Faith First Media

Churchology vs. Christianity

by Matthew Elton

copyright 2008 Matthew Elton

Like atheism, true Christianity is a minority in the United States and the world. Agnosticism has become the official religion of the United States, not Christianity or atheism. In my high school, anyone who believed in something was persecuted. Anyone who believed in God was persecuted. Anyone who believed there is no God was persecuted. Only agnostics who truly have no beliefs whatsoever were not persecuted. The great majority of students followed the path of least resistance and either became agnostics or pretended to be agnostics and hid their beliefs if they had any. I've seen this trend not only in high schools but also in colleges and almost every workplace imaginable. It's a trend that permeates almost every aspect of American society - a movement towards agnosticism, because those who hold beliefs (theist and atheist alike, for both groups hold beliefs) are judged and often treated unfairly.

Getting to the point, only a very small minority of people in the United States believe something enough to change their lifestyle over it. The vast majority of people who call themselves Christians do so because they attend church, or because they said the sinner's prayer once in their life, or because their parents were Christian. These are the people I call "Churchologists", because their faith is not really in God, but in their churches. Churches have nothing to do with Christianity. They are an institution created by man, and as such, they are every bit as corrupt as any other institution created by man. I would say the majority of Americans are Churchologists who know little or nothing about the Bible and attend church in order to socialize, gossip about current events, and play late night bingo. There are many studies to confirm this. Studies show that the majority of Christians in the United States don't even know what the first book of the Bible is.

The true measure of whether someone is a Christian or not is whether they follow the teachings of Jesus or not. For Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments". That's John 14:15, and it's the most important verse in the Bible. Even atheists admit that Jesus taught a message of peace and love. So I don't care how many people call themselves Christians - if they have not love, then they are not Christians. As the Apostle Paul wrote, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." Dawkin's claim that Christians are some sort of threat to society has no basis in reality. The Churchologists are the threat. They're the ones who don't have love - who want to force their "beliefs" (which they talk about but don't follow) down the throats of others, who want to turn democracy into theocracy. If I were to list the one hundred most loving, caring, compassionate people I know, every one of them would be a Christian, and any one of them would, if given the chance, gladly give his or her life to save mine, or yours, or a homeless person's. They will not repay evil with evil, no matter how much evil you throw at them. The idea that these people are some sort of threat to society (as Dawkins claims) could not be more wrong, and a statement like that is an epic fail on Dawkin's part.

In the United States, and anywhere else in the world, there is only a small group of people who follow Jesus enough to love their enemies and face persecution by turning the other cheek. There were about a thousand students at my school, and I only knew four other Christians, most of which were "in the closet". I have fundamentalist friends who attended another school, and they are persecuted severely for their beliefs. Persecution is a horrible thing for an individual to have to face, but for Christianity as a whole, it is not necessarily such a bad thing. Like Natural Selection, persecution weeds out the Churchologists and false Christians, leaving only those with strong faith. Let's pray that God will give us the strength to endure persecution if - God forbid - it does come.