Its Not Progress To Invite Those You Hate; Progress Is Realizing Not To Hate At All

So, I came across this article written by a minister, regarding his suspicions on church decline, and his opinions on what churches need to do to survive.  You can read the whole article here, if you like.   

I at first found this article very interesting.  First off, apart from the whole article, I really liked this portion: 

"Many churches are trapped in traditions that have died or are dying along with their aging populations. Traditions are good but, when traditions harden into institutions, as of course they almost always do, the traditions die with the people who cling to them."

It might not be that profound, but I found it poetically written.  Traditions are those simple, common things that help a community find it’s feet – they give it identity, purpose, and make it feel cohesive, warm, embracing.  Traditions make everyone involved feel like they are part of something greater.  But then just the same, once the traditions become outdated, it makes the room full of young people feel awkward to go through the motions performing a tradition that is meaningless to them, carrying the weight of it, simply to make their parents/grandparents happy.  It is a perfect statement of the rise and death of what gives people a sense of belonging, knowing eventually that as the pillars of a community die, those that take up the banners of traditions may take a new form that the elders don’t recognize and feel lost trying to follow.

And then the article just pissed me off, and I found the author stupid, clueless, and part of the problems he identifies.  He’s writing about the problems churches face, essentially what is making them outdated and useless; what they need to do to stay relevant.  But in one paragraph, he appears to fully admit he has no clue his church is as much a part of the problem as any other, and he’s doomed to the same demise. Consider when he writes this: 

"I'm a Baptist by upbringing and training and I'm a member of Highland Baptist Church, in Louisville, Kentucky. It's one of those rare -- and I do mean rare -- bright lights. It's a Baptist church that truly seeks to live out the teachings of Jesus. And, because the church does, it has become, among other things, an LGBT friendly church. It is known and respected across the city as truly a Christ-honoring church. What makes it so rare is that the congregation truly seeks to "love enemies," "to do good to those who are evil" and so forth." (emphasis mine)

What a fucking asshole.  What a complete, absolute, douchebag.  How dare he make such a statement, so bluntly - it's like he wrote in code for any fundy christian reading this, "it's okay, we're doing our part loving the evil, the broken, the outright wrong, in hopes they find god and mend their ways."  

Seriously, fuck this guy.  He thinks his church is so fucking different because they allow gays... it's like the lame movie scenario where the popular kids decide to have one of those parties where everyone brings the most embarrassing or ugly person they can find and the winner will be the one that brings the biggest loser (who in the movie inevitably turns out to not actually be ugly, so whatever lesson they teach about learning to accept someone from the ‘out crowd’ is lost by the discovery that this person should have been in the ‘in crowd’ the whole time).  This idiot priest thinks that by opening his doors to the untouchables, the gays, the evil, the enemy… makes them better than most churches, rather than just accepting that there is nothing wrong with these people from the get go.  

I honestly can’t believe he wrote that, after talking about how some churches need to stop talking about ending the world and instead be relevant to living in the world… the idea that people are leaving churches that have become nihilistic in favor of finding places that are still committed to fixing the world we’re in, not ending it… and then he goes and declares that they’re only admitting gays to satisfy that backhanded compliment of the bible, sure we’ll let you in, but we assume that in doing so you will recognize your wickedness and repent, you scum.  

What an arrogant, misled, insulting, pathetic apologist.  I got to that part of it and realized he's exactly the reason his church and any other SHOULD experience a decline, they still manage to justify their hatred in a way that we in the "real world" realize is arcane and impractical for survival in our day to day experiences.