Jesus didn’t have much use for the Pharisees of His day. He wold call them out every chance he got. The modern day pharisees are not labeled as such, but there are plenty of them.
JESUS CALLED THE PHARISEES
1. Blind guides (Matt. 23:16).
2. Fools (Matt. 23:17).
3. Whited sepulchers…full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness (Matt. 23:27).
4. Serpents (Matt. 23:33).
5. Generation of vipers (Matt. 23:33).
6. Graves which appear not (Luke 11:44).
7. Hypocrites. (Luke 11:44).
Hypocrisy is what I want to focus on for just a moment. Hypocrisy directly relates to the authority of the Bible in a person’s life. Let me show you what I mean. “Answers In Genesis” completed a study not long ago which gives some startling statistics. 61% of today’s young adults who were regular church attendees (in conservative / evangelical churches) are now “spiritually disengaged.” They are not actively attending church, praying, or reading their Bibles. The top five reasons these people give, as to why they do not attend church anymore, are interesting…
Self righteous hypocrites account for 20% of the reasons young people give for stopping church. When these people who have left the church were studied in greater detail, it is discovered that the majority of them have a problem with the authority of the Bible. 83.5% of them had their first doubts about the Bible and its authority in the middle school and high school years and it was during those years that they were failed by the churches (and Christians) in their lives. They were not taught and equipped to understand or defend their beliefs. Instead they got hypocrisy!
From this information it appears that the hypocrisy of professing believers and losing faith in the Word of God are two of the biggest reasons why these young people leave church. These two experiences are strongly connected. Someone read one of my recent columns where I mentioned “absolute truth,” and he was stirred to write to me. I want you to read carefully what he wrote. I have permission to share this.
“Hey Brent I am going to answer why some of us don’t believe in absolute truth. I am writing it in messenger because it is not appropriate and could cause a huge outrage. I am not trying to start a war I am trying to show you my point of view. I will be as respectful as possible and tread lightly while dropping bombs along the way. You might remember my family, dad, mother and my sister. Dad and mother are prime examples of why I threw the Bible right down the drain. They beat me, choked me, abused me to try and get me to comply as a child. I always asked questions and I was given another beating and told because it was the truth. Now years down the road these supposed Christian’s fully believed this while living a whole different lifestyle. You see dad loved cocaine and hookers. Mom ripped out her hair wore a wig and verbally abused the crap out of all of us. Dad went to federal prison for embezzling money. And mom has been married three times. I don’t know but that is not quite the teachings that were being jammed down my throat. Not only do they still behave this way, but they are racist, right wing, and untruthful people. They still attend church services numerous times a week. Does God actually tolerate behavior like this and will forgive you just for acknowledging his absolute truth? Me personally, I sure wouldn’t; and I don’t think a higher power that is more intelligent than all of humanity would tolerate this behavior. This is a lot to swallow, but these Christian’s are the first to be violent, the first to single out a person of color or another religion, the first to lie and the first to steal from you any second they can. They will throw the first stone and have zero empathy. I’m one hundred percent sure if Jesus came back he would just laugh at this mess of a world and probably try to solve it again. The sad part is the born agains would probably persecute him because of their closed mind and would not believe him. I just want to ask why god would allow this behavior. I would rather follow in the footsteps of Buddha than ever have to raise my child with that level of craziness. Enough said.”
WOW! Read my article next week to see how I answered this young friend.