Rolling Stone published an interesting article this month titled:

“Jesus Made Me Puke - and other tales from the evangelical front lines”

Their reporter went ‘undercover’ for a weekend retreat with an evangelical church group to ‘encounter God’ (and by undercover I mean, he pretended to be a believer so he could go to their retreat). In case you’re curious, he didn’t come to a saving knowledge of Christ through the weekend event. Aside from a few good laughs (it was a well-written and entertaining article - if you set aside the entire basis of the content), it was just embarrassing to read.

One of the first problems he indirectly addresses is the lack of real men in church today:

“With the glasses and a slouch I hoped I was at least in the ballpark of what I thought I needed to look like, which was a slow-moving hulk of confused, shipwrecked masculinity, flailing for an answer.” (p.72)

This perspective went right into his overall picture of the church’s reason for existence - to make life happy or better. In other words, you (the sniveling, worthless wreck of a man) are the before picture…

“That’s one of the reasons that it’s so important for the pastors to look healthy, lusty and lustrous - they’re appearing as the after photo in the ongoing advertisement for the church wellness cure.” (p.72)

The entire piece was very telling in regards to how the business of church is done in the 21st century. The Church (at least in his perspective) isn’t really pushing people toward a relationship with Christ as much as they are trying to make people feel really good about being at church.

“…as far as I could see… most of what we were doing was simple pop-psych self-examination using New Age-y diagnostic tools of the Deepak Chopra school: Identify your problems, face your oppressors, visualize your obstacles… With a little tweaking and much better food, this could easily have been Tony Robbins instructing a bunch of Upper East Side housewives to “find your wounds” at a chic resort in Miami Beach or the Hamptons.” (p.75)

It was enough to make me incredibly depressed at the current state of the Church, until I read a post from John Piper on the Desiring God blog. In it, he quotes J.C. Ryle and it sheds light on the depression with hope for Christ’s return…

“I believe that the widespread unbelief, indifference, formalism and wickedness, which are to be seen throughout Christendom, are only what we are taught to expect in God’s Word. Troublous times, departures from the faith, evil men waxing worse and worse, love waxing cold, are things distinctly predicted. So far from making me doubt the truth of Christianity, they help to confirm my faith. Melancholy and sorrowful as the sight is, if I did not see it I should think the Bible was not true.”

“And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.”
Matt 24:12

“Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons”
1 Tim 4:1

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. . . . treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, . . . while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
2 Tim 3:1, 4, 13

We can use articles like this to see our shortcomings. It’s a painful process, but it’s healthy to look at ourselves from someone else’s point of view. And it’s healthy to turn back to the Word to find our strength - not in the rationale of magazine editors, but in God’s holy Word.