The failure of "Christianity"

Once again the Roman Catholic church finds itself up to its clerical collar amidst a flood of institutional sexual abuse.  As a victim of this torrent, I'll not use silly terms like "alleged" or "allegations."  It is very real.  Because of the moral failings of many within clerical Catholicism, many who have never looked into Christianity have ample reason to never do so.

Please, no spears.  My language in the preceding paragraph makes plain that not all Catholic priests are pedophiles.  It also does not absolve Protestant pastors of similar abuses.  Do you remember Ted Haggard?  All such failures within that which calls itself "the Church" or a "church" becomes another check against Christianity for those who have never tried it.

The repugnance that many show toward all things Christian stems not only from its failures.  This past summer, my eldest son had the opportunity to witness in the front row the heresy that is Benny Hinn.  My son attended because he was doing mission work in Kenya and with the talons of the "Prosperity Gospel" embedded within impoverished Africa, he wanted to see it first hand.  What did he find? 
You can read more about Hinn and his ilk through my son's posts here, here, here, here, here and here.  My son is not the only one from within the church railing againt the peddlers of prosperity.  John MacArthur, one of our nation's finest expositors of the Bible, speaks with great passion against that which masquerades as part of the church in a lengthy article here.

"To go to Uganda and see Benny Hinn and Company steal roughly $800,000 from the poorest people in the world made me furious, and still does. Even more heartbreaking was how ready these people were to give their money under the lie that God would return to them a hundred times what they had given."

Who's going to want to become part of a community where the successes pillage impoverished peoples and where the failures take horrifying liberties with those entrusted to their care?  Were I atheist or agnostic today, I don't know that Christianity would be where I would turn if all I knew of it consisted of pedophiles and used-car salesmen, not that strapping C4 to one's chest seems a much better worldview.

Here's where getting back to basics comes in.

When assessing what Christianity has brought to the world in terms of charity, hospitals, education, civilization, stability and rule of law, it has much to commend it.  Even those things are superficial.  From what do these things come?  Now we're getting somewhere.  What do the founding documents say?  How does the Bible compare to those who so grotesquely misrepresent it?

Biblically, sexual immorality has no place among those who call themselves Christians (Matthew 5:27-30, Ephesians 5:3, 1 Corinthians 6:18-20).  How does the Bible speak of those who falsely teach what God has said?  Paul suggests that such folks are accursed.  So riled did this get the preacher that he spit it out twice (Galatians 1:6-10).  Jesus referred to them as false prophets and likened them to wolves in sheep's clothing (Matt. 7:15, 20), suggesting that many will believe themselves to be part of the church ("Lord, Lord") but will find that on the Day of Judgment, Jesus did not know them (vv. 21-23).

So why the disparity between the pure teaching of the Bible and what has become of the Church today?  Two key issues.  One would be entropy.  Whoa, hey, don't go physics on me!  Sorry.  We live in a fallen world.  Sin holds sway.  That natural state of man is to move further and further away from God's designs and to kick all the harder against God's rules.  The Bible makes plain that becoming a Christian does not suddenly make one pure in heart never to sin again.  It does give the believer the power NOW to overcome sin in their lives.  That's why Paul kicks the church at Rome with such passion to live their lives as slaves to righteousness vice slaves to sin (Romans 6).  Whereas before Christ, a person cannot be expected to live in a godly fashion (Romans 3:10-18), one whose life has been bought from the pit by the blood of Jesus Christ ought to live their lives in devoted obedience to the One who saved them (Romans 12:1-2).

The second reason the Church today bears little resemblence to its ancestors is because it no longer holds to the Word of Truth that birthed it.  Paul warned against those creeping into the church and distorting its message (2 Timothy 3:1-9, esp. vv. 6-9).  He later prompted Timothy in the same letter to be careful to preach the word properly (4:1-4).  Peter also testified to the importance of the written word of God (2 Peter 1:16-21).  I referenced the infection of the Church that began in Europe under the guise of Higher Criticism in my last post.  Through nothing much more than whim, scholars began to declare the Bible as unreliable with regard to history and unreliable concerning things supernatural.  If the Bible is false and is not authoritative, then Jesus becomes anything we want him to be.  To Benny Hinn, he's a cash cow.  To pedophile priests, he's the condoner of their sin.  After all, God is love, right?

When the Church fails to fight internally against the sin of a fallen world and when it rejects the only standard of truth by which it can right itself, it becomes irrelevant to a world in desperate need of salvation.  The lost reject the Christ, the only avenue for wholeness, because his ambassadors have failed at their task.

To those who have never dipped their big toe into Christianity, please do not think you know the Christ because a few of those who claim to be his followers have corrupted his image and misrepresented him.  Go to the source of Christianity.  Go to the Christ made known to the world today in the pages of the Bible.

It is the Easter season after all.  Taste and see that the Lord is good.  And so is his church...as it honors him.