I've been noticing that many people are quickly fleeing from Traditionalist Christianity. Most Christians today are part of the Catholic or the Mainline Protestant Churches and are "Whateverists". Most of them still believe in God and Jesus, but don't follow what their denomination teaches. Many don't go to Church every week, ignore their moral code, and follow this idea that Denominations and religions are just labels, and whatever works for you is fine. The more fundamentalist Christians do not see that Denominations and Religions are just labels, in fact they believe that their church is supreme, and all the other ones are false.
We also see that people are starting to follow in other Abrahamic Traditions such as Judaism, Islam, Mormonism and Jehovahs Witness, because they all teach a reformative form of "Hell", more of a Purgatory state. However they teach that a small percentage of the extremely hardened are either annihilated or kept in the Lake of fire.
There are others who have flocked to Eastern Faiths, such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Oriental Religions due to their inclusive nature. None of those religions have real strict Dogmas, an exclusive nature, or a belief in everlasting Hell. They believe in Judgment, but only a temporary judgment. They also believe in an infinite spirit, but they have a vague understanding.
Many people in the United States, Latin America, Africa, Australia, The Middle East, Asia and the Pacific who follow in the Indigenous Religious traditions find Evangelical Christian mission work a nuissance. I cant say I blame them if someone just bombarded my culture and forced me to live by this rigid Fire and Brimstone exclusive not so peaceful church.
Then there are others who have joined some modernized form of Paganism ripped off from Egyptian, Greek, Near Eastern, and Roman beliefs. Im pretty sure that they would not want to be pagans if they knew what they had taught in the Ancient times.
There are others who are involved in this new age religion where everyone crosses over no matter what.
But I honestly cannot blame people for abandoning these Christian traditions. They have turned Jesus into a pretty poor savior, and a lousy God. Either he has been made into the following:
1. A man who concieved a child in full awareness that someday he would throw that child in an intersection with busy traffic, and let the other one live. OR A man who is watching his three year old and the child runs into a street with a car coming and all he does is beg him to not run in the street. These kinds of people get thrown into jail. And the court systems are not going to pardon this man on the case of the fathers predestination to kill the child or respecting the childs free will. Of course a three year old does not know any better than to run in the street, and is not running in the street to kill himself.
2. A God who is a sellout. He wills everyone to be saved, but then sells out and lets Satan share in part of the deal. That would be like starting a charity to feed the hungry, and your managers who help you set up the business turn it into a savage prison. And the business is yours. Would you just keep this business just as it is? Would you just shut it down? or would you fix it and try to return it back to what you intended it to be? (Eternal Torment, Annihilation, and Univeralism).
3. God is an incompetent leader. He has the plan for salvation for the world, but he screwed up by letting millions of religions exists all claiming to be the true one which is a crucial decision to make, giving us absolute free will to blindly walk into a horrible place, giving incompetent evangelists the responsibility to make sure everyone becomes saved, and giving us a lifetime to repent, and after that, the mercy's expired. Some get several years and others dont even get a year to choose Jesus. And other theology teaches that if you die with an unrepented sin equals hell. Sounds like a political leader who makes a bad decision that causes major national crisises. ex. George Bush and the economy. But Bush is not all knowing and perfect savior. And people do not like to be under the authority of someone who is flawed.
4. No acceptions, this is how it all works out. Well, the bible teaches that God has everything planned out to bring salvation to all people, and put an end to evil. Thats not what the creeds teach. They teach that you must meet specific standards or you go into eternal hell, no exceptions. Some creeds teach there are acceptions. Catholics and Mainline Protestants in our modern day teach that there are exceptions to those who never heard of Jesus. The strictest Fundamentalist Churches teach no exceptions. Its comparing Jesus to a teacher that planned a major test for a certain day, but many of the students get some virus that has been going around, and are unable to go to class for that test, but the teacher makes no exceptions. Naturally the teacher should make an exception to the problem, because there was a flaw in his plan, and an exception is meant to fix some flaw that occurred in a rule.
