If It Was The Last Day On Earth

Close your eyes and picture this (gee, don’t actually close your eyes, I’m not some audiobook that’s going to read aloud for you):

A congregation of smiling people filling a church. Hands raised in worship. Voices loud. Music bright and harmonious. Love, generosity, and joy flowing from people. Words of Biblical wisdom spoken from the pulpit. People hugging and laughing, praying for each other.

Sounds amazing, right?

From the outside - sure.

But what if I told you that this is all just a facade? That those big smiles on everyone’s faces are masks just waiting to crack in anger, hurt, and sadness. Hands raised, while some are genuine, others use to show how ‘good a Christian’ they are. The music is the same four modern worship songs you’ve been singing for the last year and it’s only harmonious because people are only picked if they have star quality and the ‘right look’. Love is given only in a shallow sense or awkwardly when someone has a complete breakdown (even then it’s pretty bleak) and happiness is mislabeled as joy (not the same thing!). Generosity is preached from the pulpit, but people give to look good and money is returned to staff pockets more frequently than to the hurting in our neighbourhoods or the many volunteers who are taken advantage of and work for free. Words of wisdom are repeat sermons from three years ago and milk instead of meat. The same people hugging you talk about you behind your back as soon as you're not in their presence. Some of the very people praying for one another are uncertain as to whether they even want to follow God anymore, or equally it becomes a show to see who can pray for the most people and look like the perfect Christian.

Welcome to the modern Western church.

Yikes.

If it was the last day on Earth *I’m really sorry Lord* there is no way I’d be in church. And to be completely honest, I don’t think Jesus would be either. In fact, I’m not sure if He’s even welcome through the doors right now.

I’m sorry for that depressing imagery. But at the same time, I‘m not. Because this is the reality for many Christians that want to go to church and be in a community of believers but see so much hypocrisy, judgement, gossip, and exclusivity, so being in their own company with the Lord is far and above a better option than being faced with the above every Sunday morning or night.

Right now, I am one of those Christians. I loathe going to church. I don‘t want to talk to people that I know don’t want to talk to me and pretend that we‘re both happy to see one another.

I don’t want to sing worship songs that we sing every week as if we’re at a concert of the same touring band or poorly sing a beautiful old hymn for the sake of meeting the quota of one hymn per six months or so to ‘appease‘ the remaining older generation. Ever thought that the younger generation might want them too?

I don’t want to pray out loud and call out what I’m thinking when the congregation is praying as the pastor yells over and over to "come on church!" as saliva flies out his mouth in his passion for us to cry out loud.

I don’t want to hear that "God is good!" again when there are so many better ways and words we can use to describe His character. Like, come on! Good? Really? What about magnificent? Beautiful? Indescribable? The list goes on…

I don’t want to sit through a fluffy sermon that I can barely concentrate on about anxiety and Jesus calming the sea (not that it isn’t an amazing story! It‘s the sermon surrounding it!) that I’ve heard five times before and will likely forget about until the next time I hear it. I don’t want to only be included in things because I have a boyfriend or because I went to the right school or know the right people. I’m sick of the cool people ruling everything everywhere. Who decides who and what is cool anyway? Screw that. I don’t want the same popular people who do the bare minimum to be praised from the pulpit over and over when there are volunteers behind the scenes who show up for hours and days year in and year out, receiving no recognition or thanks, because they’re doing it out of the goodness of their heart for Jesus and not show.

I don’t want paid staff to receive more benefits and bonuses whilst driving the latest BMW when there are real people in their church or in their community who live paycheck to paycheck, who haven’t eaten in days, who struggle to pay the bills, who are terminally ill, or who are homeless. And the church is ‘generous’. Ok, sure.

I don’t want to be a part of any of that.

So what do I do?

Because this is a problem everywhere. It's not just my church, or the church down the road, or the church across the city. It’s a pandemic of sick churches across the globe. And like I said, I really don’t think some of those places have seen Jesus for a long time.

How has the church become so pharisaical, and right under everyone’s noses?

It makes me want to stomp and shake my fist in anger and at the same time throw up from the sheer wrongness of it. The apathetic, lukewarm Christians that fill churches now must sadden God so deeply.

If it was the last day on Earth and we were face to face with God would He be saying to us, "Well done good and faithful servant!" or "Away from Me, I never knew you."? I know I sure don't want to hear that second option. In fact, I think they are the scariest words in the whole Bible (Matthew 7:23).

I just wish that the church would wake up! Seriously! What are we doing? Why is everyone so comfortable being comfortable? How can we show love to the world when they already see the judgement we give to each other? Why are people perpetuating the Christian bubble, growing up in a Christian school, going to a Christian college, some going on to work completely surrounded by Christians? And these things aren't inherently bad, but how can we preach the gospel to people who already know it? What about the unbelievers who need to hear it that are missing out or are too afraid to break into the carefully constructed, masked and 'perfect' Christian environment of the church?

I've been told by my family that I can always turn a negative into a positive and point people back to Jesus. But in this case, I have no idea how this situation can look remotely positive at the moment. Unless there is a revival throughout the church, I worry that it won't ever get better - in fact, the church may only get worse. However, I can continue to look to Jesus.

If you haven't watched the film 'Don't Look Up', I would highly recommend it. It's one of my new favourites. It has been quite polarising, where people either love it or hate it. I think the people who hate it only do so because they don't like that they're faced with the reality that they may be the very people who don't want to look up. They don't want to see the comet screaming towards Earth that will kill them, but rather enjoy life, living blindly in their comfortable, lukewarm, shallow little worlds.

I'd like to think that on the last day on Earth I'd still be in the fight to show everyone to look up. Look up at how the world is ending (because let's be honest, every day since Jesus left Earth is another day closer to His return), look up at how broken we are, look up at how sinful and selfish our world is, look up at how much we need Jesus.

At the end of the movie 'Don't Look Up', Timothée Chalamet's character Yule, prays a prayer for everyone on the last day on Earth. It's so beautiful and I want to share it because I hope that there are some other Christians (I know there are) who feel the same, and who can pray this with me as we worry about the future but also simply as we strive to grow in our walks with Jesus to step out of the lukewarm, pharisaical Christianity permeating our churches into a burning hot flame of life that shows the gospel and Jesus' love to others both inside and outside the church.

So, let us pray.

"Dearest Father and Almighty Creator,

We ask for Your grace tonight, despite our pride.

Your forgiveness, despite our doubt.

Most of all Lord, we ask for Your love to soothe us through these dark times.

May we face whatever is to come in Your Divine Will with courage and open hearts of acceptance.

Amen."

#honestlyimperfect #lastdayonearth #JesusisKing #dontlookupfilm #modernchurch