Some readers may feel that the foregoing parodies have been a destructive decimation of their religion. They may be wondering, "What is left of Christianity and the Church after all these pins have been knocked down in this bowling alley of parodic analogy?" Some may think that I have acted like the proverbial "bull in a china closet," destroying the fine and fragile constructs of Christian religion. Has this been but an iconoclastic rampage which has left the ecclesiastical stage littered with debris?

   Some might allege that I am guilty of church-bashing or Christian-bashing. Not so! I might plead guilty to tradition-bashing or religion-bashing, but not to the former charges. Christianity is not comprised of traditional beliefs or practices. Such becomes religion! The English word "religion" is derived from the Latin words religare or religio which refer to being "bound up." Jesus did not come to bind us up in religious rituals of devotion or tie us down to moralistic codes of rules and regulations. Jesus said, "you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). "I am the...truth" (John 14:6). "If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed" (John 8:36). Christianity is not religion! Christianity is the dynamic life of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Christian life is the freedom to be and do all that Jesus Christ wants to be and do in and through the Christian unto the glory of God.

   What I have attempted to do is to peel off the flaky layers from the pungent onion of ecclesiastic practice today. I have peeled off the peripherals of program and procedure and false piety. What is left at the center? The Person of Jesus Christ. The essential core of Christianity is the living Person of Jesus. Christianity is the ontological reality of the spiritual Being of Jesus Christ, rather than epistemological compilations or ecclesiastical formulations. We must return to a Christocentric theology that asserts as Paul did that Christianity is "Jesus Christ + nothing!" The essential reality of the Christian gospel remains intact, for Christianity is the dynamic indwelling presence of the life of the risen Lord Jesus, and the living out of His divine character in Christian behavior.

   Let me assure you that I am unashamedly a Christian, personally identified with Jesus Christ. Along with Paul I affirm that "Christ is my life" (Col. 3:4); "For me to live is Christ" (Phil. 1:21); "Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). My focus on Jesus Christ necessitates my exposing that which has served to cover Him up ­ the accretions of tradition, the fallacious ecclesiastical formations, the improper priorities of religion. I invite you to stand with me in affirming the centrality of Jesus Christ in the Christian life and in the Church. Christianity is Christ!

   There are many Christians today who are disheartened, fed-up and "burned-out" with their ecclesiastical experience of "churchianity." They still love God and still confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but they are longing for meaningful spiritual reality. For them, perhaps these stories can serve as a "cleansing of the temple" which drives out the merchandisers of improper beliefs and practices which are being "sold" to many unsuspecting religious people today. I believe that there are many others like me who desire the fullness of the spiritual reality that is in Jesus Christ alone, and who desire the simple singularity of focus on Jesus Christ in their worship of Him.

   What is left? The spiritual reality of the life of Jesus Christ is the only hope for mankind. I have unashamedly attempted to scrape off the barnacles of religion so that Christians might "fix their eyes upon Jesus" (Heb. 12:2).