Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
We're addressing the problem of hypocrisy today. Really important issue where people. There was a Barna study done that was a bunch of years ago, an extensive study where they asked non christians, what are the reasons that you don't like church? What are the reasons you don't like Christianity? What are the reasons that you don't want to become a Christian? And there was the top two or three answers had to do not with evidential reasons, the kind of stuff that we've been talking about, about history and philosophy and science and so on. But actually the top two or three were moralistic reasons, which were that they don't like the hypocrisy and the judgmentalism in the church. Meaning the church has a history of hurting people, having homophobia, killing witches, the inquisitions, the crusades, killing, torturing people that we don't like, demonizing people, going on wars, being judgmental, being mean spirited, unkind jerks in the world. And that's the reason I wouldn't want to become a Christian. So as Christopher Hitchens said, that the number one argument against the existence of God is christians themselves. All right, I.
Mark Clark [00:00:58]:
That's the issue that we gotta deal with, because it's an honest issue. It's something that, as someone who grew up outside the church, I had to wrestle with in my own life. Was the church something I wanted to actually identify myself with? Because the minute I say I'm a Christian, it comes with all the baggage, all the baggage of the history of the church, the awfulness of the church, the things that we've done. So we actually have to address this issue. Steven Weinberg put it this way. He said, good people will do good things and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things, that takes religion. And what he means is, obviously, the issue is we live in it today, where if you theologize oppression and violence, then it justifies it in your mind, which is why we have fatwas and abortion clinic bombings, and Palestine and Israel fighting each other and 911 and the awfulness of terrorism.
Mark Clark [00:01:55]:
It's all theologically driven. It's not just politically driven. 911. If you look into the motives of what they were doing, it wasn't just about politics. It was about defeating the great Satan America that actually develops Britney Spears and Internet pornography and sends it around the world and destroys people's souls. And so what they wanted to do is they wanted to fight back against it. Theologically, it wasn't just a political war. And so once we have theology behind us.
Mark Clark [00:02:23]:
What we find is we can almost do anything to anybody. And so what we need to do is address this. Robert Kuttner, talking about Christianity, says this. The crusades slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The inquisition brought about the torture and murder of millions more. Dan Brown, the writer of da Vinci Code, says the church in Europe during the witch trials killed more than 5 million women. 5 million women. So here's the question.
Mark Clark [00:02:53]:
What do you and I do with this issue? What do we actually do with the fact that we have this whole history of the church and the atrocities and the awfulness of what they've done? I have seven points, all right, that we're gonna get through. So we're just gonna talk through them, and hopefully we'll be out of here for dinner first. All right? The first point I have to make is we have to actually just admit it. The fact is, Christianity, there's no point in telling ourselves that we've never done anything bad, all right, in history and in modern times. I was watching television the other day, and it was a news show about all these KKK guys down in the south wearing their hoodies, burning crosses, sitting there with their bibles open, and they're all attending church together, and they're all in these community groups together. And they're talking about the fact that the guy goes, the Bible says that white people are the purest breed in the world, right? And I'm just like, oh, my gosh, I. This guy has never opened a Bible in his life. And I just wanted to reach into the screen and chop him in the throat for being so dumb.
Mark Clark [00:04:04]:
Because here's the thing. You begin to kind of take theology and make it racist for yourself. And these guys, see, here's the answer to racism and dumbness like that. True Christianity is actually the answer. Pure biblical Christianity is the answer. Because here's what we find with every racist. That when racists get to heaven, it will be hell for them. Because in revelation four and five, every tribe, tongue and nation is gathered around the lamb worshiping him.
Mark Clark [00:04:37]:
Every tribe, every tongue, every color. And they will be surrounded by a whole bunch of people who aren't white. Praise God, by the way, because I was just in Toronto last weekend, that's why I wasn't here. And I was preaching at a conference. And the whole conference, it was just all black people. And when I preached, dude, they were electric, all right? They were like, man, I couldn't even talk. Like I would be preaching. They'd just be standing up.
