Why are 80% of teenagers leaving the church? Well, I have...

Many of you may be familiar with this statistic. I don't know where it comes from, nor do I know the exact validity of it, but if only half of it is true, 40% is bad enough. I have to be completely honest and say I don't mind being numbered with that 80%. I have probably not been to a good church service ever since Camp, and before that it was probably up to 6 months. Y'know I've not missed it at all. I miss the kind of spiritual quality up at Camp Barakel because I can feel God, but at church I hardly feel more than a mockery of what the true message of the gospel is.

Religion...this was going to be my first title really, "The pitfalls of 'religion'" but I felt that was kind of boring. So instead of saying that I guess it might be more shocking to just say I don't go to church. I used to go to a church where the people thought it was a sin to miss church on Sunday...I don't know when it began but I'm to the point now where that doesn't even phase me. These people will preach Christianity to people who've never been to church in their life and turn around and chastise me for missing one day. As if God is going to put that between you and salvation.

For my part I am sick of religion, and I don't miss going to church because of that very reason. It's like I'm sick of seeing weak fathers on movies and TV shows. These leaders who are supposed to be "shepherds" ordained by God to bring the message down from the mountain every Sunday, but yet they don't ever say much more than what people want to hear. I've not heard the Spiritual realm preached about in church ever. I've never heard about the biggest things we have in our lives ever spoken of in church. Because these pastors are no longer afraid of what God is going to ask for in an accounting of their time on earth, and even what they did as shepherds of Christ's flock, they are instead worried about losing members because they won't get as much tithe money.

Now I do have to check myself here, there are some cases where people just don't want to be challenged anymore. The average churches do minister and are useful in Christianity to many kinds of people. For that I do give leeway. But when the vast majority of churches are still stuck on this one model of preaching and giving people the message it's not healthy for Christianity as a whole. It is the very reason why so many people are leaving the church, people like me know there's more to Christianity than what I've been hearing all my life but no one will say anything different.

It reminds me of the colonial days when war used to be two lines of men shooting at each other in open fields. This warfare was thought up in France and taught to many of the generals of the time, and for the longest time it was considered the only way to fight, was to be "gentlemen." No rough stuff. Well, guess where it started to change. Some smart people who were a lot smaller in number and decided that was just plain stupid (I know you're thinking of The Patriot but that's a story and this tactic of unconventional warfare didn't come up until well after the revolutionary warfare, and when used before that time it was reserved only for the "savage indians" who were widely known as "ungentlemanly"). It's the same deal with "religion."

Religion is a belief with rules. You have to do XYZ to be good enough to enter heaven. And if you don't believe that Christianity hasn't sunk to that low then I'll help you with a few examples: "go to church every Sunday" "Do not kill" "You have to be straight" "Don't get drunk"

I know these aren't necessarily good things, nor does God encourage these things. The only point in any of these examples where there is a problem is with the "Do not kill" the translation is "Do not murder" there is certainly times to kill, but with Christ dieing for our sins the need for it exists only in very minute circles of life. Still, it is harped on by the majority of "religious people."

Any of these points are just rules that you have to fulfill to be "good in the sight of God." Umm...last time I checked my Bible God said there was only one way to get to heaven, and that was through our Lord Jesus Christ. The rest is rules.

I wish I could go into more detail in this but unfortunately I don't have the time. For now I want to make sure that everyone knows that Christianity is about believing that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that He has risen again in the defeat of death's sting. Salvation is through Jesus Christ, it is not through the fulfillment of so many rules. That is an Old Testament model and Jesus came to make that moot.

I will discourage people from these sins, for sins they are. But if they believe that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior, they are saved and no church or "religion" is going to make them much better in the eyes of our Lord. Christianity is about believing in Jesus Christ, religion is about stuff like going to church on Sunday.

Let me out of religion please...

"To Live is Christ, To Die is Gain..."

Do you ever wonder what the meaning is of that phrase that Paul speaks? "To live is Christ, but to die is gain..."? I've never really thought about that phrase much, mostly I just ignored it because the implications of such a phrase are so large I didn't want to deal with it. But now that I've been coming to spots where my faith and actions really take root and define who I am I've found myself looking at these hard questions. How do you translate this to your life?

For one, society in general places so much emphasis on someones death, but in the same sentence can denounce it. Abortion is one thing where life doesn't even enter the argument, people just don't care about it. But when someone dies in life who is just another guy he'll at least get a mention in the paper. Movies depict death of notables in a huge dramatic way, where as the average soldier on the battlefield just gets cut down. Society is saturated with the idea of death just like we're saturated with sensuality. How do you deal with death when life itself holds very little meaning?

As a Christian life should be just as important if not even more than death. We always look at death as this painful and hurtful ending that will impact everyone around us negatively. Look at Paul, how important was he during the times he was in? How many people would be effected when he kicked it? But at the point that he was thinking about it he was almost regretting the fact that he was still alive! But at that point it wasn't out of depression, it was because he wanted to be close to God, he wanted the real thing.

I have never been that passionate about being close to God. I knew I could be close to God if I wanted to, but my heart being human was always about doing what I wanted as opposed to going with God. I looked at being close to God as spending countless hours in the Bible, praying for so long you forgot to eat, decided to fast for weeks anyway, and then come out to work just to keep the bills current. That didn't sound too fun to me. I don't think that that is what it means, but the visualization was enough to scare me for awhile.

Why live though? What is life for but to glorify God? The life we have for certain is a gift, it's not just a given that we have this life and that it is now our right to do whatever we feel like. We can, but it isn't our right. The point of our existence is to give glory to God, but because of our fallen nature we have the ability to chose not to live to His glory. Thus my question comes, what truly is life? Paul found a way to live between life and death seemingly. Basically he was alive because God wanted him to continue to minister, but for Paul, anytime a Roman soldier walked past he was thinking about how in half a second he could be with God.

"To live is Christ..." this part of the verse I just don't get at all. I know that in life we are supposed to emulate Christ and His sacrifice, but life is Christ? I just can't seem to get my mind around that. But the "to die is gain..." makes absolute sense to me. We think "the suffering is over," but those who understand the verse say, "I am with God."

What is the purpose of life? How do we deal with life and death? It seems to me that when you have a passion for God above all things all questions to that tune don't exist anymore. On the one hand you have the opportunity to bring glory to God, and on the other you have the opportunity to be with God. When your heart is at this place you'll have the same problem as Paul, I just wish I could be with you God, let the world go its own way, I just want to be with you.

"To live is Christ, to die is gain..." I still don't think I fully understand this...