God may not be Dead, but Christianity has a weakening Pulse

The number of people proudly proclaiming to be Christians is declining. In fact, in the United States, it seems like the number of people that subscribe to a philosophy other than Christianity may soon overtake the number of Christians. The real question is: why the decline in Christians in a "Christian nation"?

The answer to that is actually pretty obvious.

Firstly, we need to address what isn't the real cause. Many Christians point the finger towards, what they call, "the removal of God". The heart of this claim is the belief that society is removing God and religion from important places such as school, government, and media, and that is causing less people to know about Christianity. This, the lack of knowledge leads to the lack of embrace, and we are left with a declining number of Christians.

The problem with this argument is two-fold. The first part is the actual existence of religion in these places. The United States (as much as people would like to believe) is NOT a Christian nation; we are very much a secular nation. There are certainly symbols of religiosity woven in to our history such as references to a creator in the constitution, but the first amendment is clear on this one. Not only does the bill of rights protect the free exercise of religion, it also protects citizens from the establishment and indoctrination of a national religion for all. Case in point, the United States is not a Christian nation. Because of that, Christianity (or any religion) does not belong in the government or government-funded programs (education) as those legally must be as free as the nation in which they are established.

Secondly, there is little proof that these things are being unceremoniously pulled from areas in which they used to be. There is even less proof that their absence affects spirituality. Yes, there may have been a time (long ago) in which prayer was allowed in schools, but guess what? It is still allowed in schools. Students are allowed to pray (provided it does not impact the regular school day). Teachers are simply not allowed to lead or mandate such prayers (as it should be and has always been). The government has always maintained a system of secularity, and you would be hard-pressed to find a court docket that suggests otherwise.

See what many of these "Christians" fail to realize is that the exodus from Christianity has nothing to do with the underexposure of the faith or the about-face of the government. It is not a collection of lost souls or an overly-sexualized society causing a decline of believers. Quite simply, their is one big reason for the loss of Christians: Christians themselves.

Yes, believe me, in today's world, the biggest deterrent of Christianity is the collection of the loudest voices of the very same people who claim to be the people of faith. Many people, Atheists included, embrace some aspects of the Christian faith; largely because these aspects are standard parts of morality. We all believe that people should not murder, should treat people as you wish to be treated, and should not commit adultery. We also all believe that lying is not ideal and that loving one another makes for a good society. Unfortunately, that last part seems to be what is causing the undoing of Christianity as many know it.

See, the problem with, what seems to be, modern-day Christians is this selective adherence to the holy text, the Bible. It seems to have created this modem movement of using the Bible as a buffet; they simply pick and choose which verses actually matter. Sometimes the Old Testament is irrelevant, but sometimes it matters. Sometimes Jesus overrode the old rules while other times he reinforced them. It has become too easy to justify bad behavior with scripture backing while demonizing other behavior because someone interpreted that behavior as "a sin".

So, what does that look like in modern society? Well, it looks like this. Christians stomp their feet and scream "ALL lives matter because Jesus died for all!" every time someone dares to say "Black lives matter". However, apparently the "all" part of their argument does NOT include immigrants when they are seeking refuge in this country or children when a gay couple dares to try to adopt them. It also means that Jesus loved and died for all except LGBTQ individuals because they are an abomination that does not deserve love. It means that meanest and cruelest individual can go to heaven purely because "he believes", but even the kindest trans individual is headed straight for eternal damnation because they "lived their life in sin".

Hmmm, I wonder why Christianity is on the decline.

There are people in this world that simply want to live a life where people are treated lovingly regardless of race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation, and many of those people consider themselves to be believers. However, when the loudest Christians are screaming that others are sinful and wicked simply for living a life that happens to disagree with them, you can see why many would choose not to associate with that. As the saying goes, what's in a name? Well, when a name such as "Christian" brings about feelings of judgment, discrimination, and hate from holier-than-thou people, you can start to understand why Christianity is on the decline. God is not dead because there are still many believers, but the number of people willing to take up the label of Christian is certainly losing life.