I listen to NPR on the way to/ from work each day. Thats my only news source. I don't spend any other time in my life hunkered down in front of TV or internet news. I wasted years of my life, just after 9/11, glued to the 24 hours news networks...never again.
Today I was driving home and I heard a commercial on NPR for something called "10,000 Doors." Apparently this is a new website/ movement by the United Methodist Church to "rethink church." You can see their site HERE.
What bothered me about this radio commercial was that the tagline went like this...
"What if church was a place where God believed in you?"
I began laughing. I know that such massive anthropocentrism isn't really funny - but, I could not help busting a gut. I mean, how ridiculous is this joke of a thing called American Christianity. We have so deceived ourselves in thinking that we can use religious vocabulary, regardless of theology, and call ourselves believers.
I guess that I should expect this from ardent Wesleyans. It is a complete system that focuses on the free will of man to choose his own salvation, the logical outcome of which is simply being realized now - God is here to be our helper, we're the real center-point in the show.
Expect to see more of this in the future. Christianity is being twisted into a social action network with passing reference to God, and sometimes Jesus. Its a form of works-salvation that rarely mentions sin, the cross, grace, or judgement - those things that Jesus said and did so clearly.
I think that it is primarily a product of a low view of Scripture. Folks have largely decided to read the Bible, the few who actually read it, as a nice story with lots of example of how we can be better people despite all that fairy tale stuff. Once a person or a denomination begins to let their view of Scripture slide, they will soon deny all the essential doctrines of the faith and anthropocentric, feel-good, humanitarian assistance is all that they will have to stand for.
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