When I was young, I spent most Wednesdays and Sundays at church. I dressed up in the nicest clothes I had, sat in a pew, and listened to that week’s sermon with a smile on my face. I read my bible and honestly believed in God and all these wonderful, powerful things people told me every week about Him and all the great things I would have if I believed in Him.
As I got older, however, things started to change.
People that went to church with me started to show their true colors. People that sat in the pew on Sunday would go out to eat afterwards, trash talking the woman they sat next to during the service. They treated their waitress like dirt and then didn’t tip. They cursed like sailors. Some Christians went as far as leaving their family for the rest of the day to go cheat on their significant other with someone down the road. I saw and heard things that turned my stomach, things that made me wonder what I was doing by attending the same church as these people. Wasn’t God telling us all that we were to love everyone, to treat everyone with kindness and understanding? Wasn’t God telling us to be faithful?
Some might say, “Well, it’s just your church. Find a new one!” Trust me, I tried. In my entire life, I’ve visited enough churches and learned enough about the people there to completely disengage me from the community. Every church had the same people, the same ruthless unforgiving people that snarled at you when you turned your head. There were women there who would smile at you and pat you on the back, then gossip behind their hand the second you walked away. There were men who were on their knees thanking God, then going home and hitting their kid across the cheek. There were preachers who cheated on their wives, who did drugs, who disowned their kids when they admitted they were gay.
John 15:12 “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you”
There’s another verse that says God is love, and love comes from him. Love isn’t talking behind someone’s back. Love isn’t hitting your own child. Love isn’t being two-faced. How can someone spend their entire week acting so vicious, so nasty, and then show up to church on Sunday and pretend it doesn’t happen? How can they ignore the words that are written in the books littered all across the church? In Proverbs, the Bible says, “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight.” It started to seem like most of the people I was attending church with were reading a different Bible than I was.
I can understand how people believe in God, or how they want to believe in Him. I can understand wanting to know there’s someone out there looking out for all of us, who loves us and has a place for us to go once we’ve passed on. I don’t look down on that at all. I do, however, look down on those who believe in Him and don’t live their life as He wants.
You can’t be a Christian and do the things I’ve seen and heard. You can’t be a Christian and hate others. You can’t claim you follow God, and then commit adultery. You can’t preach His gospel and take His name in vain in the next breath. It doesn’t work that way, and if you truly believed in Him, it wouldn’t be an issue. You’d know all those things already. As God says, we all are made of sin and your sins aren’t any less damaging then someone else’s. Remember that.
I tell you all of this to finish with the following: I’m not someone who attends church, nor am I a follower of God. I don’t even believe anymore. In my mind, I can’t follow someone who’s followers don’t understand His word, who actively defy Him, and treat their neighbors so disgusting on a day-to-day basis. I’m not saying all Christians are this way, but 98% of the ones I’ve met are, and I can’t pretend I’m okay with that and look past it.
