution seems to be to just cut them off at the ankles and if they can’t exist then it is their problem; “those people” should not be our problems. They are simply a drain on our society!  They are keeping us from thriving. Of course he also goes on to say in this quote that anyone employed by our government are also free-loaders; they just get their money from a different pot! In this blanket statement he is including our teachers, fire fighter, policemen, government agents, FBI, FDA, Justice Department, social service agencies, and thousands of other workers trying to help us accomplish a safe and meaningful life.

There are so many places in Jesus’ words that are very counter to my conservative friend’s foundations; I just fail to understand how he, and so many  supposed Christians like him, can so easily ignore those messages. Jesus clearly tells us to be our brother’s keeper and even to joyfully give them the shirt off our backs if they need it. But, my conservative friend doesn’t seem joyful about anything in his life except maybe his guns and other similar stuff.

In talking with my conservative friend and so many like him I have come to find that his core political and seemingly life driving belief is that no one should get anything that they haven’t worked for and earned.  He rants and rants about this on every opportunity. What is so strange about this is that he then goes on to state that his spiritual foundations are that Jesus died for his salvation and there is nothing he can  or even need to do to earn it.  Therefore he readily admits that spiritually he is a free-loader himself who is getting something he as absolutely not earned.

How can a person’s political beliefs be so much in contrast to his supposedly spiritual beliefs? How can a person who calls himself a Christian totally lack compassion for those less fortunate them himself? This dichotomy continues to thoroughly astound me! How can the two co-exist in one person. How can a person accept Jesus’ sacrifices and then go on to ignore his words and adamantly refuse to help those around him who are struggling for even the basics in life???

The sad thing about all of this is that my conservative friend has many other who think the same way as he does surrounding him on his weekly church visits.  They are all hunkered down talking about the evil world out there and ranting and raving about people who are getting something they didn’t earn and then they go on to say that they are getting something they absolutely did not earn themselves. Many in this category truly in a heartfelt manner question why institutional church today is getting such a bad wrap lately. They seem dumbfounded by that fact. If they would get stop and listen to themselves once in a while they would know the reason.

The Clubhouse Effect…..

Posted on by RJ

I recently watched an interview of a Christian clergyman of twenty years.  He was having doubts about his faith.  All of us have doubts and one time or another. Even Mother Teresa was troubled by them. Having doubts is not too unusual but this particular minister’s doubts were leading him to make the leap back to an agnostic or even worse. This is sad but it is not really the purpose of this post.

During the interview the pastor noted something  I think he called the clubhouse effect. This is basically where religious beliefs take a back burner to maintaining a social life via church activities. In other words the social aspects of Christians usually trumps doctrinal beliefs. In Catholicism this is commonly called being a “cafeteria Catholic”.  But this practice is by no means limited to Catholics. Many, if not most, pick and choose what we want to believe in religious doctrine or just follow where they are led by their church leader. This practice of selected beliefs is almost always done at a very personal level.   It very seldom is discussed or exposed more publicly.

I can personally attest to the loss of a significant portion of my social life when I left a church.  Sometimes I regret having spoken up so much in doctrinal matters as to draw attention to myself. While many others in that church told me they agreed with much of what I said they did so in a very private manner so as not to jeopardize their church status.

One very interesting comment by the doubting clergyman was that  ”it is a dirty little secret that hardly anyone actually reads the Bible, especially on their own.  If they did churches would be in much more dire straits than they already are.” When I went out on my own to study the New Testament, that is without having certain verses constantly pointed out to me, I found the words of Jesus to say something much different from the established church  was feeding me on a weekly basis.  If I had relegated the Bible to its reserved place on my bookshelf as so many do I would likely still be a member of that church. Sometimes, but not often, I regret my decision to see what Jesus was really talking about…

What Language Did Adam & Eve Speak??

Posted on by RJ

Some Christians believe that each and every word in the Bible is literally true and without error. Even though I did not believe in a literal Bible I belonged to one of those churches at one time. I often asked embarrassing questions during our weekly bible study. Questions the clergy leader really didn’t care to try to answer.  Asking those questions is probably one of the reasons they tossed me out.

I never got to ask the question in the title of this post but I would be very interested in knowing how they might answer it. According to the biblical account Adam & Eve were the first humans. They had a lengthy relationship with God before they obtained the “knowledge of good and evil”. Some of their conversations seemed quite deep indeed.

Of course those who take Adam and Eve account as being literally true must then deny the existence of cave men, cave writing, ancient artifacts, and other forms of early man.  They even insist that the earth itself is only about six thousand years old! They must say all that evidence discounting their beliefs is either outright fraud on the part of our scientists or just God trying to trick us. They go to extreme lengths to hang on to their literal and inerrant stands. I do feel sorry for those who must deny so much of our history and archeological evidence. They have a hard time reckoning their version of history with established evidence. To that end most seem to treat science as an enemy of religion instead of being a God given tool to mankind.

But more sadly they spend so much time trying to justify their interpretations that they miss out on so much that the Lord tries to teach them in this day and age.  And of course in their stubborn insistence in literal stories they turn many away from learning about their creator.  The Bible has much to teach us about God and how he wants us to love him and love every one of our neighbors. It is a shame they don’t concentrate of the overall message and let some of the early biblical stories just be stories that teach us lessons about life.

Getting back to the original question, I would guess that the literalist’s answer to my question would be that they spoke some form of Greek or Aramaic.

Black Evangelicals, White Evangelicals, and Franklin Graham’s Repentance

Posted on by RJ

The following is an exerpt from a recent Sojourners.com emailing relative to Franklin Graham who now heads the Billy Graham Ministries. The author of the article is shown at the bottom.

When Franklin Graham expressed doubts about President Obama’s Christian faith during an interview on Morning Joe last week, it reminded me of an uncomfortable dinner I had in the late ‘90s.

I sat down for a pleasant meal in the home of two great friends — one of them a white evangelical faith leader deeply committed to social justice. Well into the evening’s conversation — when we’d dropped all our pretenses and our exchanges moved well past mealtime niceties — one friend asked me something that caught me entirely off guard.

“Do you think Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Christian?” he said.

