I\u2019ve been meeting weekly with a guy that is having trouble believing in Jesus. This past week we went to lunch and while talking he started to cry and the heart issues started to surface. He opened up about how his dad was a pastor, his parents got divorced, and after the divorce he moved back and forth between parents, always forced to go to church. He saw the deep hypocrisy in his family, and the absentness of the church, and his comment to me was, \u201cwhy would I ever want to be a part of that?\u201d My heart broke. It\u2019s hard to blame him right? He has been the victim of bad religion and I hate to think of how many others there have been.<\/p>\n
After all the different readings this semester my mind has been reeling. It\u2019s clear there\u2019s some bad religion being passed around. It\u2019s clear there\u2019s something wrong. We\u2019ve been reading so much about the problem that is painfully right in front us that when I opened Ross Douthat\u2019s book Bad Religion,<\/em> and skimmed the table of contents, I immediately skipped to the conclusion regarding \u201cThe Recovery of Christianity.\u201d I just want answers.<\/p>\n Douthat starts his concluding chapter with this humorous line of hope. \u201cThe history of Christianity has always featured unexpected resurrections.[1]<\/a>\u201d And then Douthat goes on to share what GK Chesterton describes as the \u201cfive deaths of the faith,\u201d those times when Christianity seemed all but doomed. However, Douthat points out that times of crises have been followed by times of renewal and G.K. Chesterton has noted that while many times \u201cthe Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs but each time it was the dog that died.[2]<\/a>\u201d To hope for revival is every believers obligation and reading Douthat\u2019s concluding words gave me the drive to read through the rest of his book.<\/p>\n Douthat did an excellent job using humor and history while pointing out all the flaws of bad religion. Whether it\u2019s the prosperity gospel of Joel Osteen, the \u201cmystical pantheism\u201d of the \u201cGod Within cult,\u201d or Oprah, or Glenn Beck, I feel like I did too much nodding of my head through this book.<\/p>\n At the end of this book I was left asking myself if am I a part of the problem or am I part of the renewal? I\u2019m wondering if we are living in a time where Christianity appears doomed or are there signs out there that we a part of the revival?<\/p>\n I really just want answers and I want to fix our cultures bad religion problem, yet I know it\u2019s not that easy. I left my lunch friend the other day saying something very similar to Douthat\u2019s concluding thought. Douthat articulates it much better then me so I\u2019ll just share his words. He says, \u201cthere is something to be said for returning to the source, for looking again at your half-forgotten patrimony, for considering anew the possibility that Christianity might be an inheritance rather than a burden.[3]<\/a>\u201d I most definitely agree that there\u2019s something to be said for returning to the source\u2026.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, (New York, NY: Free Press, 2012), 277.<\/p>\n
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