Evangelical Christianity tells you that you should be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

      When you receive Jesus, you actually get "born again."

      You are "a new creation."   It's as if God has reached down into the world, just like he did in Genesis 1, and performed a miracle, a new act of creation.

      Henceforth you will walk in newness of life.

      The morning after your religious conversion, you wake up with a smile on your face, confident that if you die today, Jesus will receive you into his loving arms.   God has actually adopted you as his son!   You are a child of God!

      The days pass.   You read your Bible.   You go to church on Sunday.

      And that 15-year-old blonde behind the counter at Starbucks is just as sexy as she ever was.   You find yourself "lusting after her."   The tight blouse, the soft swell of her oversized breasts, the perky smile ...

      And Matt, the smug know-it-all that you work with, is just as irritating as he ever was (even more irritating than your brother-in-law).   You find yourself wondering how difficult it is to hide a dead body.

      You suppress your feelings, because you know God doesn't want you to have them.

      And you find it difficult to believe some of the stuff you read in your new eight-translation parallel New Testament (such as Matthew 21:22.)

      Months go by.   You find out that your local church has the same kinds of cliques and petty small-minded snobbery that you experienced in high school.   It seems that Christians are exactly like everybody else.

      And you realize that you didn't really change.

      You are what you are.

      You weren't "made over."   You weren't re-created.

      You're just trying to be something you're not.

      You're being dishonest with yourself ... about yourself.

      And Christianity doesn't allow you to admit the truth.

      You examine yourself to see if you're actually "in the faith."   And you're not.

      This is what's wrong with evangelical Christianity:

      It promises to do magic, and it doesn't.

      It promises to make you into a new person.

      It doesn't.

      It's a lot like what happens when you join the Army.

      You're required to act a certain way.

      You have to pretend to respect people that you don't actually respect.

      You have to dress in a way that you'd never dress if you had a choice.

      You "go along with the group."