I intend to start blogging again.
I’ve been studying the breakdown of churches and congregations for the last year. I think I have some things to say on that subject that are worth sharing.
Let me preface my remarks by saying that I did not grow up in my youth as a Christian. My family belonged to a Catholic church, and I once thought that I wanted to be a Catholic priest. I turned away from believing in God as I progressed into pre-adolescence. I lived as an agnostic/atheist for about 25 years. I repented from rejecting God about 12 years ago. Why? I found myself in desperate need of grace.
I am a member of an independent Baptist church, but I have not attended services there for several months. So I don’t have any particular allegiance to a denomination or group, If you ask me to recommend a good Bible-believing church to you, I could not come up with one at the present time. I would not recommend a church without attending it and interviewing the people there. Why? For the same reason I have stopped going to my church down the street, doctrine and theology.
I cannot recommend, nor can I suffer, a church where doctrine and theology clash with the Holy Bible. Why? Because adherence to the Bible in teaching and practice is the only thing that will distinguish the Church from every other belief system.
I find it disturbing when a church publishes a statement of faith, and then routinely sanctions teaching and practice which run contrary to that statement. In any other setting that would justly be called lying, but not so in pews full of existentialists who get their theology from “Christian books” and other forms of entertainment. Loose theology finds fertile ground in congregations where men are idolized and the sayings of men (aphorisms) are raised to the same level as Scripture. I do not have a place in such a church. Why? Because I could not sit by without challenging false doctrine. I would be considered a troublemaker.
Here’s the point…I’ve been brought to faith and shown the Light of the World by His Word. (He has changed my life and my thinking 180 degrees from where it used to be in the days of my rejection.) Therefore words mean a great deal. And not only words, but actions too. Words and actions that conflict with reality are false, and therefore rightly to be called lies and deceit. To accept that words can mean anything one wants them to mean, and to say that truth is relative, that is playing with irrationality. That is to invite a breakdown in communication, and without communication nobody can know Christ, except the false christ of their imagination.
I ex-communicate myself from any church that lacks integrity concerning the teaching and preaching of the Holy Bible.
