WE'VE LOST CHRISTIANITY

 
WE'VE LOST CHRISTIANITY
by Andrew Strom

Despite the thousands in our megachurches today, soaking up the
warm entertainment offered to them every week, I want to put it to
you that we have lost Christianity. Despite the Christian books
now found in every Walmart, and the "crossover" of Christian artists
into the mainstream, and our Christian mega-stores and CD´s and
DVD´s and Study-Bibles, I want to put it to you that we have lost
Christianity.

Despite our lavish Cathedrals in the suburbs (`Charismatic or not)
with their pastel hues and comfortable pews, their projector screens
and $30,000 sound systems, I want to put it to you that we have
utterly lost Christianity.

We left it behind somewhere when we shifted our churches from
the inner city into the "comfortable" suburbs. We left it behind when
we stopped welcoming the bums off the street into our meetings
and started welcoming only the "respectable" people. We left it
behind when we stopped preaching "take up your cross" and
turned the gospel into a success formula - `Seven Steps to your
Best Life Now.´

Somewhere in our comfortable suburban streetscape with its
manicured lawns we lost the real thing. Somehow in our concern
for "property values" and a better `dental plan´ we left it behind.
But that is not the worst part of it. The worst part is that we don´t
know how to get it back again. Or perhaps we don´t really WANT
to get it back again. The cost simply doesn´t bear thinking about,
does it? And so, as we drive around in our nice shiny cars with
our groovy plastic toys, and attend "church" as we know it twice
a week for 2 hours;- As we live a life that is about as unlike
Jesus as you can get, a life of comfort and coddling undreamt
of by billions around the world;- a lifestyle in the top 10% of the
earth today (-in debt up to our eyeballs all the while) - the fact
is that we don´t really CARE that we have lost original Christianity,
do we? We are too busy, man. Don´t bother us with that kind of talk.

It will all be OK, the preacher tells us. We will all make it to heaven
in the end. We are all "decent" people here. We have "prayed the
little prayer". We have `given our heart to the Lord´.

But what is this? What is that thundering voice I hear? "DEPART
FROM ME." `But LORD... But LORD....´

"I said - `DEPART FROM ME´. Don´t call me Lord. You never truly
lived like I was your Lord and you know it. For I was hungry and
you gave me no food; I was thirsty and you gave me no drink; I
was a stranger and you did not take me in; naked, and you did
not clothe me; sick and in prison, and you did not visit me...."

What is the essence of true Christianity that we have lost, my
friends? It is simply described by James as follows- "Pure religion
and undefiled is this: To visit the fatherless and widows in their
affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." (Ja 1:27).

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