“Ratbag” is an Australian (very derogatory” term for a bad person, a “nasty piece of work”.
Jesus said it very plainly:
“The sign by which men will know that you are My disciples, is that you love one another”.
The list of people who have been hurt and damaged by churches is LONG. By Jesus’ definition, the people doing the hurting ARE NOT His disciples – no matter how much they trumpet His Name.
Religion is a great tool for mind control and political manipulation. The Reformation was started, and then controlled , on BOTH sides, by an Intelligence Agency. That Intelligence Agency was from Venice. It worked for, with, and on behalf of, Venice’s business interests. Venice was the power that ran The Silk Road Trade between Asia and Europe. The new European sailing ships that reached Asia, and the gold in America by sea, threatened Venice’s dominance of world trade.
So venetian business interests needed a “distraction” while they moved their base of operations to sea ports on the Atlantic. The distraction was The Reformation vs The Counter Reformation.
Henry VIII ‘s divorce lawyer was a Venetian.
Things have not changed. Intelligence agencies still interfere in church denominations, and set the “religious agenda”. If a Pastor or Preacher does not follow the “official line”, he soon gets “ousted”.
There are good people in all denominations. But they are not the ones setting the agenda. Neither is Jesus the one setting the agenda.
And yes, there are also a LOT of “ratbags” who harm others. How many people have gone to church(es) looking for God, and looking for answers, but instead, they got hurt, they were harmed.
How many? Sadly, in our era, we are talking hundreds of millions of people !
If that figure sounds unbelievable, sk yourself how many Catholics have left the Catholic Church because of the paedophilia scandals of the past 70 years?
That figure, ex-Catholics alone, is in the hundreds of millions. The “damage” in other denominations may not be quite so obvious. But it is just as widespread.
Beware of “religious ratbags”. They are not of God. Some of them are just plain stupid. Many more of them are plain evil, predators whose only purpose is to “rob, kill and destroy” (Jesus’ description of the force they work for, i.e. the Devil.)
On the positive side, if you got no answers from going to church, the problem probably wasn’t “you”. It was likely to have been the church!