I don’t claim to know the solution, but the modern church has failed

By David McElroy · August 6, 2018

The modern evangelical church shaped my early life to a remarkable degree. I was so deeply embedded in the church subculture that I unconsciously believed that being part of that culture was synonymous with knowing God.

I’ve lost faith in the church. I’ve lost faith in the people who have set themselves up as God’s spokesmen on earth. I’ve lost faith in the institutions which I was taught to believe in. I’ve lost faith in my long-cherished belief that being part of that subculture led to knowing God.

But as I’ve lost faith in all the earthly people and institutions which I was taught spoke for God, I’ve strengthened my belief in the God who I’ve always struggled to know and define and understand.

The church as I knew it was just a subculture — a little subset — of modern American culture. We were shaped by our national culture and then we unconsciously shaped our religion to be an acceptable part of the middle class culture we cherished.

If the Christian church is just a subculture of modern American life, what is the point of its existence?

The modern church seems determined to be exactly like the rest of the world except for holding to slightly different standards of dress, speech and conduct. If the church is distinguished just by those outward appearances — which seems increasingly to be the case — then the church has been completely co-opted by the world.

To the early Christians, following Jesus meant those people were fundamentally changed. They weren’t just normal members of their society who had some slightly different conduct rules. They were people who believed that something had fundamentally changed about them. They didn’t just walk down an aisle or get baptized or repeat a rote prayer to “ask Jesus into their hearts.” (As a side note, that last idea is nowhere in the Bible. It stunned me when I finally realized that.)

The early Christians were risking everything to follow something which most of the world scorned. They were outcasts. They were opposed to everything their culture stood for.

As Christianity was adopted by politicians as an official religion in Rome — and then in other places — it was changed. Being a Christian no longer meant you were a radical who was different from others. It just meant you were following what was normal for your society.

In much of modern conservative America, that’s most of what it means to be called a Christian today.

Where is the power of God in that? What’s the point in that? Why not just join Kiwanis or the Chamber of Commerce instead?

Every human society has developed the concept of religion. In every society that I’m aware of, religious norms and religious leaders were used to shape the people to be more acceptable to the rulers in one way or another. You might quibble that today’s leaders aren’t very religious, but that’s not the point. The point is that various people and groups use religious teachings and religious institutions to control people’s behavior and to seek power for themselves.

It’s not just the evangelical church which has gone down this path. My perspective is from the evangelical point of view, but the progressive church has done the same thing — just with different aims.

The conservative evangelical church is more about pursuing political power to pass laws to control the social behavior of society than it is about seeking and knowing God. Some people within those churches certainly have good intentions and some people can even feel closer to God as a result of being part of churches — but knowing God is always ultimately secondary to teaching people to conform to the dictates of the subculture.

The progressive church (and various other groupings) are similarly more interested in pursuing political power to force people to behave in certain ways, too. Those of such groups believe they have come up with what God must want, so they seek to put progressive politicians into power to recreate society in accordance with what they want.

The socially conservative church and the progressive church are remarkably similar. Both groups are deeply invested in gaining political power to force other people to act as they claim God wants humans to act.

There is no evidence that Jesus was the least bit political. He seemed remarkably uninterested in political power. Although the Romans feared he wanted political power, there’s no indication that such power interested him. He asked people to listen to his message of love — and voluntarily change their lives to love other people.

Jesus never once asked his followers to force others to obey his message. He never once suggested that a government be instituted to enforce his will. Jesus was interested in people voluntarily learning to love and voluntarily changing their lives in ways that led to knowing God.

It’s easy for me to see that the modern church has failed, but the more I think about it, the more I think the church has been failing for close to 2,000 years. The church became an institution — an instrument of the government and an instrument of the cultures of a thousand different nations.

The church has become a way to convince people to conform themselves to this world — which is exactly what the Apostle Paul warned against in Romans 12.

The longer I live, the more I see my deep need to know the God who I see as Creator, but the less I see my need to be part of a subpar subculture which is more interested in political power and cultural control.

If Jesus were to walk among us in the flesh today, I doubt he would be very comfortable in our churches. I doubt he would be interested in the sermons or the political actions or the glorified social clubs. And I doubt very many churches today would welcome the Jesus who preached the Sermon on the Mount.

I don’t claim to know the solutions to this deep issue. I don’t claim to know how to reform the church. I honestly suspect it’s past reform as an institution.

I also know that those of us who seek God and long to know that spirit we recognize in our hearts need a community where we can join together in our quest and where we can join together in fellowship. Not where people can tell each other how to live or what to believe, but a place where we can give up the need to control others and learn to focus on our own issues. This is what makes it so dangerously appealing to say — once again — that it’s time to start a new church and “finally do it right.”

I’m not arrogant enough to say that. I’m not arrogant enough to be that person. I don’t claim to lead anything or to tell others how we ought to live. But like an Old Testament prophet, I do feel like pointing a finger at the institution which has been such a huge part of my life and saying, “We have to turn away from our evil and controlling culture and turn toward the Living God.”

I once planned to become a pastor or missionary. I was licensed to the ministry by a Southern Baptist church when I was in college. I served on a church staff. But I’ve seen enough to say that this institution — this subculture — is the wrong way.

Our institutions have failed. Our institutions and leaders have become corrupt and and in some cases evil. For those of us who feel an ache in our hearts to know the spirit whose presence we feel dimly, the subculture needs to die.

Our hearts need to be open to God to do a new work in us today. I have no idea what form that needs to take — and I’m not sure I’d trust anyone who claimed to know.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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