Christianity Today

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By Fr Kelvin Ugwu MSP

Sorry to say, our version of Christianity today is very toxic. Our faith instead of liberating us, has put us in a cage. This is why again and again, we keep producing atheists and not true believers.

Do you know that if a Christian of today on his/her way to church to pay tithe encounters a dying person on the road, he or she will most likely not help even if all that the dying person needs so as to be alive is that money?

Why?

Because the words "rob God" is only understood in one way: failure to pay tithe directly to the pastor. And so, God will strike you death if you take the money to save life. 

This sort of bondage is one of the reasons for modern day atheism —the need to be liberated from the cage of Christianity. For atheist don't pay tithe and none of them have been struck dead or their businesses being unproductive.

Christianity today is all about the fear of going to hell and the promise of going to paradise. This is the reason why that Christian brother is forming nice. This is the reason why that Christian sister is wearing long skirt. They are not nice because it is good to be nice even without any reward, they do everything out of fear of hell.

Remove hell and heaven from Christian teachings, then you will see the real colour of the type of people we call Christians.

There is really no true conversion in Christianity today, what we see is crisscrossing: Catholic crossing to become Pentecostal and Pentecostals will cheer and rebaptize the person. Pentecostal move to become Protestant and Protestants will celebrate. Protestant will move to become Catholic and Catholics will feel proud. Or worst still, deeper life cross to Living Faith, Mountain of Fire cross to Redeem or to Christ Embassy. . . Etc

Why do you think that your Pentecostal friend won't let you rest until you follow him or her to the church they attend even though they already know you are a Christian who is active in your own church?

Each Pastor is trying to outdo the other. "How many capacity can his church carry?" "How many services does he conduct on a Sunday?" "What type of cars are packed at his church during service or mass?" "Has he bought a private jet?"

What Christianity is not about is what we focus and define as Christianity. We do not teach what Christ is saying, instead we teach what we want Christ to say.

As you read this, a preacher somewhere is already making his usual annual ember months money, this is usually found in the Eastern part of Nigeria during this period as the year is about to end.

The preacher goes house to house making families suspicious of each other in the name of seeing vision for them, putting fear of death on the people in the name of giving them December prophecy, casting out imaginary spirit with fabricated meaningless words he calls speaking in tongues, and claiming to have the powers to purify the compound of every forces before the New Year. . . all these are done at a stipulated sum of money. 

Until we free ourselves of all these nonsense we do in the name of Christ, time will come when no one will be found in the church and all the big churches we have today will be converted to night clubs. May God forbid!