Here is something that Yahweh said that I did not write down until now. Yahweh said, ‘they won't listen. They are a stubborn people.' Hearing this kind of stopped me in my tracks, and made me wonder what that meant for me as a writer. It does take the wind out of your sails but I have decided to deal with the dilemma by writing both to a future audience and to an imaginary ideal audience of people who are willing listen. You see, I understand that sooner or later everyone hears Yahweh, even if they don't hear me.
Anyone who is familiar with gospel accounts and the elements of the story of Joshua who rose from the dead, would know that it is a major theme of these documents that God did not require religion. This theme did not originate with the gospels themselves but this is actually the carrying on of an earlier tradition of the Jewish Prophets. What God really requires the very most from churches is empathy. Religion always looks cheap and tawdry in comparison.
Here is the way I read the situation in the churches. The churches pale in comparison to God, and their goodness rusts away and looks like cheap tarnished bronze. The end result of this process could take many forms, or at least this is what I am hoping is true. To begin we could consider the worst case scenario. A church stands before God looking like tarnished bronze while God shines like gold. The guilt of the church is clearly revealed, exposing that church to shame and thus stirring up that stubbornness Yahweh was talking about. This resistance could be shame based resistance followed by rationalizations and justifications and increased sinning. Or the source of the resistance could be short sighted greed or concerns for survival or other such motivations. A church then begins digging a pit, and then digging deeper and deeper, as though that church did not understand that this only gives you in the end a deeper pit with not much else to show for the effort. Now the situation has gone from bad to worse, for now that church looks foolish, which is the twice the reason to be humiliated, disgraced, and shamed. That church now has added incentive to keep digging out that same pit they were working on before. They go from bad to worse until finally they turn out just like those pharisees in the Bible with no useful empathy remaining in their hearts at all, becoming in the end a church up to its neck in the deepest and worst sorts of cruel evil. How does that sound as a worst case scenario? Well, perhaps it could be made even worse, and why not, because it is the worst case scenario, and just based on my personal experience of this place and thus my expectations, it is certainly true that the worst case scenario will always come true, when you are presented with a range of options. So we can take it for granted that this will certainly happen, and be prophetic, because let's face it, it will. It always does. Barring a miracle of some sort, it will happen again. And so I describe that one really stubborn church that won't stop sinning in the church way of sinning, and this is something you would expect to see.
Now being a natural optimist after considering the inevitable worst case scenario for that church I would like to be able to believe that what one can expect is a range of responses. That always sounds like a good omen to me, for after all, having dealt with that church of the worst scenario in the next church you consider things can only improve to something better than the worst case scenario. (Knock on wood.) I am encouraged by the fact that the book of Revelations presents a range of responses of different churches and indicates that churches would exhibit a range of behavior. This would be about as close to a rosy scenario a person can reasonably expect to see in this place, anything being better than that worst case scenario, just by definition.
A piece of advice. There are some scary scary things written down in the book of Churches to describe the fate of that worst scenario church. So if you want to live in scary scary land, the land of the march of the church damned, then you can go off to join such a sinful stubborn church on the march to hell, rolling terrifying scriptures back and forth in your mind as you stubbornly march along on with that sinful church. It goes without saying that all that sinning and the terrifying damnations of scripture is not something that is going to contribute anything to the well being of your mental and spiritual health. But then it isn't supposed to be enjoyable. It is after all the march of the damned. You won't like it. Find a different church and just let them do that one themselves.
Now religion, it turns out, is compromised just like every other thing on this planet is compromised. The compromises made by religion are best revealed by comparing the high empathy policies advocated as the Law of the Kingdom of Heaven and the lack of fulfillment of those ethical requirements in the lives lived out by churches. There are truly important ethical requirements of the Law of God that are only noteworthy by their absence, having been given no place of priority in the writings and speeches and sermons of those churches. All churches only partially accept the Law of God just as it proves to be the case that all churches only partially accept the Bible, and this is true even among fundamentalists, who are different then only in that they refuse to admit this is true.
All churches have fallen short of the Glory of God because most churches are practical institutions, and they understand they have to learn to live in the world, and that means no hopeless idealism or ridiculous unworkable impossible ethical demands. Now as I mentioned previously, the Word of God is considered hopelessly idealistic in this place, and no church wants to be irrelevant to society, and so what churches produce in the end is that brand of compromised religion peculiar to a certain church. Now which parts of the Bible will be played down and which parts will be played up differs among the different churches. What I hold to be true is that in almost no case will you ever find a church that completely keeps to the High Ethical Standards and Gloriously Idealistic Law of God. Churches are more sensible in a worldly way and thus they know not to do something like that.
The problem comes when sinful tawdry looking churches have to stand in their tawdriness before the splendor and majesty of God. Doesn't she look cheap now, those churches? And I am sure she probably feels pretty cheap, and let's face it, there is a good chance she is going to do the shame based resistance thing, and try to justify her tawdry appearance. She will do that thing that Yahweh described. She won't listen. She will be a stubborn church.
Religion always looks pretty cheap next to God. So there you go. Churches have fallen short of the Glory of God. If churches can't yet see that, and I can, it is only because those churches have not yet experienced the sudden drop. They haven't been brought before God under bright lights only to have someone hold up a mirror for them, while people are watching, of course, keep that in mind, and there that cheaply dressed church will find herself looking at her tawdry reflection in that mirror, and she will know it. She looks tawdry and cheap. The big question that hangs in the air for me, is how will she deal with the humiliation. Now there is no doubt that God cannot become less good, just to make a church look less dowdy, less cheap. No, in the real world, God just is good and so it is the case that churches will have to look bad.
