It's Time for Church (As We Know It) to End...

Luke in Star Wars episode eight The Last Jedi believed that the Jedi as a religion and people should end .

Luke Skywalker: I will never train another generation of Jedi. I came to this island to die. It’s time for the Jedi to end.

His reasoning for his belief always made a great deal of sense to me.

Luke: Lesson two. Now that they’re extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified. But if you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy, hubris.Rey: That’s not true!Luke: At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out. It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.

If you have watched the prequel series you would know that Luke was undoubtedly right. The Jedi were very legalistic and rigid, they did not allow Jedi to marry. They were slow to action and entirely missed a Sith lord sitting right under their nose the whole time.

I believe that the church today is very similar to the Jedi council in the Star Wars prequels. I believe the church (as it is today) should end for some of the same reasons. Lets look at some prophetic words from Paul describing the kind of behavior I am talking about. Paul explains to Timothy about a time when the church will fall away.

Paul prophesied the slow degradation of the church

For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.2 Timothy 4:3-4

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.  People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,  treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—  having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires,  always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.  Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected.  But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.2 Timothy 3: 1-9

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.  Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.  They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth.  For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,  because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.1 Timothy 4:1-5

I don’t know about you but everything Paul told Timothy reminds me of the church today in so many ways.

The Church today is almost the same as the world

Could you think of a really strong difference between the way the world lives and the way Christians live today? I’m sure everyone has their list. The only thing I can think of is a strong adherence to technical morality.

The thing is this isn’t much of a difference because it’s mostly just a set of rules that we follow based on striving and obligation aka technical morality. This sums up all my grievances with the church in one statement. Yes we all would like to believe the church is so different from the world. There are some very superficial differences to satisfy that issue. However when you look closely there really isn’t much of a difference at all.

I can’t convince you

I have spent a great deal of time going through research about the church. Using statistics by people like the Barna group to make a strong point. The reality is that if you don’t think these things are a problem in the church there is just about nothing I could do to dissuade you. All I can do is use my strong anecdotal evidence and experience in many different church environments. Someone will always be able to say”oh Timothy you’ve just gone to a bunch of bad churches”. Yes I have but I have never experienced a church that is truly different. If you genuinely believe your church is different and better in all of these ways and follows in the footsteps of the original church. Great! Please tell me because I might want to visit.

I have a long list of symptoms I could go through that show how messed up religion really is but its all tangential to the core issue. I will however briefly mention a few: Divorce is treated as normal and generally adultery is okay as long as you remarry, single people over twenty are treated like they have leprosy, judgment of the sin of the world 1 Corinthians 5:12, fake happy little lives that are entirely inauthentic, and the relentless pursuit of social status above all. Often morality to these people is based upon how many other people pat them on the back and praise them in church.

Christianity is watered down

all of the things mentioned above are true. Not all churches are equally guilty of every one of these. The things mentioned above are really just symptoms of a core underlying issue. Does the church today look anything like the church in Acts at all? We can all delude ourselves to believe that we are but if you are honest, you know that we are nowhere near that. Is that a fair judgement? Yes of course it is! You have access to the same spirit and the exact same power as : Jesus, Peter, Paul, Timothy, Elijah, Moses, David, And so on. As John Eldridge says, God didn’t give us a book of exceptions. He intended these stories to be models of how we are to live our lives.

That being said, we are nothing like the church in Acts. The early church didn’t have social get togethers and potlucks but had something closer to war meetings. They lived supporting one another because they had to.

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.Acts 4:32-35

Can I go to that church? Is that an option? Because I haven’t seen or heard of anything remotely like that.

