Sorry everybody.

Open Letter of Apology to The World

Please bear with me, this is long overdue and there's lots of ground
to cover. I want to make sure that I get it all out. Not just for me,
but because I think you need to hear it. Maybe there are other
Christians out there as well that need to make apologies and will find
courage here. I appreciate your time, I know it's valuable.

Dear Members of the World,
I'm just a guy, nobody really. Son of a preacher. Years
and years of Vacation Bible Schools, summer camps, youth ski trips,
puppet shows - you name it. I'm not a bad
guy, I've been mostly behaving myself and everybody seems to like me.
I do some good stuff here and there.

But lately I've been trying to understand Jesus more and stuff I never
noticed before has really started to bug me. I've been taking a look
around and I'm having a hard time making sense of what it is we've
built here. So, it just seemed like, whether anybody else says it or
not, I need to take responsibility for the part I played and say what
I have to say.

Here we go ...

I know you think that Christians are a big bunch of hypocrites. We say
we're more "religious" and we're going to heaven and you're not, and
then we drive our big shiny cars with little fishies on the trunk and
cut you off in traffic as we race by the homeless guy on the corner.
We average just 2% of our money to church and charity, despite that we
say the Bible is the word of God and it says we're supposed to give
everything. On average, we buy just as many big screen TVs and bass
boats and fur coats and makeup and baseball cards and online porn as
anybody else. Maybe more. You've seen leader after leader end up in
jail or court or a sex scandal of one sort or another.

Well ... you're right. We're guilty of all of it. We've done it all.
And, I'm really sorry.

You see our cheesy TV shows and slick guys begging for money and you
get that there's something seriously sneaky and wrong here. A high-
pressure call for money so they can stay on the air? Were we supposed
to use Jesus as just another form of entertainment? Who do we think
we're kidding? Where's Jesus in all this? Aren't we supposed to rely
on him? Isn't He going to meet our needs if we're inside His will?

What happened to sacrifice and suffering and helping the poor? I'm
just sick about this. I mean, the church leaders, they're not all bad
guys, there are lots and lots of really hard-working well-meaning
folks who love and care and are meeting real needs in the community.
Some of them understand and love Jesus - but I'm just real sure those
pastors don't drive Bentley's, have multi-million dollar homes and
their own lear jets! I mean, what "god" are we worshipping? Money?
Ego? Power?

You see our massive shiny new buildings all over the place. Heck,
maybe we even kicked you out of your house so we could expand our
parking lots. You can't figure out why we need four different
Christian churches on four corners of the same intersection. We've got
playgrounds and bowling alleys and basketball leagues. We've got
Starbucks coffee in the sanctuary. We've got orchestras and giant
chandeliers and fountains out front. We've got bookstores full of
"jesus junk" with every imaginable style and flavor of religious knick-
knack. But where's Jesus? Is this what HE wanted?

Oh, sure, there are good folks all over and not every church is such a
mess, but Christians are the ones that say we're supposed to be "One
Body." So even the good ones are guilty of not putting a stop to it
sooner. We were supposed to keep each other in line and not tolerate
factions and dissensions and greed and idolatry and all this other bad
stuff. Man, we really blew it! We've got 33,000 denominations and most
of them won't talk to the other ones. We lose over $5 million a day to
fraud from "trusted" people inside the church! We spend 95% of all our
money on our own comforts and programs and happy family fun time shows
and we let 250 MILLION Christians in other countries live on the very
edge of starvation. Not to mention the billion or so that have never
even once heard of Jesus - or the homeless guy downtown we almost ran
over when we cut you off.

We're as guilty as we can be. All of us. Nobody is exempt. We should
have put a stop to it a lot sooner. But I can't apologize on behalf of
anyone else. This is about me.

I know that you might have gone to church as a kid and stopped going
as soon as you could. I know that you might even have been abused by
somebody in the church! Maybe we got you all fired up and then just
let you drift off like we didn't really care. Maybe you just don't fit
our "profile." You might have piercings and purple hair or tattoos or
been in jail -- and somewhere inside you just know that even if you
wanted to go to church one Sunday, it would not go well. I'm sorry for
that. Jesus loves you. He always hung out with the most unexpected
people. He had the biggest heart for the folks everybody else tried to
ignore. What have we done? We've told you to put on a sweater and some
loafers or you can't go to heaven. I just want to throw up.

