I left the faith not because I wanted to go rape, murder, or have premarital sex and smoke the occasional organic matter. I didn’t do it so I could have an abortion. I didn’t leave the church because of its unholy matrimony with the Republican party which is a morally bankrupt and corrupt institution (although this one is true).
I left the faith because God is weak.
When I fell for Jesus, when I committed my life to it, I believed in a powerful God, one who could create galaxies and tapestries of life with a wave of his hand. I would rather believe in no god than a weak one; nothing proved how weak God is as much as what happened last week.
The Abortion Saga
Fundamentalist/Extremist Christians across the US rejoice: you did it. Through billions of votes at all levels of government, through your repeated embrace of pro-life politicians steeped in corruption and sexual sin… you got what you wanted. A single court decision, overturned.
This was the awe inspiring full might of the Christian Church. Mormons, Catholics, Evangelicals, Protestants, everyone unified and spent all their capital to accomplish it, and… what a pathetic show.
God is Weak
This is the message of the American church: The best thing that God’s power can accomplish, via the church he *called* (Acts 1:8), is… drumroll please… punishing girls and women for having abortions. Really? This is the best demonstration of God’s power and will? That’s it?
Did God, through His church, accomplish something that matches the power He claims to have? Creation-level awe-inspiring? Was he able to move mountains? Was he able to do something he actually cared about, like feeding the poor, healing the sick, bringing the masses to salvation?
Failure. God failed. His church failed.Grade F-. Fail.
The God of wonders, the Father of Lights. His church sacrificed everything… for this. How dismally, miserably weak.
Missed Opportunity
(Nomenclature: I use the pronoun “she/her” for the church, because she is indeed the bride of Christ, Eph 5:22-23)
The American Church: massive, wealthy, and powerful; just imagine what she could have done. All of her capital, all of her registered voters. If the church could have mustered the same unity, energy, funds, and stamina elsewhere, she could have:
Solved homelessness.
Solved hunger.
Disarmed the world’s nuclear arsenal.
Actually made Black Lives Matter.
No, in fact, Christians are on the wrong side of BLM, and confoundingly they are on the wrong side of the nuclear weapons question as well.
It is a beautiful testament to God’s weakness: What the church accomplished in the abortion saga is big indeed, but the great travesty is how proportionally little she was able to accomplish in what matters to God:
For religion that God finds pure is this: To help widows and orphans in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by this world. -James 2:1
Disunified
Christians are famously disunified, with dozens of major denominations, and divisions within denominations as well. The Mormons, Catholics, Baptists, Prespeterians, Lutherans… cannot agree on anything, and as you’re reading this churches are splitting all over America.
Jesus prayed for unity among his followers (John 17:20-23) right before his betrayal and death. Whose job is it to fulfill his prayer, was he praying to us? Do we just blame humans for our disunified failure? Or was he praying to God and God profoundly failed?
Christians can’t agree on nuclear disarmament. They can’t agree on whether the poor should have healthcare. They can’t agree on anything. The one way where the church achieved the unity that Jesus prayed for is this: Criminalizing abortion. What further proof do you need that God is weak?
Glass Cannon
I will not argue the reality that what the church is accomplishing in the abortion saga is a powerful victory… politically; but at what cost?
The creditibility of the church is shattered, she lay in bed with duplicitous, adulterous, lying politicians to get the abortion ban she wanted. And in the process the church literally sold its soul to the devil.
Want proof? Look no further than the worship services in empty churches every Sunday. Moralists like myself will never come back, why would we want to be apart of an institution that can only unify around controlling women?
And let it be so: Let this be the final gasp of the church in her power and relevancy in US politics and culture. Let this final, powerful stroke explode the church into the irrelevancy that modern liberal democracies around the world enjoy.
The deepest shame is that, if the church only had one shot, it squandered an opportunity to really show the love of Jesus.
If I Were a Christian…
If I were a Christian today I would be despondent. We spent so very much political, relational, reputational capital on getting Roe overturned, and it’s killing the church. The church sent the clear message that no, it’s not women who know what’s best for their bodies, it’s not even God: It’s the US government… The sum is a whole lot more unwanted babies, and a generation disgusted by Christianity.
We serve a God of power and that power is demonstrably not showing itself, shrouded in mystery. Rather, it’s being revealed in something futile, punitive, and un-Christlike.
It is a victory for Christian Fundamentalists, but not for the “Kingdom of Heaven”. For those who utter the prayer “Thy will be done, on Earth, as it is in heaven”, make no mistake: GOP accomplishments on abortion rights are no an answer to your prayer.
The last thing that Jesus said before He ascended to heaven: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. -Acts 1:8.
If the abortion ruling is the fulfillment of this verse, then I conclude: God is weak.
Postchristianity 