Galatians 2:4-5:

Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery— to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.

That phrase “preserved for you”, when referring to the Gospel, really caught me this morning. The sense of the word ‘preserved’ is that it would ‘continue’ or ‘last’ or ‘live on’. The whole passage has this sense that Paul is protecting the Gospel, not only for now, but for the future as well. He will not allow the Gospel of Jesus, which is grace and truth in its purest form, to be convoluted by individuals who would tack things onto it, or water it down with anything.

Of course, for me, it immediately made me think of our own corporate church system today. Virtually every corridor of the organizational church makes big compromises—some motivated by fear, some by ‘love’ and some are just plain insidious. But all seem to fail to ‘preserve’ the Gospel.

Some churches, out of fear of losing numbers, will refrain from preaching some passages of the bible. Yet all passages of the Bible inform, or are informed by the Gospel. They must be preached faithfully. Some churches in hopes of bringing in and not turning-off lost people remove iconic Christian symbol—like the Cross. The message of the cross itself isn’t far behind. And still some churches, with wicked and greedy motives, simply preach whatever will be most likely to produce a giving spirit in the congregation.

While the motives and the forms and degrees vary, the result is always a gospel that begins to deteriorate. The Gospel is not preserved. Regardless of the risk, it’s crucial that our churches do what they must to hold fast to and preach the (whole) Gospel.

Tim Keller, in Counterfeit Gods says:

An idol is something we look to for things that only God can give. Idolatry functions widely inside religious communities when doctrinal truth is elevated to positions of a false god. This occurs when people rely on the rightness of their doctrines for their standing with God rather than on God himself and his grace. It is a subtle but deadly mistake. The sign that you have slipped into this form of self-justification is that you become what the book of Proverbs calls a “scoffer”. Scoffers always show contempt and disdain for the opponents rather than graciousness, This is a sign that they do no see themselves as sinners saved by grace. Instead, their trust in the rightness of their views makes them feel superior.

Does that sound personally familiar to you? It has to me. Perhaps not as severely right now, but in the past, definitely. Sometimes we may not even realize that we have placed some of our hope in something other than the Gospel.

Many churches look at the churches around them as competitors, rather than partners. Or theological diversity as a threat to their ministry. I doubt this is anything short of a sense of religious idolatry.

Even if our theology is right, and our church is healthy, our attitudes toward other people’s theological ideas and churches reveal a good deal about what our own thought and theology means to us. “Scoffing” and “disdain” for anyone is not a good thing. But it’s especially revealing when those things are directed at people who share the same salvation we do.

A scripture many of us are familiar with. It’s often used when talking about evangelism. 1 Corinthians 2:1-4:

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Whenever I come across this scripture I’m baffled how something so clear can be so totally neglected in institutional church ministry at large.

Even though he was well educated and able to debate the world with the best of them, Paul resolved not to employ such methods. This was so that when the people believe, there would be no risk that their faith would rest on his power of persuasion, but on God’s power alone.

While parts of the church are beginning to move into a healthier mindset, there is still a huge, possibly even vast majority, of the church who is still spending loads of money and time and resources attempting to craft an appealing ministry that will draw in crowds. It’s like Tim Keller says:

“What you win people with, you will keep them with.”

Don’t get me wrong, there is value in meeting people where they are at and allowing ourselves to be culturally relevant. But that happens on a personal level, not a corporate one. When the church manufactures ‘relevance’ the world can tell and just adds one more drop in the bucket for why the institutional church shouldn’t be trusted.

sVery recently, a somewhat successful blogger, mother and Christian, made public her shift in thinking. More specifically, that she has become an atheist. I have to commend her honesty and bravery. If she was as active in her church as her post made it seem, she almost definitely has lost most of, if not all of, her church friends (which statistically among Christians would mean all of her friends. Of course, her own experience is all conjecture on my part).

I am not going to link directly to her post. Specifics aren’t terribly important and digital gossip is still gossip I’d like to avoid.

