Monday, April 6

No religion? No problem

I'll add my "amen" to what Michael Spencer, the iMonk, is saying here:
The ARIS study (see link in the post or this link at USA Today) says that those with “no religion” have doubled in less than 20 years; growing by almost 10% a decade. Look at America in 2050 if that growth rate continues at even half that speed: a third of the country will be “godless.”

If evangelicals and other Christians had their heads about them, they would welcome this development. No religion beats meaningless adherence to religion every time. I see this every day. I work with dozens of students with a cultural adherence to a particular “Christian” religion. They overwhelmingly know almost nothing of Jesus, nothing of the Bible, nothing but a collection of cultural traditions, legends and superstitions about Christianity, but they consider themselves Christians.

When it comes to my job as a Christian communicator, give me the students who are “non-religious” over sorting through cultural adherence and dead superstition. ~ link
As a neighbor the non-religious are generally easier to be around than the civilly religious. As an evangelist I feel like I have a better shot at sharing the gospel with a non-religious person who uses their brain than someone who mindlessly thinks they're Christian because they do a few Christian things.

I don't think atheism makes any sense whatsoever. But I'm sure they're saying similar things of Christianity -- especially if they think that Christianity is mostly a matter of doing a few Christian things.

1 comment:

Beth B said...

"As an evangelist I feel like I have a better shot at sharing the gospel with a non-religious person who uses their brain than someone who mindlessly thinks they're Christian because they do a few Christian things."

That was certainly the case Sunday when we showed the Craig-Hitchens webcast. The Alliance of Happy Atheists were courteous and throughtful. Many were rejecting Christianity based on this cultural/pharisaical model that they had grown up in.

We spent two hours after the webcast ended in conversations with them. At this point we have two prayers:

1) we hope that they will be willing to let us get to know them on a more personal level in the days to come.

2) we hope that the Lord will use us to be able to demonstrate a different way of being Christian: one which involves godly virtues of heart and mind. That would blow away their received notion of what Christ and His church are about.