A VIEW FROM A VIEWER

After viewing Rebellion of Thought, Kelly Dominguez wrote...

Towards the end of the documentary of "Rebellion of thought", Brad told of what happened when he went to tell his pastor he was leaving the church. The Pastor ask him a question and he responded with something. Forgive me, I can't for the life of me remember what exactly was said. My memory is really bad. Would you please refresh my memory? I rented the movie through Christian Cinema and already returned it, my bad. I should have watched it again.

Lately, I've been very dissatisfied with what I see in our church. Not more then two days before watching your movie, I had a conversation with a friend about how our neighbors were moving and I didn't know them..............because my family is so "busy" (something I believe comes from the devil) "going to church". So your movie was food for the brain. Thank you.

Brad replied...

Thanks for asking about Rebellion of Thought. I appreciate you taking the time to view it and am encouraged that you find the discussion valuable.

You asked what my response was to my pastor when I told him I was leaving our church (note that I did not leave the 'church', the body of Christ, but a specific assembly that met in a certain building!)

Kent has provided the transcript from that portion of the film, which is great, because I'd have a hard time remembering as well.

When you look at what’s going on it’s seems that maybe the church is part of the problem here.

I’ll go way out on a limb here. This hopefully will be edited out. What the church is designed to do is to seduce believers into thinking that they believe…

Beep! (CENSORED)

Probably the greatest indictment of the church today is that we don’t practice the gospel. We preach it. We teach it. We do all kinds of things with it. We put it on banners. We sing songs about it. We just don’t actually do it. Just go automatically to church every Sunday, week after week and do the same things over and over again. We will never observe what it is that’s going on there and be able to do something different. And then you have the danger of those people who have a vested interest in making sure that we don’t examine the traditions of the church or the North American church because you know we even ______ teaching that that…

...When I left the church that I was with I had been with the church for about, oh, six or eight years. When I was asked why I was leaving I told the pastor, I said I’ve I’m having a problem with the church because it’s not adequate, it’s not sufficient for me to be a part of a church where the gospel is preached. I said the desire of my heart is that I that I’m part of a church where the gospel is practiced.

There you go - I'm still on my quest - and by the way, when I look at the church I left, I would say without question that it comes closer to the mark of practicing the Gospel than any church I have been a part of, and I still felt compelled to leave.

Part of the problem, as you touch on, is that there is a distraction in the church that I am convinced is part of the Deceiver's plan, to convince believers that by being involved in church they are serving Christ. I believe that this is the greatest deception ever conceived against those who would follow Christ, and we are, for the most part, blind to it.

To close, let me fill in the censored part of the script, with a paraphrase of what the distributor insisted we remove.

The organizational church today is designed to do three things:

Seduce believers into being part of the organizational church community with attractive services, songs, programs, 'ministries', and facilities...

Anesthetize the believer with many 'good' things (worship, praise, care of other believers) so that the believer does not realizing that what he or she is doing has little connection to the mandates Christ communicated in the Scripture...

Deceive the believer into thinking that going to church, singing and praising, tithing, and caring for other believers (all truly good things) are what Christ would have us do.

Ultimately, the church is most successful at enabling even mature believers to miss the point, that God called us first to love Him with all our heart, mind and soul, and second, to love our neighbor as ourselves, which turns out to be a whole lot more difficult in our culture than going to church.

So, Kelly, your journey begins. It will not be easy or popular, but you aren't alone. More and more followers of Christ are starting to act on their dissatisfaction with the organizational church. Pray that you will not be discouraged, deceived, or misled as you seek Christ and work to serve Him.

I will pray that you find a small group of like-minded believers who will commit themselves with you to living Christ as you abandon 'being busy' for the sake of the organizational church.

Feel free to write and share you experiences. We'd like to hear from you.

Brad