Just One Savior

You know, there is something seriously wrong with much of the church.

Not with its Founder.

Jesus was right about God. He preached a unique message of God’s love for all people.

He told us to love even our enemies, because God loves “the ungrateful and the wicked.”

He renounced revenge of all sorts.

Jesus got it right.

So why has the church, almost from the start, gotten so much wrong?

How could someone who claimed to follow Jesus write a revenge epic like the Book of Revelation?

And why did a council of Christians not see that this work teaches the opposite of everything Jesus said?

They put it in the Bible!

And now, along with the God we call Father who loves us all, we have that rough God who sends plagues and dumps bowls of wrath upon us.

And we pay the price.

For 2,000 years many in the church have sponsored inquisitions, crusades, and slavery—in God’s name.

John Calvin had a man killed over doctrine.

My great, great, great grandfather, a Baptist preacher, owned slaves.

When I was growing up, nearly all of the folks in the pews on Sundays were loudly and proudly racist.

And now, it is mostly Christians who follow that man who is morally and spiritually bankrupt.

Why?

How could this be?

Here’s the answer:

Many Christians read the Bible as if all of it reflects Jesus.

It doesn’t.

Revelation and a number of passages in the Old Testament give us the very opposite of Jesus.

I just did a quick count. We have only one Savior.

It’s time for the church to listen to him.