Welcome to The Atheist Church

"And they said to him, Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but yours eat and drink? And he said to them, Can you make the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days. And he spoke also a parable to them; No man puts a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new makes a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agrees not with the old. And no man puts new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desires new: for he says, The old is better" (Luke 5:33-39).

A small town council gathered to discuss the problem of reoccurring accidents on a certain portion of nearby road. Cars were speeding around a bend, and going over a cliff. After some discussion, the council came up with what they believed was a solution to their problem. They decided to build a hospital at the bottom of the cliff.

Such is the way of man. He attacks the symptom rather than the cause, and this is never so evident as with the seesaw of political elections. Every four years the country becomes disgruntled by unfulfilled political promises, so it votes for change, and change never comes.

Even the great political force of the "religious right" gets caught up in hospital building, thinking that the answer to the accident problem is legislative. However, trying to fix a corrupt system is nothing more than putting a new patch on an old wineskin. In time it will burst.

The answer is to look to the blueprint of Christianity--the Bible, particularly the Book of Acts. It shows us the clear agenda of the early Church. It wasn’t to bring in a legislative theocracy to a corrupt society. Instead, it was to change the corrupt heart of the individual, through the power of the gospel. When a sinful man or woman is genuinely converted, they live for righteousness. They know the reality of "He leads me in paths of righteousness."

We live in a thoroughly corrupt world, evidenced by corruption within religious society, within the political world, within the business community, within every area of human endeavor. The only way to straighten the road and stop the accidents, is to preach the gospel and pray (and fast) that a sinful world listens and obeys its command to repent and trust in the Savior.

Pic. Porter with Wineskin by Niko Pirosmani.