Irvine511 said:
i cannot actively practice in a church that remains willfully, obstinately blind to the 21st century.
I'm glad you brought this up. First of all, it's very hard to relate Jesus' message, or any positive message for that matter, to modern society, because so many people put other things before God in their lives. It could be politics (not against liberal Christians, but people who think politics are everything), pride, money, sex, drugs, alcohol, lust, hate... the list could go on forever.
Secondly, you're absolutely right when you say the problem is not the message, but the messengers. human nature has it that we interpret things differently. This gave us so many denominations in the church, and as believers we just have to accept that not all Christians believe a certain thing is a sin, faith is the only requirement to enter Heaven, all that good stuff. We have to love Catholics, Protestants, and non-believers as ourselves. We should also try to relate in a way that we have the same God, the same Savior, and the same relationship in Christ. Sometimes I'm guilty of not doing this, probably just as much as anyone else. I'm a sinner, as much as a non-believer, I deal with lust - among other things - more often than I'd like to admit. We deceive ourselves if we say that we have no sin, and the truth is not in us.
Thirdly, a lot of us have a hard time accepting that we can't really do anything to take away the sins of the world. We all believe that's not our power, but it's something we often tend to forget. The weight of the sin of the world is something that only Jesus can carry. The wages of sin is death, and he died on the cross for us. There's nothing man alone can do to take away the sin in the world.