Bullshitology
Posted at the Taking The Bible Literally Facebook group
Due to an article showing that more than a thousand churches a year are closing in the United States, the article giving reasons why folks are abandoning church attendance, I determined to write a list of reasons that totally differ from what the article stated.
The real reason why folks cease from churches wasn’t mentioned. The excuses were mentioned.
Since I deal in Bible studies on nearly a daily basis, with some days having two different studies, and since those who attend the studies are from very different faith backgrounds (or lack of faith backgrounds), I can tell why folks are just ignoring churches. I will give a list of reasons:
• Bullshitology isn’t what a number of folks desire to hear. What they are hearing isn’t Biblical Truth, and they can sense that (though they don’t know of what Biblical Truth consists).
• Sermons are boring and vacuous. Almost never is preaching truly exciting. Movies can be exciting. Comedians can be exciting. A good love story can be exciting. A well-written novel can be exciting. Sermons are nearly always tedious. If they aren’t tedious, they are sometimes threatening, without giving reasons. In other words, they aren’t even good enough for a good used-car salesperson to use as an approach.
• Pastors don’t know their Scriptures. They are either ignorant because they haven’t read the texts carefully, or they are highly educated with degrees, while not knowing what the Bible is even about. (Finding a pastor who actually understands the Bible is like finding a high-value lottery ticket.)
• Pastors used canned sermons to present, using commentaries of others and ‘nice’ stories to bring across whatever they desire to say (and not at all what the texts are saying). When pastors do research, they use what others have found instead of thinking through the texts literally, using Hebrew, Chaldee, and Greek texts literally translated to see and show what is actually present.
• Pastors have a topic that they desire to present. They use the Bible as if the Bible is there for them to use to present their own points. Thus, the Bible is totally misused as a tool to teach something that the Bible never does substantiate. (Folks can sense this without directly thinking what is occurring.) The idea of going to church to be ‘corrected’ by the opinion of a pastor just isn’t worthwhile.
• Pastors manage to evade the most difficult issues of the Bible and of life, instead looking to present ‘the Christian faith’ in a palatable way (which ends up being disgusting and stupid, instead of ‘palatable’). Pastors do make folks hungry for lunch (and getting out of the building).
• Pastors themselves don’t fear God; and the lack of the fear of God makes them look like everyone else. Some pastors financially do very well. Some don’t do so well. What is so rare is to find a pastor whose fear of God and love of the Truth draws folks to independently go after the Truth.
• Pastors so often make sure that the bottom line is ‘giving.’ They present ‘a product,’ and claim that ‘giving to God’ pleases God. They find texts to back them up on this; and yet, they violently misuse those very texts, again, not teaching those texts literally. Folks tend to ‘feel’ when a person is trying to extract money from them, and it just isn’t worth going to church to hear that. (See how many websites for Christian ministries have a very obvious ‘DONATE’ button.)
• Pastors don’t take folks into the Bible in a way that causes others to INDEPENDENTLY handle the Bible. The focus isn’t on independence; the focus is on scatological terms like ‘interdependence,’ which is another way of expressing being chained to the pastor and the church. This effect can be felt, if not described, by attenders.
• Pastors don’t take the time and trouble to start at the beginning of the Bible (by which I mean Genesis), and to carefully explain, in detail, from the Hebrew text what is being described. It takes weeks of explaining just to get through Genesis 1. How much more does it take to explain what occurred when Avraham sent his slave to obtain a woman for Yitzkhak (Isaac) his son, a truly romantic love story filled with suspense. The Bible has these events that would grab ANY teenager’s ear, besides others of other ages.
• Pastors sometimes design their churches to be country clubs, but with far less benefits than real country clubs, yet at far higher cost to membership. Churches just aren’t as entertaining as real country clubs, though some pastors do seem to try to imitate the real things.
• Sunday School teachers are so often totally inept; yet they are permitted to read from Sunday School materials that are written by unbelieving and doctorate-rich spiritual idiots who present things in such boring and unbiblical ways. Rarely is there a Sunday School teacher who knows anything at all about the Bible. Newbies (new ‘Christians’) are sometimes assigned to ‘teach’ the brats (the younger children that almost no one desires to babysit even for an hour), when if the pastor were serious, would make sure that each person in charge of those ‘brats’ loved children, loved the Bible taken literally, and could totally grab their attention by rightly describing what is occurring in texts. (I have known of two cases where the teacher truly knew the Bible, and the children loved coming to Sunday School to hear what was going to occur next in the texts of the Bible, and to such a degree, that they would fill the ears of their parents with what they learned in Sunday School.)
As you can tell, I have some perspectives on why folks are abandoning churches, and I am glad to be one who doesn’t attend church. I truly delight in the Bible, and I love being participant with others who desire to see what the Bible states LITERALLY. I find Yehovah the Gods of Israel such a delight, and I fear Him greatly. Yehovah has no place in any church of which I am aware. Yet, I know that somewhere, in this planet, is a pastor who truly loves and fears Yehovah, and believes the Bible, and takes his/her congregants into the Speeches of God very literally, and with a love that all who attend know is real.
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Original page April 6, 2007 | Updated May 30, 2021