I was dumbstruck. I had never heard anyone actually ask that question before.

“Yes,” I replied. “What would make you doubt that?”

As he explained, it became clear: My friend wasn’t sure whether Dr. King was a Christian because King’s Christianity didn’t look like my friend’s Christianity.

Dr. King valued justice. My friend valued justice.

King professed personal faith in Jesus. My friend professed personal faith in Jesus.

And yet my friend still was hung up about King’s faith because, to his eye, King didn’t seem interested in “evangelism” as my friend defined it — i.e. the practice of calling sinners into personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ, whose death on the cross is payment for our sins.

Twentieth-century white evangelical understanding of the Gospel guided (and in many ways defined) my friend’s Christian walk. Therein lies the disconnect between his Christian faith and Dr. King’s.

According to sociologists Michael Emerson and Christian Smith (authors of Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America), only one thing separates white and black evangelicals, but it makes all the difference in the world: Vastly different experiences of structural and systemic oppression……

Franklin Graham’s father, Dr. Billy Graham, didn’t always understand this, either. The elder Graham’s revivals began as segregated affairs, but the Supreme Court’s desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) agitated his conscience and he quickly course corrected. From that point on, Billy Graham never again held a segregated revival.

What’s more, in 1957 Dr. Graham invited Dr. King, to share his pulpit for a 16-week revival in New York City.

For Billy Graham, Martin King was a Christian.

In the last decade or so, a new generation of white evangelicals — such as my friends Shane Claiborne, Kelly Moltzen, Josh Harper, and others — have intentionally displaced themselves, moving into impoverished communities of color in order to gain the experience their parents and grandparents lacked. As a result, their white evangelical eyes are open…..

The president has clearly professed his belief that Jesus died on the cross as payment for his sins. And Obama repeatedly invokes the words of Jesus that guide his world view: “Just as you did to the least of these, you did to me.” (Matthew 25:40)

For a moment, Franklin Graham’s cynicism tested my own faith. I wondered if he had any idea that, when he questioned the president’s faith, it felt as if he were questioning my faith…..

Lisa Sharon Harper is the Director of Mobilizing at Sojourners. She is also co-author of Left, Right and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics and author of Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican … or Democrat


I too was disturbed that Franklin Graham questioned President Obama’s faith.  It seems there is something in the Bible about judging others faith.   Maybe Franklin Graham needs to study those verses more thoroughly. The basic problem here is just an on-going problem with Christian organizations in general today.  They seem to be in the business of doing their best to see who they can exclude from their groups rather than being inclusive as Jesus was. We are now roughly 39,000 different views of what Christ was here on earth to do and almost every one of them are thoroughly convinced that they are the only ones who have the “true” answer.

It saddens me to see the obvious political connotations behind Franklin Graham’s doubts of President Obama’s faith.  He should have learned his lessons better from his father.  He has since apologized for his comments but they should never have been made in the first place. It tells you something about the man who replaced Billy Graham in that ministry. He definitely has some learning to do.

Posted on by RJ

Welcome to the Red Letter Living Blog

This blog was the result of my three-year investigation, that concluded in August 2011, into the various forms of Christianity around today. Click the button above to see my conclusions.   While I now only post occasional thoughts here I am keeping the blog open so that others can see what I discovered on my journey. If you are interested I would suggest you look into the “Tags“,”Categories” or “Archives ” listing on the right side of the screen. Just click on any topic that interests you. One thing to notice is the date of the posting you are looking at.  Some of my thoughts and observations evolved over the three years of this study so keep that in mind.

If you are interested in what I might be blogging now see me at www.rjscorner.net

Today’s Church Building, What Would Jesus Do……

Posted on by RJ

I got to thinking recently about what did Jesus teach us about where we were supposed to come together to worship God. As I have mentioned before there is actually almost nothing in the Bible about this topic. But I can take the many other words of Jesus and postulate what he would likely say if he had addressed this area.  Here is what I think Jesus would say.

The ideal church building would be in someone’s home. If the group is too large for that then it would be in a rented facility that is used for other purposes the other six days of the week.  Things like a dance studio, a movie theater, or other similar places would be ideal.  When Jesus told the rich man that in order to be a follower of Jesus Christ he should sell everything he had and give it to the poor and then come and follow him he was pointing us in this direction. When we spend such large amount of money building giant cathedrals aren’t we actually repeating what the rich man was doing?  Aren’t we putting ourselves and our comfort before God’s commands?

Jesus clearly told us that the church is not the building, it is the people themselves. As long as there are people in need, and as he said there will always be people in need, we should spend our collections in meeting those needs and not on lavish, or even not so lavish, buildings. If we did that then we might not have to rely on our government to do it in our place. The early Christians did meet in homes but somewhere along the line the Catholic church turned their attention to brick and mortar and became distracted from people’s needs.

So, in my mind Jesus would be pleased if we just stopped all these massive building projects in his name. Why do we spend so much money on buildings that are basically only used on Sunday mornings?  Are we actually just building comfortable club houses for ourselves?  God does not intend us to build monuments, some would say idols, to Him but instead to build loving relationships with each other including the least of these.

I Don’t Care To Know Anything More About God….

Posted on by RJ

The title to this post certainly sounds like an ultra pompous statement doesn’t it?  But this is indeed what some Christians are saying when they cling to the “Sola Scriptura” doctrine. To say that God has nothing else to teach us besides what is contained the documents that were collected more than sixteen hundred years ago is depriving them of much needed help in living in the world today.  In that regard I feel deeply sorry for those that stubbornly cling to the concept of “Sola Scriptura”. They are depriving themselves of lessons God has been teaching the rest of us for so many years.

But it seems at least to my simple mind that Jesus told us something different in that same book. Why do some overlook those words? Let’s look at those red letters.

I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Jesus clearly told us in these and similar passages that God will teach us additional things when we are ready to learn them.  In my opinion we are still learning things from the Holy Spirit today and will continue into the future. To say that God finished giving us lessons and insight almost two thousand years ago is utter nonsense to me!  As examples when the Bible was compiled people were just not ready to hear that women were not property of men or that slavery was not an institution blessed by God. It would be many years before we were ready to hear those types of lessons. 

