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As you read this
you might reasonably suppose me to be quite antipathetic to
organized religion - and you would be right. But to help balance the
picture, let me start by saying that, as a disciple of Jesus the
Christ, I have never once been disappointed in Him. And before
reading this, it might be helpful to browse my reasons for being a
disciple. You
will find them here.
I would have
thought that effects of an enlightened society that prides itself on
it's 'Christian' culture, (In God We Trust) would be manifestly
evident in at least 4 areas.
Crime, health, the
value of life
and education;
But we find that
suicide rates are at an all time high, especially amongst youth,
American imprisonment rates are the highest in the world,
western national health is declining, and schools are progressively dropping
standards to permit students to pass.
Does that sound like a Christian
country to you? If I pointed you to a Messiah whose followers
boasted those stats, would you be in a hurry to follow him?
Fact:
Suicide rates amongst our most promising are
up.
Fact: As I
was writing this, I caught an article dated 22nd February 2008 that
you have to read to believe. For the first time in history, every
single jail cell in England was full.
In a desperate attempt to buy time, the Justice Minister begged
magistrates to imprison fewer offenders.
Here's the article.
Some Christian
Influence!
On a per capita basis, according to the best
available figures, the United States has three times more
prisoners than Iran, four times more than Poland, five times more
than Tanzania and seven times more than Germany. Maryland has more
citizens in prison and jail (an estimated 35,200) than all of Canada
(31,600), though Canada's population is six times greater. In fact
in the same period of time in which the population of California
doubled, the rate of incarceration increased six times. California
is home to some of the largest Christian churches and para-church
groups in the world, while Texas has executed more people that the whole
Spanish inquisition.
Fact: Drug
resistant
TB, leprosy and other pestilences are invading
the U.S. who came in at
48th place in
a recent study on longevity
after Greece, Bermuda, Peurto Rico, Jordan, Macau and 43 others. New
treatment defying
superbugs are running rampant.
The syphillis rate is up for seventh straight
year. Rising Health care
costs in the USA, (the highest in the world, per capita), are
manifestly inadequate to deal with the rising incidence of leprosy,
tuberculosis, heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, mental
diseases, obesity, and more. That plus the
systemic breakdown of our hospitals under the
strain,
has health agencies now claiming that
for the first time in living memory, general health in the USA is
sliding backwards.
Oregon now conducts a lottery where the prize
is health insurance.
Fact:
Ironically, on the same day that BBC news published a story about
the Education Department
dropping regular school examinations,
another story was published by a leading British newspaper that
stated,
"Thousands of jobs a year are not being filled
easily because applicants can't communicate effectively",
while in the USA, figures that once compared Education statistics
are now no longer published. A
recent survey
found
that only 43% of American 17 year olds knew that the Civil War was
fought between 1850 and 1900.
Calling Western
Nations 'Christian', is like calling fast food nourishment.
I have stopped
calling myself a Christian. I haven't 'left the Church'; but I have
stopped calling myself a Christian.
The first followers of Jesus the Christ were termed, 'disciples'.
The first time people anywhere were called 'Christians" was in
Antioch, and it was a term of derision applied by those who opposed
'Christians.
Western Christianity today is seeker friendly, fat free,
salt reduced with sugar added, and seats a family of four in complete comfort.
Being a disciple, on the other hand, takes discipline. Viktor Frankl
said, What is to give light must endure burning.”
As the first disciples of Jesus the Christ were called 'Christians'
as an insult, so also today, it should be considered an insult,
considering these statistics.
For every 10 men in the average U.S. church… (for U.S. read
Canada, Australia, U.K, and others)
9 will have kids who leave the church. FROM; "Swim with
the sharks (and survive)," Go! Magazine, a publication of North
American Mission Board, Retrieved February 12,
2004 http://www.go.studentz.com/
my_life/swim_with_the_sharks.htm,
8 will not find their jobs satisfying. FROM; Ralph
Mattson and Arthur Miller, Finding a Job You Can Love (Nashville:
Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1982), 123.
6 pay the monthly minimum on their credit card balances.
