The Churches Are Failing! P3 of ?

The left has been pushing an ever more liberal set of policies that strike at the very heart of conservatism and traditional religion, especially Christianity. For years, the right and conservatives, have not really resisted; this includes the church. The church by and large has taken a stance that it isn’t going to get involved in politics. But it, as well as the American people and the American government has never made a distinction between what is political and what is not. And indifference has led to anything that can be pushed to a politician is political.

Indecision lack of courage has taken parenting away from us. Now, surgeries can be performed on underage children to allow for such major life decisions as abortion. Another example, inaction let the government make gender into a political issue. If it isn’t obvious at birth what gender an individual is (and there are a rare instances that this could occur), genetic testing will reveal it. But our government is dictation that children can seek out the attempt to change their gender, get medicines irreversibly alter their bodies and even mutilate their own bodies. Besides taking the decisions and even counseling away from the parents and allowing the child to make choices that they are not mature enough to understand, the child or an adult, never actually and truly change their gender. They will always, no matter the medications and no matter the mutilating surgeries be the gender they were born as.

But the church sat on their hands and let these and other travesties happen. Sure, maybe there will be a small mention of how abortion is evil and a Christian shouldn’t be for it and maybe there will be the crazy over zealous person in Sunday school that hands out an anti-abortion track but that’s about it. The church doesn’t want to step on anyone’s toes. The church doesn’t correct the Christian when the Christian wont take a side (which is really taking the pro-choice, or rather pro-murder, position). The church won’t spend a Sunday morning taking about the horrors, showing the science that a fetus is a life, not just a stage of pregnancy. The church leaves it up to it is between the mother and God if they want to kill the baby.

The church has done the same with marriage. It hasn’t placed an emphasis on not only for a man and a woman to stay together, but hasn’t really condemned same sex partnerships and marriages. The church will rarely stated that God hates divorce and it certainly doesn’t teach it. The same goes for the LBGT issues. The church may say that it isn't normal and its a sin but it doesn’t teach it. It doesn’t take a strong stance on condemning it. It’s shameful but it seems to be the norm for the church.

By the church not teaching how these and other topics are wrong has empowered the Christian to be lackluster in their actions, indecisive when they need to make decisions and utterly shameful in their knowledge of Biblical matters. But at least the church didn’t step on any toes.

And of course while all this was and is occurring, the left is making fun of the traditional family and it’s values and organized religion. And the congregations, taking the lead from it’s elders and preachers, sit back and take it. The opening prayer by this session of the House is a good example. Invoking the name of a god never before mentioned n congress (and not by a person that has a religion affiliation toward that god) and to the man god and the woman god. This wasn’t a prayer but a deliberate insult to the Jews and Christians of this country (well, actually not just of this country but anywhere).

Whether they intend to, the elders, preachers and teachers of our churches are encouraging this; by their example. They aren’t doing much to make a difference in the church so how can the church make a difference in the world?

Let’s look at the ping pong meme. The premise is that the church actually gets very little time to teach and influence kids, so the children's parents need to supplement and/or step up the teaching at home. What the church doesn’t understand is that thy are teaching children much more than they realize in that 40 hours; and much f it is negative.

For example, the church teaches our children that they are second hand citizens. In many congregations, children are actually in classrooms and their own sanctuaries more than adults. But they are giving the second hand equipment that the adults find undesirable, like audio and video equipment. The kids get the crap that the adults are no longer satisfied with. What does that teach them of their worth?

Children are told how much Jesus loves them at Sunday School, maybe even with the Bible verse of they will know that you are my disciple by your love, but the teacher and perhaps no one never makes contact with them outside of Sunday School. Would a child think that they are loved? Or at the end of VBS, they are told by their group leader that they are loved and that they will see them next year at VBS. Would a child mistake this as love? Why aren’t we loving them outside of Sunday morning or VBS? Why aren’t we visiting them and their families afterward? Truth is in most cases, this si the love that the adults were shown as kids and they don’t know better. And the church doesn’t teach our children’s teachers or critique them. Heck, truth be told, the church is lucky to get someone to fill the roles let alone get people that are actually capable, competent, adequate and the right people for the tasks. And what does that teach, this is the best we got?