One of the lessons in the above text I still don’t really understand but maybe someday I will and that is why did Jesus have to leave in order for the Holy Spirit to come?  But I am certainly grateful for the messages that the Holy Spirit continues to give us generally and me personally about living our lives as Jesus expects.

Getting Back to the Red Letters….

Posted on by RJ

I have been away from the red letters for too long in this blog. For that reason we will spend the next several posts getting back to the core of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and that is to take his words and especially his commands to heart.

Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  ”If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

John 14, 11-15

I chose these words because of several things. One is that Jesus says that he is in the Father and the Father is in him. Some say this is a foundation for the concept of the Trinity but I don’t necessarily take it as such. To me it just says the Jesus and God in heaven are aligned in everything Jesus does and says. So, we are to treat Jesus’ words as if they came directly from God the Father himself. Let’s look as some of those words in this text.

Jesus says if you believe in God then you will imitate him in the works that he did. But he even goes beyond that and says that if you really believe in God you will actually do greater works than Jesus! So much for the belief that we are all just poor miserable sinners incapable of anything good!!  Jesus, by the words found here, was staking his reputation on his actions. He even said if you don’t necessarily believe in me then believe in the works that I do. He certainly puts a lot of emphasis on works in these words doesn’t he. In that regard when he says when you ask in my name (and in the works that I do), I will do it, he is saying when you do the works that I do I will be there to help you out. So when you do good works Jesus is there to help you out. What an awesome thought!

The final verse in this quote is the kicker. If you love me you will keep my commandments. Just what were the commandments of Jesus. He told us elsewhere in this words that the new covenant he brought only contained two commands and that is to love God and to love each other. He also made it clear that all the Old Testaments laws could be wrapped up in his new covenant and therefore in these two commands.  Notice that Jesus did not call his commands “suggestions if you feel like it”, he called them commands. These words like so many others found in the red letters goes contrary to what many who call themselves Christians today espouse.  When Jesus commands we should be listening but it seems many of us have glossed over these type words to make them almost meaningless. I am certainly not one of those and I hope and pray that each and every one of you who are reading these words aren’t either. When Jesus commands I am certainly going to listen.

Putting God in a Box….

Posted on by RJ

When we insist that our version of God is the only true one are we putting God in a Box?  That is are we limiting him to how we currently perceive him or maybe just want him to be? I think that is the case with many Christians today. Here are some examples of putting God in a restrictive box:

  • The Bible contains everything we need to know about God — Jesus clearly told us that we are not, nor in my opinion will we ever be, ready to know everything about God; he will wait until the appropriate time to give us additional information as we need it.  When we block out that new information we are blocking out God himself and limiting him to what we currently know about him.
  • When Jesus said xxx he was definitely talking about yyy — This is the practice of taking something that Jesus has said and turning it around to mean something else. This seems to be too common in some of today’s religious institutions.  When Jesus told us the story about doing for the “least of these” he concluded it by saying if you don’t do this then our father in heaven will not recognize you on judgment day.  Those are direct words from Jesus that seem to have been totally changed into something else today, particularly by those who deem “works” to be a totally unnecessary aspect of Christianity.
  • All we need to know about God is he saved us wretched beings from eternal damnation — Several Christian denominations today put all of Jesus’ messages to be centered around his coming to save mankind from themselves.  They fixate on our sinfulness instead of our potential.  In that regard they make God into our savior and for the most part ignore the he is also, and maybe more importantly, our Lord. They turn Jesus into a life insurance policy and ignore the other 90% of his messages to us.
  • God is only going to save people who believe as we do. Everyone else is damned to eternal agony. — If this is not putting God in a box I don’t know what is. The people who fixate on “everyone is going to hell except us” have made God into their own personal savior. They totally discount the possibility that God just may, as he said through Jesus, desire that all men come to know him. They don’t give God the power to do what he says.
The above examples are just a few that are around today where people fashion a god to meet their personal needs and then limit him to that task. It is ludicrous for us to limit God to what we want him to be based our current understanding. When we do that we are saying that we know the heart of God and there is nothing else to be learned about him.  When we say we know everything about God and what he wants us to know isn’t that to one degree or another  putting ourselves in God’s place.
God is who he is and that is something that none of us can ever totally fathom.  To try to keep God contained in your personal or even denominational vision of him is almost as detrimental as not believing in God at all. God cannot be contained in your versions of him nor can he be totally contained in a small compilation of words written by men about him.

What We Read….

Posted on by RJ

This post will be sort of a first review of the book entitled The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith. I say sort of because I will primarily be discussing something that the book brought to mind and not the book itself. The book is primarily about how many evangelicals have put the Bible into an impossible position by their very narrow interpretations. It goes into quite a bit of detail to back up this proposition. While the subject of the book is captivating the book is somewhat dry and full of biblical terms not commonly known by laymen. I will struggle through the book to glean the info it provides but it will not be particularly enjoyable. With this brief introduction out of the way let’s  get on to the topic at hand.

Here is a quote from the book to start this discussion:

If what I have said in the book so far is true, one would think that biblicists would be deeply troubled by interpretive pluralism and the implications it has for the biblicists theory of scripture, revelation, and truth. But for the most part they are not…..One possibility concerns the structure of social networks among biblicists. We know sociologically that the principle of “homophily” (love for and attraction to what is similar to oneself) is one of the strongest forces in social life. As a result biblicists (and many other Christians) who interpret the Bible in the same way have a very strong tendency to cluster together into homogeneous social networks…

Long story short those who believe in a very narrow view of the Bible never study anything outside of that belief. So, if the only thing you expose yourself to is your narrow view of something it is very difficult to see the consequences of your actions or to effect any change in your belief system.  During some discussion with my “literal and inerrant” friend this topic came up occasionally. I had asked him a number of times if he had read this or that book and he always said he didn’t. Once I gave him a copy of a book that was in no way controversial as far as theology was concerned. It concentrated totally on God’s love for us and our fellow-man.  About two weeks later I asked him if he had read the book and he said that he skimmed it and found too much that he didn’t agree with to read anymore. I was totally shocked by his comment! The book was about God’s love and that was it.