Mark Clark [00:05:04]:
They'd be going give me blah, blah, blah, blah. Amen. Amen. They'd be clapping like this. They'd go, bam, bam, bam. And I'm like, man, white people suck. I'm gonna go plant a black church. That's legit.
Mark Clark [00:05:18]:
They give back some good energy. They let you know you're doing a good job. All right? All you guys are point number one. I see gong show. So that's what you want, though, all right? The biblical, the form of biblical Christianity comes to us and calls out any kind of racist oppression in us. But the first point is to admit it. Admit that it's a historical reality. Admit that it's a present reality.
Mark Clark [00:05:45]:
We have dropped the ball. We have hurt people. We have oppressed people, we have judged people. Donald Miller tells a great story in his book Blue like jazz, where on his very. On his campus of his very liberal university, he set up a confession booth. And when people would come into the confession booth to confess their sins, because they're all having orgies and getting hammered and high every day, they would come into this confession booth to confess their sins to Donald Miller and his friends, and Donald Miller would sit there, and instead of them confessing to him, he would start to confess to them the atrocities of the church, the things the church has done, the oppression, the awfulness. And that gained a hearing on the university campus for the gospel to actually be made clear to people. The first step is you and I actually admitting it, recognizing that we do have a history of awfulness.
Mark Clark [00:06:37]:
This is why Jesus began his ministry in Mark, chapter one, by looking at religious people, not secularists or atheists or agnostics, but the most religious people of the day, and started his ministry with these words, repent. He wasn't talking to pagans. He was talking to what we would deem as the church. And he was saying, you, the church, need to be humble and recognize you've made mistakes. You're going in the wrong direction. And there's things you have to admit and say sorry for metanoia, meaning turn around and go in a different direction. We have to apologize and posture ourselves to the world, not in a judgmental, mean spirited way, but in a way that loves and serves them. This is why Jesus washed feet.
Mark Clark [00:07:26]:
This is what we want to do. We want to be the greatest hospitality organization in the world, the church, loving and serving people, not killing them, oppressing them, judging them from a distance. All right, so that's issue number one, that we have to start by just admitting we have a history of this. Number two. Second point is the church is actually filled. Here's the reason. See, when skeptics push back and they say, hey, the church is filled with hypocrites, the church is filled with mean spirited people. The church is filled with awful people.
Mark Clark [00:08:00]:
The first thing to say, okay, yes, we have a history. The second thing to say is, the reason it is filled with those kind of people is because the church, and I know this might be a news flash to you, is filled with people who aren't christians. So if you go back through history and you start to understand, I've told you this story before, here is the church that when we planted our church, right a year in, the guy's calling us up and going, hey, you got people yelling at me, swearing at me, putting their middle finger up at me as they park their car on my lawn, telling you, f you, I'm going to church. And that was village people, all right? Why? Because those people aren't. They're probably not even christians. But if you look in and go, I can't believe it. A guy talked to me in the foyer the other day. He said, hey, listen, here's my buddy Joe.
Mark Clark [00:08:50]:
I met Joe. Joe's like, hey, what's up, Mark? I'm like, hey, how you doing, Joe? He goes, cool. I talked to this other guy. He's like, listen, Joe's from a local prison. Every week I bring murderers and rapists to church with me. I'm like, huh, cool. What campus do you go to? So the reality is, is we can look at, oh, my goodness. I can't believe this guy is a murderer.
Mark Clark [00:09:13]:
I can't believe this guy's a rapist. What's he doing in the church? And the whole point is, and we're going to find this out, that the church is supposed to be filled with people who need the grace of Jesus. That's the point. But it's also filled with people who are actually fake disciples, people who don't understand their need for the grace of Jesus. And that's why they're here. They're people who think they have the grace of Jesus already in their life. They think they're already christians. This is why.
Mark Clark [00:09:42]:
Read Matthew, chapter seven. Jesus comes out of the gate, and he says this, there are false teachers in the world who will teach bad doctrine and actually deceive people away from the truth. And then he says, there aren't only false teachers in the world. There are false disciples in the world who aren't going to teach bad doctrine to others and deceive others, but they actually deceive themselves. The church is filled with people like that. This is why Jesus talked about, he pushed against the idea of the exoskeleton of religion. All right? His most angry sermon, Matthew 23, is reserved for religious people who put on masks. And so Jesus said, you are hypocrites.
