Artie’s Blog

11 Comments Add your own

• 1. adam decaulp  |  April 11th, 2007 at 7:02 am

  might be a bit short, on my way to work.

  it has been my experience that church, well meaning and well meant, takes on the role of a magnifying glass. however what is magnifies is not Love or God because the aparatus to do that perfectly already exists in the created world, in nature and in men, in music and songs and words that come from the love of God. this has been the way since before man right, angels sang and all that and heaven was a created place?

  church is a hybrid of the synagouge and the state first truly realized under Constantine and it tries to be something that already exists, the reflection, the creation of new ways to show God’s love and love God and people and experience that. The only advantage and organization of this nature carries is that it has large numbers and a monetary base and a structure (no different from government, man’s replacement for God) that demands and commands loyalty of the many to the few. but those are not advantages. people who love one another, who drink beer together and share Christ’s love, grow food together and play basketball together, are bound, in love.

  they do not need to be constrained by creeds and oaths made by men. by rules and laws that Christ lived and died to free them from. The church is an attempt to wed two things men who love have no need for: a “holy” and a “secular” middle man, mediator if you will, between them and God.
  Thats what a government/king is and that’s what a priest/pastor is. someone who knows/plays God professionally and so is better equipped to handle matters of that nature.

  that would be great if it weren’t entirely contrary to scripture. Hebrews says Jesus is the high priest, the name Christ tells us he is king, so why remake what we already have? because it gives us something to see, something to touch, like thomas.

  and Jesus is not the center of any church, he is the sideshow attraction, the bearded lady that draws the crowds. if he were the ringmaster and not the main event (which is controlled by the ringmaster.

  now i dont think the people who run the show are bad, i think they just want to belong and matter and they’ve bought in, maybe they are more the victims than anyone because they are placed in a position and almost forced to try to be something they arent.

  but yes, in brief, church is a cookie cutter forced rendition of an organic thing that like all organic things has to be free to grow or it will become warped and twisted. patterns are created by living things, they dont follow them.

  take care, looking forward to what you have to say

• 2. Brandon  |  April 12th, 2007 at 11:42 am

  I suppose I should chime in seeing as how I am pro-church but have not attended one regularly in four years.

  I was not raised in church. I did not become a Christian until I was about 16 and when I did become a Christian I encountered a good amount of opposition. The Church I started going to really was a tremendous part of my religious life. I would go so far as to say that if I had not had CCC I would not have remained a Christian. CCC was my Christian family and I mean that in the most non-cute way possible.

  That type of Church I am for and think is necessary in almost everyone’s religious life. Now, I am not talking about the structure necessarily but the relational aspect. When me and my buddies sit around and drink white wine, smoke cigarettes, and read our bibles together it feels like family and it feels like Church. I think that the only other thing necessary is an active ministry in the community of my Church family.

  Most of the Churches I have tried out and got a bad taste for I feel are places where it is very hard to make family. The primary concern for me is finding a place where I can meet some community need through ministry. (Community like neighborhood not church community.) But whatever church I can do this at; I still must be able to make it “my” family.

  I remember why I started coming to youth at CCC and it was because the girls were cute and there was free pizza. Right now I’m looking for a Church with the same qualities.

• 3. adam decaulp  |  April 12th, 2007 at 5:47 pm

  you started coming to ccc because of my charming personality and winning smile i thought… sigh

  i feel you, i suppose if you can have both, the system and the family then whats the problem right? i am convinced however that a thing must follow after its nature and the structure’s nature is not family but law and as long as there is not serious conflict we can overlook minor encroachments and compromises but at some point a choice has to be made and families will always choose love and systems will always choose the law that will preserve them.

  love is too spontaneous to always do things one way, to be tired and old and out of date because it is creative and new. i love the people at ccc i love people in general and i want to love them more because my current standard is far too low. i hate church because it doesnt love, its just a law and law’s purpose is to maintain itself by exacting itself on everyone and everything. people are sacrificed for ideas and traditions not just in church but everywhere. Iraqis are sacrificed for freedom africans for medicine mexicans for money the poor for power the faithful for the preservation of something that pretends to be faith.

  of course good can come from things, good came from the fall of man, but that never made the fall a good thing. the church system is the still born byproduct of love and law, if we went back far enough i think we would see that it was not a consensual union.

