My Ninety-Five #1

I know, I know, lost momentum there, please forgive me. Fell down the rabbit hole, hit the floor, did a little grab the key and THEN shrink yourself tango, and now crawling through the door.
Anyway.
So, in 1517 this guy named Martin Luther (he's on wiki) wrote this thing against the church called the Ninety-Five Theses, detailing 95 challenges, or issues he had with the church at that time (to call that a gloss would be an obscene understatement). He was a monk, a Catholic priest, a theologian, attended university (back when that actually meant something), studied the great philosophers, I'm guessing spoke or at least understood Greek and Latin, and had the spiritual ballz to take on the Catholic church when they ruled the western world and get himself in a LOT of trouble.
And then there's me. What do we have in common???
 Not anything really.
 I don't really fall under any of these categories, some less than others. I think the only thing we have in common is standing in front of our prospective religious institutions (since Protestants were earning their name at that time in history by 'protesting') with a speech bubble over our heads that says, "Religious Institution! What gives?! Are you kidding me?!?!?"
 So, I am most emphatically not comparing myself to Martin Luther or the present Protestant wing of the church to the Medieval Catholic church, but I'm exploring if I can find ninety-five things that legitimately bug me about the Protestant church in general. It would definitely give me the means to get REALLY SPECIFIC, and give me time to do some research and see if my impressions are still (or ever were...) reality at large.


One of my grievances with church is that it's not designed for new comers, though it be the goal for a lot of well-intentioned leaders. Don't get me wrong, we put out the welcoming banner. It's on church handouts and seems built into events, but we do A LOT to undermine how user-friendly we would like church to be.

#1-Oversimplifying

This first issue is such an irritatingly intricate issue, it has taken me weeks trying to extricate it from other issues, and in the end, I think I have pretty much failed, but, here goes...

A lot of our messages are confusing, if not seemingly contradictory and inconsistent, and if you don't know to ask further (cuz people don't really explain it further), you won't find out the truth of any matter, only the bumper-sticker wrap-up repeated for the lifers each Sunday.

Here is one example. New believer in a new church, a little uncomfortable, you've gone through the 101 class and they are now cutting you loose in "big church". You get the church bulletin showing the pastor's schedule for the coming year.

Your Church Itinerary

Jan:             All You Need is Jesus
Feb:            Why We Need Each Other-The Importance of Relationships
March:       You Don't Need Self-Help with Jesus
April:          Guest Speakers Drs. Cloud and Townsend
May:          Why Following Christ is Easy-Always being Joyfully His
June:          Learning How to Carry Your Cross-Suffering is Inevitable
July:           It's Not About You, It's About Jesus
Aug:           Are You Making an Impact for the Kingdom?
Sept:          Learning Life's Not About Me/Less of Me, More of Jesus
Oct:           Developing Spiritual Gifts and Talents
Nov:          Why Missions is Right for Everyone
Dec:          Discovering Your Unique Calling

It's confusing, but everyone is smiling and easy as though it's the simplest thing in the world. I mean, who cares if we understand as long as we have Jesus? What they're saying has threads of truth, but those threads are getting tangled when they cross things other people have said.

The best part is the ways pastors tend to emphasize in each sermon just how universally, unequivocally what their saying at that moment is perpetually true. #selltheproduct
This Sunday: The SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING you need in your life is prayer.... until next week when,
Next Sunday: The SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING you need is faith in Christ....until the week after when,
Next Next Sunday: The SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING you need is to know the Word....

This has been a feature of every single church I have attended.
Each of the messages is delivered in a polemic, turn-or-burn, skate-or-die dichotomy that often conflicts with the polemic, turn-or-burn, skate-or-die dichotomy the pastor laid out the Sunday before.  Each Sunday is preached in a vacuum as though nothing said that day has any bearing on the statement the pastor made last week. It's confusing, and honestly, I welcome my home Bible study because it helps untangle the knots created at church (Plug: Clinton Arnold's Bible Background Commentary is kick-ass!!!!)

Soooooooo difficult not to careen headlong into other topics!!!

Whenever someone begins to define faith, or God's love as "SIMPLY blah blah blah", I stop reading.You wonder if Paul might have used the athletic imagery because if you do it wrong, you can seriously hurt yourself. Human beings are complex beings. God is a complex being. This isn't necessarily sexy. It might turn people off. We've never let us stop that before. In high school, we would have two "Purity Weeks" where we had chapel EVERY DAY and had to listen about the evils of sex, ESPECIALLY sex before marriage. Why is virginity (a fake sense of purity, really) more important than our intelligence?

How can we determine our spiritual gifts without discerning minds?

Arg, veering, sorry....

What if we actually defined the concepts in our religion with the respect sublime concepts deserve? (yes, I called it a religion, screaming "it's a relationship not a religion" isn't actually saying anything and you could even argue it robs God of His due respect and glory)
I would argue people outside the church would respect our teachings more if we ourselves actually gave our teachings more respect, at the very least as much attention as we do our catch-phrases and bumper-stickers. How can people love and appreciate the nuances found in our belief system when we don't even celebrate them? #grasshopperfail


Now, to be fair, I'm not saying we should deluge people in information. At this point in my rant, I'm not sure exactly what I'm saying, but, I'm saying weigh every damn word and make sure what you're saying is unequivocally what you meant to say and that you're actually conveying needed information.


Further Reading...
Love Your God With All Your Mind, J.P. Moreland
12 Christian Beliefs that can Drive You Crazy, Cloud and Townsend