Mark Clark [00:10:22]:
The word hypocrite means a play actor, somebody pretending that they're a Christian and they're not. And so when the church looks in at Christianity and says, I can't believe the church is filled with people who say they believe this, but they're out having sex with everybody, getting drunk, cheating on their finances, running businesses, awfully and oppressively, I would say, yes, because they don't. They haven't. They don't know Jesus. They think they do, but they don't. This is why Jesus, when he lays out eternal life in John chapter 17, here's what he says in verse three of John 17. He says, and this is eternal life. That they know you talking about God, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent, that they know you.
Mark Clark [00:11:09]:
Not that they politicize it, not that they institutionalize it, not that they create systems out of it, but that you actually know, love and walk with the God of the universe. The question is, is that you, do you actually know him or are you a false disciple? Somebody? And here's what's scary. Who has deceived themselves into thinking they really know God, but they don't, and then you go out and you represent him. So, of course, the church is filled with people who actually, you know, there was a study done not long ago where the people looked at the activities of christians versus non Christians. And here's what this study said in the last 30 days. Surprisingly, there were the same exact levels of engagement in the following areas between Christians and non Christians. Gambling, visiting a pornographic website, taking something that didn't belong to them, saying mean things behind someone's back, consulting a medium or a psychic, having a physical fight or abusing someone, using illegal or non prescription drugs, saying something to someone that's not true. Getting back at someone for something they did and consuming enough alcohol to be considered legally drunk.
Mark Clark [00:12:18]:
There was no statistical difference in these ten areas of a person's life in this study between somebody who claimed to be a born again Christian and people who said, I don't care about Christianity at all. No statistical difference between those activities. Why? Actually, there was one area where there was a statistical difference, and it was that christians recycled less than non Christians, 68% to 73%. Are you joking? See, here's the reality of Christianity, though. The apostle Paul in Galatians says, you know what'll happen if you actually know and love the God of the universe. You will grow in the things of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Those things will begin to define your life if you really know him. But the church is filled with people who think they know him and don't.
Mark Clark [00:13:15]:
And this is what's scandalous. Jesus says in Matthew seven, he says, there's going to be a time in the end where people say, get before God. And they say, Lord, Lord. And he says, away from me. I never knew you. And they said, yeah, but we cast out demons in your name. We preached, we built a church, we gave our tithe. We didn't watch rated r movies.
Mark Clark [00:13:34]:
We always did our devos. And he says, but I didn't know you like you didn't know me. You didn't walk with me, love me, pour into me. You didn't allow me to actually work in your life and change not what you do, but what you want to do. So then that changes what you ultimately end up doing. See, here's the issue. We have to understand that when you come at this from a skeptical vantage point, then with the church being full of people who aren't actually Christians, be very careful to judge the legitimacy and the validity of Christianity based on a whole bunch of people who don't actually do it. Well, you can't base the legitimacy of Christianity based on people who fumble it.
Mark Clark [00:14:16]:
You have to base it on the life and the teachings of the founder, not the people who actually try to do it but fail. You have to be very careful with that. Leo Tolstoy, he said it this way. He said, attack me, rather than the path I follow in, which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and I'm walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way? Because I am staggering from side to side? It's not. It's just he's, he's stumbling. But you don't say, well, that's not the right way home, then. So we have to be very careful when we come at this, because the Bible constantly points us out.
Mark Clark [00:14:59]:
Even the book of James, written to a whole bunch of christians, says, listen, demons know that God exists and they flee from him. Meaning there is a. Here's what's scary. The Bible is very clear. There's a kind of knowing God, there's a kind of faith in God that doesn't save you. The demons know, he says, and they shudder. Demons know God exists. You don't have to convince a demon God exists, but it doesn't save them.
