Alright, I want to say this first: I appreciate that you’ve stayed in this conversation. I really do. I can tell you care, that you take your tradition seriously, and that you’re trying to offer what you believe is truth. That matters to me. I’m going to speak just as plainly as you do, because I think you can handle it.

You keep pointing to your sin like it’s some badge of spiritual maturity. But Christ didn’t die so you could stay tethered to your brokenness. He died so you could actually change. He didn’t offer you a mirror just to say, “Yep, still filthy,” but to cleanse you and fill you with His Spirit so that His love becomes what people experience when they encounter you.

You speak of repentance as if it’s the destination. It’s not. It’s the doorway.

You talk about church as the only hospital, but then point to sacraments and tradition as the required price of admission. You keep reducing the gospel to obedience, when the whole point of transformation was not through your obedience, but His. You are like Christ because of Christ.

And if Christ in you and through you is the goal, then look at how He loved. He confronted religious pride. He broke bread with doubters. He listened before correcting. He touched wounds before calling people to sin no more.

Right now, your version of Christianity seems to say, “You’re disgusting. Come to church.”

But the gospel contradicts that directly with, “You are deeply loved. You have been made whole.”

Your sin isn’t the problem. If the work of the Cross is actually finished, your sin is not your problem. It was Christ’s.

What I see in you is a refusal to believe you can actually live differently. That Christ can actually live through you. That His Spirit doesn’t just forgive, it transforms.

You want me to come back to church? Then show me what church people look like when they truly believe they’ve been made new.

You say Christianity isn’t about me. But Jesus didn’t die to protect institutions. He died for people. For their hearts. For their healing. For their wholeness. That is the good news.

So I’ll keep talking to strangers here, or anywhere else I can connect with people. I’ll keep telling my story. I will bring the Church to them. Because someone out there needs to hear that there is nothing to be ashamed of anymore. Love defeated shame. Love defeated doctrine-as-a-weapon. Love is the good news we share through our words and our actions.

And since you speak often of repentance and obedience, I’ll offer this to you in your own language:

If the Church is a hospital, as you say, then what do you do when the wounded are afraid to walk through the doors, not because they reject healing, but because the people inside keep reopening their wounds?

Is it not a kind of spiritual malpractice to demand repentance from the hurting without first washing their feet?

You’re right, Christ calls us to die to ourselves. But if that death doesn’t make us more gentle, more approachable, more like a refuge for the broken, what exactly is dying in us? And what’s still holding on?

And one more thing. You seem to have misread my last question. It wasn’t for me.

It was for you.

Are you Christlike?

Not in your theology. Not in your discipline. Not in your sacraments or church attendance.
When people think of you, do they think of love?
Love in your tone. Love in your compassion.
Love in how you treat even a stranger—not just on some internet platform, but everywhere.

Because as Jesus said, that is how they will know you are His disciple.

First of all, I want to thank you for engaging with me. You have definitely given more thought to your position than your initial replies. I dismissed you as someone not willing to actually engage based on those short responses, but this last reply had depth and effort. I truly appreciate and respect the effort.

You’ve made your position very clear: submission, sacraments, and Church are non-negotiables in your view of faith. I understand that, and I even understand where it comes from. The tradition you’re drawing from is ancient, rigorous, and unapologetically structured.

But what’s missing here, and what is truly heartbreaking, is any sign of compassion for another person’s spiritual wounds.

I didn’t come here to tear down faith. I came because I loved the Church. I gave it years of my life, my energy, and my care. I spent six years in formal religious study. I learned Greek and Hebrew so I could seek truth and teach it faithfully. I led weekly studies for fifteen years, speaking to literally thousands of people who longed to know Christ. I watched marriages fall apart. I watched people suffer in silence. I watched young hearts burn out trying to earn a love they were told was unconditional.

And I served right in the middle of all of it. My entire life’s work has been Christ.

So when I speak of grief, I speak from the inside. This isn’t theory to me. It’s memory. It’s life.

Your response hasn’t engaged with any of that. You haven’t asked a single question. You haven’t tried to understand. You’ve quoted doctrine and offered correction without even pausing to wonder who you’re speaking to. You assume I left because I didn’t want to submit, when in truth, I stayed far longer than was good for me because I wanted to be faithful.

The Church you speak of, and the God you seem to represent, appear interested only in obedience and conformity. But the Jesus I encountered in Scripture? He wept with the broken. He dined with the outcast. He challenged the religious elite. He called people not to power, but to love.

So here’s my sincere question for you:

If someone came to you and shared that the Church had wounded them, not once, but persistently and they did so with humility and pain in their voice, how would Jesus respond?
Would He accuse them?
Would He quote doctrine?
Would He tell them their experience doesn’t matter?
Or would He listen?

Because that’s really what this comes down to. Not whether I agree with every line of theology. Not whether I tick every box of orthodoxy. But whether those who bear the name of Christ actually reflect His posture when someone is bleeding spiritually.

