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Please bear
with me, this is long overdue and there's lots of ground to cover. I
want to make sure that I get it all out. Not just for me, but because
I think you need to hear it. Maybe there are other Christians out
there as well that need to make apologies and will find courage here.
I appreciate your time, I know it's valuable.
Dear Members of
the World,
I'm just a guy,
nobody really. Son of a preacher and missionary. Years and years of
Vacation Bible Schools, summer camps, youth ski trips, puppet shows,
revivals, choir trips - you name it. Even went to a Christian college
and got a degree in religion. I ended up in the business world, but I
spent two decades tithing, sitting on committees, teaching Sunday
School, going to seminars and conferences, etc. I even met my wife in
the single's class at church. I'm not a bad guy, I've been mostly
behaving myself and everybody seems to like me. I do some good stuff
here and there.
But lately I've
been trying to understand Jesus more and stuff I never noticed before
has really started to bug me. I've been taking a look around and I'm
having a hard time making sense of what it is we've built here. So,
it just seemed like, whether anybody else says it or not, I need to
take responsibility for the part I played and say what I have to say.
Here we go ...
I know you think
that Christians are a big bunch of hypocrites. We say we're more
"religious" and we're going to heaven and you're not, and
then we drive our big shiny cars with little fishies on the trunk and
cut you off in traffic as we race by the homeless guy on the corner.
We average just 2% of our money to church and charity, despite that
we say the Bible is the word of God and it says we're supposed
to give everything. On average, we buy just as many big screen
TVs and bass boats and fur coats and makeup and baseball cards and
online porn as anybody else. Maybe more. You've seen leader after
leader end up in jail or court or a sex scandal of one sort or another.
Well ... you're
right. We're guilty of all of it. We've done it all. And, I'm really sorry.
You see our cheesy
TV shows and slick guys begging for money and you get that there's
something seriously sneaky and wrong here. A high-pressure call for
money so they can stay on the air? Were we supposed to use Jesus as
just another form of entertainment? Who do we think we're kidding?
Where's Jesus in all this? Aren't we supposed to rely on him? Isn't
He going to meet our needs if we're inside His will?
What happened to
sacrifice and suffering and helping the poor? I'm just sick about
this. I mean, the church leaders, they're not all bad guys, there are
lots and lots of really hard-working well-meaning folks who love and
care and are meeting real needs in the community. Some of them
understand and love Jesus - but I'm just real sure those
pastors don't drive Bentley's, have multi-million dollar homes and
their own lear jets! I mean, what "god" are we worshipping?
Money? Ego? Power?
You see our
massive shiny new buildings all over the place. Heck, maybe we even
kicked you out of your house so we could expand our parking lots. You
can't figure out why we need four different Christian churches on
four corners of the same intersection. We've got playgrounds and
bowling alleys and basketball leagues. We've got Starbucks coffee in
the sanctuary. We've got orchestras and giant chandeliers and
fountains out front. We've got bookstores full of "jesus
junk" with every imaginable style and flavor of religious knick-knack.
But where's Jesus? Is this what HE wanted?
Oh, sure, there
are good folks all over and not every church is such a mess, but
Christians are the ones that say we're supposed to be "One
Body." So even the good ones are guilty of not putting a stop to
it sooner. We were supposed to keep each other in line and not
tolerate factions and dissensions and greed and idolatry and all this
other bad stuff. Man, we really blew it! We've got 33,000
denominations and most of them won't talk to the other ones. We lose
over $5 million a day to fraud from "trusted" people inside
the church! We spend 95% of all our money on our own comforts and
programs and happy family fun time shows and we let 250 MILLION
Christians in other countries live on the very edge of starvation.
Not to mention the billion or so that have never even once heard of
Jesus - or the homeless guy downtown we almost ran over when we cut
you off.
We're as guilty as
we can be. All of us. Nobody is exempt. We should have put a stop to
it a lot sooner. But I can't apologize on behalf of anyone else. This
is about me.
I know that you
might have gone to church as a kid and stopped going as soon as you
could. I know that you might even have been abused by somebody in the
church! Maybe we got you all fired up and then just let you drift off
like we didn't really care. Maybe you just don't fit our
"profile." You might have piercings and purple hair or
tattoos or been in jail -- and somewhere inside you just know that
even if you wanted to go to church one Sunday, it would not go well.
I'm sorry for that. Jesus loves you. He always hung out with the most
unexpected people. He had the biggest heart for the folks everybody
else tried to ignore. What have we done? We've told you to put on a
sweater and some loafers or you can't go to heaven. I just want to
throw up.