Mark Clark [00:15:30]:
There's a whole bunch of people in the present, in the history of the church that are actually a disaster who oppress people and kill witches and torture people because they don't know the first. Listen to me. Why do they do those things? Because they don't know the first thing about Christianity. They don't understand the fact that Christianity's founder is a guy who dies for his enemies, who gives up power. He doesn't go after it. He absorbs the wrath of God. He serves people. He says, love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you.
Mark Clark [00:16:05]:
And those aren't like secondary doctrines. This is like the center of, the center of the entire church is Jesus dying on a cross, taking on the wrath of God for his enemies. You and me, that's the point. And then you and I see enemies and we go and we oppressed them, we talk bad about them, we slander them, we politicize them, we oppress them, we kill them, we torture them. And Jesus is going, it's almost like he predicted that the church would fumble this and he started saying, guys, you have to wake up. Stop pretending to be something you're not. The reality is we got to constantly. Look, and I've told you this story before, but I think it illustrates this point well because I, when I was in college, my buddy, remember my buddy called me up and asked me to go on that tv show.
Mark Clark [00:16:52]:
And I went on a tv show and he said, we're gonna speak on the issue of prayer. And I said, okay. And so I read a whole bunch of books on prayer and I had this great line, the prayers only talking and listening. We got on the tv show and the cameras came on and I'm sitting there and I'm talking about. And they said, mark, what do you think? And they looked at my buddy and they said, what do you think? And I had told him on the way there what I was gonna say. And so he didn't have any things. The camera went on him when he stole my line. And then I had nothing to say.
Mark Clark [00:17:17]:
And I'm like, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. And he, and then the camera came on me and he already said it. He said, prayer is only talking but listening. And I'm like, I told you that on the drive here that I was going to say that fool. And so they said, well, what do you think about prayer? And I had nothing. Why? Why? Because I didn't have a prayer life. Because I was playing games.
Mark Clark [00:17:38]:
I was putting on a mask. I was pretending to be something that, in the dark, away from everybody else. I actually wasn't. And so the church is filled with people like that. But we have to be careful. Don't base the legitimacy of Christianity based on people who fumble it. Okay, third point, the church is a place for sinners. And what I mean by that is when a skeptic looks into the church and says, well, the church is filled with all these bad people.
Mark Clark [00:18:09]:
I can't belong to it. What you're assuming is that the message of the gospel is to make bad people into good people. And that's not what the gospel is about. The gospel is about the fact that Jesus had to be good for you because you'll never be good. Jesus is perfect and you are not. You are an utter disaster. And he's not going to make you into a good little boy and a good little girl who, you know, you used to do bad things and now you do good things and you're gonna earn favor in front of God. That's not how this works.
Mark Clark [00:18:39]:
That's why the church is full of people who are sinners. The church is full of people like Joe. The church is full. It should be. The church should be full of a bunch of messy people, people who aren't perfect. Your community group should be full of people who aren't perfect but are bringing their imperfection to bear and say, I'm glad Jesus is perfect for me. The reality is, is that you and I, the church is filled with people who look as I talk to people in church, they go, oh, my goodness. Can you believe what that girl was wearing at church? Can you believe it? Can you believe what she was wearing at church? It's like, did she have clothes on? Yeah, praise God.
Mark Clark [00:19:21]:
You don't know where she was a year ago. And people said that about me. He smokes, he swears, he does the bad things. He rides a skateboard. He's not the christian kind. Condoms coming out of his bag every 2 seconds. He's not good for Christianity. He's not good for the church.
Mark Clark [00:19:47]:
And what you got to understand is the church should be full of people like that. That's what the church is. The church is a hospital, not a country club. A country club is a place that you come and you just pay your little fee. You hang out with perfect people, you sip your little drinks, you sit around you wait for your tea time. And if something good, you know, the server gets. Oh, my goodness. Can you believe this server? I can't believe we should talk to management.
Mark Clark [00:20:11]:
We got to fire this guy. I pay my bills here. The church is a messed up spiritual hospital of people going, man, I need some. I need the grace of Jesus every day of my life. Which is why Jesus laid out his whole ministry and said, I came for the sick, not the healthy. Right? That's what he does. And so the church is full of people who need the grace of Jesus. I went on a.