In her post which puts some background under he conversion, she links to a number of YouTube videos which decry Christianity and the Bible. The YouTube videos, like usual, take many of the harder passages from the bible and isolates them from the whole of scripture. Or, assumes a lot of things about the state of naturalistic thinking and the reason behind that.

In a few words, the woman remade these points with her own lexicon. Citing misogyny, slavery and child abuse as some of her biggest contentions with Christianity. Though in the length of the whole post, these were pretty small points. Perhaps the “wrinkles” in the fabric of her faith which eventually lent themselves to a full fledged tear.

When she really got down to a heated monologue it wasn’t about Christianity, it was about the Church.

This is long, but if you’re a Christian you ought to read it!

The woman absolutely did not want to serve as an elder in her church for a second term.  The woman did not like being an elder.   Being an elder was mostly about money.  How to get it and how to spend it.  She came to understand just how much money it took to maintain the large brick church building that stood empty six days a week.  The amount of money it took made her sick.  It was thousands and thousands of dollars every month.  She thought about how all that money could be used to alleviate human suffering and misery and instead it went to to heat and cool and pay a mortgage on a huge brick church building that stood empty six days a week.  She thought about the hundreds of dollars that she gave every month to maintain the huge brick church building that stood empty six days a week.  She thought about how if she gave that money to a starving family or a hospital in Africa or a school in the slums of Brazil, she would be doing a much better thing than when she gave that money to heat and cool and staff a huge brick church building that stood empty six days a week.  But the bible commanded that the woman give ten percent of her money to the church and not to starving people in Africa.  The bible was more interested in the empty building and not the miserable people who were suffering and so was god.  The woman did not want to be an elder anymore because she wanted to forget about that money that went to heat and cool the huge brick empty church building, but the woman felt like she had to be an elder. Because that is what christians do.  They serve the church… or the the expensive brick building that stands empty six days a week.

What has she said here? She’s said, in extreme brevity, that there was a painful mismatch between the money they had and what they spent their money on.

In the case of this woman, it seems that her church failed to help her, or at least give her the tools, to iron out the theological wrinkles in her faith. If that isn’t one of the churches important functions, I’m not sure what is. But more than that, her church’s self-absorption led her to misunderstand the whole point. Unfortunately, it ended sadly. Though my own story must lead me to believe no one is out of God’s reach. There is still hope.

I’m heartbroken for this woman, and my own lack of faith leaves me fearful for the huge number of people in the current church system. The church cannot continue like this. It’s disgusting and stories like these are just the refuse of something that should be beautiful, but instead is disfigured and grotesque.

So, can it stop already?

I like to think that I am a logical thinker. For the most part, I don’t think that’s an unreasonable self-assessment. No one is perfect and we’re all prone to mistakes. In our choice of lifestyle, the things we do, say and believe.

When our theology is challenged, it doesn’t do us (or anyone else) any good to stick our head in the ground and cling to what we think we know.

I’m not an atheist because I have found the arguments presented by Christianity are more compelling, though not without it’s intellectual challenges. I’m not a Catholic because I’ve found the arguments presented by the Protestant part of the church more reasonable. I’m not a Methodist because I’ve found the doctrines of Reformed theology resonate more deeply with scripture. I could continue, but I think you get the point.

Without healthy debate, I would not have come to any conclusions at all and, in all likelihood, I would probably still be a bitter, cynical, proud agnostic (though I don’t mean to imply all agnostics are—but I was). I am much better off now than I was then.

Religious belief is a great taboo of our age. Individualism is so prized among us that a debate over such things seems to shake us to our very core. Simply vocalizing our disagreement with one another has the effect of a huge personal attack.

But I think this is a disservice to ourselves and to each other. We will not all agree on all things. Sometimes our disagreements will be small, other times huge. But, the fact that our potential for wrongness is ever-present means that if we to grow and improve ourselves, we have to be willing to be wrong. Or at least entertain the possibility.

