You grew up sitting in various pews, but after getting a dose of higher education, you’re not really into anything that smacks of organized religion. After studying the Crusades, learning what jihad really means, and reading ten bloggers rant about the Pope’s pedophile cover-up, you figure that all of these manmade institutions aren’t credible. The Church—any church—is just a nasty, manmade construct designed to give uneducated, needy people some scaffolding.

On the other hand, you also think that God probably exists, and Jesus and the Buddha and Mother Teresa were onto something good. You don’t want to adopt the atheist’s combative edge or the agnostic’s arrogant philosophizing, so you snuggle down into the cozy netherworld of Spiritual Living. It’s a one-size-fits-all accommodating worldview fed by books like Eat, Pray, Love and The Secret. Spiritual Living lets you pray for wisdom or wear cool T-shirts or even go to silent retreats where you can stare at the ocean for a long time. It’s tapas-style dining where you order tasty little samples of  religion’s best ideas—without the prix fixe risk. Come to think of it, if you don’t trust the chef to choose for you, it might be better to pick a different restaurant altogether.

Apparently I and those of my ilk are headed for extinction.  At least that is what a group of mathematicians have determined for the “religious” folks of a number of European countries.

Frankly, this doesn’t really bother me. In fact I kind of wonder why it has taken so long?

The stiff and unimaginative way that we Christians have “done church” often makes me wonder why we have any market share at all. After all, boredom and church are many times found intertwined in the same bed.

But while we Christians have been dithering about and majoring on the minors, those who make a buck entertaining and amusing us have been getting better and better at their job.

Not that it is the job of the church to entertain or amuse (although I do think that we have hardly lifted the veil on the immensely entertaining and hilarious nature of God) we Christians have been mandated to offer something to the world that can’t be found anywhere else, something so authentic, so wondrous and so in cahoots with mankind’s deepest longings that it can’t be ignored.

[This originally appeared on the Mars Hill Church blog]

I was originally assigned the task of looking at advice on how to be a man from a men’s magazine. Problem is, there wasn't any.

Esquire's June/July 2010 issue was called How to Be a Man. Appropriate. With a title that declarative and a tagline of “Man at His Best,” I was anxious to comb through it to see what they had to say about manhood. With a base circulation of 700,000 and competition like GQ, Maxim, and Details, Esquire is arguably one of the largest and most influential men’s magazines in the world. They've got to know what they're talking about, right? Esquire’s website describes their audience as "the affluent and successful man." Should be exactly what I'm shooting for here.

With Irony As Our Guide

Two more great quotes from Why We Love The Church.  I wish I could post every line I've highlighted so far in this book but I think I'd probably drive you all crazy.  Just do us both a favor and read this book.  This first excerpt is from co-author Kevin DeYoung.

[In speaking of the current trend among many younger Christians of confessing the past sins of the church.]

""When a man over forty tries to repent of the sins of England and to love her enemies, " writes [C.S.] Lewis, "he is attempting something costly; for he was brought up to certain patriotic sentiments which cannot be moritified without a struggle.  But an educated man who is now in his twenties usually has no such sentiment to mortify.  In art, in literature, in politics, he has been, ever since he can remember, one of an angry and restless minority; he has drunk in almost with with his mother's milk a distrust of English statesmen and a contempt for the manners, pleasures, and enthusiasm of his less-educated fellow countrymen."