Mark Clark [00:20:35]:
I taught at a school retreat, christian school retreat, a few years ago. And I remember after every session, the kids would come up to me and they would say, hey, man, I just want to let you know something. I do drugs. I look at porn. I don't believe in Christianity. The only reason I go here is because my parents forced me to go here. And something about what you're saying is causing me to rethink everything about the direction of my life. And we could look in at those kids and go, my goodness, they go to a christian school.
Mark Clark [00:21:04]:
How did they get into that christian school? They're having a bad reflection on the church. They're out there doing bad things. They're carrying the name of Jesus into the world. World. We could look at it like that, or you can look at it like, oh, my gosh. When the kingdom of God drops in a person's life, all the mess rises to the surface, and now the church becomes a messy place where people are actually talking about the fact that they doubt, talking about the fact that they're looking at porn, talking about the fact that their marriage is a disaster. See, it's not that it doesn't exist here. It's just we're not talking about it.
Mark Clark [00:21:41]:
And when we start to be honest and go, this is, then here's what happens. Our reputation, and we look worse. We look a mess. We look like a disaster. Our reputation. But here's what happens. God looks big. God looks great.
Mark Clark [00:21:57]:
God looks like, oh, man, I'm saving and using and calling and changing people who are this much of a disaster. That's how good I am. That's how big I am. That's how powerful I am. But if all the church is doing is, well, our lives are perfect, there's nothing God needs to save, then he doesn't even look good. And so the church should be willing to go, man, you're right, skeptic. The church is full of ridiculous people, messed up people, sinful people, you're right. And they all need the grace of Jesus, which is why we make mistakes at times.
Mark Clark [00:22:32]:
Now, aside from all those things, here's point number four, Christianity's violent past. Let's pause the mythology for a second and get into a couple of the numbers so that we understand what we're actually dealing with when people say, you did all these bad things, aside from those three points, let's get into actually talking about what it actually looks like versus the mythology. Alistair McGrath, scholar at Oxford, says that the reality of the church, the challenge of the church, is to rescue Christianity from misunderstandings. And in no context is it truer than this. First, the widely held belief that religion is the primary source of all the great killings and conflicts is simply not true. When you look at the crusades, the inquisition in Western Europe, here's what you got to understand. These were geopolitical wars. They weren't religious wars, right? When you look at the crusades and you look at the inquisition, this wasn't a bunch of Christians saying, hey, let's go convert people so that they love and serve Jesus Christ.
Mark Clark [00:23:36]:
It was Europe doing what Europe did, which was they went into geopolitical wars. They spread the map of Europe. It's just they institutionalized Christianity and then went forward based on that premise. They started killing people, not confronting people they didn't care about. That a modern example. You look at Northern Ireland and people say, oh, the Protestants and the Catholics are fighting. Listen, the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland are not fighting about transubstantiation and justification by faith and paedo baptism. They're dealing with geopolitical wars.
Mark Clark [00:24:07]:
They're freedom fighters, which just when you start to research anything about Christianity, you start to realize there's no way people who are going to kill in the name of Jesus know anything about Jesus. The whole point of Christianity is here's where Christianity flourishes, not when it gets into political power. And this is very important for those of us who think the best way to spread Christianity is make sure that you get political power. Christianity spreads rapidly on the margins of society, not in the seats of power, which is why every time Christianity gets into power, it dies. And then it moves by the sovereign grace of God, which is why in North America, Christianity is dead, because it got power and it fell asleep. And so what happened to it? The epicenter of Christianity has always moved. It started with a bunch of jews in the Middle east, and then it became greek and then it became european, and then it moved to North America, and now it's moved from North America. And the face of Christianity is now asian, latin american, and african.
Mark Clark [00:25:13]:
It's not north american anymore. The fastest move of the spirit of God that the history of the world has ever seen is happening right now in China, and it has no power. So this is where Christianity has to understand that when we try to spread things by power, the spirit of Christianity actually dies. And christians know that. So what about the witch hunts? Dan Brown in the Da Vinci code says this about the witch hunts, that the church in Europe killed an astounding 5 million women. 5 million. Carl Sagan, in his book the Demon Haunted World, says this. No one knows how many supposed witches the church killed altogether.
