Before I begin, I do believe in God but by the time you read this, you will probably disagree with me or think I’m deluding myself.  What I don’t believe in is religion!  Religion is too exclusionary, dogmatic, inflexible, intolerant, contradictory, exclusive and controlling. 

Some years ago several people left a local church because a particular individual wanted to join their church.  This individual’s lifestyle was not up to what much of the congregation thought it should be (in other words, to them he was a sinner) so they left and joined another church because they could not prevent him from joining “their” church (I would think their church was God’s house, not theirs).  I thought the mission of the church and christians (I refuse to capitalize the word  “christians”) was to spread God’s word and to reach out to the so-called sinners so they “may be saved.”  Apparently that is not true.  What I think is equally as bad, in time these same people hide (I will not call them liars) the reason they left that church for another one.  (Exclusionary, inflexible, intolerant).  They consider themselves good, God fearing (why should you fear a good, companionate, forgiving Father) people but for most of them, “it’s my way or the highway.”  (Dogmatic, exclusive, controlling).

Another thing I’ve noticed about every  ”christian” I have ever met.  It’s the “do as I say, not as I do” scenario.  A preacher (I refer to all religious leaders as “preachers” since they have different titles depending on the denomination) put in a recent newsletter that the “unchurched” people were not only listening  to what christians were saying, but watching their actions as well.  I know that I do but I also watch the preachers for the same reason and guess what I found, every one of them are hypocrites, at least those that I can watch that closely.  In fact, I think many of them are worse than the members of their congregations.  When my Dad died years ago, most of the people in the church I attended at the time, even those that did not know me, expressed their sympathy.  Not the preacher.  Not five feet away, I looked at him and he gave me a dirty look, turned his back and walked away.  Even the other people around me at the time were surprised and shocked and they said as much.

The last thing for this post concerns the worship of another God that most preachers and christians, especially evangelicals, do routinely.  They worship a book called the bible.  I’m not a biblical scholar but I do remember that God says you cannot server two masters.  In my experience they worship the bible first, then God (contradictory).  I’ve heard of only one preacher that states that many christians worship the bible, not God (there are some good preachers out there, but not many).

That’s it for now but I will be back with more on this topic as well as others.