In the first three centuries of the Christian faith, church leaders hammered out the doctrine of God and parsed through the two natures of Christ, in meticulous detail.
Meanwhile, they crafted an impressive tradition of moral reasoning, appealing to both Scripture and Natural Law.
At the same time, they engaged in full frontal polemics with other religions of the Empire.
All while being a technically illegal gathering, under both official and unofficial persecution. In some of these persecutions, their livelihoods and very lives were lost in both judicial and extrajudicial actions—some intensely brutal.
And yet, they loved and served their neighbors through it all. They shared their faith. And they grew—sometimes in fits and starts, others by leaps and bounds.
Nowadays we are told that doctrine is too fussy. We should care more about being nice than whether we can articulate the Trinity without falling into heresy.
We couldn’t morally reason our way out of a third-grade level moral dilemma. Rather, we make all manner of allowances for abuse, corruption, and flat out incompetence.
We are chided from within when we speak up for the Gospel when it’s perverted from within the Church. That’s not nice. That’s eating our own. Etc. But somehow it’s nice to let Pied Pipers steal our children, and wolves devour Christ’s little lambs.
We don’t produce martyrs. We don’t even produce thinkers. We do often produce “preachers” who wouldn’t even hack it on the Junior College TedX circuit.
Some of us are ashamed to even call our churches churches; opting instead for the blandly corporate Christian center, or something equally as undescriptive.
And we wonder why we’re shrinking way faster than the early Church grew in the first three centuries.
A Church without a robust Gospel, an engaging intellectual heritage, a coherent philosophy of virtues, or a compelling vision for what is good and true and beautiful; a Church that’s ashamed to be herself—she will certainly not attract anyone, for she has nothing to offer.
We have sold our spiritual, intellectual, and moral birthright for a mess of lowest-common-denominator porridge.
the sermonator 
One response to “What’s wrong with the Church?”
Many, if not most, Christians have embraced the general societal antipathy toward and suspicion of education and intellectual pursuits. As a teacher in high school and community college, I had many parents with nothing more than a high school education question my competency to teach the subjects I had studied in the university and qualified for through state examinations. This general disparagement of thought has spilled over into our faith practice, demeaning and degrading it. The result, an anemic body, often unable to engage in even the simplest theological discussions. Many of us have never thought deeply about the tenants of our faith and as a result do not recognize spurious statements or doctrines.
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