The (Ir)Relevant Church

Another week, another church. This week I visited Hope Presbyterian Church, a mega-church located in the suburbs of Memphis, TN, with an average weekly attendance of 7,500. As expected, it is full of wealthy, white families with a few black folks scattered here-and-there for good measure. After navigating the expanse of minivans and SUVs and dodging families with the standard 2.5 children, I made it into the front door. Once inside, I ran the gauntlet along the corridor where parishioners were dashing between vending machines and coffee kiosks to stock up before the big show.

Inside the sanctuary, I made my way to the 7th row for the best view. The show started promptly at 11:15am. The music was a good mix of contemporary and traditional songs, but was essentially a 30-minute concert starring the zombie-like choir and various musicians—from guitarist to drummer to saxophonist. When the music team finished, there was a customary offering and the pastor, Dr. Craig Strickland delivered his sermon. His homily was the third part of a seven-part series titled, “Seven Words from the Cross”. In the series, Dr. Strickland is lecturing on the seven comments Jesus made while hanging from the cross. By the way, these comments by Jesus are not consistent across the four gospels, but that is neither here nor there. Last Sunday, he discussed “love” citing John 19:25-27, where Jesus says to his Mother, “Woman, here is your son (John the disciple),” and, “Behold your mother,” speaking to John of Mary. He goes on to explain that loving your family and treating fellow believers as family is a good thing. The entire sermon was pleasant and non-judgmental. Because of its lack of substance, I won’t bother with further analysis.

This entire experience is a shining example of why Christianity is wrong and evil. Contemporary Christianity is deceptive. Believers focus on sweet and loving passages by Jesus and Paul, while ignoring the genocide and rape sanctioned by their god in the Old Testament. They emphasize Jesus as a loving, humble servant who only wants to save you from his vengeful father who seeks to cast you into eternal torment. The moderate, touchy-feely version of this religion legitimizes all the fringe denominations, which lie to children as a means of propagandizing them and psychologically and emotionally abuse them.

The truth is Christianity is VERY judgmental and preaches the wicked message of an afterlife of eternal torture to the gullible masses. This experience did nothing but expose the shallowness of contemporary Christianity. Christianity is an evil enterprise that seeks to perpetuate and “make relevant” a dim-witted proposition for financial gain and power.

Church website: www.hopepres.com

A Visit to the Asylum

Until this past Sunday, I had not sat through a church worship service in over seven years. After considering a number of churches for this adventure, I decided to attend First Family in Columbia, TN. About twelve or so years ago, this particular church—otherwise known as First Baptist Church—decided to build a large complex on Pulaski Highway south of town. After nearly sixty years on the corner of High St. and West 8th St downtown, the church left an enormous empty facility and a large parking lot where several historic homes once stood. This action demonstrated their arrogance and disregard for the neighborhood and lack of financial and environmental stewardship, but I digress.

The experience at First Family was as one would expect—mind-numbing, overly-repetitive praise music and a sermon full of the standard rhetoric with a spattering of conceited applause and AMENs. The pastor made the usual religious pleas and wisecracks to elicit an emotional response from the crowd. I was left wondering what had happened and how could I regain the hour I lost.

Before the service began, one person who happened to be sitting directly in front me spoke and shook my hand saying, "I don't know if you're a member or not, but hello." No one spoke to me for the remainder of the service—including during the time when everyone is encouraged to speak to their “neighbor”. I suppose I didn’t appear neighborly enough despite being dressed for the occasion with a sports coat and a genuine smile.

The first thirty minutes was a prolonged performance by a female who I would assume is the music minister. I don’t know her name, because it appears in neither the bulletin nor on the web site. There were the standard sing-alongs, but no one in the crowd seemed to be familiar enough with them to heartedly participate. The lyrics were convoluted and ludicrous. One of the seemingly never-ending praise songs had the chorus “There is a fountain who is a King.” What the hell? Having grown up in church, I unfortunately know what this means, but to an average person off the street, it would seem utterly ridiculous.

