A couple of week ago, I read Brian McLaren's book "A New Kind of Christian." In his introduction, he shares the conclusion he has reached after many years as a pastor and seeing so many things:
Enough of this evidence accumulates (my list could go on and on) ... and a pattern becomes perceptible, and a realization comes like a good cry: Either Christianity itself is flawed, failing, untrue, or our modern, Western, commercialized, industrial-strength version of it is in need of a fresh look, a serious revision.
When I read that, I realized that is how I have been feeling. I look at Jesus and the early church and I look at the modern evangelical church and I can't believe they are part of the same religion. McLaren also says this:
You can't talk about this sort of thing with just anybody. People worry about you. They may thing you're changing sides, turning traitor. They may talk about you as if you came down with some communicable disease. So you keep this thing like a dirty secret, this doubt that is not really a doubt about God or Jesus or faith, but about our take on God, our version of Jesus, our way of faith. You let it out only when you feel you have found someone you can trust.
When I read that, it was as if he was reading my mind. Wow, it is so true. The few people I have talked to about this reacted just this way.