This and other incidents like it showed me that my “literal and inerrant” friend read very narrowly when it came to religious matters. It saddens me that those who hold very narrow views of God and scripture will make no attempt to understand those who view things differently. I can only imagine that they might believe that if they do venture outside their current belief system they may come to doubt some of the things they hold so dearly.

The way to enlightenment in almost any area of life it to study the different possibilities and then come to a knowledgeable and nuanced conclusion.  By locking out that possibility the “literal and inerrant” group are insuring their eventual demise and given the current church membership statistics that demise seems to be approaching more quickly these days.

If God Is Love (Part 5)

Posted on by RJ

This is a continuation of my discussions of the book entitled “When God Is Love” by Philip Gulley and James Mulholland. Here is the quote for today:

Working to make the world a more gracious place wasn’t a priority in the churches of my childhood. Some of this negligence was a result of apolcalyptic interpretations in which the world was doomed and damned anyway. One man insisted we shouldn’t work for peace in the Middle East because we were simply postponing Armageddon and the return of Christ. However, the primary reason the church didn’t have time to change the world was because we expended so much energy trying to save souls. We’d work for weeks on revivals, evangelism programs, mission support, and the like. We didn’t have time for soup kitchens, visiting prisoners, or working with the homeless — unless of course, we could figure out a way to work in an altar call.

When I became convinced of God’s intention to save every person, my perspective on the purpose of life changed. Salvation became a lifelong adventure in which God is gently and patiently drawing us away from self-absorption and toward authentic relationship with God and one another. The point of life was no longer to get saved or to save others. The purpose of life was to live graciously. Freed of personal anxiety about God’s acceptance and no longer obsessed with creating others in my own image, I was able to focus on what it means to be rather than do.

Working to make the world a more gracious place is still not much of a priority in today’s church. While I am yet to be fully in the camp that God will in his own way bring all souls to him, I am fully on board that much of the current church approach to those outside the faith is misguided. When we quit looking at others as projects to be converted and instead as fellow human being to be loved our whole approach to them changes. They become fellow children of God and not heathens to be saved.  The way we point others to Christ is through our actions and not our words or even necessarily those words found in our ancient books.

Lets finish up with a follow up quote on this subject.

Saving souls isn’t about altar calls, but about responding graciously to those we encounter in our daily lives. Being gracious is not about inviting others to our church, but about living an inviting life — one both attractive and winsome. The purpose of life isn’t to create more Christians , but “to let our lights shine before others, so they will see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven” Matthew 5:16

A few posts ago, and several other times on this blog, I have stated that we all at some time, and often many times, question what is our purpose in life. Why did God create us. I think Mr. Gulley and Mr. Mulholland have got it right in that regard. We are to be like the Son and let our lights shine in order to point others to Christ. Alter calls and such just don’t hack it. They never have and they never will.

I am Humbled….

Posted on by RJ

It is amazing to me that this blog is almost three years old and now contains  300 posts. It also humbles me that so many really care enough about what I have to say to come back so often.

  • If you want to see what I have talked about in the past the best way is to click on one of the topics in the tag cloud below or just search for a word or two in the search box above.
  • If you want to see some more, outside the area of Red Letter Living, that I blog about see my other blog at RJ’s Corner
Thanks for making me a part of your daily life. Let’s all strive to live by the Red Letters each and every day of our lives.

The Nature of Man…

Posted on by RJ

Since this is my 300th post to this blog and as I am coming off a rather long hiatus, I thought I would handle an impossible topic and that is the nature of man.  I apologize in advance for this post’s length but describing the nature of man will take a few more than the five hundred words I try to limit my posts to. :)

The nature of man is to seek God -- Most of us are on this earth for seventy-some years and at least sometimes, and often many times, we have a deep spiritual urge to know where we came from and what it is we are supposed to do while we are here. Most of us believe that there is someone or something called God who brought us to life. What does this God want from us? Why did he give us existence? These questions have personally plagued me throughout my life but I am not alone in that regard. Seeking the meaning of life is built into the basic structure of us all.

The nature of man is self centered and self destructive– Some say that man’s self centered nature stem from the “survival of the fittest” attitude from our ancient past.  That is in the early days of man only the strongest survived; there was no place for looking out for others in that mode. As a history buff and someone who has seen man’s inhumanity to man it is obvious that the man is still a very self centered creature.  Jesus told us to love one another. That and to love God were the only two commandments in his new covenant that he brought to us. But as cited above the nature of man is contrary to Jesus’ command. The history of the world is, for the most part recorded in the histories of our wars. Just go to the history section of any modern library or bookstore and you will see that to be the fact.  We seem to define ourselves as to who we have killed; not who we have loved. Just look at the love affair with weapons of destruction among us, especially in the U.S. Our technology seems to advance first in our war machines and then migrate to other areas. We have become total experts in killing each other but total failures in loving each other.

The nature of man is to ignore the teaching of God --  Many of us who were brought up to be Christians, have been taught that Christianity is a “do nothing” religion. God has done it all for us and absolutely nothing is expected of us but to believe in him. With this mentality we are at least indirectly trained to ignore the teachings of God beyond this one thought. We were taught that God views us as nothing but poor miserable sinners and expects nothing good from us. This “do-nothing” attitude is the reason that many outside of Christianity feel Christianity as a false religion. Hindus have a rather strict list of requirements that are deemed mandatory by their religion. Of course the same goes for Muslims. They, like their Jewish counterparts are even told what they are allowed to eat and how many times a day they are to pray.  With 80% of those in the world today believing that God wants us to do certain things and act certain ways it is hard for them to believe that a god who says nothing is required is not a false god.

