The False Promise of Safety in the Broken System

The criticism I have about religion really deals with the broken system that undergirds it: that marrow-deep dysfunction that pushes people to create a broken system, to join it, to celebrate it, to perpetuate it, and ultimately to protect it from all potential criticism or dismantling. Though Christianity is one of the best examples of a broken system that we could possibly encounter in our society, there are certainly others. Today I’ll show you what I mean by illuminating one of the biggest miseries to come out of broken systems: the false illusion of safety that they offer to both adherents and those who encounter their adherents.

Good Apples, Bad Apples, and Broccoli.

Christianity is supposed to be the religious equivalent of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Its advertising and marketing materials proclaim constantly that its adherents are, ideally, the cream of the crop of the entire civilized universe. The people serving on the Enterprise and who belong to Christianity are both supposed to be the best their universe has to offer. But in reality, Christianity is a lot more like Red Dwarf–minus the sense of humor, self-awareness, and cleverness. And we can tell which it is by how its very own people react to their bad apples and their broccoli.

The Perilous Position of the Sales-Minded Christian

There are a whole bunch of Christians who don’t like to evangelize. This reticence drives their leaders and authority figures out of their ever-lovin’ trees and leads to quite a lot of the finger-shaking sermons directed at the flocks–and yet nothing is changing except for the worse (in those leaders’ eyes at least)! I’ll show you why today.