A new national survey has just been released and it verifies a lot of what George Barna has been telling us for a decade or more. Religion isn’t being swallowed hook, line, and sinker any more. People no longer are buying religious dogma that makes no sense, defies scientific truths, and common sense. People are leaving religion and church for spirituality and community.
Main line denominations are losing members by large double digit percentages. And yet people are seeking a deeper spiritual life which the church seems bent on not providing. Christianity is being redefined within the context of our culture. While that might sound relativistic, it’s not- it’s simply being real and relevant! We need a little more spiritual integrity to go along with our diet of fundamental religious beliefs.
Rather than developing the scientific “postulate mentality” where we search for truth and while not knowing as much of it as we should we go with what we know until what we know or think we know turns out to be proven wrong- or right. A scientific postulate is a self-correcting mentality. Since the church thinks that it is infallible (or at least the Pope, the Bible, and certain beliefs), then there’s no need for a postulate. We have doctrines. We have theologies. We have dogmas.
And don’t you dare challenge them!
Protestants look back on Martin Luther and the Reformation with pride, not realizing what happened there was a clarification- a redefining of Christianity. Vatican II was the Catholic version of redefining its beliefs. The process of updating and redefining our beliefs is not a HERESY, but a NECESSITY!
The life of Jesus was not about status quo but about revolutionary ideas: ideas so subversive to current thinking that it got Him killed. We still kill people today who disagree with us. We’re just more sublte about how we go about that process of cutting one off, out, and away.
What’s the latest BELIEF that you once held near and dear that you no longer embrace? The one who cannot have a ready answer is probably one in desperate need of one!
Very good post. I bet to take out the church of the box completely.
No dogmas, No building,Etc…. “Bio Church”