All of that been said, I would like to invite healthy debate. Even over this, if you like. For the Church, I would like us to come to grips with what we believe. Whether we agree or not. But that will definitely mean engaging one another’s differing opinions and beliefs with respect and humility.

So, let’s do that. Emphasis on the respect and humility part.

When the Passion of the Christ was released back in 2004 I don’t think I knew a single Christian who wasn’t moved by it. Christians flocked to the movie theater in groups and watched the movie together.

But since then, the movie has become something of a punch-line in the church. Especially among younger Christians.

This is probably in part because the secular world found it funny how Christians bought so hard into the commercial product. And Christians not liking being the butt of a joke joined the laughter. I’ll admit, that the slew of Passion related merchandise that hit the Christian bookshops was a bit sickening to me, and still is.

But I think another reason Christians have, over time, responded to Passion in jest is because there’s a certain and real discomfort associated with it. Just look at almost every other depiction of Jesus’ crucifixion in our culture. It’s extremely tame. When we are accustomed to movies like Saw, Jesus’ crucifixion, the way the church has painted it, really doesn’t seem so bad.

Growing up I remember thinking to myself, “Yeah, that sucks, but I can think of worse”. And certainly, there is worse. The degree isn’t the point. But we’ve brought the temperature so far down it’s barely even noticeable.

So when Passion was released, though not without its flaws, we were given the most realistic depiction of Jesus’ last day we’ve ever had in modern culture. Compared to the way we’ve grown up looking at Jesus’ death, Passion cut our hearts like a hot knife in soft butter. The difference is vast. And while we don’t seem to have a problem watching the gore elsewhere, when we see it like it probably really happened to our savior, I think we get pretty uncomfortable with it. (Perhaps even an indication of our guilt in enjoying the gruesome entertainment we do; if this were true, one would have to go).

In response, the movie becomes a joke and thus, impossible to hurt us. And I think this is tragic.

1. The Passion of the Christ was an excellent movie on it’s own. Regardless of what my faith says, assessing the film itself, it was done with real excellence. (Though I don’t recommend watching it as form of entertainment.)

2. A cornerstone of our faith is in remembering what Christ did and why. For Christians in the first century, Matthew simply saying the word ‘crucifixion’ was enough to invoke understanding in the hearer. We have no such connection to that word. Passion helps bridge that gap.

3. If we harden our hearts to the most basic realities of Jesus’ suffering to defend ourselves from discomfort, how can we have any confidence in our own belief and faith in those sufferings?

It may not be anywhere near Easter, but I think Christians—especially those in my generation—should reconsider their attitude toward this film. Perhaps even set a time and watch it alone and consider some of the realities of Jesus’ sufferings on our behalf.

A friend sent me this video via Facebook today. It’s a bible disclaimer intended to be funny. And, I suppose in it’s accuracy, it is. Although, from inside the church, it’s also a bit embarrassing and sad.

(Can’t see the video? Watch it on YouTube)

The disclaimer warns that taking the bible as anything beyond metaphorical lessons could lead to all kinds of bad things—such as bigotry, sexual guilt, homophobia and suppressed ‘gayness’. The list goes on and eventually includes a whole slew of the worst of Christian stereotypes.

It’s asserted that these things come from taking the bible too literally. But, the reality is that we see these issues in the church for precisely the opposite reason. The bible isn’t taken literally enough.

Sections of the church love to take literally the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and they should, but somehow do not take literally Jesus’ words that he came for the sick, not the healthy. And so they end up as bigoted homophobes. Many take literally the creation story, including the fall (again, perhaps we should), but somehow fail to take literally the redemption and propitiation brought about by Christ on his cross which frees us from all guilt and liberates us to actually do something.

The ironic thing is, statistically, Christian groups are still responsible for most private humanitarian work. Significantly more than atheist or agnostic groups. Unfortunately, Christians are also responsible for some the the most reprehensible behavior—at least in the West, I don’t know about elsewhere. But that problem isn’t rooted in believing the bible, it’s rooted in failing to believe the bible.