• 4. Artie  |  April 16th, 2007 at 10:25 am

  A & B,

  I am glad that you both chimed in. I really want to pursue discussion on these matters. I personally feel bound by Scripture to pursue some kind of organized expression of Christian community. I am not convinced, however, that the organized Western expression is the only way or even the best way. I do not feel the aversion that Adam seems to have. I am sure that this is in part due to your idealogical convictions as well as your experience with goofy churches. But in order for good discussion to ensue, I need some clarifications. You (Adam) stated:

  “i hate church because it doesnt love, its just a law and law’s purpose is to maintain itself by exacting itself on everyone and everything.”

  This sounds so extreme to me. Can you tell me how you’ve come to this conclusion? What do you mean when you say the word church because when you say “I hate church” I hear “I hate people (who make up the church)” because in my mind I we can not speak of church without speaking of people. My guess it that you mean you hate a particular organized expression of “church”, so what is it?

  We must also remember that the frustrations you mentioned are not simply church flaws, they are humanity flaws.

  We have not spoken in quite some time and I know this sort of communication breaks down by not communicating tone and affection. I have always held you in the highest regards and I feel that our friendship transcends ideas, geography and even the passing of a few years. My questions are not simply for the sake of debate and argument, I really want to understand. I want to learn, grow and dialogue so that we all may benefit.

  Once last question, do we both agree that Scripture (as flawed as our various intrepretations may be) is authorative in the life of a follower of Jesus?

  I am hoping to gain more insight into what church really is and how it can be more effective in being true to the calling of extending the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

  Later dudes.

• 5. adam  |  April 16th, 2007 at 9:47 pm

  forgive my ambiguous use of a term without proper clarification. it was irresponsible of me, especially over such a precarious medium as typed conversation.

  your concern is well founded as hating people would definitely hinder loving them

  when i say church i do not mean the people, i do not mean the greek word ecclesia that has been so readily forgotten. i mean the instiutuion that most people mean and then and feel and shudder when they say the word church. i realize that it might be ambitious of me to attempt to divorce one from the other, the people from their chosen office, but i feel i can.

  before doing so though i would like to say that though i wish my furious anger towards church as a concept is due solely to my bad experiance with goofy churches, as you put it, i cannot make this claim. with the exception of those denominations not accessible in america (greek/russian orthodox, coptic, roman catholic, etc) i have been to every denomination i know of and have found them all, essentially, lacking/infuriating/the same.

  that said onto divorcing man and machination. when i say i hate the church i refer to the institution man has erected to capture/contain/convulate God into a manageble, meager form of Himself. The people who make up the institution are the reason i hate it but perhaps for less apparent reasons. though i am often angered by my and my fellow man’s flaws, magnified as you so eloquently pointed out, in the system, it is these people who embody these flaws that i love/want to love. so how then do they make is possible for me to hate the church? because the church hates them, it destroys them, and so if they were not there, not threatened by it, i would not hate it, i would not even regard it.
  to clarify further, i hate the church the way i would hate a man-made bilogical weapon that killed people. without the people it threatens this weapon means nothing to me. and yes people chose to make it as we chose to make the church, but this makes people all the more desperate and immediately in need of love, not less so.

  i would argue that what we call the church (and eastern and western examples, sadly, at least insofar as denominations go are similar because eastern churches were founded by western missionaries) is a monstrous deformation of what Christ did and still does. Jesus made a family, a unit of individual people tied together by no creed, race, nationality, religion, or any other made up pretend, artificially imbued, overblown sense of self worth fabricating nonsense. Jesus gave us love and not some conventional romance novel/feel good new age all is one i love humanity love, but something that could truly unite two otherwise separate people. that’s amazing. and it still is amazing. what we have chosen instead, what we have mercilessly tortured and mangled love into is not amazing, or rather it is amazing but in the most horrible conceptions of the word.

  (and yes i fear that i tend to be extreme, in college hyperbole always earned me rather poorer marks than my professors said i deserved.

  i agree wholeheartedly with your latest post Artie, it is impossible to commune with other people who love God and in turn love you and you love if you isolate yourself and i agree with my father that human beings were made for relationship just as fish were for water and birds for flight. it is our natural enviornment and the one in which i feel we must be to some capacity or another to thrive. In fact it is because i so passionately agree with you both that i could never promote going to church as i am convinced the nature of that system is the desolation of relationship of true conneciton. it offers substitutes but those are the promises of the lizard on the man’s shoulder in paradise in C.S. Lewis’ THE GREAT DIVORCE

  (by the way, thanks for recommending that book, it has been one of the more influential reads of my life)

  citing the good that comes from church is problematic as well for two reasons: good can come from anything and the good that does come from it is solely due to its imperfect mimicing of certain natural, unnavoidable good things in human interaction things like relationship and love. those things are too great for any system to overcome. doesnt the Bible quote the Lord when it says

  “46If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? ”

  so saying we love each other proves very little. or to argue, as i have myself, that it’s imperfect but what isnt we have to work with what we have is more than dangerous because the same could be said for abortion, for the death penalty for imprisoning mexican children in money making detention centers for using war to stop potential threats. anything awful thing can be made reasonable by reason, give me a topic and i will explain it’s inherent logic and worth not because i am terribly logical but because that is logic’s nature, to justify everything and thus itself.
  this brings us back nicely to the church, its nature, like that of all systems, is to justify itself, promote and prolong itslef, and thus destroy any and all threats to itself.

