This is from an online discussion where I was asked why I do not go to church. There are several reasons and they are complex.
I don’t go to church because I consider the church to be too rooted in Paganism and tradition. This is something that I felt convicted of even as a young child, but I attended church because of my parents’ wishes – we attended a Baptist church back then, and I can’t say I didn’t feel happy there, and I can’t say I didn’t feel love there, but there was something missing. In my teens I stopped going to church because I was refused communion because I was a child, and also because I asked why the church and Jewish people worshipped on different days (considering Ephesians 2:16, Ephesians 4:3-6) and the answer I received didn’t make sense. I had lots of questions, and not enough answers that made sense. I returned to the same church in my mid 20’s and the same questions presented themselves to me, but the right answers never came, so I moved on to a Seventh Day Adventist church (which wasn’t hugely different) before moving to a Messianic Congregation which I liked (apart from the liturgy) but was quite a drive from my home.
Paganism:
Christmas and Easter are festivals not spoken of in scripture, the apostles didn’t keep them, they are pagan replacements or additions to biblically correct observance: https://www.anthony-ewers.me/the-origins-of-christmas/
Easter is in line with the Vernal Equinox, it’s a replacement of Passover – I need to do another blog post or article on that one.
Tradition:
I see both the present day and historical leadership of the church, even back to “The Early Church Fathers” as modern day Pharisees. Yahshua said this about them:
“‘These people honour me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’
You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”
And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! (Mark 7:6-9).
It’s important to note that it was the way the law was presented, side-stepped, partially applied and perverted by those who claimed to be teachers of it at that time that Yahshua despised, not the law itself (note Matthew 5:17-20).
There is also the time as a child I was told by my girlfriend (sometime in the early 80’s) that black people had been allowed to be slaves because of the bible, namely “The Curse of Ham” (Genesis 9). That got me thinking about Trans-Atlantic slavery and the consequences that affect black people to this day. God’s curse on people who do not obey his commands lasts 4 generations (Exodus 20:5/6), so if Noah’s curse on his descendent Ham did come to pass and was somehow more permanent than God’s, it is therefore strange that the Israelites were actually enslaved to sons of Ham (Egypt – Exodus 1 etc) before their deliverance from Egypt, and this happened approximately 800 – 900 years after the flood according to scripture. So why after all that, scripturally, The Curse of Ham should then have been used by Christians several millennia later as a reason to justify the enslavement of black people seems to be rather tenuous at best. Scripture says slave traders will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Timothy 1:10), yet many denominations of the Christian church participated in slavery, owned slaves and were even compensated for loss of those slaves who were deemed to be “property” when slavery was abolished.
If I began making a cake and put in arsenic rather than almonds, I would have to throw that cake away and start again. If I were building a house and I built off line distorting the original plan and design, I would have to tear that part of the building down and rebuild. But as proof that many churches haven’t learned they were using the wrong spiritual ingredients and perhaps not building their church according to the foundation and plan God required, there are churches who refused (and continue to refuse) to allow black people into the ministry or priesthood, and movements like British Israelism and its offshoot Christian Identity (who feed off false teachings like “The Curse of Ham”). These movements want to assert that Anglo Saxons, the British, Scottish, German and Nordic peoples are the rightful heirs of the promises god gave to Israel, they focus on tenuous etymological links between words and twist biblical scriptures out of context in order to give them the reason to purge native peoples from their homelands and make people slaves. The Christian Identity movement in particular is extreme, it views people who are non-white as having no soul, not being human, a different species only fit only to be slaves. The literature of these movements such as “The Turner Diaries” gave rise to the tactics and lifestyle of the Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh and they underpin the views and life-styles of racist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
Essentially I see Europeanised Christianity as a corrupt vine, that doesn’t just distort scripture and harm black people, it also gives white people a false sense of superiority. It traps everyone in an illusion of ardent faith, but you have to remember what Paul wrote:
“And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.” (2 Corinthians 11:14)
What I mean by quoting that is, if the devil masquerades as something good, we have to be really careful about what we consider to be good, and for me, the ONLY clarity that can be gained on that is from God’s word, so I reject Church tradition, new unwritten commandments and anything that tries to pigeonhole me into a box where I serve in some kind of underclass in society because of the colour of my skin.
I’m Messianic to a degree, but the current occupants of Israel are not much different to the Nazi’s who persecuted the Jews in WW2 judging by the way Israel treats Palestine, and any non-Jewish person wishing to live in Israel’s biblically prescribed territory. I’m not pro-Israel in this sense, which Messianic people tend to be. I don’t currently keep Old Covenant feasts or much in the way of custom, but rather I’m at a stage where I have rejected Christian customs and want to find the right place where I feel faith is correctly defined and practiced.
I don’t know if my reply is what you would expect, and I in no way mean to offend, it’s just that I feel if you are not aware of stuff in this world yourself and are not telling others, I feel you are sleepwalking in a living nightmare. Ignorance just isn’t bliss.
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8)