Sorry....

This was written by Mr. Jay Harker who is in my church group. I got it off of my friend's blog, who got it off of his.

"Open Letter of Apology to The World

Please bear with me, this is long overdue and there's lots of ground to cover. I want to make sure that I get it all out. Not just for me,but because I think you need to hear it. Maybe there are other Christians out there as well that need to make apologies and will find courage here. I appreciate your time, I know it's valuable.

Dear Members of the World, I'm just a guy, nobody really. Son of a preacher. Years and years of Vacation Bible Schools, summer camps, youth ski trips, puppet shows - you name it. I'm not a badguy, I've been mostly behaving myself and everybody seems to like me.I do some good stuff here and there.

But lately I've been trying to understand Jesus more and stuff I nevernoticed before has really started to bug me. I've been taking a lookaround and I'm having a hard time making sense of what it is we'vebuilt here. So, it just seemed like, whether anybody else says it ornot, I need to take responsibility for the part I played and say whatI have to say.

Here we go ...

I know you think that Christians are a big bunch of hypocrites. We saywe're more "religious" and we're going to heaven and you're not, andthen we drive our big shiny cars with little fishies on the trunk andcut you off in traffic as we race by the homeless guy on the corner.We average just 2% of our money to church and charity, despite that wesay the Bible is the word of God and it says we're supposed to giveeverything. On average, we buy just as many big screen TVs and bassboats and fur coats and makeup and baseball cards and online porn asanybody else. Maybe more. You've seen leader after leader end up injail or court or a sex scandal of one sort or another.

Well ... you're right. We're guilty of all of it. We've done it all.And, I'm really sorry.

You see our cheesy TV shows and slick guys begging for money and youget that there's something seriously sneaky and wrong here. A high-pressure call for money so they can stay on the air? Were we supposedto use Jesus as just another form of entertainment? Who do we thinkwe're kidding? Where's Jesus in all this? Aren't we supposed to relyon him? Isn't He going to meet our needs if we're inside His will?

What happened to sacrifice and suffering and helping the poor? I'mjust sick about this. I mean, the church leaders, they're not all badguys, there are lots and lots of really hard-working well-meaningfolks who love and care and are meeting real needs in the community.Some of them understand and love Jesus - but I'm just real sure thosepastors don't drive Bentley's, have multi-million dollar homes andtheir own lear jets! I mean, what "god" are we worshipping?

Money?Ego? Power?

You see our massive shiny new buildings all over the place. Heck,maybe we even kicked you out of your house so we could expand ourparking lots. You can't figure out why we need four differentChristian churches on four corners of the same intersection. We've gotplaygrounds and bowling alleys and basketball leagues. We've gotStarbucks coffee in the sanctuary. We've got orchestras and giantchandeliers and fountains out front. We've got bookstores full of"jesus junk" with every imaginable style and flavor of religious knick-knack. But where's Jesus? Is this what HE wanted?

Oh, sure, there are good folks all over and not every church is such amess, but Christians are the ones that say we're supposed to be "OneBody." So even the good ones are guilty of not putting a stop to it sooner. We were supposed to keep each other in line and not toleratefactions and dissensions and greed and idolatry and all this other badstuff. Man, we really blew it! We've got 33,000 denominations and mostof them won't talk to the other ones. We lose over $5 million a day tofraud from "trusted" people inside the church! We spend 95% of all ourmoney on our own comforts and programs and happy family fun time showsand we let 250 MILLION Christians in other countries live on the veryedge of starvation. Not to mention the billion or so that have nevereven once heard of Jesus - or the homeless guy downtown we almost ranover when we cut you off.

We're as guilty as we can be. All of us. Nobody is exempt. We shouldhave put a stop to it a lot sooner. But I can't apologize on behalf ofanyone else. This is about me.

I know that you might have gone to church as a kid and stopped going as soon as you could. I know that you might even have been abused by somebody in the church! Maybe we got you all fired up and then just let you drift off like we didn't really care. Maybe you just don't fit our "profile." You might have piercings and purple hair or tattoos or been in jail -- and somewhere inside you just know that even if you wanted to go to church one Sunday, it would not go well. I'm sorry for that. Jesus loves you. He always hung out with the most unexpected people. He had the biggest heart for the folks everybody else tried to ignore. What have we done? We've told you to put on a sweater and some loafers or you can't go to heaven. I just want to throw up.