Mark Clark [00:25:58]:
Perhaps hundreds of thousands. Perhaps millions of. That's a big perhaps. Perhaps millions. Perhaps gazillions. Who knows? Perhaps filillions. What? That's. There's no data.
Mark Clark [00:26:20]:
Carl Sagan has no sources, cites, nothing, just goes. Maybe the church in Europe killed 5 million. Now, most scholars recognize that the reality isn't even close to that. Most scholars would say that during the witch trials and the witch hunts in Europe, about 40,000 to 60,000 people, 20% of which were men, were actually killed in regard to the witch hunts, because you have to understand millions. If 5 million women were killed during witch hunts, there was only 500 million people in the world at the time. So that would mean the church systematically wiped out 1% of the entire world thinking they're witches. So we have to get data, right? We actually have to go. Okay, now, is it good that the church killed 40 to 60,000 people? No, it's not good, but it's not close to millions.
Mark Clark [00:27:14]:
The Salem witch trials skeptics that I talk to all the time, go. Salem witch trials. Thousands of women in America were killed by the church. But the reality is, as scholars have looked at this, and you could look this up in my book, I cite a bunch of stuff, footnotes about this. The reality is fewer than 25 people, women, were killed in the Salem witch trials. 19 were sentenced to death, and a few others died in captivity. And so total witch trials, crusades, everything. The church overdose, a 500 year period, killed between 200 and 250,000 people.
Mark Clark [00:27:51]:
Not good, but not 5 million. So we got to slow the tape down and get the data right. Now, here's my fifth point. Does religion poison everything? Christopher Hitchens in his book called God is not great. Religion poisons everything, argues that the only system that oppresses and kills people tribally is if you attach God to it. Religion destroys cultures, kills people, oppresses people. So the reality is religion kills everything. Now, the reality is, though, that we gotta push back on that and recognize that the greatest atrocities of the last hundred years have come not from people who believe in God, not from religion, not theology, but from atheistic regimes.
Mark Clark [00:28:36]:
Right? Stalin, Hitler, Mao. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Collectively, Hitler killed 6 million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Christians. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia killed 2 million of their own people. Stalin and Russia killed 20 million. Through mass slangs, Mao and China exterminated an estimated 50 to 70 million of his own people. Why? Not? Because of religious reasons. These were atheistic paradigms and frameworks and worldviews.
Mark Clark [00:29:07]:
So collectively, religions killed three or 400,000 people in 500 years. These guys killed 100 million people in a matter of 50, 60 years, driven by atheistic solutions, not christian or religious ones at all. And so Alistair McGrath says this. The 20th century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history, that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed that religion causes intolerance and violence. The reality is there's people saying, hey, that's a bad. Because you got to ask the question where your worldview actually goes. See, a religious worldview, a christian worldview, at least sets us up not to oppress and kill and do awfulness because it says we're made in the image of God. Where an atheistic one says, you're an animal.
Mark Clark [00:30:05]:
Who cares? If you need to oppress a race of people and get them to pick cotton and sugar for you, and you're stronger than them and you can economically benefit from them, who cares? Do not tell a zebra not to be a zebra or a lion not to be a lionhouse. My kids and I right now, I introduce them to planet Earth. All right? That series, I thought they'd be bored stiff. These kids are loving it. They're, like, watching all these. But it's fascinating. Nature is brutal, isn't it? Praying mantises will just have sex with the other praying mantis, and then the female will rip his head off. That's quite an ending.
Mark Clark [00:30:50]:
We're watching bobcats go around, and yesterday we were watching this, like, bobcat or something, sit there looking up at this squirrel, and he jumped, boom, like, 6 meters up a tree, grabbed the squirrel, ate his face, came down. My kids like, ew, this is disgusting. I watch nature. All it's doing is trying to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat all the time. Eat, have sex, eat, have sex. That's all it's trying to do over and over and over again. Nature is red and tooth and claw brutal. If you're just an animal, who cares, man? Oppress any race you want.
