In the WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN newspaper Magazine of 5-6 November 2022 is the article by Nikki Gemmell entitled: Losing their religion (p11).
It is lop-sidedly anti-Christian. I suspect she has never carefully read and understood the Bible, and simply does not understand Christianity. It appears to have been written without provocation. Was there a personal backstory?
Losing their religion
She opened with a statement by the late Christopher Hitchens: “quite the question on modern religion: To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation - is that good for the world?” To which Nikki enthusiastically added: “is it good for an organisation to preach homophobia and sexism?”
No other ‘Biblical sin’ gets such attention as homosexuality. Did she think God too might be homophobic? What about pride, selfishness, envy, anger, murder, adultery, stealing, laziness, lust and sexual immorality (broader than unbelieving journalists think) plus a host of other sins?
If Hitchens and Nikki thought churches preach to children hell and female inferiority, sexism (not defined) and the like, then it’s been a long time since they sat in any church. I can’t recall the last time I heard a sermon about hell (I should have) - what Jesus came to save us from.
Whilst the message of the New Testament and Christianity are about love and reconciliation to God, He still has His unchanging standards for living which He wants us to observe.
Religious extremists and others
She referred to religious extremists, fundamentalist gerontocracies, Christian fundamentalism, religious ultra-conservatives, hard-line Christianity and fearful reactionaries. None of these terms were defined so the reader was left to come to a vague adverse conclusion without assistance from her.
None of these terrible people got to put forward a contrary view. She had the first and last word. In the Bible it is stated that: The first to present his case seems right till another comes forward and questions him. (Proverbs chapter 18 verse 17). In the courtroom this is called cross-examination.
She quoted someone named Nick Cave whose biggest problem with religion was the “certainty of belief” which he said leads to a “kind of moral superiority or dogmatism”.
Religion and Christianity have little in common. I used to religiously wind our old wall clock every Sunday morning before church.
In his book comparing today’s American church with the 1930s Nazi Germany church (Letter to the American Church, 2022) Eric Metaxas, author of the biography of brave German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote at p127: “The Christianity of the German churches had been dead religion masquerading as Christianity”.
Certainty of belief
…..depends on what is factually true, not what someone believes to be true. Unbelief in a truth never converts that truth into untruth so the statement: what’s true for you (e.g. the resurrection of Jesus) is not true for me, is nonsense if the ‘believer’s truth’ is historically true.
An ex-Pentecostal “preacher” apparently asked “Why was my beloved God male? and Why was Eve responsible for the Fall of Man?” Such immature old chestnuts reveal miserable ignorance which (hopefully) no sensitive, respectful Bible-believing Christian church would entertain.
The kitchen sink
Nikki threw in for good measure the callousness of the horse racing industry (not a Christian endeavour), the national netball saga -v- the Hancock Prospecting logo (irrelevant), and Tasmania’s Catholic Archbishop about submission of wives to their husbands (a circuit-breaker re spousal deadlock). This concluding smorgasbord of topics guaranteed her article would end on the intended low note.
What God freely offers is forgiveness, hope and a sparkling future of peace and happiness with Him that the ignorant and deliberately uninformed know nothing about.
She then opined that the ‘religious extremists’ (presumably including people like my wife and me - parents and grandparents) have a problem. It’s called the “growing awareness of younger generations”, meaning the growing ‘awareness’ of people like, plus younger than, herself.
To cite street demonstrations in Iran of the people revolting against the “fundamentalist gerontocracy” that is suffocating and squeezing the life out of its people, not only the younger generation, is absurd. Perhaps she and later generations have a problem too.
But there’s some truth…
Regrettably it must be acknowledged that the Christian church sometimes appears to have lost its way and lost touch with the young by weakly turning the wine of God back into water via shallow preaching evidencing scant thought and preparation, and dull services which embarrass many church-goers.
Combine that with uninformed youth-oriented social media, left of centre anti-Christian print and digital media, a widespread mood of anti-creationism and unscientific ‘evolutionism’, plus a myriad of distractions that draw people away from God overlaid with a strong general willingness for this to happen, and the decline of churches is understandable.
Nikki may be right though that within the modern collapsing church there are “fearful reactionaries and stubborn old people…destroying [church], leaving it…as a fragile movement of its time that is not moving with the times”.
But was she primarily criticising the content of the Christian message (I didn’t think so) or its presentation (probably)?
Although homophobia remains the favoured ‘whipping boy’ relished by Christianity’s avid enemies, God will not compromise regarding what He regards as sexual immorality in all its forms. His high standards remain notwithstanding the critical onslaught of the skeptic, which prompts her reference to “modern thinking” reflected in the “values not of their world”, the charge being “the fragile church is not moving with the times”.
Need for change and compromise
Yes today’s church probably needs to adapt, but the “values of their world” cannot avoid God’s unchanging standards expressed for the common good. And typical of the barrenness of atheism, Nikki offered nothing to replace what she enthusiastically criticised.
In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit. (Judges chapter 21 verse 25).