Disclaimer: This article is soley my opinion not meant to be taken as the equivelant to the Gospel. I am a christian for the record albeit a terrible one.
10. While there are some exceptions, in general our music is not as good, and to me it seems ok to demand lower standards and have lower expectations.
9.Sports. Has anyone played with christian athletes, again, there seems to be an acceptance for mediocrity. Oh, it's all right we lose every game, have terrible tempers and no self control, I obviously love Jesus.......right.
8. Micheal W Smith.........need I say more
7. Churches can become a members only club. I'M NOT SAYING EVERY CHURCH IS. People often do not feel welcome and often feel alienated because they are not aware of the often existence of the unwritten social rules. Some churches do an excellent job at making people feel welcome, however as a whole, i , and others see this as an area for vast improvement. There is a book by Phillip Yancey called "what's so amazing about grace" one of the quotes goes like this "it's easier as a homosexual to get sex on the street than a hug in a church.
6. Where is the balance between legalism and grace?
Yes legalism is bad, but so is autonomy(self-law) . As christians i feel that we have not found this balance yet. Where grace should be legalism reigns, and where we need to be a little more firm and structured we lack the ability to be just that. People feel that the church dislikes the sin, but hates the sinners. This is not just my opinion but people who have been hurt by the church.
5. i googled the term "purchase christian" just to see how many websites sell christian whatever, 8.9 million. Mormonism, which i think is the fastest growing religion and will be considered a world religion fairly soon, had 460,000 results, buddhism had 509,000 results. Not that this proves anything. But seriously, we've all seen the result of the christian trend machine. we take what the world has douse it with sanctification and resell it as our own. for an excellent read about this go to :
http://www.klife.com/resources/staff/media/GQ-WWJD.html here's a quote from the article:
If a person is going to waste his life cranking the stereo, clicking the remote, reading paperback pulp and chasing diet fads, he may as well save his soul while he's at it.
Holy living no longer requires self-denial. On the Ark, every mass diversion has been cloned, from Internet news sites to MTV to action movies, and it's possible to live inside the spirit, without unplugging oneself from modern life, twenty-four hours a day.
4. Televangelists. Again i'm not talking about the exceptions to this rule, because there are some. I'm talking about the ones who spend ten minutes on the sermon and fifty on how God will bless you quicker by "sowing" into their ministry. A lot could be said about the corruptness in this area, but what good will it do.
3.A few rotten apples..............
It's sad that christianity gets misrepresented far too often by the fanatical. Like the people who show up at abortion clinics and ect. You know the ones with the signs that say Jesus hates baby killers, or the ones that show up at gay pride parades with signs like God hates fags. These are the "christians" whose prefer terrevanglism to building relationships and getting to know people.
2. I believe people do not trust or like the church because we are seen as fake. We as a whole need to find a better balance between being real and still being different. Far too often people do not see the difference in our lives than theirs.Again, this is just my opinion based on what i have seen and experienced.
1. Tacky bible tracts.
Again, here it seems christianity falls victim to shallow standards. Most of us have seen them. You know, those little pieces of paper tucked away in library books, left on restaraunt tables. What's worse than tracts, is when christians leave a tip, but instead of real coin they leave fake coin with scripture on it. I'm sure employees love that. Christians in general are terrible tippers. Anyways, we've all seen these tracts left randomly about in public places. For me, the worst one I've ever seen was a photocopy of a fake 100 dollar bill, with the phrase "100 dollars won't get you much on earth anymore, but it certainly won't get you anywhere in God's kingdom" .......lamelamelame. No contact information, no record of who put it there, not even a scripture reference in case you did want to know more. I mean that's pretty effective. a photocopy of a fake 100 dollar bill. impressive. must have taken five six minutes to think that up. I can imagine the person who planted that sitting across the way in a tim hortons, staking out their evangelism victim, then silently patting themselves on the back on another successful day of telling someone about Jesus...............