FROM;
Howard Dayton, Crown Financial Ministries, personal correspondence,
January, 2004.
5 have a major problem with pornography. FROM; Family Safe
Media website, Retrieved February 12, 2004 from http://www.familysafemedia.com/
pornography_statistics.html
4 will get divorced affecting 1,000,000 children per year.
FROM;
American Academy of Pediatrics,
Family pediatrics report of the task force on the family [Electronic
version]. (2003). Pediatrics, 111(6), 1541-1571.
Only 1 has a biblical worldview. FROM; Barna
Research Group, Electronic Press Release, December 1, 2003 .
All 10 will struggle to balance work and family
According to a Barna survey, 53% of all adults in the USA identify
being deeply committed to the Christian faith as a top priority in
their lives.
Can you put a price on ‘deeply committed’? Yes!
The following statistics are taken from the Status of global
mission, ad 2006, in context of 20th and 21st centuries published by
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
You may read separate findings contained in the
World Christian
Encyclopedia
published by the
Gordon-Conwell
Theological Seminary.
These findings are disturbing at the least.
The Way it is
Of all monies collected by the 37000 Christian Denominations in the
USA;
-
(Are there really 37000?)...
Churches spend
twice as much on missionary conferences as they do on missions; ($8
bil)
$810 million on audits (that’s still more than they spend on
missions);
$16 billion goes to embezzlement;
$1.1 billion on a recurring megacencus, covering 180+ topics;
and $1.1 billion+ on sexual abuse defenses. (10% of offenders still
get moved to other parishes.)
This means that
over 95% of all church income is spent on non mission related costs;
1 in 4 retiring full-time ordained workers (clergy, ministers,
missionaries) defrauded of retirement benefits;
and .01% of income (one dollar in every thousand collected)
available for overseas missions;
This still leaves a little.
91% of what is left, goes to outreach/evangelism that targets other
Christians;
40% of global foreign mission resources go to just 10 fully
evangelized countries;
This still leaves a little
In fact, it leaves .01% to be spent in countries where less than
half down to none of the people have EVER heard of Jesus, and where
it takes 700 times less to baptize a convert than in the US.
Could this be possibly why
-
some 250 of the 300 largest international Christian organizations
publish demonstrably incorrect or falsified progress statistics;
-
and why 818 unevangelized ethnolinguistic peoples have never been
targeted by any Christian agencies ever, (More
than 90% of all Christian materials are in English, but only 8% of
the world speaks English);
even though everywhere on Earth can now easily be targeted with at
least 3 of the 45 varieties of effective evangelism;
-
and why although
more than 70% of all Christians now live in
countries where they are experiencing starvation, persecution, and
martyrdom,
-
and why less of our money goes to evangelize the unsaved than
Christians
spend on toilet paper, even though all it takes to support the
average home grown missionary in the most untouched nations on earth
is less than $1000 a year;
-
and why we can’t keep up. (124 million versus 4 million, world
population growth versus those evangelized through over 4000
agencies;
-
and possibly why
14 million converted Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims
have opted to remain within those religions in order to witness for
Christ as active believers in Jesus as Lord.
-
oh, and also why China and Africa now send missionaries to America.
The Results
“You say, ‘’We are rich, we have become wealthy, and have need of
nothing';
and you do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind,
and naked.” Rev 3:17
We can’t share what we don’t have;
and not only do we not have Godliness, but neither do we know where
to go for it.
We don’t believe our own gospel, else we would propagate it. The
figures speak for themselves. It is bad enough when we don't want to
sacrifice ourselves to the Gospel, but when the resources we offer
up instead of ourselves, amounts to less than $1 for every $1,000 collected
in our Churches, it speaks for itself.
Vacuums must be filled, and energies must be used.
Where the Christian Church would be expected to propagate the Gospel,
there's a vacuum. So that vacuum gets filled with programs, projects
and whatever it takes to keep the members stimulated.
The energies that
would otherwise be used in pursuit of Christ and his likeness (the
real gospel message), are turned
inward;
biting and devouring each other.
What then is possible?
In a word, much!
