It’s remarkable, considering the tone of so many Christian sermons and messages, that any church has honest people show up at all. I can’t imagine that any religion in the history of humanity has made as many clearly false claims and promises as evangelical Christians in their quest to say that Jesus makes us better people right now. With their constant promises of joy, power, contentment, healing, prosperity, purpose, better relationships, successful parenting and freedom from every kind of oppression and affliction, I wonder why more Christians aren’t either being sued by the rest of humanity for lying or hauled off to a psych ward to be examined for serious delusions.
The paragraph above is excerpted from a post on Michael Spencer's blog, The Internet Monk. As you can see, he's a pretty powerful critic of the evangelical church, powerful especially because he loves the church so much. In the post from which I drew the quote, titled "When I am weak: Why we must embrace our brokenness and never be good Christians," he takes on the relentless prosperity/victory/joy-filled nonsense that so many evangelical churches preach, and reminds them that "This life of faith is a battle full of weakness and brokenness. The only soldiers in this battle are wounded ones."
The entire post is great, and so is Michael's blog. He has an interesting group of readers, including several atheists and agnostics, who have found in him a Christian who does not demonize or demean them, and with whom they can have a serious conversation. His book, The Coming Evangelical Collapse, will be coming out soon. (Actually, I'm not sure if that will be the final title of the book, but it's what everyone who knows about it calls it. You can Google the phrase "coming evangelical collapse" to see what people are saying about his ideas, and you can read his commentary on the topic, published in The Christian Science Monitor last March.)
One more thing - Michael recently received a cancer diagnosis. Prayers, many prayers, would be much appreciated right now.
I used to visit his site from time to time while on my own spiritual journey. But, once I landed (and not in an evangelical Protestant church) it seemed disingenuous for me to continue with a site mostly dedicated to criticizing something I had already left. I was also waiting for him to find someplace for himself and disappointed that it never seemed to happen, KWIM? I am sorry to hear about his diagnosis. Lord have mercy!
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