Technical Morality

The life that Jesus offers you-inevitably puts you in the crosshairs of religion. Because of their love for technical morality, large portions of the Church will be upset with your freedom. Because of their lack of desire for holiness they will not want what you’re offering. Jesus was in almost constant conflict with the religious, so that ought to give you a warning-this is probably in your future as well. Don’t look for it; I’m not encouraging that. Don’t make it your mission to go change the church. But the conflicts will inevitably come, simply because you are siding with Jesus.John Eldredge -free to live

John Eldredge made this as a warning to those that are pursuing holiness through his book. Technical morality is a plague that has covered all of religion and is as evil as it gets.

Technical morality is the exact same morality the pharisees adhered to. I see it as still the only code we adhere to today as well. Its just like Paul predicted “having a form of godliness but denying its power.” If I told you that we can’t follow Gods law without the help of the holy spirit I doubt anyone would have an issue with that but that’s not how we live. I have spent most of my life in that same striving. I think we just accept that we are all sinners and broken and that’s it.

We gave up on holiness

Living life without sinning perpetually is just too hard. You never really seem to gain any real lasting freedom from sin. Its just an endless fight that you know you will eventually lose to at some point. So we give in which is what is so insidious about this. Yes you’re broken and yes you’re severely flawed but do you really expect the God we worship to just leave you there? Can you honestly accept that he just saves us from consequences of our sin and then just forces us to live with it till he comes back, constantly trying to push this huge bolder up the mountain? NO, he came to heal us, we are not just forgiven our sins but the cross gives us everlasting victory over Satan if we would only claim what is ours! We are healed through the resurrection and given authority through his ascension to the throne. There is SO much more!

Useless knowledge of God

Think about it this way. I went to Spanish class for three years of my life in high school. They taught me a lot about grammar and learned a lot of technical structure but very rarely did I ever speak the language. I did well and got good grades but I can’t talk a single bit of Spanish to any native.

I’ve heard of people who have had as much as ten years learning a language through college and still couldn’t hold a very simple conversation with a waiter at a restaurant. I know a lot of Spanish, kinda sorta but not really at all. In the same way for most of my life. I knew God very well but kinda sorta not at all. “always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth“. I knew the technical structure of Spanish but does anyone actually speak like that? No! They speak in a way that sounds entirely different.

If you want to learn a language you have to be around native speakers and listen to them. In the same way we have to be connected to the spirit and hear from God in order to know anything really meaningful about him. We all practice this very distanced sterile understanding of God that rarely involves I dunno maybe talking to him?

Has church made us better?

Can you say that today you are a better person because you went to church for however many years? I certainly can’t. In fact I have developed a far deeper understanding of God from the time in my life where I didn’t even attend church than any time that I have. Technical morality seems right, God commands us to do all these things but some of the largest bodies of scripture are left out or misused that go in depth on holiness and how we can achieve the life God wants for us. This sounds a lot like the kind of work of someone we all know so well.

Satan has infiltrated church leadership

This all reminds me of a famous scene in Harry Potter Order Of The Phoenix

Dolores Umbridge: Your previous instruction in this subject has been disturbingly uneven. But you will be pleased to know from now on, you will be following a carefully structured, Ministry-approved course of defensive magic. Yes?

Hermione Granger: There’s nothing in here about using defensive spells.

Dolores Umbridge: Using spells? Ha ha! Well I can’t imagine why you would need to use spells in my classroom.

Ron Weasley: We’re not gonna use magic?

Dolores Umbridge: You will be learning about defensive spells in a secure, risk-free way.

Harry Potter: Well, what use is that? If we’re gonna be attacked it won’t be risk-free.

Dolores Umbridge: Students will raise their hands when they speak in my class.

Dolores Umbridge: It is the view of the Ministry that a theoretical knowledge will be sufficient to get you through your examinations, which after all, is what school is all about.

Harry Potter: And how is theory supposed to prepare us for what’s out there?

Dolores Umbridge: There is nothing out there, dear! Who do you imagine would want to attack children like yourself?

Harry Potter: I don’t know, maybe, Lord Voldemort!

