Throughout history, men and women who called themselves Christians have waged “holy war,” massacred native peoples in the name of God, burned the innocent at the stake, set themselves against scientific progress, spread anti-Semitic messages, participated in genocide, bombed abortion clinics, mistook sins for felonies, shamed the sinner rather than corrected the sin, spoken more about damning than saving, and led hypocritical yet holier-than-thou lives.
Many Christians have spoken for God when God has not spoken.
I have spoken for God when God has not spoken. I have hurt people with my actions and speech. I have stolen things that didn’t belong to me. I have hated people to the point of wishing they were dead. I have harmed my relationships with people due to my judgmentalism and neglected others due to my indifference. I have stunted the simple clarity, quiet strength, and urgent relevancy of Christ’s message with my own selfish agenda and myriad of attachments to sin.
I apologize. I apologize for my own actions and, if I may, on behalf of all Christians who have obscured the message of Christ by pulling over it a veil of chaos, dust, and debris.
The term Christianity has come to mean completely different and sometimes opposing things for each and every individual. Sometimes this term was used to defend merciless killings, other times it was cited to promote inhumane slavery, anti-abortion violence, or hatred of homosexuals……and the list goes on. But this Christianity is one which no Christian would defend.[1]
With each changing epoch of history and vacillatory current of society, the Church has had to view and teach certain doctrines with varying emphasis and interpretation. However, in the religious scramble to suppress or punish sin, Christians have at times in the past come all too quickly to uninformed conclusions, which were not Godly at all.
If you can, forgive us for our sins. We admit that we are sinners. And for the better, because God did not come into this world to call saints (Matthew 9:13, Mark 2:17, Luke 5:32, 1 Timothy 1:15). But know that the state of God does not stop at the state of us and churchgoers. It is true that in the past, Christians have sinned against man. But God has not. Christians will continue to sin against man. But God will not. The worth, beauty, and reality of true Christianity can not be cheaply reduced by the mistakes of humans. All those who believe they are flawed, unlovable, or empty can go to Jesus, and He will reveal to them the way to fill up all the facets of their thirsting soul.
[1] Inspiration for this paragraph came from Donald Miller’s book, Blue Like Jazz