What Does God Think Of Churches?

I can’t stand your religious meetings.
I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions.
I want nothing to do with your religion projects,
your pretentious slogans and goals.
I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes,
your public relations and image making.
I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
That’s what I want. That’s all I want.

Amos 5:21-24 The Message

For those who believe the Bible is God’s word, or inspired by God, here is God’s opinion of what I think very aptly describes religious Christianity, spoken through Amos the prophet.

When I was a devoted church-goer, I would have ignored the full brunt of this scripture on the basis of two aspects:  One, The Message translation is not a valid Bible translation and two, churches perpetuate justice so we don’t have to worry about God’s hatred of our injustice.

Although I wouldn’t say that anyone has to necessarily worry about anything, I now believe that The Message is a very valid translation and that institutional churches are most certainly unjust.

Let’s look at Amos’ same scripture passage in the New King James version, a widely accepted translation by Christians that is supposed to be true to its intent:

“ I hate, I despise your feast days,
And I do not savor your sacred assemblies.
Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings,
I will not accept them,
Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings.
Take away from Me the noise of your songs,
For I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments.
But let justice run down like water,
And righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Although written to a different culture in a different era, the religious rituals of holy days, or a day set apart from the rest, assembling, offerings and worship music are still the subjects. And God still hates them even in the King James translation. This appears to be the case in the other major translations as well.

Does God only hate the religious ceremonies if there is injustice happening behind the scene? For the sake of argument, let’s say that God adores religious rituals even though we could make a strong case from the New Testament that God indeed, does not.

So now the question is whether or not the traditional Christian church is free from the guilt of injustice. I think it would be impossible to determine every individual heart in the matter and I’m not interested in doing so anyway. But as a general whole, what portrayal might the church system give to God?

Ah, where do we start? If you suspect that this blog post is a church-bashing, you can be sure that it is. And I think it’s about time that I personally speak against the system (not necessarily individual people) that claimed my “faith” in the name of God for far too long.

Should I mention all the money that has been poured into church buildings and the creation of a religious empire while the rest of the world faces the most detrimental threats to its existence in all of history? I’m not only talking about diseases killing off millions of children, or unclean water supplies or 40 million a year aborted babies or genocides. I’m also talking about environmental threats like nanotechnologies and other artificial life possibly destroying the planet in the future. Does the Christian church even care?

How can it care when it teaches its members that the world is evil and God is going to judge and destroy it one day after he pulls his favorites (whom he had chosen before they were born) out through some rapturous safety?

Or maybe we should talk about the so-called justice of hell. What kind of a God would punish people by tormenting them for eternity for not believing in him? Or why would he hurt the people we are commanded to love? Why would a creator create souls knowing their tragic end which is not only tragic, but a horrific nightmare of the worst kind that we could possibly imagine? Is that justice? Really?

Is it just to teach that salvation is not of works and then proceed to teach all of the things one must do to ensure their salvation?

Is it just to teach that a perfect and sovereign God expects humans to lead a perfect life after creating them with an imperfect human nature?

And is it just to say that humans have a free will when we are all created just as we are, in the environment that we live in, with the parents and culture and era we are born into, and with all of our severe limitations?

And yet this God demands that all peoples of every race and nation know the Bible, attend a Christian church and believe all of the Christian theologies? Is that somebody’s idea of a joke?

How just is it to “love” your own but hate the rest of the world?

The greatest injustice for me right now is the hate mail I have been receiving from proper church-goers who have a problem with my departure from the Christian religion. This is all in the name of love, of course, and in concern of my salvation. I have been called some very vicious names that I would like to forget. And I have been assured over and over again that God is going to judge me and send me to a very hot place someday very soon.

I suppose I should laugh it off. But the disturbing thing about it is that this was me not too long ago. I, too, was sending people just like myself… to hell.

Only now I can see that I did not love “those” people. I was not even allowed to love myself. I thought I loved everyone, but now I wonder if I even liked them. How could I love them if they were going to be judged and destroyed by God? And why get attached to people if I was only going to be separated from them in a very painful way?

Although I am still trying to shake off my shackles, after leaving the religious system, my beliefs have changed. I now believe that there is nothing I can think, say or do to increase or lessen God’s love for me. It’s not possible because God is love and I cannot change God.

And now I believe that love – love, love, love – is God’s idea of justice. I had no idea.

If God loves me, then I can love me too. I am now free to listen to my own heart and mind, and believe whatever I want to believe about God. I am also free to be my honest self, or at least attempt to discover who I am. I am free to be imperfect and even angry. I might still be a hypocrite, only I no longer have to apologize for it. God still loves me.

I believe that God loves the Christians too. But God hates religion. Why? I no longer have the arrogance to say I can speak for God or anyone else, but I can speak for myself. Personally, I think that maybe God hates religion and its empty ceremonial rituals because we hate it.

Truly, deep down inside, if we are allowed to and brave enough to embark on an adventure to our own soul, I think we would know that mere rituals disconnect us from reality. An artificial righteousness tears us away from living as we were created to live. Our dishonesty hurts ourselves. It destroys our relationships. Sending people to hell creates walls among our family and our friends. Pouring our time, energy and resources into a religious system steals our lives from the real community of the world around us.

The problem is that religion blinds us to all of these things. We think we are happy when we are miserable. We think we are rich when we are poor. We think we are singing to God with all of our heart when we are really only repeating theologies, enforcing our religious conditioning. We think we can see reality when we have been trained to focus on an illusion.

One day I will finally be free from my anger toward the injustice of the system that claims to represent God and teaches people to know “God.” I will have matured enough to understand that there is a purpose for religious injustice. God will have transformed this evil into good. I will no longer feel the need to defend myself against Christian hate mail. I will be able to see all of the beauty in the souls that call themselves Christians. And I will finally know peace between myself and my fellow human beings, religious or not.

But until then, I am now enjoying my freedom to be an imperfect human being, just as I was created. And I no longer make any apologies for taking responsibility for my own beliefs, nor living them out. I also am not sorry for being honest with you, my reader, whether it draws us together or (temporarily) tears us apart.

Personally, whoever God is, I think that religion is what God hates and Christianity is a religion. And I think that God hates it, because I hate it. And right or wrong, I hate it because of what it does to people.