Look, I know you're mad. And you have a right to be. We've done you wrong for a LONG time now. There's some things about Jesus that peopleneed to hear, but we've buried a beautiful masterpiece under hundredsof layers of soft pink latex paint. If you have a Bible handy, look upMatthew 23. (If you don't, you can look it up here - http://www.biblegateway.com/.) Find it? Read it carefully, the Pharisees were the "religious"people of the day, the leaders of the faith. In this chapter JesusSEVEN times says how pitiful and wretched and cursed they are for whatthey're doing to the people they're supposed to be leading. He evencalls them "white washed tombs of dead mens bones" and a "brood ofvipers"! I don't have time here, but read it and see if we're notdoing EVERY single one of those things. Jesus can't possibly be happyabout what we've done to you.

Sure, we like to kid ourselves and pretend everything is OK - but it'snot. We're hated. Now, please understand, Jesus was hated, too. Butthat was because he said hard things and sometimes people don't likehearing the Truth. And he promised we would be hated if we were likehim. But that's not why we're hated at the moment. We're hated right now because we're a giant pack of lying hypocrites that say one thingand do something else altogether. If we were hated because we werelike Jesus, that would be one thing, but that's not it at all. You seeright through our happy music and fluffy services and you can tellthere's something desperately wrong here. We're no different than anybody else - except that we say we're better than you.
It was never supposed to be like this. Jesus asked us to care for the widows and orphans, to feed the hungry, care for the sick, visit those in prison, reach the lost. He wanted us to love our enemies and prayfor them. He cared about human justice and suffering, the lost and lonely. But I don't think He would have marched on a picket line - He had His mind on much bigger problems. He wanted us to focus on theeternal things, not the everyday. He never once said to go into all the world and build big buildings and divide up into factions and buyBentleys. Just the opposite! I get that you're mad at us and I thinkyou have a right to be, but please understand, you're mad at whatwe've made under our own power, you're mad at "Churchianity." That'sdifferent than Christ and what he wanted. Don't be mad at Jesus! This mess wasn't His idea!

Look, I'm really sorry. I accept responsibility for my part in havinghurt you. But I'm committing to you all, dear Members of the World,that I'm not going to do it any more. Not a single penny more. I'm notgoing to put my faith in "Churchianity" or any leader or program or TVshow -- but in Christ Jesus and His salvation. That's when I was setfree and began to see that God wants and expects more of us than this.And I'm not helping anybody that's not fully committed to the same thing.

It took centuries to build this monster, so it's not like it's goingto just turn around overnight. But the times are changing and we'reway overdue for something new. Big bad things are happening - like thetsunami in Asia - and I think more are coming. I don't want any moretime to go by without having said this. I'm sorry for all the time andmoney I've wasted. But Jesus saves. Really. The church itself isn'teven the point. Jesus is the real deal. He lived and He died for mysins and He rose again. He is who He said He was and He cares about me- and you. He's our only hope. We need places you can go that willonly teach Jesus and will not be swayed or tempted or distracted byanything else. God willing, that's coming.

Please don't think all Christians are just posers. Some of them really mean it when they say they belong to Christ. The problem is mostly inthe West where we're all comfy and complacent and seem to like it that way. The Christians in China and other places are deadly serious.There's no room for anything but Jesus when you're on the run from thegovernment. They are dying every day for their faith and doing crazyhard things because they're absolutely committed to Christ. These are martyrs. People willing to crucify little pieces of themselves everyday to be more like Christ. People willing to set aside everythingthey want to do what Christ wants. People willing to rot in prison ortake a beating or die if that's what it's going to take. People thatact in pure love and never back down. I'm not worthy to tie theirshoes. And there are some like that here, too, and I hope we can get alot more people to start living that way. It's way overdue.

If you're talking to someone and they tell you they're a Christian, ask them if they're the kind of Christian that really means it all the time or the kind that just means it on Sunday. The Bible says we'll know them by their "fruits" - by the faith and purity and love intheir deeds and words. When you find one that proves Christ is in themby how much they love you, ask them to tell you all about Jesus. If you know one of those fearless martyrs that speaks nothing but pure,clean, hard Truth - ask lots of questions. Truth is a lot more rarethan you would think. But don't settle for soft, fluffy and comfortable anymore - that's not in the Bible.As for me and my house, we're really sorry. From now on, we're going to serve the Lord, not "Churchianity." We're going to try to call together as many of those martyrs as we can and start doing whatChrist wanted. If I run into you someday, please give me a chance toshake your hand and apologize in person. I'm going to try harder from now on, I promise. I think there are lots of others feeling the sameway, so don't be surprised if you start hearing stuff like this more often."