I have no expectations here, but I’ll leave you with one final question for you to ask yourself and sit with:

Am I Christlike?

I know. I took a look before I responded. I had a sense of who I was dealing with. I decided to extend an olive branch, but I wasn’t surprised by what I got in return. At this point, I’m mostly replying for the sake of others who might be reading the thread.

Manmoth, I have done this long enough to know when someone isn’t interested in genuine conversation.

To everyone else reading this exchange: this is exactly what I was talking about.

I shared a deeply personal experience about the gap between Christ’s teachings and the behavior of many who claim to follow Him. And this was the response:

Dismissal. Accusations of delusion. Demands for repentance. Theological gatekeeping. No curiosity about my journey. No questions about what I saw or experienced. No willingness to consider that someone might leave the church for reasons worth examining.

Instead, I was told: “You’re deluded. You’re prideful. You’re antisocial. You must go to church.”

This is the pattern many of us have encountered. When we raise concerns about the church’s witness, we aren’t met with reflection or dialogue. We’re met with accusation and calls for submission. The response isn’t, “Help me understand what went wrong,” but, “You are the problem.”

Notice what happens: Scripture becomes a weapon instead of a balm. Theology becomes a wall instead of a bridge. And the conversation becomes about control, not compassion.

And this is precisely why I can no longer bear the name Christian myself. Because this, this dismissal, this judgment, this refusal to engage with genuine spiritual struggle, is what that name has come to represent. Manmoth isn’t an outlier. This response is the norm. This is Christianity as most people experience it.

For those of you reading this who’ve had similar experiences, you’re not crazy. You’re not alone. Your concerns about the gap between Jesus and Christian culture are valid. And the fact that raising them often provokes exactly this kind of response… should tell you something.

To those in the church who genuinely want to understand why people are walking away, this exchange is a case study. The ones leaving aren’t always rebellious or prideful. Sometimes, they’re the ones who took Jesus’s words about love and integrity so seriously that they couldn’t ignore the contradiction between His call and what they saw happening in His name.

You’ve spoken fifteen words to me. And here’s what they’ve told me:

You went to a Christian church last Sunday. You believe I wasted your time with a “long-winded” explanation. And you accuse me of pride.

If you wish to defend yourself as a disciple of Christ, then tell me: Which of the 1 Corinthians 13 attributes of love have you shown me so far? Patience? Kindness? Have you honored me?

Because I can’t point to a single thing that resembles love. No curiosity. No grace. No questions. Just a dismissal, a judgment, and a label.

So let’s talk about pride.

Was it pride that compelled Jesus to overturn tables in the temple courts? Was it pride that moved Him to confront the Pharisees, the respected religious leaders of His day, for their hypocrisy, their arrogance, their empty performance of righteousness? Was it pride that led Him to say, “You honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me”?

Or was it love? A love so fierce, so holy, that it refused to be silent in the face of corrupted religion. A love that demanded truth, even when it cost Him everything.

What I shared with you didn’t come from pride. It came from grief. From years inside the Church, serving, loving, and ultimately mourning how far we’ve drifted from the heart of Jesus.

Pride would have stayed silent. Love compelled me to speak.

If you want to continue the conversation, I’m here and I would welcome it. But if you want to show yourself a disciple of Christ, then let your words be grounded in truth, wrapped in love, and spoken with a willingness to listen. Anything less isn’t worth the breath.

I worked in churches for over 15 years, and during that time, I met many kind, well-intentioned people. But what I often ran into—and what eventually wore me down—was the disconnect between the teachings of Jesus and the behavior of many who claimed to follow Him.

The command to “love one another” wasn’t just a suggestion. It was supposed to be the defining mark of discipleship. But instead, I saw love regularly take a backseat to doctrine, tribal loyalty, and personal comfort. When challenged, many defaulted to talking points instead of compassion. They could quote scripture fluently but seemed unable—or unwilling—to embody it, especially when it required real humility or sacrifice.

What was most painful was the hypocrisy: preaching grace but practicing judgment, offering community but withholding inclusion, speaking of Jesus while acting more like the Pharisees He opposed. And often, faith became a shield—not to protect the vulnerable, but to protect egos from the hard work of self-examination. It blinded people to their own contradictions. They believed they were living rightly, when in truth they were often just defending their culture, not their Christ.

So yes, I hope your experience is different. Truly. Because for many of us who once lived and breathed church life, the gap between Jesus and those who speak in His name grew too wide to ignore. That’s why I and some of the most authentic followers of Christ I’ve known don’t call themselves Christians anymore. Our Christian values won’t allow it.

John 13:34-35 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

When was the last time you encountered a Christian who was a disciple of Christ? The only ones I know don’t call themselves Christian anymore.

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I highly recommend reading Ezra Klein’s latest book “Abundance” for a look at why the DNC has been losing the working class. It also offers some optimistic ideas for moving forward.