This is going to sound arrogant; I can’t help that.
I am very leery of people who chatter so much about leaving the churches. Most of them are trying to escape something prodding their inflamed conscience. They mutter on and on about the church condemning some sin they favor. I can’t do much to help folks like that, though I often try.
Quite some years ago I knew Western Christianity was in deep trouble. Whether I could have done more in some objective sense is useless to ask. I always did the best I knew in every context and my conscience is clear. Not that I could blame any church leaders for discounting my warnings, since there were so many similar voices making a whole lot more noise with competing warnings. My efforts were lost in the shuffle. Eventually, I was shown the door one time too many. Their perceptions were not attuned to my message.
It was quite some time ago I took this as a cue from God. By no means was He telling me to hush; it was His driving conviction that caused me to speak in the first place. Rather, I took this all as a cue to get away from the mainstream church. For several years I wrote articles about doing church differently, doing it outside the traditional church structure. As time went on, my articles were progressively radical. I didn’t just reject my own background, but all theology and church practice of Western Christianity as a whole.
There are some overlapping specific teachings, of course, but I reject their entire approach. So I began exploring what it meant to reject Western Civilization and all the intellectual assumptions. Recently, I went back and reviewed all my academic material and wrote a book on how the Bible is based on a view of reality and of knowing that is alien to virtually the whole of Western Christianity (the book linked on the right side of my blog).
While plenty of individual Christians have no trouble with my message, even as they remain within the boundaries of their respective church memberships, I have grown increasingly alienated from the mainstream churches and traditional organized religion. Once again, I’m taking this as a cue from God.
I’ve often recognized the logical consequences of what I believed. If Western Christianity stands entirely on the foundation of Western Civilization, what will happen to the mainstream organized religion when the West no longer supports it? For example, given the current trends in Western governments, there will surely come a time when governments will turn against the churches. As they are currently organized, very few churches will continue functioning on any level at all against official government sanction.
Meanwhile, traditional churches are fading away. The new generations see nothing that answers the call in their souls. The current trend of growing vanilla mega-churches is more about gathering the last few believers from a shrinking pool. The problem is not the gospel; the problem is how it comes wrapped and filtered. If you ask me, it’s not the gospel at all. Folks, traditional Western Christianity is dying on its own, never mind the high probability of political oppression.
Most Western Christians could never imagine the Holy Spirit continuing His work outside the structure. I can’t imagine God letting it go on much longer as it is. I have no timeline, no prophetic vision of how it will look. What I have now is a very powerful urge to distance myself from the mainstream of Christian religion as commonly recognized. I can only assume there is some connection between that urgent move of the Spirit and God’s plans. I’m the last person eager for the suffering and sorrow sure to come.
Still, I have to make sure the average Joe and Jane do not associate me with that mess. The imperative of the Spirit is there; my mind only now begins to recognize how that must be organized and implemented. I believe my ordination and everything attached to that will become meaningless. However, I suspect this will be a highly quantum-ized moral consideration. It won’t be the same in very context. Aside from having a “computer ministry” I’m going to make sure I don’t let people think of me as being a preacher or pastor in meat space. I’ll probably end up saying “Christian Mystic” a lot because most people won’t associate that with church.
I’m not saying all churches will disappear, but that Western Christianity as a whole is doomed, and I believe that doom is very close upon us.
