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Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan  Thanks for the reasons Kent. The things you wrote are spot on, as far as what lessons people should take away from the Bible.
Do you think churches are the best way to teach these lessons? Are these even the lessons that churches are really teaching?
It would be a really interesting social experiment, I think, to go to several dozen churches and record the sermons to see if they mention these same values that you just have.
If churches are out there telling people to celebrate life, to get along better, explaining how other religions aren't things to fear, teaching people to stay out of debt, etc., I'd be all for that. But I bet if you recorded ten sermons and analyzed the lessons, churches would be teaching something entirely different. In fact, I bet ten different Christian churches might be teaching ten different things, some of them contradictory.
I know it's a bit unfair to group all churches together when looking at this issue. Not all churches are the same, by any means. I realize that there are some very loving, open minded, joyous churches out there.
An interesting indicator of how truly loving and accepting a given church is would be their response to 1. an atheist joining, and 2. a gay couple joining. |
Dan - I resonate with most of what you say here. I spent a decade at a more main-stream church trying to convince people to act in the way you've mentioned and growing tired of the messages I was hearing in the pulpit. I finally left that church in late 2006 for a more progressive church (that, oddly enough, has a more stoic tradition denominationally) - and have been infinitely happier for reasons you note.
I participated in a really cool 3 month dialogue between Christians and atheists a year ago on a blog - it was a great experience.
My favorite Christian author is a pretty radical guy named Donald Miller (Blue like Jazz - among other books). My daughter shared Blue Like Jazz with an agnostic friend of hers who said "if more Christians were like Miller, I might be a believer".
Another favorite book is called "Dear Church". The author gives very compelling reasons why 65% of the under-30 group that claim to be Christian are unhappy with ALL organized religion today (as researched by George Barna).
So, I hear what you're saying. I probably over-reacted to Steve's post for this very reason. I stand by my statements, but my preference is always to attempt to find common ground with someone rather than argue something to death.