Responding to a church’s tweet that celebrated all “sexual orientations and gender identities,” a self-described atheist retorted, “[I]f your church is just preaching the exact same thing as the broader culture, what’s the point of going to church? Just imbibe the party line somewhere with more comfortable seats.”

CS Lewis once said something similar: “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”

One of the biggest mistakes the Church can make is the vain and relentless pursuit of relevance. All indications consistently show it’s a losing proposition.

What makes the Church meaningful to a watching world is what historian Tom Holland has called Christianity’s “weird stuff.” You know, those moral standards and ideas that don’t jibe with modern sensibilities. Otherwise we might as well, as St. Paul put it, “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”