Mark Clark [00:31:27]:
Now, I'm not saying the atheists and agnostics I know do that. I'm saying some of the nicest people I know on the planet. I'm just saying their worldview doesn't explain why they're nice. They shouldn't be all that nice. When we look back at these exterminations, it should be like, that's nature, Mandy. You gotta get rid of the weak so the strong survive. So ask yourself where your worldview goes. Christianity has this beautiful thing where it says, we are all made in the image of God, no matter how rich, no matter how poor, made in the image of God.
Mark Clark [00:31:58]:
Thus all the dignity and essence and value of a human being is based on the fact that you're made in the image of God. But if you're simply an animal and we're living in the animal kingdom, all bets are off. We have to ask the question of our worldview. Goes, all right, the 6th point is this. Skeptics, in order to solve the issue of oppression from Christianity and from religion, have said the only way to do it is by getting rid of truth claims. Because as Foucault and Nietzsche and Freud, these guys came into their own. They started to realize that truth claims are what create oppression. So if you claim to have the truth, you will oppress people.
Mark Clark [00:32:38]:
So the post modernity has said the solution then is to get rid of truth claims. And if we get rid of truth claims, then no one has the power over anybody else. So I was getting my photo taken by a guy this week and we were talking about God. And he was just a photographer from Vancouver. He was asked to come and he was taking pictures. And we started jamming about life. And his wife had gone through something, we were talking about her, and he, he said, let me tell you what my version of God is. And he said, God is nature.
Mark Clark [00:33:06]:
God just is nature. There's no person. There's no God. And then I started talking about what my version of God was. And he's like, yeah, but isn't this great that, you know you're true, what you're saying is true, and what I'm saying is true, and we can all get along. And I'm like, huh? That's not what I said because that doesn't make any sense. And I'll tell you why. And because the minute we say your truth is your truth, and my truth is my truth.
Mark Clark [00:33:27]:
There's no such thing as truth. The minute somebody wants to say that there's no such thing as truth, the irony of it is that in and of itself is a truth claim. And so you have to. You can't. That whole system of thought you're actually cutting off the branch you're sitting on. You can't say that there's no such thing as truth because then I'm going to push back and say, is that statement true? Yes. So here's the problem. Freud said, don't listen to anybody's deduction about God and theism, because everything that we decide about the universe comes from guilt and insecurity.
Mark Clark [00:34:03]:
That comes from basically a father wound and a sex wound back when we were kids. All right, so he said, you can't listen to anybody's deductions about God because everything's coming from guilt and insecurity. Here's the problem. If that's true, then I shouldn't listen to Freud's conclusion that everything I believe are from guilt and insecurity, because what his conclusion is comes from his own guilt and insecurity and sex and father wounds. So don't listen. To the minute he's saying you shouldn't listen to anybody's conclusions about God. We say, well, we shouldn't listen to your conclusions about God either, because all of your conclusions are just a guilt insecurity wound. Here's what CS Lewis said about the atrocity of this kind of thinking that we do as a culture.
Mark Clark [00:34:44]:
In his book, the Abolition of Man, he says, you cannot go on explaining away forever. You will find that you have explained your own explanation itself away. You cannot go on seeing through things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something else through it. It's good that the window should be transparent because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How, though? If you saw through the garden too, if you see through everything, that everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To see through all things is the same as not to see.
Mark Clark [00:35:22]:
It's the ultimate power grab to say there's no such thing as truth, because what you're saying is you're taking away any kind of discourse and you're just saying what I've just said is true and there's no. You're doing the power grab now. You're the one trying to oppress. You're the one trying to say I'm the only one that's right. But everybody else claiming that they're right or is the problem with the world. But every time you say that, you're just seeing through everything. It's the same as not deceived. Which is why Christianity comes out of the gate and it says, you know what Christianity doesn't say? It says the truth is not a concept, it's not a principle, it's not an ideology, it's not a religion.