Of course much of this “do nothing” mentality comes from a few of the letters of St. Paul not from Jesus himself who many times said just the opposite. In order to maintain this stream of logic it is necessary to ignore much, and I would even say most, of Jesus teachings.  Of course, those of us who look at “all ” the words of Jesus know that he intended those who called themselves his follower to do and act according to his words. Being a follower of Jesus Christ is definitely not a “do nothing “ proposition. How did so much of Christianity get this so wrong?  So many who call themselves Christians have latched onto a scant few pieces of Jesus’ words and thrown out the rest. This saddens me deeply. The most glaring example of this looking past the words of Jesus come from the “Great Commission” contained in Matthew 28:19-20:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
20 teaching them to obey all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

There are so many who quickly cite verse 19 and then go on to ignore verse 20 where Jesus tells us to do what he commands of us. This selectively choosing the words of Jesus seems to be so prevalent in today’s churches I at times refrain from calling myself a Christian. Instead I am beginning to simply say that I am a follower of Jesus Christ.

The next time in a corresponding manner I will be tackling an even more impossible task and that is to try to understand the nature of God.

If God is Love (Part 2)

Posted on by RJ

This is a continuation of my collection of snippets from the book by Philip Gulley entitled If God is Love.

The Psalmists boats, “Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hate. I count them my enemies” (Psalm 139:21-22). Hatred, when directed at those we have judged wicked, becomes a sign of religious devotion rather than a grievous sin. The enemy is not loved, but destroyed, not prayed for, but preyed upon.

We can protest religious hatred and violence are sins of the past, but to do so we must ignore current Christian visions of the future. How do we explain the tremendous popularity of the “Left Behind” series of books? These books, which have sold millions of copies have spawned two movies, portray a future in which Evangelical Christians are saved while everyone else is destroyed. They proclaim a Jesus with a sword in hand atop a charging steed, initiating a violent end.

Our violent religious past and expectations of a wrathful future impinge on Christian behavior today. David Beneke, a leader in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, discovered this reality shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks. He was suspended for eighteen months from his duties and required to defend himself before a variety of denominational panels. His sin was not something as radical as believing in the salvation of all people. His crime was joining with Muslim, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, and Sikh religious leaders in a prayer service at Yankee Stadium. He was accused of praying with “heathens”. He said “This ordeal reveals the hard side of Christianity”.

If fairness, similar stories abound in other religious traditions. This arrogant exclusivity plagues all the great religions. Adherents of each faith hate the “other” — Christians hate heathens; Muslims hate infidels; Jews hate Gentiles. For many, religion is how we decide who to love and who to hate.

As I have said many times Jesus melted down the Old Testament laws into just two: Love God and Love your fellow man. Hate was not in this mix. Why do so many current day religious institutions base so much of their practices on hate? One thing I love about reading Philip Gulley is that he doesn’t pull any punches. He certainly didn’t in this example. :)

Lessons Learned….

Posted on by RJ

I have been getting hit by some because I don’t quote the Bible often enough for them.  As I have stated many times before I am just not a “chapter and verse” Christian. I do read the Bible frequently but instead of memorizing the words I try to learn the lessons behind the words and then attempt to make those lessons a part of my daily life. As far as I am concerned there are just too many “bible thumpers” around today.  I will not be one of those.  When I was in my godless years the bible thumpers constantly quoting this sentence and then that one actually had a negative effect on me. I might have come to God sooner if I had not been exposed to them. When I accepted Christ back in my life many years ago I vowed to never be like them.

This topic also goes back to one a few posts ago about not being able to see the forest for the trees. If you are too focused on each of the words (trees) you lose site of the overall message (forest) those words are meant to convey.  And as I have also  said several times before anyone, if they look hard enough can find some “words” in the Bible to back up whatever circumstance they want to push.  By looking at the lessons the Lord intended us to discover we can apply them to our lives and therefore be more pleasing to God. I am not one of those who think that God views me a something less than a bowl of snot. Yes I am a sinner but I am also a saint. It is my job to make sure that I be more saint than sinner. If I do that I believe that God is pleased with the responsibilities he has put upon me. If I lay back and say that I can’t do anything because I am a poor miserable sinner then I must realize that I am  shunning the responsibilities that God has given to each of us. We are to do two things while on this earth, to love God and to Love each other.

So here I am as usual telling you that God loves you and wants you to take his message of love into your heart. Until you do that you will always be seeking something that seems to be missing from your life. Taking on the responsibilities that God puts on you is a life filling ambition.

Contemplating the All Powerful God and the All Loving God…

Posted on by RJ

The Old Testament has always been a struggle for me. I find far too many places where God’s wrath is brutally shown. This is in such a total contrast with Jesus Christ I know in the New Testament. It is almost like the good cop/bad cop scenarios that play out so much on the TV cop shows. I tend to refer to it as the all powerful God vs. the all loving God. Can the two really co-exist or did God basically change his management style between the Old Testament and the New Testament or you could say between the old and the new covenant? These are the things I have been thinking about lately. I know they are theological in nature and I have sworn off that sort of thing but it still crops up from time to time. I just can’t seem to help it.

I must admit that I almost ignore the power side of God. In that sense I seem to be in conflict with many evangelical religious establishments today who  revel in God’s power. They deem that God is all powerful and absolutely everything that happens happens because He has willed it.  One of the dictionary definitions of the word will  is: the faculty of conscious and especially of deliberate action.

So following this “all powerful” to it’s conclusion means that God deliberately brought millions of children into existence so that he could kill one every three seconds today by depriving them to have safe drinking water or enough to food to eat! Or in another example he purposefully created all the dictators of the world so that they could kill thousands (millions collectively) of the people for little or no reason.  The people who  pray to the all powerful God say they don’t understand these sort of things but God must have a divine purpose for his extreme brutality.  I find it very difficult to even contemplate praying to that kind of god.

Here is how I see all of this: 

I kind of believe in the God of the Possible as illustrated by Greg Boyd in one of his many books. That along with the fact that God gave man free will answers the good god/bad god dichotomy for me. No, God is not responsible for all those children dying. That pitiful condition belongs totally to us humans. We are the ones who can’t seem to get along with one another.

Jesus told us to love one another; we just can’t seem to get that right especially when it comes to loving across national borders. God gave us free will and except for some very very rare circumstance he does not go back on his word.  It is not God doing his will, as some say, that causes all the suffering in the world it is that WE don’t do God’s will to love one another.

