Herewith is my last installment on why I believe the church is culpable for our cultural corruption and my top ten raucous remedies to help the church with its mad cow disease. My recommendations are:

1. Get men who dig being rowdy back in the pulpit.

2. Could we have some sound doctrine, por favor?

3. Preach scary sermons (at least every fourth one).

4. Get rid of 99.9% of “Christian” TV.

5. Quit trying to be relevant and instead become prophetic contrarians, I’m talking contra mundus, mama!

6. Put a 10-year moratorium on “God wants you rich” sermons (yeah, that’s what we need to hear nowadays, you morons, more sermons about money, money, money!).

7. Embrace apologetics and shun shallow faith.

8. Evangelize like it’s 1999.

9. Push lazy Christians to get a life or join a Satanic Church.

10. Demand that if a Christian gets involved in the arts that their “craft” must scream excellence and not excrement.

Having covered points one though five in my previous three columns, here’s my final whack at six through ten. Enjoy . . .

6. Put a 10-year moratorium on “God wants you rich” sermons (yeah, that’s what we need to hear nowadays, you morons, more sermons about money, money, money!). I’ve got to confess, I like money, and the more the merrier as far as I’m concerned. Money has been good to me. In addition, I’ve got to come clean and proudly announce that the Bible is not anti-denari, much to the chagrin of the pro-poverty Christians. Matter of fact, the Bible is chock-full of holy wisdom on how one can righteously make, adroitly juggle and justly bequeath one’s hard-earned drachmas.

So, I don’t have problems with either having cash or hearing about it from a balanced biblical context. The two things that I think do a massive disservice to God and country and make me want to spit are, one: the obvious hucksters (and the not so obvious hucksters) in the pulpit and on “Christian” TV who blather on about it week after week, and two: The Judases who preach the happy clappy crud that does not righteously offend, all for the sake of keeping the lemmings blissful and the offering baskets stuffed full.

Hey, Pastor Money Freak Boy: how about mixing up your teaching a tad? You’re becoming a wee bit obvious. Here’s a thought: How about preaching the gospel every now and then, or teaching on apologetics (if you even know what that is) so that your flock can defend their faith, or talk about how the Christian can be a major player in salvaging our nation, or teaching on the armor of God, or going verse by verse through the book of Romans? What do you think about that, Slingblade?

The Detergent Church, on the other hand, will not be imbalanced with a glut of money messages, nor will it hype the crowd with outrageous “you’ll get rich if you give now” slop. Rather, it will address the pressing spiritual and social issues locally and nationally, give the biblical remedy to the malady, and not use Sundays to suck the cash out of the crowd ad nauseam. For the Detergent Church, a simple tithe and offering does just fine, thank you. The Detergent Church understands that if they do their job God will float their financial boat without them resorting to obsession or manipulation.

7. Embrace apologetics and shun shallow faith. The church has avoided apologetics for the last couple of decades like Paris Hilton avoids the pickled pig foot platter in the Telemundo green room. So, why has the church run away from both knowing and being able to articulate why they “believe” what they “believe” to the inquisitive unbeliever?

Well, truth be told, American Idol has been on and a lot of Christians are lazy, stupid and, in reality, they do not really care where we’re headed as a church or a nation. If they did, they’d get off their McDonald’s-enlarged languid laurels and do the difficult work of thinking and fighting for that which is holy, just and good.

The repercussion of the church taking a twenty year anti-intellectual nap is that we have morphed from being the sharp army of God to a dull gaggle of clods. Yep, Christians having embraced feelings over facts has left large chunks of Christendom intellectually naked before the anti-Christian Torquemadas who would love to see the church relegated to a religious ghetto on the sidelines of life.

The Detergent Church doesn’t shun the role of the mind in the life of the believer. Like our testicles, we like our brains and believe that we don’t have to check either at the door of the church to be a Christian. The Detergent Church thinks it is a sin and a scandal for congregants to stay stupid and not be able to give an answer for that which they believe. Yep, they take Jesus’ command to love God with all their minds seriously. Continued...