Look, I know
you're mad. And you have a right to be. We've done you wrong for a
LONG time now. There's some things about Jesus that people need to
hear, but we've buried a beautiful masterpiece under hundreds of
layers of soft pink latex paint. If you have a Bible handy, look up
Matthew 23. (If you don't, you can look it up here -
www.BibleGateway.com .) Find it? Read it carefully, the Pharisees
were the "religious" people of the day, the leaders of the
faith. In this chapter Jesus SEVEN times says how pitiful and
wretched and cursed they are for what they're doing to the people
they're supposed to be leading. He even calls them "white washed
tombs of dead mens bones" and a "brood of vipers"! I
don't have time here, but read it and see if we're not doing EVERY
single one of those things. Jesus can't possibly be happy about what
we've done to you.
Sure, we like to
kid ourselves and pretend everything is OK - but it's not. We're
hated. Now, please understand, Jesus was hated, too. But that was
because he said hard things and sometimes people don't like hearing
the Truth. And he promised we would be hated if we were like him. But
that's not why we're hated at the moment. We're hated right now
because we're a giant pack of lying hypocrites that say one thing and
do something else altogether. If we were hated because we were like
Jesus, that would be one thing, but that's not it at all. You see
right through our happy music and fluffy services and you can tell
there's something desperately wrong here. We're no different than
anybody else - except that we say we're better than you.
It was never
supposed to be like this. Jesus asked us to care for the widows and
orphans, to feed the hungry, care for the sick, visit those in
prison, reach the lost. He wanted us to love our enemies and pray for
them. He cared about human justice and suffering, the lost and
lonely. But I don't think He would have marched on a picket
line - He had His mind on much bigger problems. He wanted us to focus
on the eternal things, not the everyday. He never once said to go
into all the world and build big buildings and divide up into
factions and buy Bentleys. Just the opposite! I get that you're mad
at us and I think you have a right to be, but please understand,
you're mad at what we've made under our own power, you're mad at
"Churchianity." That's different than Christ and what he
wanted. Don't be mad at Jesus! This mess wasn't His idea!
Look, I'm really
sorry. I accept responsibility for my part in having hurt you. But
I'm committing to you all, dear Members of the World, that I'm not
going to do it any more. Not a single penny more. I'm not going to
put my faith in "Churchianity" or any leader or program or
TV show -- but in Christ Jesus and His salvation. That's when I was
set free and began to see that God wants and expects more of us than
this. And I'm not helping anybody that's not fully committed to the
same thing.
It took centuries
to build this monster, so it's not like it's going to just turn
around overnight. But the times are changing and we're way overdue
for something new. Big bad things are happening - like the tsunami in
Asia - and I think more are coming. I don't want any more time to go
by without having said this. I'm sorry for all the time and money
I've wasted. But Jesus saves. Really. The church itself isn't even
the point. Jesus is the real deal. He lived and He died for my sins
and He rose again. He is who He said He was and He cares about me -
and you. He's our only hope. We need places you can go that will only
teach Jesus and will not be swayed or tempted or distracted by
anything else. God willing, that's coming.
Please don't think
all Christians are just posers. Some of them really mean it when they
say they belong to Christ. The problem is mostly in the West where
we're all comfy and complacent and seem to like it that way. The
Christians in China and other places are deadly serious. There's no
room for anything but Jesus when you're on the run from the
government. They are dying every day for their faith and doing crazy
hard things because they're absolutely committed to Christ. These are
martyrs. People willing to crucify little pieces of themselves every
day to be more like Christ. People willing to set aside everything
they want to do what Christ wants. People willing to rot in prison or
take a beating or die if that's what it's going to take. People that
act in pure love and never back down. I'm not worthy to tie their
shoes. And there are some like that here, too, and I hope we can get
a lot more people to start living that way. It's way overdue.
If you're talking
to someone and they tell you they're a Christian, ask them if they're
the kind of Christian that really means it all the time or the kind
that just means it on Sunday. The Bible says we'll know them by their
"fruits" - by the faith and purity and love in their deeds
and words. When you find one that proves Christ is in them by how
much they love you, ask them to tell you all about Jesus. If you know
one of those fearless martyrs that speaks nothing but pure, clean,
hard Truth - ask lots of questions. Truth is a lot more rare than you
would think. But don't settle for soft, fluffy and comfortable
anymore - that's not in the Bible.
As for me and my
house, we're really sorry. From now on, we're going to serve the
Lord, not "Churchianity." We're going to try to call
together as many of those martyrs as we can and start doing what
Christ wanted. If I run into you someday, please give me a chance to
shake your hand and apologize in person. I'm going to try harder from
now on, I promise. I think there are lots of others feeling the same
way, so don't be surprised if you start hearing stuff like this more often.
Thanks for your
time. I hope it helps.
Doug Perry -
Kansas City, Missouri, USA
www.FellowshipOfTheMartyrs.com
fotm@FellowshipOfTheMartyrs.com
P.S. If you would
like to help me get this apology to everybody in the world, please
forward it on - but please don't make any changes. A PDF file is
available on the website if you want to print it off. Audio,
too. I think this needs to be said. Thanks! You can
download the entire Apology to the World book that includes lots of
writings from this site, plus some new stuff here - Download
full E-Book FREE.
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