I’ve been called a lot of things these past few years, and I just want to clarify: disagreeing with the church doesn’t mean I’m bitter and unloving towards the church.

Truthfully, I stopped buying into this idea that everyone who calls themselves a Christian is, or that “The Church” is what it claims to be. To me, the church in America, for the most part, is an impostor. It wears the “Hi My Name is Church” name tag, but underneath all of the masks and makeup it in no way resembles the church. That makes it an impostor. (obviously this doesn’t apply to everyone.)

I do think there are genuine Christians mixed up in that mess. I’ve met plenty, helped plenty, and become friends with plenty, but I don’t think that EVERYONE in that mess is one of His sheep. I’ve found more sheep that belong to famous pastors and worship leaders than I have who belong to Him. And I’m not going to spend my life trying to make those sheep, who are so religiously devoted to their celebrity shepherds, stop and follow Jesus. That’s what has led to so much bickering and arguing and frustration and disappointment over the past few years; we’ve been trying to snatch other people’s sheep from other people’s palms, instead of just accepting what Jesus said, “My sheep follow my voice, they will not follow the voice of a stranger.”

If they aren’t following His voice, and are following the voices of strangers, they do not belong to Him, they belong to them. That may sound harsh, bitter and unloving, but it’s what He said. I’m not going to come face to face with one of the wolves He mentioned, whose only desire is to devour the sheep, and then treat that wolf like it’s a sheep, just to uphold this flaky appearance of “love” that so many people have.

I used to follow preachers, pastors, and big movements more than I followed Jesus. I listened to the voice of the stranger because I was told it was Christ. But when somebody came along and showed me the real voice of Christ according to scripture, I gave it all up because I knew that other stuff I was listening to wasn’t my Shepherd. As Jesus said in that scripture,
“They will run from the stranger…” and run I did.

So it stands out to me when I show someone His voice, and they dismiss it and defend the voice of their pastor or prophet over Christ. Red flags go up all over, because once they hear His voice, Jesus said they will follow His voice. If they hear His voice and don’t follow His voice, let alone, KNOW His voice, then I can only conclude what Jesus concluded,
“They are not my sheep.”

My personal perception of loving the sheep is protecting them, not making them vulnerable by inviting wolves in just so my peers will more readily accept me as loving. I can’t do it. It’s been tempting to do, because it’s no fun to be constantly misunderstood as being angry and bitter. It’s no fun to have no contact with some of the only real church family you’ve ever had, and to constantly be wondering if they don’t talk to you because they too think you’re just a bitter person who likes to complain and bash Christians. It’s certainly no fun to see friends who you thought you were close with, get married, and you don’t even receive an invitation to come celebrate with them. And then you sit around self-conscious wondering if you really went to far like they say, and maybe if you had just kept your mouth shut, you could be there enjoying life with them.

Who knows.

All of these people speak of “sacrifice,” and I had someone tell me yesterday that there is a cost to follow Christ. Yeah, there is. And following Christ over the past 3 years has cost me my reputation, my friends and family from church, some of my real family thinks I’m nuts, and most all of my local Christian friends don’t talk to me, and no longer express any desire for me to be around.

I ran my friends off by calling out the hypocrisy and damage-causing doctrines of popular Christianity, and being told it was unloving for me to do so. From my point of view, it would have been unloving to see it there, and say nothing, so what was I supposed to do? Sell out my own integrity? Put the blindfold back on and pretend that stuff doesn’t exist? Put the plug back into my head, go back into my fantasy world, and spend the rest of my life trying to forget about everything that exists outside? No. The only reason I started seeing reality in the first place was because somebody else loved me enough to point it out to me. They could have went the “loving” route that so many others want me to go and left me there in naivety, and God only knows where I would be now (maybe dead?).

Don’t lecture me about “cost” and “sacrifice,” or “love.” I’ve given up my entire life to this. While everyone else was off at work making money and moving forward with their life, I was on here 12+ hours everyday working my for free, trying to help pull as many people as I could out of the religious mess that calls itself Christianity. While everyone was going to church once a week to wear their Christian mask for a few hours, I was doing this every single day, and there was no “off” switch in between sermons.

People want to talk about “cost” and “sacrifice,” and say we are unloving and bitter towards the church. If we didn’t love the church, we would not have put our entire lives on hold for the church (don’t even get me started on what Ryan has given up for this). “Unloving” and “bitter” is an ignorant statement, people have no clue what we’ve given up and have had to endure in order to be scapegoats for this movement.

We’re the guys people quote on their pages. We’re the guys all of their friends come after with slander and accusation, we’re the guys who constantly have our reputations tarnished and our intelligence insulted–and it’s mostly behind our back. It’s mostly by people who purposely misunderstand us and never ask us to clear anything up because they don’t want it cleared up. They would rather have a reason to write us off.

If you want to talk to me about cost and sacrifice, come talk to me about it after you’ve experienced the results of saying what everybody else is afraid to say. Then I would love to see how much we have in common.