Some computer error messages, like “imminent hard drive failure,” are really quick, simple to interpret, and definitive as to resolution. Life doesn’t often hand us something so easy! But with the 2014 Religious Landscape Study, life has done exactly that for Christians.
Tony Waller’s story illustrates an overarching trend and a deeper problem in the religion: Christianity is failing its young people. To understand how someone like this could end up in a church ministry involving children, we have to dig deep into what evangelical churches think about youth ministry–and how someone unqualified could end up with a church’s most precious and finite treasure in his hands.
Tony Waller’s story illustrates an overarching trend and a deeper problem in the religion: Christianity is failing its young people. To understand how someone like this could end up in a church ministry involving children, we have to dig deep into what evangelical churches think about youth ministry–and how someone unqualified could end up with a church’s most precious and finite treasure in his hands.
Yet another wide-eyed, disingenuous Christian takes a shot at why people become atheists. The results are, well, sadly predictable. I’m just surprised he didn’t also make some guesses about the number of teeth and ribs atheists have.
There really are two types of Christian in this world, and one of them hates the other with every fiber of its hate- and rage-filled little body.
When you present people with anything statistic-related, and you reward that statistic based on its level, then yes, people are going to do anything they can to figure out what the statistic is and manipulate it.
Prosperity gospel preacher Creflo Dollar recently asked his followers to give him a USD$65 million dollar plane because that is what he thought he needed to spread the gospel (how did people manage before private planes?). In the wake of considerable pushback and criticism, he removed the grifting request, but he’s back and more belligerent than ever–and blaming Satan for all the backlash.
So basically it was just another day in Prosperity Gospel Land.
When I think about all the accusations and strawmen, all the gloating and smugness that seem such a great part of modern Christianity’s interaction with non-believers, I realize suddenly that beneath them all is fear–and most of that fear is stuff that every human being alive has to deal with on some level. The way these Christians are dealing with their very human fears is probably the worst possible way. They want the fear resolved, but they want it resolved as easily as possible and at the lowest possible cost of effort that can be managed.
The few people who respond to Christians’ lies and are fooled thereby into conversion–or reconversion, or rededication–are enough of a success that the legions turned off from the religion are totally forgotten. So why is it that non-Christians forget all this stuff when it comes to their own untruths?
Has nobody told Christians exactly why shepherds tend sheep?