Look, I know you're mad. And you have a right to be. We've done you
wrong for a LONG time now. There's some things about Jesus that people
need to hear, but we've buried a beautiful masterpiece under hundreds
of layers of soft pink latex paint. If you have a Bible handy, look up
Matthew 23. (If you don't, you can look it up here - www.BibleGateway.com
.) Find it? Read it carefully, the Pharisees were the "religious"
people of the day, the leaders of the faith. In this chapter Jesus
SEVEN times says how pitiful and wretched and cursed they are for what
they're doing to the people they're supposed to be leading. He even
calls them "white washed tombs of dead mens bones" and a "brood of
vipers"! I don't have time here, but read it and see if we're not
doing EVERY single one of those things. Jesus can't possibly be happy
about what we've done to you.

Sure, we like to kid ourselves and pretend everything is OK - but it's
not. We're hated. Now, please understand, Jesus was hated, too. But
that was because he said hard things and sometimes people don't like
hearing the Truth. And he promised we would be hated if we were like
him. But that's not why we're hated at the moment. We're hated right
now because we're a giant pack of lying hypocrites that say one thing
and do something else altogether. If we were hated because we were
like Jesus, that would be one thing, but that's not it at all. You see
right through our happy music and fluffy services and you can tell
there's something desperately wrong here. We're no different than
anybody else - except that we say we're better than you.

It was never supposed to be like this. Jesus asked us to care for the
widows and orphans, to feed the hungry, care for the sick, visit those
in prison, reach the lost. He wanted us to love our enemies and pray
for them. He cared about human justice and suffering, the lost and
lonely. But I don't think He would have marched on a picket line - He
had His mind on much bigger problems. He wanted us to focus on the
eternal things, not the everyday. He never once said to go into all
the world and build big buildings and divide up into factions and buy
Bentleys. Just the opposite! I get that you're mad at us and I think
you have a right to be, but please understand, you're mad at what
we've made under our own power, you're mad at "Churchianity." That's
different than Christ and what he wanted. Don't be mad at Jesus! This
mess wasn't His idea!

Look, I'm really sorry. I accept responsibility for my part in having
hurt you. But I'm committing to you all, dear Members of the World,
that I'm not going to do it any more. Not a single penny more. I'm not
going to put my faith in "Churchianity" or any leader or program or TV
show -- but in Christ Jesus and His salvation. That's when I was set
free and began to see that God wants and expects more of us than this.
And I'm not helping anybody that's not fully committed to the same
thing.

It took centuries to build this monster, so it's not like it's going
to just turn around overnight. But the times are changing and we're
way overdue for something new. Big bad things are happening - like the
tsunami in Asia - and I think more are coming. I don't want any more
time to go by without having said this. I'm sorry for all the time and
money I've wasted. But Jesus saves. Really. The church itself isn't
even the point. Jesus is the real deal. He lived and He died for my
sins and He rose again. He is who He said He was and He cares about me
- and you. He's our only hope. We need places you can go that will
only teach Jesus and will not be swayed or tempted or distracted by
anything else. God willing, that's coming.

Please don't think all Christians are just posers. Some of them really
mean it when they say they belong to Christ. The problem is mostly in
the West where we're all comfy and complacent and seem to like it that
way. The Christians in China and other places are deadly serious.
There's no room for anything but Jesus when you're on the run from the
government. They are dying every day for their faith and doing crazy
hard things because they're absolutely committed to Christ. These are
martyrs. People willing to crucify little pieces of themselves every
day to be more like Christ. People willing to set aside everything
they want to do what Christ wants. People willing to rot in prison or
take a beating or die if that's what it's going to take. People that
act in pure love and never back down. I'm not worthy to tie their
shoes. And there are some like that here, too, and I hope we can get a
lot more people to start living that way. It's way overdue.

If you're talking to someone and they tell you they're a Christian,
ask them if they're the kind of Christian that really means it all the
time or the kind that just means it on Sunday. The Bible says we'll
know them by their "fruits" - by the faith and purity and love in
their deeds and words. When you find one that proves Christ is in them
by how much they love you, ask them to tell you all about Jesus. If
you know one of those fearless martyrs that speaks nothing but pure,
clean, hard Truth - ask lots of questions. Truth is a lot more rare
than you would think. But don't settle for soft, fluffy and
comfortable anymore - that's not in the Bible.

As for me and my house, we're really sorry. From now on, we're going
to serve the Lord, not "Churchianity." We're going to try to call
together as many of those martyrs as we can and start doing what
Christ wanted. If I run into you someday, please give me a chance to
shake your hand and apologize in person. I'm going to try harder from
now on, I promise. I think there are lots of others feeling the same
way, so don't be surprised if you start hearing stuff like this more
often.