Mark Clark [00:36:06]:
The truth person, and his name is Jesus. And he said, I am the way, the truth and the life. We can't run away from the concept of solid truth. We have to just ask the question, what truth are we talking about? Because of course, some truth could lead to oppression, but not christian truth, where you're laying down your life for your neighbor, when you're praying for those who persecute you, when you're dying on a cross for your enemies. That kind of truth is never going to oppress, it's never going to take advantage of, it's never going to be racist, it's never going to harm, it's just going to love and serve and die for. And so the church has to be very clear on what they believe the truth to be. The truth isn't ideology or politics. I see people rambling on in politics, and it's almost like Christianity is attached to a political party and political rantings.
Mark Clark [00:37:05]:
And I'm saying, guys, don't you understand? The kingdom of God is a transnational kingdom made up of every type of person from every country in the world. That you have more in common with christians in Iran and North Korea than you do with non Christians in Canada. You know that, right? There's a brotherhood and a sisterhood. That is the kingdom of God. Because our citizenship is what not on this earth, but in heaven. And my kingdom is what not of this world, the nations we belong to. None of this stuff has ultimate claim on your life. Jesus does.
Mark Clark [00:37:49]:
And so lastly, trivial objection. And this is my 7th point, and we're okay, and then he'll pray for us. The last point is this. I think at the end of the day, to say that you don't want to become a Christian based on the history of the church, hurting people, oppressing people is a trivial objection. And here's why. If we found out of all the amazing conclusions of Isaac Newton, gravity, mathematics, if we found out that the students of Isaac Newton were bad guys, adulterers, thieves, kleptomaniacs, even murderers, does that make the conclusions of Isaac Newton wrong? No, it's actually a trivial objection to raise the question of what the followers of Jesus have done with Christianity and then conclude that you don't want to be a Christian because at the end of the day, people fumble stuff, but it doesn't go. It doesn't speak to the truth of what we're talking about. The reality is it's trivial.
Mark Clark [00:39:01]:
People come to me as a pastor all the time and they say I can't be a Christian. Why? Because my parents destroyed me by shoving this down my throat. Or the church did something wrong one time or some pastor did something bad, ergo, I can't be a Christian. But at the end of the day, those people aren't Jesus. You have to get all of those people off the table, and all that you're dealing with is you and Jesus in the end. That's the question. And so Lewis ends one of his books this way, and I'll leave it with you. If there is a goddess, you are, in a sense, alone with him.
Mark Clark [00:39:40]:
You cannot put him off with speculations about your next door neighbors or memories of what you've read in books. At the end of the day, the question of Christianity, and the question you're going to be asked as you stand before God is, what did you do with my son Jesus? The question will not be, what did other people do with him? What did you do? Who do you say that I am? And some of you might have just come through this series, and as we've been going through this stuff and gone, okay, I understand, I understand. But this idea of joining the church and taking on this reputation, you don't have to worry about that. The question at the end of the day is the reputation and the work and the accomplishment of the one who came and went to a cross and died for your sin and rose again to give you life. And now the question is not, what did your neighbor do? Not what did your family members do? Not what some church or pastor did to you, not some history of the church. It's you in the end. It's you and God. Do you know him? So I'm just going to pray for us and give you an opportunity.
Mark Clark [00:40:51]:
Maybe today's the day where you say, I need to come to know Jesus. Father, I do pray that we have the courage to actually ask the question of whether we know you or whether we're just judging Christianity based on what other people have done and not done well with it. So I just pray, Holy Spirit, you would speak and that people would be open through all these discussions and concepts and content and data that at the end of the day, you just kind of blow all that away and just speak and say, it's me and you in the end. What have you done with my son? I understand people have dropped it. You don't have to be perfect. He was perfect for you. And the Bible says, if we repent of sin and we put our faith and trust in Jesus, and we call him Lord, and we believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, that we will be saved. Saved from sin, from the wrath of God, from ourselves, from our own silly reasons and conclusions and pushbacks to Christianity that actually aren't relevant, that are trivial at the end of the day.
Mark Clark [00:42:05]:
And Lord, I just pray that you just breathe through all that as we sing, as we respond, and that people on the spot will give their life to you today. In Jesus good name, we pray. Amen.