The Disintegration of Christianity

The disintegration of the Christian faith saddens me.

Where is it going today?

It is lost in some need to relate to the culture at hand. It is beset with shallow ideas of celebrity status and wealth, of a theology so flimsy it barely supports a life much less a nation.

Someone posted on Facebook the other day a video of a bumbling, vulgar, oahfish Baptist preacher from North Carolina saying from his ornate pulpit that he’d had a vision of what to do with all of the “lesbians, the homosexuals and queers.”

He said to put them all in an electric fenced in area, drop food in there, and then let them die off.

Listening to his obscene rant, all in the name of God, made me think of a book my friend Danny Redding suggested to me, Charles Kimball’s “When Religion Becomes Evil.”

For a minister, like the North Carolina man, to say such things from a Christian pulpit is evil. Plain and simple. It is an inexcusable evil.

Dallas minister Ed Young who pastors a huge congregation of young professionals has now started a fashion blog. He says ministers and Christians need to be cool and hip and dress the part. I visited his blog. What a waste of time and energy as he provides video clips of him trying on designer shirts and talking about never dry cleaning your suits and what amount of starch to use in your clothes.

This is Christianity? Pathetic.

Forget the terrorists out there plotting to blow up things. Forget those nasty prostitutes the church has always been so afraid of and offended by. Forget even the Wall Street crooks deranged by dollar signs and cheating the country out of billions. What many in the Christian faith today are doing is worse than all of that. They are dismantling an entire belief system by making it silly, mean-spirited, political, or materialistic.

John Lennon of the Beatles predicted it years ago. He said, “Christianity will go. It will shrink and vanish.” It appears he was right.

The Christian faith has been taken over by a radical political ideology of greed and selfishness and a goal of making society work only for a select few. It has been hijacked by the pettiest kind of power urges. Its mission has been shriveled down to little more than a few meaningless clichés.

Christianity is dying. It will not be saved by mirroring a chic culture as Ed Young seems to believe. It will not be saved by the North Carolina preacher’s deplorable ignorance and hatred of gays.

If it has any hope of surviving it will need to guide us into going deeper in our search for human meaning and how to serve the diverse community of brotherhood and sisterhood we all live in.

If the Christian faith does not help us do that then it has lost its purpose. And it will shrivel and die. Maybe something new and better will replace it.

If I had five minutes to evacuate--what would I take with me?

If I was told there was a bomb in my building and I had five minutes to evacuate my apartment I’d grab a grocery bag and quickly toss these items into it: 1. A photo of my grandparents, Mom and Pop and me, when I was 15 years old. I learned what love is made of from them. I learned what it is to be kissed on and hugged in arms so tender they felt like God’s arms. I discovered self worth from those two angels in human flesh. Of all the people in my life, they were the ones who made me feel I counted. Honestly, whatever capacity I have to love others came from them. 2. A sentimental, dog-eared, stars in the margin copy of Pat Conroy’s, “The Prince of Tides.” It is a book I have read three times and often return to for its wisdom. It is a harsh, profoundly tragic novel, the story of a family so broken and tortured by such flawed and wounded people that it is sometimes difficult to turn the next page. And yet it is the story of such Herculean courage and endurance that you want...

I Saw the Delicacy of Life

I was flying Across the deep And I saw the delicacy Of life Wrinkles on the faces Of the old So pure they glistened Like awards The joy of children Running with abandon Their laughter ringing Like chimes in the wind I saw the soft moving waves Across the sea And the trees releasing Their rainbow leaves Birds joined me on my flight And I saw the surface of their wings Adorned with patterns Glorious and unfurled I saw the tears of the sad And the smiles of the glad The suffering in mourning And the celebration of birth As I descended toward the ground Slowly, slowly, softly I saw the gentle grass of the field And smelled the fresh earth It was a perfect landing © 2018 Timothy Moody

Actions Make a Difference

“We make progress in society only if we stop cursing and complaining about its shortcomings and have the courage to do something about them.” ~ Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Physician/Author Pictured here is Kikuko Shinjo, 89 years old, a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast. As a 17-year old nursing student she helped nurse victims of the carnage back to health. Many of them died in her care. She says she holds no grudge against America and encourages interaction between the Japanese and Americans. She has devoted her life to peace, saying, “I want all the people around the world to be friends, and I want to make my country peaceful without fighting.” Today she makes colorful paper cranes and donates them to the Children’s Peace Monument at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

The Unclad Soul

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