I have noticed that the book of Revelations deals with problems in churches by addressing those problems, and I encouraged by the fact that someone else felt this was worthwhile to attempt. I thought I would try to articulate some of what concerns me about those churches by isolating some of these concerns through practical examples. The first concern I have is with prosperity doctrine, a very popular form of religion today. I compare this doctrine to the unspecified doctrine of the Nicolaitans that was said to be invading churches in the book of Revelations. We are never told what doctrine the Nicolaitans were teaching, but it isn't important. What is important is that churches not hold doctrines that are ethically compromised. Even if you cannot control a world you can still create a church. In this way churches can give expression to the high ideals of God by making the church a place where deepest concerns of God are given the highest honor. This would exclude unethical or morally compromised conduct. Doctrines devoid of these qualities lead people into dangerous pits and traps, and are dogmas devoid of the required empathy demanded by the requirements of the Law of the Kingdom of God.
Now religion really fails people when it leads people into any kind of trap that is bound to produce guilt and then shame followed by that ruinously destructive pit digging conduct, the rationalizations, the stubborn denials, and shovel after shovel full of that very same sin. The best way to illustrate the point would be by using a practical example.
There is this concept known as ‘prosperity teaching' and this is a perfect example of a doctrine so devoid of empathy and so unconcerned with the ethical requirements of the Law of the Kingdom of Heaven that it is certain to lead people into behavior that is cruel in the sight of God, in that it shuts out the sound of suffering humanity, a very onerous sin, and because this is a heartless sin, it is a sin that is as guilty as sin itself, and thus the source of profoundly deep guilt, and a kind of shame that can be unbearable. Such people will march the march of the damned in this place, with the torments of condemning scripture always whispering into their ears. Doesn't sound like much a life. Because prosperity doctrine is unconcerned with the fate of suffering humanity, but concerns itself with making sure that you, as an individual, get a bigger share of whatever pie is being split, prosperity doctrine is a serious sin in that it is evidence for a greedy and self concerned heart. It looks very cheap in the presence of God, and particularly tawdry. Now if the shame and guilt one must accept as the price of sinning could be compared to a coat, then the enormous load of guilt brought onto a person by this doctrine could be compared to a coat of heavy chains. This unethical and obviously morally compromised behavior is the source of a terrible guilt and a load of shame that is truly crushing in its awesome weight. You see, this is God's universe, and the guilt and shame always match the crime. Not only do they march the march of the damned when they sin in this way, sin prevents them from returning to God, and this is a clearly recognizable trap. They will dig pits, and they will keep on digging, because now they have become guilty, as guilty as sin itself. Whenever a church teaches people to sin, and especially when people are taught to sin in such a dangerously unclean way, it is a perfect example of a terrible failure on the part of religion and is the evidence for the lack of understanding of the heart of God or the gospel you would expect to find in any church which is so deep into some sorry sin.
The Word from Revelations for those churches is as follows. Purchase white robes from Joshua the Messiah to hide your shameful nakedness and buy salve to heal the injury to your blind eyes. What it means is this. You are guilty. As guilty as sin itself. Now change your clothes and move on, and don't sin anymore. Grace, you see, is always dependant on repentance, and repentance will be followed by Grace. This is how you will have to deal with impossible guilt. Repent, surrender the point, change your conduct, and you will be forgiven. As the gospels described this grace, ‘go, and sin no more.'
That God should not require religion is best demonstrated by the failings of religion. What is in the religious heart is what is manifested in the religious life and is the source for what is heard from religious lips. When the paltry deeds of religion are compared to the heart and the deeds of God, the church looks paltry indeed in comparison, and this leads to deep guilt, for every church has certainly fallen short of the Glory of God, something that will become apparent in the not to distant future. Guilt, especially of the heavy, onerous type churches produce leads to an equally onerous obstinate shame based resistance, with constant and repetitive sinning a necessary part of the mix.
Here is a practical example of what I mean. Consider first the terrible fate of the starved babies of the world. Tens of thousands of these infants die every single day on earth. Meanwhile it turns out to be the case that livestock eat 80 per cent of the food produced in the world (returning 1 gram of animal protein for each 100 grams of plant protein produced.) Humans directly consume only 10 per cent of the food produced and you can clearly see here that this is situation in which improvement is possible. This cruel and senseless starvation of babies would be just one example of the kind of odious and disgusting evils of the world which God must endure during every minute of every single day. Add onto that the odious offence, the disgusting and cruel tormenting of human bodies that goes on day after day, the terrible acts of evil and the great humiliation, pain, agony, sorrows, all of which God must endure during every living moment of every living day and you can understand that not only would God would be in a great deal of pain after being forced to endure things truly odious and disgusting to consider, but as a result you would also understand that God is Wrath and Anger. All that is required to understand God is a little genuine empathy. A little child could do it...And this is where prosperity doctrine leads people far far away from the very heart of God. If they understood they would not be asking God for houses, cars, trips around the world, and all the other things they ask for. It looks cheap and tawdry and unclean and that spells trouble for churches.
You should also never underestimate God. You should never think lightly of the wrath of God, or think of it as nothing more than a tap on the wrist. For example, if you don't have the empathy to feel what a starving baby feels and thus what God feels, the alternatives range from sending you straight to hell for that odious sin, or showing you some mercy by giving you the option of attaining some empathy. In the case of this sin you could learn the required empathy by kindling the wrath of God and then experiencing ruins and hungers as you try to live out your sorry life and survive just one more dreadful anxious day. You could be hungry. You could be hard pressed and desperate with no one to turn to, the one who receives no empathy or mercy and just has to learn to live with it. You don't underestimate God. You don't make God run out of options, because you see God is never out of options.