In his book, “Why Jesus?” Ravi Zacharias makes some startling observations about our churches:
– Churches that do justice to the message of Christ and his claim upon our lives are rare.
“Churches,” said one critic to me, “are country clubs for the nice people … they’re really
not so nice to everyone else.” I have to admit that I’ve personally sat through some large
gatherings of Christians after which I have walked out and wondered what I would have thought of Christianity if that was what I had heard before I came to Christ. For the most part there is a huge gap between the preaching and worship of today and what faith in Christ and the worship of God were intended to be.
– I am afraid that the forms and the programs have commandeered the message of Jesus into a kind of show and entertainment mold, where the congregants are merely spectators who have come to watch a show.
– The legalism of the Church has disenfranchised so many that the Church has found itself speaking to just the handful who still agree with its castigations and have lost the many who need its healing message of love.
– Our individuality is suppressed. People are forced to think collectively. Christianity teaches a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being.
– We have moved from silence (quietness, solitude, and meditation) to noise.
– The institutionalization of Church made it vulnerable to all of the abuses we now see.
– (Churches falsely and) simply yield to the large majority and the prevailing worldview.
– (Churches don’t teach the truth because they are afraid of being called exclusive.) Jesus proclaims the truth–that is why it must exclude all that is contrary to it. Worldviews begin by definitions. Definitions create boundaries. Violations of those boundaries elicit condemnation. That condemnation itself excludes. It is impossible to sustain truth without excluding falsehood. All religions are exclusive. What else can be expected but exclusivity when truth claims are expressed? All religions are exclusive. Truth by definition excludes. Truth excludes the denial of what it asserts. All designations exclude something else–one’s ethnicity, language, or education. (Churches don’ want) to preach a destiny that excludes anyone else, so we reserve the description of evil for only the most heinous.