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Every few months Wordpress.com has a featured article that extols the reasons why a person is leaving the Christian faith and why he or she is now an atheist.  It is not Wordpress.com that is featuring these articles, it is just the amount of hits these articles get that puts them on the front page of Wordpress.com.   I read these articles and become somewhat disappointed thinking about the view of Christianity this person has seen.  But it is the view of American Christianity that most people have.  We Christians  are self centered, money hungry, two-faced, homophobes, that are trying to force everyone that disagrees with us to bow to our wishes.  Look at the treatment of Liberty University over pulling the liberty name off of the Democrat’s Student Club.  We are made to look bad even when we stand up for what we believe, so when we do slip people pile on like a elephant herd on the last peanut.

In John chapter 16 Jesus says, “All this I have told you so that you will not go astray.”

When I read this it helped me realize that some people will walk away.  They will walk away from Christianity because life happens, or because they have found many reasons to not believe in the God of the bible.  Lets face it, there are reasons given daily on the TV or in new books or every Easter and Christmas in special segment that magazines run.  If you look you can find a reason almost daily to stop believing because the enlightened do not believe in God, and mainly the God of the bible.  In the parable of the sower Jesus calls this cares.  The cares of the world just became so great that the person walks away from their faith.

So how do we overcome this?

The main thing is to stop focusing on the negative.  Yes you should check everything you read, and no you should not check your brain at the door.  But you should ask yourself how much of this is true and how much is false. Take Creationism for example.  You can’t prove creation ex nihilo scientifically, just like abiogenesis can not be proved scientifically.  Now can we see that one or the other is true absolutly because we are here.  Does your Christian faith rest on whether or not God spoke and created everything, absolutly not.  Salvation requires you to take Jesus as your savior and give him control of your life, not believe in creationism.

Don’t put the weight of trying to learn every nuance of the Christian faith on yourself.  We try so hard to obey when we read, “Always have an answer.”  This has made us overly skeptical of people that are not Christians.  We project a mean spirit when we act like we have all the answers or try to have all the answers.  If someone asks you a question its o.k. to say, “I don’t know.”  They want to look smart so let them, and don’t worry about it.

He told them to love each other and serve each other so we need to serve.  Do we serve well?  No, not all the time but we are human.  We are trying to do better serving.  But it is ingrained in our culture to be self serving and expecting the rest of the world to come to us.  Missional churches are learning to be the hands and feet of Jesus.  Not to get people in the door, but to just serve people and let them know God loves them.

If you are struggling with your faith try focusing on the hungry and hurting.  Give back instead of trying to find fault.  I am not saying that this is the cure for those who are seriously doubting their faith.  I am saying this to those that these few things will begin to help those who are seriously trying to resolve issues.

If you have done your due diligence and really tried to examine the Christian faith.  I mean really tried to prove or disprove it, and you  decide Christianity is not right for you, that’s o.k.  But if you have just heard someone say Christianity ain’t cool and you walk away, then you have done a disservice to what you say you believe and need to really examine what you are saying.  Don’t just give up.