Why Churchianity is evil.

By today’s standards, the Jews of Palestine were a righteous bunch. Most of the time they were faithful as husbands, raised children who were righteous, kept to the laws of God.

Sometimes their zeal for God made them rebel against the tyrants and imperial troopers who enforced the will of the tyrants who ruled the Levant as client kings for Rome.

But compared with the pagans, the Jews were a light shining in the darkness. They were not have institutionalized prostitution and pederasty — the Greeks did. Nor men killing slaves at whim — the Romans did. Nor child sacrifice — the Carthaginians had, within recent history. Every Roman schoolboy was taught about Cato the elder, and his cry ‘Cathargo delenda est’ and the horrors of the temple of Topeth, where Hansdrubal sacrificed his eldest son pleading to his god before the final battle of the Punic wars. And they knew that the Romans sowed salt over those fields for a good reason.

Yet Christ calls the times evil, and he calls that correctly.

John 7:1-13

¹After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He did not wish to go about in Judea because the Jews were looking for an opportunity to kill him. ²Now the Jewish festival of Booths was near. ³So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples also may see the works you are doing; ⁴or no one who wants to be widely known acts in secret. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” ⁵(For not even his brothers believed in him.) ⁶Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. ⁷The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify against it that its works are evil. ⁸Go to the festival yourselves. I am not going to this festival, for my time has not yet fully come.” ⁹After saying this, he remained in Galilee.

¹⁰But after his brothers had gone to the festival, then he also went, not publicly but as it were in secret. ¹¹The Jews were looking for him at the festival and saying, “Where is he?” ¹²And there was considerable complaining about him among the crowds. While some were saying, “He is a good man”, others were saying, “No, he is deceiving the crowd.” ¹³Yet no one would speak openly about him for fear of the Jews.

Hebrews 12:3-11

³Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart. ⁴In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. ⁵And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as children — “My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him; ⁶for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts.” ⁷Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? ⁸If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children. ⁹Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live? ¹⁰For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness. ¹¹Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

One of the new words that has been coined within the tradosphere is “Churchianity”. A Churchian is a person who attends Church, but is not of Christ and does not obey Christ, in that he does not let himself be disciplined by Christ.

For that discipline hurts. When you find someone and they then cool in that relationship, it hurts. When people assume that you have slept with her (because you have actually dated more than a half dozen times… it hurts). When the ideas of Godly submission are called abuse: that hurts. Where the fashions of this world are worshiped, instead of God. And where no one will call out sin, or hold people to account.

It would be nice if we could go back to valuing the Prov 31 woman who runs a tight ship and has handmaidens carrying the packages instead of all wanting to be the handmaidens ’cause they look cuter in the sheer linen.

Yes, it would be nice wouldn’t it? And it certainly would go a long way to encourage women to stay married because it is an honorable thing. Instead we cheer and applaud people who have the “strength” to make the “hard choice” to do what is “required” to live a “fulfilled and happy” life. And “finding yourself” and “finding your bliss” is an inherently youthful way of thinking, isn’t it?

Unfortunately even the church has joined the cult of youth worship. We used to believe the Bible’s admonition that foolishness is part and parcel of youth and wisdom is the blessing that comes with life experience from which the young could benefit.

However, since we have embraced adolescent culture (since the 50?s maybe?), we have what we see before us today: an unhealthy attitude towards work, duty, family, and faith. Those things are stifling you know.

Well, yes and no. I know people around my age, who, seeing their children are leaving the home, and now having no man in the home, are listening to the siren song of travel, of pleasure. When I come along and make it clear that I am not looking for a roomie with benefits but a wife, that is seen as stifling because that impinges on their freedom. As if the state does not: as if family does not. And this is encouraged within the church. We do not call these things because we were afraid of confrontation, of being called names, of being termed abusive. In short, the church needs to harden up.

“I’m sure she thought her reasons for divorcing were absolutely critical for the well-being of her and their children and that Jesus would totally understand. Every one of her emotions surely was lined up in agreement with that course of action. *** Otherwise we’re just giving every woman a get-out-of-marriage-free card, and under Reason it says, “Check One: A) adultery, B) something else really bad.”

Absolutely. This is critical to understand for the modern Christian man. If she is Churchian, she will come up with a rationalization for whatever she does; and her personal Jesus will bless it, whatever it is. Because, you see, the Churchian’s “holy spirit” is a sanctified hamster.

I can think of two examples. One is a woman who divorced her husband of 17 years because she was unhappy, she had to work, her husband was unhappy, and she just didn’t want to be married to him anymore. Sure, he made his mistakes, but she had no grounds for divorce. Her holy hamster blessed it, though, saying that she had a “right to be happy” and that she needed out of her marriage “for the sake of her mental health”.

The second was a preacher’s daughter married for about 10 years to an atheist who didn’t want kids. She was coming up on The Wall and at 35, had an affair with a divorced man who had 5 kids of his own. She promptly got pregnant by her paramour. Her holy hamster blessed it, saying that “it was meant to be” and that she needed to have a kid and this was her last chance and she “deserved to be happy”.

So let us be clear about some basic theology around the church, lest we worship it, and not Christ.

1. The Church is a theocracy, not a democracy. It is the bride of Christ, and as the husband is the head of a marriage, so Christ is the head of the church. The apostles appointed elders (presbyteroi) to rule each congregation and Paul spent some time explaining to Timothy and Titus who to appoint. They are accountable to God for the congregation. In short, the Pastor and Elders are from God: once an elder, always an elder — and the rest of us are under orders.
2. The primary role of the church is to give glory to God. It is to bear witness. It is to worship. For we are of Christ.
3. The secondary role is to encourage righteous living and good works. This is why we meet together — so that we will compete over who is righteous, that we will be encouraged to continue regardless of the difficulties that we are going through, and that we collectively can do good. This does require correction at times, and always has: consider Paul’s letters were generally written because something needed fixing.
4. We are neither a charity nor a revolutionary organization. The church may run charities — in fact, it should. The church may confront evil in our societies — again, it should. But the church is not part of the revolution or part of the social welfare structure of society. Our salvation does not depend on the soup kitchen.
5. The church does not do therapy. People from churches set up the first humane mental hospitals (the York asylum: it is still running) during the enlightenment —  and ran them without physicians — and there are many in the church who help the distressed. But we do not preach therapy or comfort. We preach the gospel.
6. The church does not promise ease and pleasure. Instead it indicates that being disciplined and punished is part of our godly growth. If you are of Christ, you are more likely to be poor, to have difficulties, and to struggle with weaknesses. If you are of the world you are alone.
7. The church cares about truth, not popularity. Consider the brothers of Jesus. They gave him the usual salesman advice: you have got things sorted in the rural sticks, go to the heartland. But Christ did not, and this is missed by many. He remained faithful to where he was to be at that time, and then attended the festival (as was his duty as a Jew) but privately. He did not use the opportunity to preach, as many would have done.

Christ did not seek prosperity, or popularity, or ease. The Churchians do: you can find them because given a choice between difficulty and ease, they chose the way of least effort, and in their sloth slide to the pit.

Do not be one of them, and do not be like them.