I know I have no right to speculate but so many theologians do it every day so here goes. I do kind of believe that God did change his approach on how to guide us between the old and the new covenants. He could see that the “powerful God” approach just didn’t work with us sinful human being and at that point He just decided to love us anyway.  God’s love is called agape love that is it doesn’t have conditions attached. What the ramification of that has concerning heaven and hell are a matter for a future post.

Wanted: 1,000 Pastors For the Poor

Posted on by RJ

Source:  Wanted: 1,000 Pastors For the Poor – Jim Wallis – God’s Politics Blog.

Sojourners, which is a Christian based organization founded on the principle that  Christians are called to be their brother’s keeper and that governments are accountable for the well-being of all their citizens. The source post is a call for 1,000 pastors to come forward and say cutting the safety net out from under those in dire needs should be the last thing to take the axe in today’s deficit reduction mantra (These are my words not Sojourners)

Here is part of the letter calling for 1,000 local pastors to stand up for the poor in their communities:

We are local pastors. Our lives are committed to our churches and communities … We work, pray, and do whatever we can to remain faithful to the responsibility of every Christian to help the poor. Still, we can’t meet the crushing needs by ourselves. We do our best to feed the hungry, but charitable nutrition programs only make up 6% of total feeding programs in the country while the government makes up 94% …  We have seen this support allow young people to be the first members of their families to get college degrees, ensure mothers can feed their children a healthy diet, enable those with disabilities to live fulfilling lives, give much-needed medical care to those who can’t  afford it, support seniors, provide housing for families, and help people in finding a job.

As the post, and the words above mention, presently only 6% of the needs of feeding the poor come from charitable programs (that includes Christian and secular sources and only includes the U.S. ). Since Christians can’t/won’t step up to answer Jesus’ call we must insist that your government representatives continue to fill the gap for us.  As Ron Paul, a Libertarian candidate for president has said, we must cut absolutely everything possible for other programs/budgets before we start cutting strings from the people’s safety net.

I wonder if there are 1,000 pastors out there willing to take this call?

A Vast Institution Based on a Few Bones…..

Posted on by RJ

This is going to be a short post about the religious establishments of today. I hope this closes out my recent thoughts in this area. I really want to move on to other things about Jesus. This post is based on some words in the book entitled If the Church Were Christian by Philip Gulley. Here are those words:

We have built a vast institution based on these “hints” Jesus gave us.  But we should never delude ourselves into thinking that today’s church sprang directly from the mind and witness of Jesus.  All we have is extrapolation, a few bones upon which have been erected a larger organism.”

As Mr. Gulley pointed out further in his book this is like building a dinosaur skeleton based on just a couple of vertebrae. Its seems a stretch to do that but in reality that is what actually happens at least with dinosaurs.

These words by Philip Gulley have had a serious effect on my life. Up until I read them I, as most people seem to do, ignored that Jesus said very little about establishing a formal religion to replace the then current day Judaism. As Mr. Gulley says we have taken a few bones and erected a vast institution around them. Since we are actually so fragmented you might even say we have established many vast institutions and each one thinks that they are the only ones to truly follow Jesus’ few words in this area.

I am hard pressed to really know what the “proper” response to this dilemma should be? Most of what we know as the Christian church is actually based on the words of Paul not Jesus. I know Paul was a big time guy in the Jewish hierarchy so starting a new religious establishment is where he would naturally migrate. Was Paul inspired by God? At some level I’m sure he was but was it really Jesus’ intention to let Paul and a few others  show us the “rules” on how to live as followers of Jesus? I personally am just not ready to accept that premise in totality.

Reading Too Much Into the Words…..

Posted on by RJ

I must admit that I have become pretty turned off by most theological things. At one time I was deeply embedded in theology and studied it on almost a daily basis. But after several years at it I discovered that, like the original Bob Newhart TV show character did about psychology, that theology is pretty much a crock! :)  Of course the business of theology is pretty much interpreting scriptures.

Many of us get carried away with “interpreting” scriptures. We take a message that says one thing and try to turn it into something else or in some cases we might take  add a few words to make it mean exactly what we want.  This post is sort of aligned with the one about mining tidbits in scriptures but in my mind intentionally misinterpreting the words to fit a particular agenda, as some seem to do, is even more harmful. I think much of this, especially by the amateur theologian, is a very innocent practice. We read the words and automatically think it means one particular thing. So, we add a word or two to make that meaning clearer. Much of this “adding words” is innocent in nature but some of it is very intentional and not for noble purposes but more for self glorification.

When I personally look at Jesus’ words I try to take them for what they say, not necessarily what I want them to say. In some places I am disappointed that he didn’t go on to say something a little clearer to me but I am not about to intentionally put words in Jesus’ mouth! If anyone has the ability to say what he means it surely was Jesus.

I must admit that when I read the words of Jesus in totality,  and I do this on at least a semi-annual basis, he spends too much time talking about the kingdom of heaven and other such things for me. Since I am an altruist through my soul I want him to say more about “the least of these” and being “my brother’s keeper”.  He does speak often about that but not enough for me. Some of Jesus’ words just don’t make much sense to me, at least at this stage of my life. I know there are a myriad of theologians out there to “help” me with those areas. I certainly know that there are many who are more wise than I am but in reality I’m pretty sure most are just guessing as I do.

I try very hard is not to add words or change the meanings of what Jesus says to fit my particular agendas. I pray that I will always become aware when I might be trying doing that.

The Duality of Jesus??

Posted on by RJ

I’m sure according to the theologians I have the wrong word in the title  but in this post I want to spend some time pondering the duality of Jesus. That is Jesus the man and Jesus the God.

Here are some words of a Quaker friend of mine:

It is not that Jesus is God more than he is human, or human more than he is God, but that the nonduality of human and divine is encapsulated in his life….                     http://www.quakerquaker.org/profiles/blogs/jesus-christ-a-integral

While I don’t by any means agree with all of this post this sentence got me to seriously think about Jesus being human  It is hard to conceive that Jesus being God could ever think and have emotional responses as we humans do!  I remember bringing this up as a young boy in Catholic grade school. I believe a nun’s, or maybe it was a priest’s , explanation made me more confused than before I blurted out the question. The answer basically, as a twelve-year-old remembers it, was that Jesus did not really understand his divinity until he was baptized by John the Baptist. The thirty years of his life up until that time he lived pretty much as a human, that is with human understandings and emotions. I don’t know how the responder to my question would have handled the gospel story about the young Jesus in the temple as I did not know enough to bring it up at the time.  I am not saying that this answer is according to Catholic teachings or even if I remember it correctly.  But this was the first encounter with my questions about Jesus being human.