Imagine if you will for a moment that Hogwarts is the church and Umbridge is a demon answering to Satan. The metaphor feels right if you really think about it. The ministry has infiltrated Hogwarts and wants to keep them from rebelling against them so they, being intelligent, know that education is so important to maintaining control.

Satan and his minions pretend to be the righteous.

And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about. For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.2 Corinthians 11:14-15

Satan gives us a watered down useless version of Christianity that disarms anything with any actual power and leaves everything else to make up a pointless faith. If we rip out the power and the supernatural from Christianity it’s just a bunch of useless rules.

Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them? And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? I face death every day—yes, just as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord. If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised,“Let us eat and drink,    for tomorrow we die.”1 Corinthians 15:29-34

We don’t live like the early Church

The only way I can explain how messed up I see the church is that Satan has a very very strong influence in it today. During the early church history, Christians were killed and tortured for their faith. They lived with such reckless abandon that none of it seemed to matter. What’s funny is that the persecution increased their numbers. I can just imagine Satan saying”. What am I gonna do about these guys? Nothing I do seems to effect them!”

What I believe Satan realized is that persecution doesn’t work. In many ways persecution validates the belief. If this isn’t the real deal then why does everyone want to stop me so bad? What Satan realized was: if you can’t beat them, join them. During the reign of Constantine the great in Rome, some version of Christianity was adopted by the roman empire. There were different versions of Christianity that popped up before that but it truly became a religion in that moment in history. Hence Roman Catholicism.

Today Satan feeds us a watered down version of Christianity that’s just enough like the real thing that it fools us. Being heavily involved in the modern church, he gets to decide a lot. This is what Satan does, he never strait up lies but he takes a position that looks like its the same thing as the truth but it’s not. Before Roman Catholicism, You really couldn’t describe Christianity as a religion but more of a movement. The early church called their movement, The Way.

But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way.Acts 19:9

About that time there arose a great disturbance about the WayActs 19:23

However, I admit that I worship the God of our ancestors as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect.Acts 24:14

How many people actually know that! I never learned that. We don’t take deep looks at scripture like that! God has, and always will be, opposed to organized religion. Jesus was killed by the religious. He cursed the religious. The way we practice the faith today looks far more like the rest of the world than it does like The Way.

We aren’t suffering real persecution

If we are really the true church of God then why does the world get along with us for the most part?

In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,2 Timothy 3:12

the world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil.John 7:7

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent meJohn 15:18-21

I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.John 14:17-19

Being hated by the world by no means makes you one who is right with God but I believe that if we were practicing a sincere faith and holiness, the world would hate us with a ferocity you don’t see anymore. The church and the world can’t coexist. If the world and the church coexist there must be something wrong with the church. We don’t even need to yell and judge the world in order for us to be hated by them. All you have to do is be holy and people will be drawn to you with a magnetism they don’t understand but those in power will always hate you.

Let me also mention that throughout christian history, it was the religious that persecuted Christians even more than the world. Jesus, John the baptist, James and many others didn’t die by the hand of the Romans but were killed by the religious rulers. Peter and John were brought to the Sanhedrin not the Romans. All the very many holy wars were religious persecuting other religious people. The worst atrocities committed by man were done so in the name of God: Spanish inquisition, crusades, and so on. In my life, I may not have done enough for the world to hate me but certainly I have been persecuted by the church.

I’m tired of religion. I’m done with religion. I want to get away from denominations and complex church structures and go back to a way of life where we live with each other and do life together and stop showing up to play pretend christian on sunday morning. Religion needs to die and The Way needs to grow. Are you tired of the “ministry approved” version? I certainly am. There’s so much more beyond appearing moral and the constant cycle of sin and forgiveness. I have just begun the journey and oh how I wish to convince everyone to come with me. I see a future in which a new movement occurs. One similar to The Way- where little pockets of people across the world form battalions where they live the way the early church did and pursue an authentic faith and holiness. God has plans to change everything very soon. I want to be a part of what he’s doing, will you?

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