Dear God, In Case You Didn't Know ...

"Christianity in America won't survive another decade."

I just got the memo today, and I didn't know if You had received it yet. The National Assocation of Evangelicals was kind enough to clue me in through the mail today, and they promise me a "wake up call" if I will pay them $39 and travel to one of almost thirty locations this fall.

I must confess that all this time, I have been thinking You were in control of American Christianity since Your Son promised He would build His church. I always assumed that the promise included His building His church in America too. Perhaps my mistake was in thinking that Jesus meant "the Church" when he in fact had in mind some other organizations to do what the church would be unable to do. Fortunately for us, Ted Haggard, Pat Roberston, Josh McDowell, John Maxwell, Joyce Meyer, Jack Hayford, Jerry Falwell and some of their friends educating us on how to "do [our] part in saving this generation."

Perhaps You can send us a fresh message with some fresh "how to" information since the one You already gave us apparently is not working well enough to save American Christianity.

After all, what would the world do without American Christianity. Today, we have become much more Christlike and loving than the previous generations of the unenlightened. We have seen the error of drawing lines around things like Jesus and salvation, truth and revelation. We have realized that age old debates about imputed righteousness and infused righteousness were really agreements about how we get to God. We have progessed in our wisdom to the stage where we can see that the old ways of rigid separation from the intellect of apostasy and the arrogance of disobedience were fort building exercises by people determined to hunker down in their bunkers and hold out for Jesus to come. If only Jesus had been so enlightened, he would have worked with the Pharisees to draw a bigger crowd and pad the missions budget. He could have used their buildings instead of preaching out of boats.

To be quite frank, I am not sure what we do if American Christianity didn't survive another decade.

On second thought, maybe the death of American Christianity would bring a return to New Testament Christianity, You know, the kind you envisioned when Peter, Paul, James and John, along with countless others laid it all on the line. And when I say all, I don't mean they gave up their gas guzzling SUVs for hybrids. And I don't mean they gave up their Saturday nights to start a service for those who had other things to do on Sunday mornings. I mean that they gave up their lives and freedoms, their jobs and families for the sake of the call of Jesus.

Back then, it seems like Christianity tended to preach the gospel more and politics less. (By the way, can You send Pat Robertson a message and tell him that rather than assassinating foreign leaders, we should just assassinate the weak, anemic, consumer driven American Christianity.) It seemed they were more concerned with people than programs. It took doctrine seriously, and had the audacity to tell some people that they "weren't one of us." It somehow couldn't comprehend that Jesus didn't morph into a different person to find every man's mind; He was who He was, and we needed to change our minds to fit Him, not change Him to fit our minds. When it spoke of commitment, it did not include funding the the GOP (God's Own Party???). Nor did it include preaching that some people were not being taxed enough. It was so limited in its creativity, it tended to limit its messages to what you said. God, would you spare from us from more creativity?

Maybe death is what we need. Would You do us a favor and kill American Christianity? And please don't wait a decade to do it. There is too much at stake.