After contemplating this dichotomy for the next fifty-some years I still have problems dealing with the human side of Jesus. Jesus being human would almost be like me morphing into the body of an ant and still maintaining my human intellect. Would any of my fellow ants really understand if I tried to tell them about that “other world” of human beings? Could I really understand and live my life as an ant? It seems my human side would drown out that possibility. To me the divinity of Jesus would also surely drown out his human nature. How can the two co-exist?

Jesus several times in the Bible said he did not know the answers that God the Father knew. This goes to the understanding of the trinity more than the human side of Jesus but maybe in that response Jesus was displaying his human nature. If as the theologians conceived several centuries after Jesus left the earth that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three in one (the Trinity) then how could one know something that the other didn’t? I’m sure if I dug into this deeper I could find a myriad of different explanations from scores of different theologians. But, that is not what I am about at this point in my life. I guess I am just ready to continue to ponder this type of thing and let it ride as such. It is small stuff when it come to my faith. But as usual I have questions. That is just who I am.

Getting Back…

Posted on by RJ

I have been away from the red letters for a while now so it is time to get back to them. Let’s look at Matthew 7. In that chapter Jesus talks about  heavenly things including doing the will of God. Jesus uses several parables and other stories to relay his message about the heavenly kingdom and who and how we are to get there. One of these messages is about a tree and it’s fruits.

Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.You will know them by their fruits.Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you;

Matthew 7:15-23

Here is what I hear Jesus saying in these words and how it relates to us today.  There are many people who call themselves Christians but are really more of this world than dedicated to Jesus’ teachings.The way Jesus (and us) will know the difference is how they act.  In today’s terms they talk the talk but they don’t walk the walk.  Or maybe the old saying “Actions speak louder than words” is more relevant for you. If they only mouth the words and don’t put them into action (don’t bear fruit) then when judgment day comes  Jesus will say “I never knew you”.

Some say the reference of being thrown in the fire is about hell. I’m not sure I am ready to accept that. Maybe it just means they will not be part of the harvest. In Jesus’ time they burned the chaff and stalks to clear the fields after harvest. When I read these words I think of the Barna study I posted about a while ago. In that study most people could not tell a Christian from a non-Christian by the way they live their lives. In other words they were not bearing the fruit of being a follower of Jesus Christ.

This is one of many places where Jesus confirms what his brother James said in his epistle and that  is faith without works is a dead faith and may very well not get you past the gates. Christianity is not a sit back and wait religion.

Mining for Tidbits…..

Posted on by RJ

I was a fervent member of a church for most of the last twenty-five years. You could count on my being in a church pew almost every Sunday morning. Of course part of that time was listening to the current clergy leader give his sermon. After a while I tended to see a pattern to most sermons.  They would always contain at least a dozen different tidbits from Biblical text. Most often these tidbits were to reinforce the message he (no female ministers were allowed in my church) had chosen for the day.  Many times when I was familiar with the story around the tidbit I questioned , at least in my mind, what that had to do with that day’s message. Some of the words fit but the underlying message was just not aligned.

Many tend to think that it is acceptable to mine Scripture for these little tidbits that would fit a particular agenda we might have. We weren’t often shown the importance of appropriating the Bible holistically, of taking care to consider each and every part within its own context.  Of course with our Bible now accessible through computerized search engines this practice has become more dominant than ever.  I always wondered, but never voiced, why the sermon could not concentrate on one biblical story and carry its meaning to completion.

One only need to consider the haphazard way that Scripture mining is being used today by both the political left and right to understand that this is taking place outside the church sermon as well.   Pulling tidbits out of text and putting them into our dialog leads to an inadequate view of God’s messages as well as the politics supposedly being supported by it.

Now that I am no longer sitting in that pew I can think things that were uncomfortable then but enlightening now. It seems that no matter what your conclusions are about most issues of the world you can mine Scripture to find a small saying here or there when often taken out of context will back up your message.

  • If you want God to be on your side in your current war there are tidbits available to say that.
  • If you despise homosexuals or some other minority groups, you can find tidbits support your bias.
  • If you were a member of the KKK you could cite tidbits where God condones slavery and tells slaves to be satisfied with being owned.
  • If you were in many mainline protestant churches in the 1950′s and 60′s you heard many tidbits about civil rights for minorities being against God’s will.
  • If you were against women gaining the vote in the 1930′s you could cite tidbits about women obeying their husbands.

Maybe even more critical than Scripture mining is ignoring those “other” words that speak counter to your targeted message. That also seems to be in wide practice by so many today.  But that is for another post.

Two Issue Christians…..

Posted on by RJ

This is the second post in the series about how I believe today’s Christian establishments disappoint God.

If one believes that God is only really concerned with a couple of issues, it becomes easier to ignore others.  But human life and particularly the words of Jesus are just too complicated for this kind of reductionist approach to our faith and beliefs. How can we even think otherwise?  We must approach Scripture realizing that it is the story of God’s interaction with humanity, and this story constitutes the disclosure of God’s nature particularly through the words of Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately I believe that the extreme right wing in today’s politics and that especially includes the recent Tea Party movement have kidnapped much of the evangelical vote using this reductionist approach. They deem that God is only interested in two topics: abortion and homosexuality. As long as they shout about these two issues frequently enough they expect, and mostly see, many evangelicals falling in line with all their right wing issues. They want us to believe that all other of life’s issues outside of abortion and gay marriage are secondary at best.

It is sad to see how many Christians fall for this two-issue mantra. Those that do totally ignore the fact that the only two laws as verbally stated by Jesus is to love God with all your soul and to love your fellow man. Jesus told us that ALL the laws of God are wrapped up in these two items.

If I were to be a two issue Christian I would latch on 1)loving God and 2) loving my fellow man instead of the ones currently fed us by right wing politics today.