So even if the church does have the right people to work with the kids, how many parents are really up to the challenge, or what should be a pleasure, to teach their children in Biblical truths? Parents aren’t even getting the most basic effective teaching themselves. Why should we expect that parents can then extrapolate the soft, unchallenged lessons from the sermons, and from Sunday School, assuming they themselves attend. No. Most people don’t have the confidence to teach or tell anyone about Christ and the same goes for their family. And the church hasn’t been effective, and often times hasn’t even tried, to teach parents how to be Godly parents to share Jesus with their family.

So should the church be surprised when children do actually learn from the church? They’ve learned what they thing love looks like and how important they are to the church. Either by conversation or by casual listening, they’ve learned that there is no reason to stand up for anyone or anything because everything is between another person and God; they aren’t to gt involved. They’ve been taught by false preachers, whom no one corrects, the things that go against God and it sounds authoritative and reasonable; because no one teaches them differently.

If you do a study of preachers in the Bible, you’ll find that only a few were effective; the rest were totally ineffective and others were false preachers. I mention this because if you also do a study of standing before God, form an observer view, there are vasts numbers there, but when you zoom in to an individual, you see that there is only 3 persons; you, Jesus and God. Your preachers/elders/teachers are not there. You are before God and Christ alone. You will not be able to point a finger at anyone, not your preacher/elder/teacher/spouse/etc, and lay any blame for yourself or anyone you misled. It’s all on you.

The Bible tells us that to mislead one even as a child, that it would be better to place a milestone around your neck and throw yourself into the sea. The reference to a child isn’t a reference to an age but to one’s spiritual maturity. And to mislead someone isn’t limited to just a purposeful miss-teaching or misleading. One’s failure to correct another, one’s failure to get another the proper education and one’s immoral and hypocritical lifestyle are ways to mislead someone.

If those posing as leaders of your congregation are not effectively teaching you and your family, if the preacher makes a good performance but doesn’t challenge the church, if your church is virtually indistinguishable from a club that meets on Sunday, you better get out of there. Get the training you need for you and to train your children. Don;t let the books in Revelation show any sins against you that are not common to everyone. Don’t the words read allowed say that you held someone back, that you falsely taught, that you remained silent. Don;t let it be sad that it would have been better if you had thrown yourself into the sea.

Many people either ignored the signs or just didn’t see them, but Covid really exposed how ineffective our congregations are. The Church has preached of the end times, but the church has treated the end-times as a time to start to do things right. Covid isn’t the end times but seeing how people and governments the world over have acted because of it, it is a sign that Christians are not ready for te return of Christ.

When the governments shut down our places of worship, the church was taken by surprise. And for the most part, the church still doesn’t know what to do. It hasn’t taken care of it’s own congregations let alone make an impact on the world. The new Equality Bill will likely pass. Besides such things that shouldn’t be political that the church allowed to become so, like allowing men to play on women's teams and vice versa, the gender neutral safe places of bathrooms, locker rooms and such, and minors the ability to choose their gender, churches are loosing their ability to even be able to hire/not-hire based on non-conforming beliefs and besides having to accept same sex marriages, will be forced to not even suggest a family unit consist of a male and female parent as a viable alternative.

I often want to differentiate myself from a Christian and I do so by calling my self a Christ-follower. It means the same thing but I probably incorrectly think that it will get me out from an under the bad name that a lot of Christians have given it. One reason is for the 86% poll. 86% of Americans claim to be Christian, supposedly. Certainly their actions show otherwise. If it were true, and if they were educated properly by our preachers, elders and teachers, would any of this have occurred; they wouldn’t let these happen by their vote.

Instead, we talk after church about wrong it is for men to play against women in sports. A little talk may be about how the “Sex Change” thing is wrong, but they are really more appealed that the girls might miss out on trophy’s to men. But the women and girls that are complaining aren’t stating that they men aren’t women, just that they are missing out on their trophy. Of course, I’m for you can’t have it both ways; if you believe that people can change genders, then I think they can play on whatever team they want and I have no sympathy that they are missing out on an award.

But where is the church and their preachers, elders and teachers? Taking the same lame approach of well it’s wrong and that’s all were going to say about that. These people should not be teaching, they shouldn't be elders and they certainly shouldn't be preachers. If they aren’t stepping on toes at least sometimes, then they are just ineffective weekly cheerleaders standing in the way of the congregation getting the real instruction they need to grow in Christ and to be an effective difference in their family and the community.