Column by David Rempfer. E-mail

Enough is enough.

That’s my heart for the screaming preachers who roll through UK. They keep bringing their gospels of condemnation, attempting to indoctrinate the crowds with this disgusting ideology of “shape up or be judged,” and

I’m fed up with it – and I’m not the only one.

This generation is done with being judged.

We’ve grown up in failed homes, struggling schools and a faltering economy. All the pressures of the world are on our backs to be the generation that inherits a broken tomorrow that the broken today keeps making worse and fixes everything.

Now, the ones claiming to have contact to a higher power are decreeing that if we want God’s approval and favor we have to try hard and earn it.

Seriously? Take a wild guess why the statistics from the prominent recent book, “The American Church In Crisis,” indicate that 85 percent of churches in America are in attendance decline and 50.2 percent are predicted to not see a single person join their faith this year.

We don’t want that system. We’re sick and tired of that message.

As a huge relief, so is Jesus.

When religion demanded people buy temple sacrifices to earn God’s forgiveness, Jesus walked in, flung their tables across the room and chased them out.

When Pharisees and religious teachers complained over Jesus’ choice to spend his life around “notorious sinners,” arguing the truly holy wouldn’t associate with them until repentance, Jesus flipped out and told three stories showing the heart of God was for the lost – punctuating the Prodigal Son story with the Pharisee elder son left outside the mansion of heaven.

The classic John 3:16 quote Jesus gave a seeker is only half of the statement on God’s love; it concludes, “For [Jesus] did not come to condemn the world; he came to save it.”

When the Pharisees caught a woman in the act of adultery, Jesus’ first response was to expose that the Pharisees had no business judging or stoning her, and after they all walked away he turned to the sinful woman and showed her complete grace – instantly.

Enough is enough, false Christian preachers. I label you with the same words Jesus labeled the Pharisees with: “deceived,” “confused,” “misled” and “misguided.”

Whatever message you preach, it’s not the gospel of a Jesus who loved His kids so much it was “his joy” to be crucified with their sin-guilt to get them all back. [Hebrews 12:2]

Christianity is not a commitment to shape up, nor an obligation to work hard to be holy; It’s an invitation to come clean at the foot of the cross and be undeservedly forgiven – completely, every time, forever and entirely at Jesus’ expense.

Why? Because He loves you and when you receive Jesus, that love moves in and it changes you – you don’t have to strive to earn more of it.

We don’t deserve it; we never will, yet we’re never required to. We can’t earn it; in fact, we’re incapable of earning it, and we’ll never be asked to prove worthy of it.

It’s not that we’ll grit our teeth and through sheer resolve never sin again, though we try not to; it’s that we’ve found our way into living in the personal experience of the love of God. We don’t need the old stuff to fill up voids we don’t have anymore, so we leave them behind.

Irate preachers of damnation: Do you know who really needs Jesus? You. And I pray you meet the real Jesus – you and UK both.