Religion
Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Matthew 28:19-20
DEVOTION
“Ash Wednesday” and “Valentine’s Day” share the same calendar square this year. So, what will this day look like for you? Will it be festooned in red bows, bling, and balloons? Or, as ashes mark your forehead, will you “Remember you are dust and to dust you will return”? Maybe your day will be a blend of these two observances, because both offer a measure of love. This was the opening comment that Dianne Swaim wrote for the NextSunday devotional resources titled Reflections, for February 14, 2024. Dianne is a retired minister, who is currently a hospice chaplain in Little Rock, Arkansas. What is most telling is what she wrote next: Lent begins today. This season of the church year marks the 40 days that lead to Easter. In our country, more of us will celebrate Valentine’s Day than observe Lent.
This is an astute observation considering the report issued by the Pew Research Center this past week. The fastest growing religious group in our country are those individuals who designate themselves as “nones.” The survey conveyed that 69% of “nones” are under 50. “Nones” are the second largest religious group at 28% of the population, with Protestants composing 40% and Roman Catholics at 20%. Most “nones” believe in a higher power, but not a biblical God. Their moral compass is not hurting someone, guided by reason and logic. There are three main components to their belief system: 1) there is a God or a higher power but reject the concepts of heaven and hell 2) they question religious teachings and dislike organized religion 3) they don’t see a need for religion.
These statistics represent a cultural shift in our country, though they also mark an evangelical failure on the part of the organized church. Enthusiastic conservative Christians continually witness to saving a person from hell, seldom mentioning the joy of heaven. Sedate Christians who live in the heavenly peace of their religion, also fail to share how God envelops their lives. Youth are studying quantum physics and molecular biology in high school, though in Sunday school they are still getting a simplistic second grade biblical and theological teaching. Media exposure to the church are pedophilia priests, and not the clergyman who dutifully does Mass each morning. Joel Osteen and his megachurch compatriots thunder forth on the screen each evening, and left unseen is the selfless pastor serving the neighborhood church. We are becoming a society that recognizes the genetic reality of homosexuality, yet, the church is splintering with an inability to do so. Hypocrisy rules supreme as sex outside of marriage is condemned, yet, a divorced individual who remarries is never condemned as an adulterer.
I have never seen a Christian cut off his hand and pluck out his eye to avoid the temptation of sin; yet, biblical inerrant interpreters teach that the chasm between heaven and hell can not be disputed, because the parable of the rich man and the poor man is the only parable that mentions someone by name, Lazarus, therefore it must be factual. In their chosen professions these are mature enlightened individuals, though scripturally they are infants.
Then of course, there is the issue of the story of the Garden of Eden, time and place not known, juxtaposed to a created world whose birth transpired billions of years ago.
They profess a strong faith, though in fact, they have a very weak faith, for it one comma is out of place in the Bible, if one passage was influenced by culture, if one word wasn’t dictated directly by God, then, so they maintain, none of the Bible could be true. They are unable to traverse the fine line of biblical interpretation that recognizes the Bible as an academic conglomerate.
These same biblical thumping Christians proclaim the equality of all scriptural passages, yet, I have never seen a single one of these Bible quoting Christians hold all things in common, as they drive their $90,000 leather seated pick-up trucks.
The basic premise, a typical evangelical premise, is only people who believe in Jesus go to heaven, others are forever forsaken to an eternal fiery hell. They maintain that all nonbelievers go to hell because they must intrinsically know Jesus and have denied him; so then, all Muslims, all Buddhists, all Hindus, all Native Americans, all ingenious people in the rain forest of the Amazon, all of these individuals, I surmise, suffer the fate of lavishing in hell. So much so, I guess, for believing in a loving and merciful God.
Needing to apologize for God to create a balance between a loving God and suffering, perhaps even sadder, God initiates suffering upon an individual to develop him or her spiritually. With theological concepts such as this, it is no wonder that we have a population infused with “nones.”
All of these teachings, for a thinking person, are absurd.
In 1980 “nones” were 5% of the population, and in 2007 they were 16%. They have currently grown, in less than two decades, by 12% to 28%, and they will continue to rise in numbers until the church reestablishes the timeless message of the Bible with an authentic presentation.
The change point for me was when I decided to witness to my father. I was a sedate Christian until I came under the influence of Campus Crusade for Christ, while I was attending Slippery Rick State College, located sixty mile north of Pittsburgh. Their continued emphasis was saving a person from hell, almost absent of any other message. So, I decided to witness to my sedate father, worrying that he was destined to hell. Dad’s response, “If that is your God, I don’t want anything to do with it!”
This is why “nones” don’t believe in the Christian God. They don’t want anything to do with our conservative evangelical inerrant biblical interpretation of a God who defies reality.