No, I would not appreciate that.
God doesn't either. If you consult history you will find torture and bloodshed used by the church in the name of Christ when Roman Catholicism was made the state religion of the Roman Empire. The Grand Inquisitor was responsible for so much cruelty, authorized by the church.
Miracles are supposed to have happened with visions of the Virgin Mary and healing miracles too are supposed to have taken place in connection with Catholic "saints"......Sound familiar? (Matthew 7:21-23)
Must true Christians only pray and worship in modest places?
I have come to appreciate that Christians do not need a building at all.....they
are the church. They can meet in a forest or someone's garage....and that would be their church.
Deeje, are you a Christian churchgoer? Is you customary place of worship God-approved?
As one of Jehovah's Witnesses and a former Anglican, my place of worship is a modest building devoid of any images (not even any crosses) and set up for Bible education, because we do not practice rituals nor do we have repetitive prayers, or alters, or clergy in distinctive clothing. We have set up our worship based on the first century model......so pretty much the opposite of what you would see in Christendom, who followed the lead of Catholicism in many ways.
Does the Bible forbid stained glass windows and pipe organs? Some churches in America
display the flag and I don't believe God would find that practice perverse.
Decorations are not forbidden....but religious symbols used in worship were never used by the first Christians.
Did you know that Jesus forbids us to be any part of the world? (John 17:16; Matthew 15:19-20) Why? Because, according to the Bible, this world is ruled by satan. (1 John 5:19)
Flags are symbols of nations and people will pledge allegiance to their flag whilst taking up weapons to kill even their fellow Christians if their governments told them to....what does Jesus tell us to do?
"Continue to love your enemies and to pray for those persecuting you; that you may prove yourselves sons of your Father who is in the heavens, since he makes his sun rise upon wicked people and good and makes it rain upon righteous people and unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:43-45)
Did you know that saluting the flag is technically classified as an act of worship? Why would Christians want an idolatrous symbol in their house of worship?
How do you' love your enemy' by killing him?
How does Jesus prescribe places of worship? I believe the word temple is used in the Bible a number of times.
Jesus was Jewish.....the Temple was the center of Jewish worship and once God abandoned the Jews as his people, (Matthew 23:37-39) he allowed their Temple to be destroyed...and it has never been rebuilt. God turned his attention to a new nation under Christ.....and with a new covenant. (Acts of the Apostles 15:14)
Fashioning places of worship based on the Jewish Temple and its priesthood is not what what Christ established. The building where Christians meet is of secondary importance to the caliber of the people who gather there. If they are fed false religious ideas and pagan concepts dressed up as "Christianity" then the ornate nature of the building means nothing. It is then nothing but 'eye candy'. God wants us to worship in "spirit and truth". (John 4:23) If you don't teach the truth, then there is no Christianity.
Christendom is celebrating Easter right now......but there is nothing "Christian" about Easter apart from the time of year it is celebrated. You will not find the word "Easter" in the Bible because it was a pagan celebration involving the fertility goddess Ostre (pronounced Easter) which according to WIKI.....
"The goddess name
Ēostre is therefore linguistically
cognate with numerous other dawn goddesses attested among Indo-European language-speaking peoples. "
You think the dawn Easter service is Christian? It is pagan to its bootstraps!
I know he hated it when business for profit was conducted in the temples.
Jesus said that the ones who turned God's House into a" den of thieves" were to be cast out. Not only were they making a profit, but extorting money from their own brothers....something that Jews were not supposed to do.
We see many TV Evangelists dressed in Armani suits and living in the lap of luxury siphoning money off gullible people too lazy to leave their living rooms, talked into doing what takes no effort at all....to give them money. Any "Christian" living high off the hog on donated church money is nothing but a leach.
Charities that make huge profits and have well paid administration staff are businesses, not charities at all. True charities are run totally by volunteers.
Even those who serve as a ministers of their churches get paid for doing God's work. The apostle Paul said that these are worthy of their food and lodging but he set the example of working and earning his own money so as NOT to become a financial burden of the congregation he was serving.
2 Thessalonians 3:7-10
"For you yourselves know how you should imitate us, because we did not behave in a disorderly way among you, 8 nor did we eat anyone’s food free. On the contrary, by labor and toil we were working night and day so as not to impose an expensive burden on any one of you. 9 Not that we do not have authority, but we wanted to offer ourselves as an example for you to imitate. 10 In fact, when we were with you, we used to give you this order: “If anyone does not want to work, neither let him eat.”
I don't think that Paul would have accepted a house and a car and the payment of all utilities at the expense of his fellow Christians. How many clergy can say the same?
Sometimes it pays to get a better idea about what Christianity was like in the first century.....the churches have strayed a long way from the original model by adopting the ideas of flawed and power hungry humans.