A Wayward Child of God

I've decided to stop paying attention to Bruce Charlton. It's kind of sad because I want content, but increasingly it seems obvious I should be making it instead, given the poor quality of what is out there. Not that it would necessarily be popular...

Anyway, as should be obvious to anyone with a bible, nowhere has Jesus asked you for a personal relationship. There are various formal relationships- and much like one particular formal relationship- marriage- one might assume something 'personal' may grow out of it.

But I gave proofs- mainly that the use of the term 'personal relationship with Jesus' has risen, and at the very same time, the number of people falling away from Christianity has also risen. These are two phenomena I believe are quite connected.

And Charlton could have delineated himself from this evangelistic craze- instead he suggested the evangelicals he met were good people. Well, sure- good people who fail at their stated purpose. Are they good people? Is this not an unbiblical statement as well?

They are certainly not an effective people for failing at their stated goals. Their goal is to evangelize and they have failed.(Christianity is falling to even keep its own children.) We cannot definitively state that they are good people, but we can figure that they made Charlton feel good.

And feels are at the root of this problem, because for every comment, I received these psychological projections- in the first, I am somehow imputing something, and in the last I am not understanding. In both instances the reality is ignored. Again, delineation from this 'personal relationship with Jesus' message should be very easy- even a helpful exercise, yet he did not bother.

This is spoken in nearly all churches- the bureaucrats seem happy with it. Not just those in charge of churches, but governments as well. They prefer your religion to be personal and private, and not something to be brought up at all when they want to force you to do something against your religion.


But Charlton is in love with his own ideas. This is where the emotion comes from. He has made many mistakes, and playing with Christianity like some genius child without an elder to guide him. Responds with emotion because he interprets an attack on an idea as an attack on him.