This is no distant God who sent his Son with a list of rules to follow or rituals to practice. His mission was to invite us into his love – into a relationship with his Father that he described as friendship. But what do we do? We are so quickly captured by a work-driven religious culture that thrives on guilt, conformity and manipulation that it devours the very love it seeks to sustain. In Ephesus it was ferreting out false teachers. In Galatia it was getting everyone to observe the Old Testament rituals. Today it’s convincing people to cooperate with the church program. It doesn’t matter what leads people away from God’s life. Anything will do, as long as it preoccupies them enough to serve as an adequate substitute for the real thing.
Wayne Jacobsen & Dave Coleman
So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, Windblown Media, 2006, 34
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