  You told me once that we have demonized certain “sins” and ignored others entirely. You specifically noted homosexuality.

  (i also hold you in the highest regard, recall a great number of our coversations and frequently cite you and your wisdom in conversation and am very grateful for the opportunity to converse with you again, thanks brandon for setting up this site! but i digress)

  and why would we do that? does homosexuality threaten the institutional church in some menacing and direct way. Of course as far as spiritual warfare goes anything from the enemy is an assault of anything of the Lord but that was never the issue as far as the church (my definition, as it will be from here on out in this writing) is concerned. the church is a government and how do governments aggrandize and solidify themselves? through prosperity and power right? and where do these things come from? most often through conquest and conquest involves enemies. so enemies are found or invented. i think this is the reason certain sins are harped on and others neglected.

  say for example we took revelations literally when it said all liars will burn in hell. well then that would certianly isolate the majority of church goers, that would be bad for business. instead lying is a slap on the wrist offense and homosexuality (in the same verse, same sentence no less) also punishable by hellfire (if we are to read literally) is acknowledged as the terrible evil we believe it to be. i see no other reason or logic aside from this, i would be happy to if you would show me. for now though, it seems to me that minorities make good targets, the weak are the best foe.

  The united states knows the kim jong il has holocaust style death gulags for its citizens and has for decades maybe? has nuclear weapons, has violated every possible human rights law (not unlike us actually) that we so self righteously wave about and tirade over. which countries did we/will we attack? iraq, iran. North korea is powerful, china much more so, who wants to pick a fight then cant win. not a bully.

  the church is a bully. and it teaches the people to be bullies. i hate the wicked idea of bullying but i cant hate bullies because bullies are people, i mean i can, of course i can, but i dont want to. ive been a bully, ive been a bully for the church. i have used my love of large words and God-given-gift-of-gab to bully people who didnt support the church (in the general sense of american christian mainstream beliefs?) and i am terribly sorry for that. and i have no one to blame but myself. however i am not so masochistic as to ignore the center wherein i recieved my education. again a dilemma could arise because most if not all of the Christians i have ever known (and most of the non-christians as well) are wonderful loving people who just want what’s best most of the time for themselves and others.

  in fact i truly believe that who we are at our every best moments is who we are. that’s our true self that God has made and intended and that we strive for and become and could be at this very moment in Christ according to the promises laid out in John 17 and Ephesians 1 to list the first two scriptural supports off the top of my head. How about philipians 3? that one two i think particularly 12-14, which as i recall was the heart of a lecture given by Winky Pratney (sp?) at YFN one year which you, Artie, deeply enjoyed.

  Looking at those versus i cannot help but feel that Paul was right when he begged us in Corinthians not to make divisions among the body of Christ because doing that how can we then grasp the true brilliance and excitement of his statement in Philipians 3:8-11, that what we have is nothing not because it is nothing but because in Christ what we will find is everything, the things we left behind and the things we did not even dream of. that’s huge, that’s too big for systems or control, that’s freedom.

  I fault the church for what is it, something that cannot embrace freedom because it (the church) is a form and freedom has no form. Herodotus was right when he said everything is flux. Chuang Tse (amazing Taoist philosopher, next big one after Lao Tzu) was right on when he said he would rather “wag his tail in the mud” (story below)

  Chuangtse was fishing on the P’u River when the Prince of Ch’u sent two high officials to see him and said, “Our Prince desires to burden you with the administration of the Ch’u State.” Chuangtse went on fishing without turning his head and said, “I have heard that in Ch’u there is a sacred tortoise which died when it was three thousand (years) old. The prince keeps this tortoise carefully enclosed in a chest in his ancestral temple. Now would this tortoise rather be dead and have its remains venerated, or would it rather be alive and wagging its tail in the mud?”

  “It would rather be alive,” replied the two officials, and wagging its tail in the mud.”

  “Begone!” cried Chuangtse. “I too will wag my tail in the mud.

