The Elephant in the Church Sanctuary

 There is a huge elephant in the room where modern Christianity is concerned, and very few within the churches that really want to have an honest conversation about it. We all know that it is there. We may even whisper about it to each other, seeking to find a solution to it or understand why it exists at all. But actually seeking real solutions to it can be enough to have you excommunicated, called a heretic, and have your life turned upside down and forever changed.
     Pick up a Bible and read the Gospels. Then read the book of Acts. Then, if you're really serious, search into the Early Church Fathers and the writings of the Church leadership prior to the Council of Nicea. Now, compare what they describe as a "normal Christian" and a "normal church" with an "average Christian" and a "normal church" almost anywhere in the world today.
     Do you understand now what the elephant in the church sanctuary is? Put plainly, they don't match. They don't match at all. Not in structure, not in form, not in practice, not in teaching, and not in displays of power. And it does not matter what denomination it is being compared with. It still does not match with what is described as normal Christian philosophy and practice, nor with what is described as normal, regular church philosophy and practice. We can all read the description of the way it started, the way it is supposed to be and what is supposed to be on display; and we all know that no matter how "good" a modern church might be, it does not match the original standard.
     And no one wants to be honest about why this is the case. The common excuses are either that those in the past were "super-saints" or things were supposed to fizzle out after so long of a time, or in the more extreme line of excuses, people just don't have enough faith, or it was all just a bunch of myth and hyperbole.
     The honest truth about why the modern churches don't look like the ancient churches is because they're neither teaching nor practicing what the ancient churches taught and practiced. As much as they talk about protecting the "ancient faith," what they're teaching, regardless of denomination, is relatively novel and new. For the Catholic Churches, it's a religion which really formed around the fourth century and was dictated by Roman imperial politics. For the Protestant churches and their descendants, its beliefs and practices which are mostly no older than five hundred years, and deviate in many places severely from what is actually recorded even as they proclaim to be returning to the "ancient faith."
     Consider this truth carefully. Those same religions, organizations, and spiritual communities which profess to "believe in Jesus Christ" and follow Him and do everything in His name, claiming to be His disciples, at their core are nothing like what His original disciples taught and practiced because their core teachings developed long after the original churches. There is also the complication that the Gospels and letters the original churches left behind are frequently if not always translated with the express purpose of bolstering the more modern teachings instead of the ancient ones.
     There is a saying which I have come to appreciate, "If you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to keep getting what you're getting." Another similar one is, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time." The modern churches, and modern Christians, have been doing the same thing over and over again for centuries, each time expecting a different result, and each time being upset and surprised when they get basically the same result. It genuinely disturbed me when, attending a church conference a couple of years ago where the topic was how the church should respond to changing cultural and spiritual challenges such as the deconstructionist movement for example; it genuinely disturbed me that what was advocated and celebrated was the message to "stay the course!" Using the image of a ship during a storm. The thought which continuously comes to my mind with this image is that you don't keep the ship on course when it's about to run into the rocks, or run aground. A good pilot will take the new conditions into account and steer the ship in a different direction to avoid the serious hazards and dangers.
     Unless the churches stop doing what they've been doing, protecting theologies and belief systems (and sometimes weaponizing them against certain groups of people) which didn't even originate in the ancient church, and seriously look at why the ancient churches were different, and what they did as disciples which made them so much different and more transformative, then we will continue to get more of the same, and people will continue to leave what they've been told is Christianity for something else that feels more real, not realizing that they were never taught what Christianity really is to begin with.