Why You Should Stop Going to Church

My friend Krislanatin put up a post today about heretics. It’s a good post, you should go read it.

Since I am a heretic, I thought I might take a minute to explain why I don’t go to church.

I believe one can make a strong case for defining the current institutional church as following the Papal system–even the Protestant/non-demoninational institutional churches.

Here’s why I believe that to be true and why you should stop going to church.

Since 1994 or so when I read “A Woman Rides the Beast” by Dave Hunt I began to see the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon mentioned in Revelation. Hunt does a great job of demonstrating why he sees that, though I disagree with the section on the Nazi’s and the Catholics simply because any denomination likely has some baggage over similar issues.

So, 13 years ago that was pretty easy for me to assimilate. I was in an independent fundamentalist church with no ties to the Catholics—or at least in my mind that was the case.

But since then I have gone a little deeper—or more heretical in some people’s minds. I have begun to believe that to some degree or another the entire institutional church is still the Catholic Church and is still being run by Papal decree.

I came from a home where we went to church every Sunday. It was a United Methodist church but was still pretty conservative. As a teenager I began attending a more conservative independent congregation. When it came time to go to college I went to a fundy Bible college.

One thing you need to understand about fundy Bible colleges: No matter how much denial of reality one has to perform, every fundy act is justified as Biblical. Interpretations are based on tradition far more than Biblical imperatives.

If you read that last paragraph to a literalist he will insist it’s not the case, and I’m confident he believes it’s not the case, but I’m about to demonstrate to any neutral observer how true it is.

One of my favorite examples of tradition over Bible is communion.

Ask any fundy scholar what feast was being celebrated by Jesus and his disciples at “the Last Supper” and they will tell you the feast of unleavened bread also known as Passover.

Passover was a meal. Participation by the Jews was required under penalty of excommunication from the Jewish nation. Passover was meant to commemorate the end of slavery and rebirth into a new life of freedom.

Paul tells us Passover points us to Christ. (Remember, Christianity is simply a Jewish sect that was expanded to the Gentiles as well.)

Now, Jesus says “as often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me.” Do what? Celebrate Passover. Pretty simple.

Yet most Christians don’t ever celebrate Passover. In fact, they celebrate something looking much more like the idol feast of Mithras.

[For a good overview of Mithraism, this is a good article: http://www.taivaansusi.net/historia/mithraism.html though it lacks proper citations. The Wiki article lacks some details, but has good citations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithras ]

We know the early church adopted many pagan traditions in order to gain acceptance among the pagans.

Here’s the funny thing when you start talking to a fundy about Passover, Communion and the Feast of Mithras—they will claim Passover shouldn’t be practiced by Christians (without any Biblical support) then spend lots of time trying to deny how much communion looks like the Feast of Mithras.

Easter is another place where the message of Passover has been supplanted by a pagan tradition—the one of Tammuz and his mother/lover, alternately called “The Queen of Heaven” and “Ishtar.” Some believe “Ishtar” and the Anglo-Saxon goddess “Eostre,” from which the celebration known as “Easter” originated, are the same goddess. Some cite a lack of evidence between the two as meaning one had nothing to do with the other.

But no matter if Ishtar and Eostre are the same deity; it is obvious neither are Jesus.

So while Passover is mentioned in the scripture, today’s institutional church chooses instead to celebrate Easter, named after a pagan goddess.

But where did these types of perversions of the faith originate? It’s somewhat hard to tell—it’s possible early in the church (2nd century CE) some Christian leaders in an effort to try to assimilate the masses adopted pagan practices. It is certain by the time of Constantine and the birth of the Roman Catholic Church this became standard practice.

So when I say the institutional church is still just the expanded Roman church, that’s why. The traditions and practices—even of most fundy churches—are based on the traditions and practices of the Roman church rather than on the Bible. We have been so steeped in Romanism most Christians have never considered why they do the things they do.

Why build buildings? Why hire “preachers”? Why spend 90% + of the resources of Christians simply maintaining the system?

Why worship on Sunday—the day of the Sun god Mithras? Why celebrate Mithras birthday (December 25) when it is clear the Christ would be revealed at Rosh Hashanah, the feast of Trumpets? Why take a little wafer and a thimble of wine when the Bible pictures a full meal with some people even getting drunk?

Why call a celebration of Christ “The Feast of Easter”? Why spend 40 days before the feast “Weeping for Tammuz” and calling it Lent?

As I got the answers to these questions I saw a stronger and stronger connection between any institutional church and the Catholic church.

Since leaving the church building and institutions and following Christ without the trappings, I have more faith and more joy. I am closer to God than I ever have been in my life. Depsite many offers, I will not be going back.