After a parade of various ministers speaking about goings-on in the church, on-stage walks Dr. Steve Livengood, the senior pastor. His sermon “Perfect Nonsense” was mindless drivel. I sat through the entire sermon asking myself if this preacher is seminary-educated. Turns out he has a doctorate—from where I don’t know. I would assume from one of six, fine Southern Baptist seminaries. Despite the “Dr” in front of his name, Pastor Steve offered a homily that lacked substance and bordered on rambling.

From the title, you may have the gist of its content. As you would expect from an evangelical, Pastor Steve criticized secular education, science, and abortion. Citing I Corinthians 1:18-25, he praises the absurdity of the message of Christ. Verses 22-23 say “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” There is nothing profound or meaningful in this verse. It’s merely stating the obvious. The pastor reiterated this concept of foolishness many times as if that somehow adds truth and meaning to the message of Christ. I waited with baited breath for some profound argument with a twist of paradoxical truth only to be left wanting. Somehow in the twisted world of Christianity, foolishness and absurdity trumps intellect and rational thought.

In my opinion, the church has simply created a problem of sin and disobedience to their god, assembled what they consider to be a solution, and is now trying to reconcile all of this with more mumbo-jumbo. Pastor Steve says that those seeking an answer simply don’t understand the remedy god has put forth. In other words, the foolish ones are not those accepting the absurd message of Christ’s redemption, but those seeking truth and knowledge.

He goes on to attack philosophy and science. In a portion of the sermon directed at college students (of which I’m sure there aren’t many in this particular church), he tells them that if they are taught something in college and it doesn’t coincide with Scripture to reject it. He goes as far as to say that they may contact him via email or phone if they are confused. No doubt he will set them straight as to what to believe and how to filter contemporary scientific facts through the lens of an ancient, unauthenticated book of myths. This is the epitome of indoctrination, propaganda, and deceit. Not only has this church ruined the minds of children, they continue spreading ignorance and misinformation when the children are young adults.

In keeping with the standard evangelical Christian message, Pastor Steve reiterates the claim that humans are born corrupt and in need of salvation. The performance ends with the usual Christian mantra, “How do I know all of this? The Bible tells me so.”

This experience was beyond disappointing. The musical performance was mediocre, the sermon was elementary and lacking any true substance and the people were less than inviting. I give the full experience a D-.

The church's website is www.thefirstfamily.org.

Try Harder

Religion is a virus.

I run into a lot of Christians who would agree with that statement. “My faith is not a religion,” they say. In the 90s, Christians decided to play semantics to draw new converts who were traditionally critical of religion and church. This happened along with pastors trading in their suits and ties for Hawaiian shirts and the introduction of guitars and drums into mainstream church services. At this point, the church also dropped the tiny bit of intellectualism it had for a new, non-judgmental, post-modern emotionalism. Yes, this helped to draw in new members, but there remains a greater dearth of critical thinking in the church than ever before.

This movement toward the contemporary church model has left believers intellectually empty and defenseless against the renewed attacks on their faith. When I was a Christian, I rejected this contemporary movement and felt church was lacking something. I moved my membership to a traditional church in hopes that I could find more “meat” in Christian training. It helped even less. When I turned 30, the transition began for me. Until that time, I had been a devout Southern Baptist—having worked for the denomination for 10 years. The decision was made to truly examine my faith—to dig deep and understand as much as I could about the origins of Scripture. It wasn’t long before I realized how little could be substantiated. “Faith” was no longer enough to fill the gaps of evidence.

As time progressed, I ultimately rejected Christianity. Since that time, I have immersed myself in further study of the origins of Scripture, studying Islam and other religions, and catching up on philosophy and science—biology, DNA, mapping of genomes, the theory of evolution via natural selection, astronomy, physics, neuroscience, and so on. By playing the devil’s advocate, I was able to weed out my wrong beliefs.

Now, I find myself arguing with puny Christians—not only weak in their faith, but mind-numb and ignorant. Their arguments are sophomoric and reveal lack of introspection. By posting a simple anti-religion quote on Facebook, I can draw in the weakest of them. Their arguments—whether theological or pseudo-scientific—are unfounded, and quite frankly, embarrassing to read.

I have a word of advice for Christians—try harder. Play the devil’s advocate with yourself. Read material you wouldn’t otherwise read. Think critically. Question your faith. Stop living in a fog of ignorance. This is the only way you will grow as a person and live a full and fruitful life.