  This conversation is the REAL CHURCH, feeding the homeless and loving people in Christ by Christ for them and Christ (i find that distinction unecessary and ultimately impossibe since “God is love”)

  living a life together to the extent possible for the sole purpose of sharing God’s love and watching it transform the lives of people and the world itself into a more wonderful place (maybe it will all be destroyed in fire but who can really say that the old earth passing away as the Bible promises in revelations means more than this place being what it should be, who can say is that interpretation is correct? exactly)

  i long, really deeply more and more everyday brandon move to japan for interaction, for life with people who love God as i do, more than i do, who will force me to be more passionate. and everytime i walk into a church that desire drains from me, as it should as it must, it’s a built in alarm. our disquiet towards injustice towards half-heartedness, towards what Lewis called… watered-down Christians? something like that, is good. we should feel drained, discrouraged, outraged. we werent made to be sheep. we chose to become sheep, we were made to be perfect, the embodiment of might and beauty, the ideal bride to the Creator of might and beauty of light and form. church goers are sheep and the pastor their imprisoned leader, a monarch chained to his throne. and all are the willing? victims? of the system itself.

  i agree that we need to detox Artie, i agree. and upon doing so we cannot return to that which poisoned us or the detox will be rendered impotent if not worthless (i hesistate to say worthless though because everything, even squandered has value). drunks dont go back to the bar after detox, or at least it’s hoped they wont. how then could we return to that horrible addiciton which first destroyed and tormented us to such a degree that we chose exile over imprisonment. that would be like the man with the lizard on his shoulder letting the angel kill it (and in turn turning it into a beautiful stallion) and then riding that horse back to the greylands.

  shouldn’t we be heading for the high country instead?

  my father has told me any number of times that the generally, clinically (i believe) working defenition of insanity is to repeat the same action expecting different results. I know we are not insane.

  my hope then lies in Paul’s wonderful assurance, promise if you will, in Philipians chapter 3:15

  “15All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. ”

  followed by an essential and hope-inspiring reminder

  “16Only let us live up to what we have already attained. ”

  talk to you both soon,

  adam

  (oh and yes, i think the Bible is top notch. the truth inside being unbeatable, undeniable, and awe-inspiringly joyful)

• 6. Brandon  |  April 18th, 2007 at 10:42 pm

  very good! When a Church is a government or mini-government I think what you are saying Adam is right on. Especially when church is just a business.

  There is also another negative distinction I am trying to work out in my mind. It doesn’t seem to be so much business or government but it is deceptively oppressive. I have a certain church here in Oregon in mind. Well, I refuse to call it a church and I wish that a few of the young kids I know and care about would not go there anymore. (This church is primarily made up of youth, I think there are two adults and that’s the wife and husband who run it.)

  I make the distinction between what I see as a corporation church and a community church.

  The bible certainly teaches that as a community we are supposed to come together, this could be a few buddies getting together and drinking beer as they talk about Jesus. The problem comes in when you put people in charge of the community as the bible also teaches. (elders) In charge is probably a bad choice of words I prefer to say “caretakers of the community.”

  The church here, which I from now on will refer to as Refuse, doesn’t have elders or anyone that can serve as an accountability. It is rampant with problems and most are relational. Likewise all three of us can conjure up Churches that have a governing body but are still filled with problems.

  So how do we have community in a biblical sense and not have it turn into a corporation church?

• 7. Justin  |  April 19th, 2007 at 8:31 am

  I don’t like the feel of most churches because I feel like they are unrealistic. I guess I don’t read the Bible much because of that feeling too.

  The Bible hasn’t had any updates in quite some time and the world has becoming increasingly irrelevant to issues in the Bible. Politics and world view were so much different back then. People have rights in our country now, we have sets of freedoms, and women are equal with men. The Bible isn’t written along those lines.

  I once stated to Brandon that if I was female and actually read the Bible, then I wouldn’t be a Christian. In Biblical times you had very few choices in life, there were personal issues and those are declared. I guess that is why there are so many denominations and sects. There are many more issues in the world now and people feel strongly about them.

  ———–

  That’s not my only reason for not going to church. I guess I feel burned out, and uninspired to dedicate my time to going to a place of worship. I thank God randomly sometimes in my own time, and that has become decreasingly less often. I’m not totally sure why this is true. My beliefs are not strictly Christian.

