Brian writes,

“ I needed Jesus to  be real. He was my only hope that I had left…. I had so much hope, but it quickly faded away when I thought about being a Christian. “

That statement says a lot about why I have said that I have considered giving up Christianity in order that I might follow Jesus.  Brian was reaching out for Jesus and one of the things holding him back was the picture he had in his mind of what it means to be a Christian.   Brian is now a Christian and his new CD has a song called Die Religion Die. The CD rocks by the way if you are into heavy metal music.

I recently published a post on my blog called “Giving Up Christianity” saying I had decided to give up Christianity to follow Jesus .  Not surprisingly, I had various comments from well meaning Christians “correcting” me on the meaning of the term Christian and how what I really meant was that “religion” gets in the way of people coming to Jesus. Christian of course simply means follower of Christ and so on.

People often like to get hung up on the meaning of words while missing the real meaning of what someone is saying. You see, to all of the world, Christianity is a religion and one of the most self-centered, intolerant, and judgmental religions that has ever existed.

Being a Christian myself I agree with those criticisms. Christianity in this country at least is too focused on itself and the only time it seems to have an interest in those outside the church is to make converts. I once saw a sign on a church that said 24 souls saved this week” and I thought God have mercy.  How pathetic.  As if the church was a sales organization keeping score of how well their marketing and advertising was working.

People see Christianity as a religion of rules and not of love. Ask those outside the church what Christianity is about and I would bet that no one would say “loving God and our fellow man.” Yet, that was what Jesus taught was the essence of true religion – to love God and your neighbor as yourself.  Now without a doubt, I will receive a comment from someone who will say “Oh no, you are incorrect, the Bible says that pure religion undefiled by God is to look after widows and orphans” … (James 1:27).

That is what I am talking about. Lighten up and seek God with a pure heart and then let’s go into the world and look for ways to love Jesus in every person we meet.