During the 90’s Coca Cola (Atlanta) made a decision, and less than
20 years later, countries that have never heard of Jesus Christ know
what Coca Cola is.
Coca Cola is associated with the good life. Christianity, generally
speaking, is not.
It has been claimed that
"91% of the world's population has heard of Coke.
74% have seen Coke
51% have tasted Coke
yet only 10% of the world's population has heard the Gospel."
And nowhere to the best of my knowledge has any employer of Coca
Cola claimed that their product is healthy and good for us.
So we are left to compare Coca Cola, claimed by some health experts
to have no health benefits, having communicated its message to 91%
of the world, with the teachings of Jesus the Christ, claimed by ALL
its adherents to have benefits both in this life and the next,
having communicated its message to how many?
I'd rather see a
sermon than hear one any day.
The Bible says that in clinging to Jesus the Christ and the work of
Calvary, we enjoy a better hope, a better (last will and) testament,
a better covenant based on better promises, a better sacrifice, a
better and enduring heavenly substance. But you wouldn't know it to
look at most churches.
God gave the risen Jesus a temple of living stones. Jesus called it
the Church, His body, and said “Go Ye” . We have built temples of
dead stones, bricks and mortar, and called them, our churches, made
them corporate bodies and say “Come Y’all”. Today's drive thru
righteousness is by way of segmented salvation. (First a decision
card then baptism (in our church, mind you or it's not valid, and so
on). Membership is validated by a sort of Checklist Christianity
living out a code of behavior, the keeping or breaking of which we
believe will greatly affect how God sees and treats us. Did Jesus
achieve for us no more than what the ancient Jews already had?
Finney the
evangelist saw an 80% retention rate amongst his converts. Billy
Graham? 5%. Why? Could it be that we invented a few slick phrases
like "Ask Jesus into your heart", or "make Jesus the Lord of your
life", and proceeded to count converts on that basis? For the last 5
years I have had a standing offer to pay a $10,000 reward to anyone
who can find those terms in the Bible. It still stands.
We then equated
saying those kind of phrases with gaining eternal salvation.
Blaise Pascal has been accredited with saying "God created man in
His image, and man returned the compliment". And he was right in at
least this respect. We invented a church that places the effects of
our works on an equal footing with the sacrifice of Jesus the
Christ, invented doctrines that place religion over spirituality,
rules over relationship, membership over fellowship, showmanship
over discipleship, and ensured that if the the Holy Spirit ever had
the temerity to show up, that He would well and truly know His
place.
And so in a world where our brothers and sisters are being martyred
by the thousands, possibly at a greater percentile rate than ever
before in recorded history, we pursue our "edifice complex",
building more and greater churches as monuments to our opaque
stupidity, to house all the mental midgets we have
produced by the invincible ignorance to which we have molded them
by denominational dogma. We cheer on our dogma dictocrats in
our own unique liturgical language as they battle each other from
their creedal trenches, blamestorming while the world goes to Hell in a heartbeat,
and those who aren't directly involved in the battle for belief are
usually still suffering the symptoms of orthodoxy overload.
When we leave the truth of the gospel and
simple discipleship for anything else, it becomes a easy step
to rise to defend that 'anything else' over defending and laying
down our lives for each other.
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have pure
doctrine.
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have a
good pastor.
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love
one to another. Joh 13:35
My friend, Walt, defines love, as acting in another's highest
interests, regardless of personal cost. That is the kind of love we
see modeled in Jesus.
But we invent segmented salvation, which we use to judge each other,
and thinking ourselves to be rightly dividing the Word of God we
wrongly divide the Body of Christ. We achieve it with longhorn
sermons and prooftexts torn out of context. (Preachers Poker - I'll
see your verse and raise you a chapter.)
If calling myself a Christian, associates me with this kind of Christianity
in the eyes of the world, and I can't see how it can fail to, I
prefer to call myself a disciple of Jesus the Christ.
I would rather be associated with authentic Christ discipleship;
abandoned to Christ and to others who are like-minded.
db 2008-01-04
In God we trust, but
it's against the law to
pray in school. Larry
Norman 1948-2008
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