• 8. adam  |  April 23rd, 2007 at 12:14 am

  to brandon, it’s a great question, i think you and artie and i as seemingly approaching the issue from three different stances Artie: mostly for, Me: mostly against, You: looking for an encompassing soultion.

  i will make one of these sites soon, (how do i do that) which i would like to dedicate to working towards that end.

  to Justin, you make a fair point about changing political stances, cultural norms and points of view. We might also ask whether or not polygamy is wrong or merely socially frowned upon since many men in the old testament King David for example had mutltiple wives and many cultures the world over still allow for polygamy.

  I would beg to differ with you on the idea of the Bible being mysoginistc as i have read and reread the passages people cite to make this arguement and there is no evidence within the pages to give it credability. Paul says what he says about women talking at meetings for whatever reasons he says them, no doubt cultural. That instance aside christianity is entirely an all inclusive belief that promotes equality and equal standing for everyone all the time, that’s the heart of it. God Himself has feminine attributes, how else could He have made a woman? I fear that for wonderful reasons we often allow ourselves to react rather than research when troubling matters are brought to our attention. Meaning that with this issue, for example, people on one side might say “the Bible is right!” but never explore the question or search for the answer, for fear of being wrong and people on the other might say “the Bible is old, outdated, written by men, etc” without reading it and seeing how valid it’s ideas, arguements and dare i say truths are.

  I would offer that truth has never changed, only our understanding and approach to it. Different cultures view truth differently because truth is bigger than culture, so each perspective is an incomplete view of the totality of truth, which is why there is such a need for unity among the people of Christ and people in general. I personally have found the Bible simply inspiring despite its age and would recommend exploring it a bit mroe before throwing it out. What people may have done with the truth in it does not discredit the truth itself, anymore than love of a child being evil just because parent killed someone to protect their child. killing is wrong right?

  but loving your kid isnt. we would probably try to justify it. i think the same has been done with the truths in the Bible. they have been misused, which if anything should challenge us to know them and use them correctly.

  as for your thoughts not all being lined up with Christianity, i would not worry too much. A lot of my ideas dont either, at least not with what many people would consider Christianity, but i think if we looked at what we call Christianity in America and many other places, we would find many ideas that dont sync up with Jesus’.
  If your beliefs are hand in hand with love as the greatest priority and only goal, than they are in line with God because God is love. If they do not promote love first and foremost, perhaps they are not, and at best they are dangerous because, at least in my experience, when a cause becomes more important than a person the cause has become purely destructive and all it does and will do is destroy. take care!

• 9. Artie  |  April 23rd, 2007 at 10:27 am

  Adam, you misunderstand me if you see me as mostly for as opposed to against. I think that any church expression that is dominated by the flesh is wrong regardless of it’s organization or disorganization. Conversely, any group of Jesus followers who are stiving to obey what they understand to be the NT concept of church will bless the community, worship God and introduce other to Jesus, that is, they will see Spirit produced fruit even if their church expression or organization is less than ideal. For example, Refuse Church is problematic precisley because they do not follow the NT precedent of a plurality of Elders serving as a caretaker/governmental body of shepherds who have the authority to not allow goofy leaders to hurt, deceive or manipulate the people.

  I am not trying to convince you of anything, what I want most of all is for you to articulate what you are FOR. When you make statements to the effect that the church “is a bully and teaches others to bully” or compare church to a biological weapon that kills people or that you have pretty much experienced every denomination and they’re all the “same”, I do not see how a constructive conversation can be had. Now, I do believe that you have reasons/experiences that in some degree affect the way you feel, but you seem to not factor in how these have helped in part to shape your opinions. Can you see how these kinds of thoughts sound like the dogmatic fundamentalism that you detest? I have never thought that coporation Church is New Testament community. (At the same time, I know that disorganized church can also fall short of experiencing NT community.) I just know that within some of those structures are people whose motives are just as sincere as yours, even though they come up with different conclusions.

  I want you to know that I see real heart in much of what you say, and I agree with your desire to understand and live the heart of the gospel.

  “Ivan Illich was onced asked what is the most revolutionary way to change society. Is it violent revolution or is it gradual reform? He gave a careful answer. Neither. If you want to change society, then you must tell an alternative story, he concluded.”

  Adam, what is your alternative story. I think the seeds of it are already in place. It takes much more courage to state that story than it does to critique the old one. I say these things not to debate or convince you (or anyone else) to buy into McChurch (I hate many of the same things about it that you do). I say these things because I think that as you walk through the process you will find that your pain and frustrations may serve God’s purposes in ways that you never thought possible.

• 10. Artie  |  April 23rd, 2007 at 10:29 am

  Justin,

  What exactly do you mean when you say you feel most churches are unrealistic?

• 11. adam  |  April 25th, 2007 at 9:26 pm

  touche, I’ll get right on that

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