So many of today’s evangelicals seem to totally ignore that Jesus told us to give the stranger the shirt off your back if they are in need. Instead they seem to actively support  via their votes and their donations eliminating all of the so-called entitlements such as food stamps and medical care and such to the poor and marginalized in today’s world. Instead they are inclined to  favor lower tax rates for the wealthiest among us at the expense of those needing “shirts”. Where are God’s words supporting that view!!

I am just dumbfounded at to how this kidnapping occurred!

Yes, God is certainly concerned about taking of human life and that includes those who are not yet born. But he is also equally concerned that every three seconds throughout the day some where in the world a child dies because of inadequate drinking water or not enough food.  He is surely  also concerned about how we manage to kill each other in our endless wars. He told us that the peacemakers, not the warriors were the blessed ones. We seem to have, like so many other things, gotten that message reversed. Why do so many evangelical Christians minimize the other causes of senseless deaths by putting almost total attention to the first? That minimization of God’s commands is certainly not what He intends.

This reductionist approach to our beliefs promoted by many of today’s Christian establishments greatly saddens me. Why do we allow secular politics to have such a strong hold on us?

If God Were To Write a Book….

Posted on by RJ

In a previous post I asked the question “why didn’t God write a book?”.  One possible answer to that question came from a Quaker friend. He said that if God had written a book then man would have a relationship with a book and not with God. God want us to come to him not to a book about him.  But that did not end my questions in this area. I still wonder what if God were to write a book what would it look like?  Here are some of my conclusions about that. Of course I am painfully aware that I certainly don’t know the mind of God. That is something that man can never really know. Our minds are just too puny for that task. But that doesn’t keep me from speculating some of the possible answers to my questions.  So here goes.

  • If God were to write a book there would be absolutely no mistake that it was from God…. With our current written text know as the  Bible theologians throughout the ages have constantly shown doubt about the authors of almost every book of the New Testament.  We just can’t seem to decide, and there seems to be little evidence, of the true authors of the documents that make the Bible.
  • There would be no hidden messages…. Compared to Him God knows we are all very simple minded people who need simple minded instructions on what God expects from us and what we can expect from God.
  • It would be a book that is constantly changing…. ( I can just hear the jaws drop on this one :) )It would be a changing book in that would it would give us different messages as we move along our road of life and our journey with Christ. It’s messages would be as clear to a four year old as they were to a life long follower of Christ.
  • There would be no need for all the theologians around today… There are literally thousands of theologians around today to help us understand the Bible. But, one of the problems with that is that no two seem to have the same answers. So it depends on which is our favorite flavor of theologian as to what we think the Bible says. If God were to write a book this field of occupation would disappear. There would be no need for us to rely on others to know the meanings of a book written by God.
I believe that the Bible we currently use to try to understand the nature of God is an awesome collection of works. Yes, they do give us a basic understanding of the nature of God at least from the perspective of those who penned the words.  And quite frankly, without that book we would be hard pressed to know much of anything about the mind of God. But being a book produced by inspired men and not God, the Bible is often misunderstood, misquoted, and misused. Being a collection of works written by different men at different times it is not a very unified document many pieces of text seem to say completely different things.  If God had indeed written a book none of these problems would exist. It would be perfect as God is perfect.

God did not intend us to have a relationship with a book but a relationship with him.

Disappointments about Today’s Christian Establishments…

Posted on by RJ

Before my “literal and inerrant” friend became frustrated and stopped dialoguing with me he often asked the question why I have so much an ambivalence towards today’s churches?  I repeatedly tried to tell him that it isn’t so much ambivalence as it is a disappointment.  I will use this post to explain one of the major reasons for that disappointment. Before I start I need to tell you a little about George Barna. He is as Wikipedia describes him as the founder of  The Barna Group, a market research firm specializing in studying the religious beliefs and behavior of Americans, and the intersection of faith and culture.

Getting back to the reason for my disappointments here are some of the words from a book I am currently reading entitled  Christians and the Common Good  by Charles E. Gutenson. These words explain my disappointment better than I ever could:

One of the major findings of his (George Barna)  research is that for the most part it is almost impossible to tell a Christian, by his actions, from someone who is not religious. In fact he often found that non-Christians are more generous in giving to the poor, are about equally engaged in extra-marital sex, and that Christians are more likely to have had divorces than non-Christians…..  the rampant materialism of our culture is no more apparent than in the parking lots of large churches on Sunday mornings. Quite simply, a major reason for the increasing irrelevance of the church in today’s culture is its inability both to envision and to demand an alternative way of being in the world. Why bother with church when it has come to understand Christian faith as little more than an addendum to an otherwise secular dream of the good life.

The Christian churches of today should be giving us an alternative to being in our own life. As Mr. Gutenson said they seem to be unable to both envision and to demand an alternative way to live. Since most Christian denominations seem incapable, or at least unwilling, to do that they deem themselves irrelevant in many people’s minds. It was totally obvious that the early Christians were living an alternative lifestyle to those around them. They were giving their wealth for the common good of the community. They were living by Jesus’ words to love one another.  What happened since that time? Why has the church not emphatically pointed this out to Christians today. Are they more concerned about attendance numbers than following Jesus’ examples?

I am not knowledgeable enough about church history to know where this change started. But I know from Mr. Barna’s surveys that it is pretty much complete today.  That is the major disappointment I have with today’s Christian establishments.  I have spent the last five years or so looking for any denominations who run counter to the Barna statistics. In that time I have only found scant evidence of any church establishment offering, let alone encouraging an alternative life style.   There are a very few out there but  they are rare indeed. Many seem to be more interested in proclaiming that we are all poor miserable sinners and therefore incapable of anything good. Putting Christians in this mindset enables them to follow the secular world in both their words and actions without a guilty conscience.

So, to close this post I am not ambivalent to today’s Christian establishments as much as I am just totally disappointed in them ignoring the words of Jesus to take up our own crosses and to love each other as God loves each and every one of us. If we really care for each other we should let our light shine in our lives so that it is obvious to others that we are followers of Jesus Christ. Sadly I find that to generally not be the case.