What is the "Tainted Gospel"



A speaker at a well known youth conference warned young people they should not go out and preach a "tainted gospel." This brings up a huge question. Which of the hundreds of versions of Christianity are "tainted" and which are not "tainted"?

Whenever I see the word "Reformed" in the title of a denomination I think it could be retitled "Not Tainted Like the Other Guys." Every time a group splits off from its starting denomination we could say the same thing.

At the youth conference the speaker was referring to conservative branches of the faith as "tainted." They are tainted because they exclude certain categories of people from the group and endorse practices that are bad for the environment. I happen to agree with him on the policies he is advocating. But, of course, those policies are the very ones conservative church goers call tainted.

There has never been, nor will there ever be, a resolution as to which parts of Christianity are tainted. That is because religion is something which originates in people's minds and exists nowhere else. Every mind has a different take on the religion it contains and thus finds what is in other minds tainted.

The good thing about the U.S. so far is that guns are not normally used to decide who is right. There is an old saying about wars between countries, "My god is real. Your god is not. Bang-bang you're dead."

Calling another branch of the faith "tainted" is to carry one's nose high.

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