Which is it?

I was reading an article the today on the church and
where it stands today and making some interesting
comparisons to the Old Testament. The author was
writing about the Old Testament characters of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. About how they had no church
affiliation, no denomination, no records of attending
a church, no pattern of what we would consider
worship, tithing, etc. Now I do think its an
interesting point, but times are different and I'm not
saying that we shouldn't strive to be more like that
and be know like Abraham was simply as a "Man who
knows God." I think we should strive for that
simplicity in our faith, not as someone who worships
this way or goes to this church or a part of this
denomination, but simply as a people who know God.

Now when we look at the life of someone like Abraham
and people of his time, it almost seems like about the
only way to know God was through a personal, real
experience with God. It seems to me that their
relationship with God was one that was real, honest,
open and simply raw. They didn't base their
relationship and knowledge of God upon what someone
had told them or what they read, but rather through
who they knew God to be through personal experience.

I find this interesting to how I often base my
relationship with God on and how if I honestly look at
the church today, how they base their relationship and
knowledge of God off of. We are told almost every
Sunday three points on how to live this week and then
go out that week and then check off that we did those
and move on to the next three steps to conquer. There
often is no actual personal experience of God
happening.

We have everything "Christian" today that we could
think of. There are "Christian" t-shirts, bookstores,
schools, conferences and just about anything else you
can think of. We have created sub-culture and copied
everything else the "world" is doing, but just tag the
word "Christian" on them to make ourselves feel better
about them.

But many "Christians" today abuse, divorce, get drunk,
lie, steal, cheat, live gluttonously, hate, etc, just
as much as the rest of the "world" does.

So maybe we have simply just accepted God on an
intellectual level and nothing more. There is no
life-transforming action being taken place. The
author of the article says that maybe we have
"accepted all the cultural Christian trinkets without
accepting Christ, replacing the reality of a blessed
Jesus connecting us to God with just another religious
patter of how to look clean while remaining sick and
filthy".

Pretty deep and cutting words, but possibly true.
There is no transformation happening, we simply accept
on an intellectual level, but not enough to challenge
and change how we live. We have no personal
experience to pull from.

Going back to the life of Abraham, simply living as a
man who knew God and allowing that to effect and
factor into his daily thoughts and activities. Maybe
we (and I mean myself) have got caught up in making
sure we dress the right way, say the right words, know
the right things, act a certain way, that we have
forgotten or disregarded the simplicity of just living
with God. Maybe we can't find God in the midst of our religion.