I feel we are at a time in the human story when we must take a step back.  We must wonder what we have done.  We must ask why it is we are destroying our Earth. Is it for air conditioning?  Is it for medicine to heal?  Is it for soft hands and weak hearts?  Why do we sacrifice all things living above the ground, for all things dead below?  Is a gallon of oil worth the life of a polar bear?  Is a barrel worth a human’s?

And are we any happier?  Or healthier?

And this is what I believe: God has created humans through means and ways we cannot yet conceive.  That the Earth and creation are precious, each living being having a place and right to survive.  I believe human life also is precious and beautiful, yet I despise the actions of a selfish human, who inevitably consumes more than he can give.  I believe the goal of human life is to live in harmony with God, self, others and Creation.

I believe the act of worshipping God can only be expressed through love.  The actions of this love are care, humility, sustenance, kindness, selflessness and nonviolence.

I believe the Christian Church is a cancer of the Earth, eating away at God’s creation in the name of God; for the betterment of the individual self at the cost of others and Creation.  A corporation has no soul.  Likewise, an institutional church has no soul; no feelings and no bearing of right or wrong.  The church, throughout history, has organized into a mob to promote the will of selfish people and governments, and has rarely, if ever, produced the kind of love seen in Jesus Christ.  The church has become a bully of the world, a disgrace to the acts of a simple Jewish man.  The institutional church has become the modern day Pharisees.

Similarly, Christians have played a game with the “world” by pretending to be different while being cast from the same mold.  Christians are willing to let the world be destroyed, children starve and communities rot while they picket gay marriages and purity.  Jesus called Christians to radical living through the removal of self, not suburban living with leather seated cars.  Yes, Jesus did call men to give up their entire wealth.  Yes, Jesus did call men to leave their dead fathers before the funeral.   Yet Christians are more concerned with others believing what they believe than loving them.  Christians are more concerned with fashion than clothing the poor.

What have we done?  Is it any wonder the world hates us?  The world hates Christians because Christians hated them first.

Christianity has been boiled down into bite sized pieces of rubbish.  We preach trash Christianity, to be “in the world but not of the world,” and in that way be set free from the responsibility to which Jesus Christ has called each and every person bearing his name.  To be of Christ means to accept death on a cross, to accept living without possessions.  What good is a Christian who lives and loves in the same capacity as any other person?  For what has that person lived?  I say a warm fuzzy feeling of heaven.  To do just enough to slide under the pearly gate as it closes.  They will find that they are sliding into heaven while the world rots and children’s bellies bulge out from hunger.

As so let us be reborn.  Let us preach through love.  Let us love all things living, through selfless actions with no strings attached.  Let us feed the poor without telling them to get a job.  Let us hug those who are different without telling them to change.  Let our sense of self fade through radical actions of love.  And in this may we live to restore the Earth, to give more than we take and feed on the grace of Jesus Christ.    May a church never judge a person but open its arms in acceptance.  May people live on Earth instead of waiting to die for heaven.