I’m sure I’ve agreed to some shit over the years.

Not knowingly, of course. I’m talking about those Terms and Conditions that pop up every time a company wants to update its software.

I never read them. Just check the box and get on with my life. For all I know, Apple owns my firstborn and Amazon can harvest my organs whenever they feel like it.

I was a Director of I.T. You’d think I’d know better.

I’ve seen plenty of software updates that didn’t improve a damn thing. Sometimes they fix a problem. Other times they create one, and you’re stuck spending the next three days undoing whatever some developer thought was a brilliant idea.

Churches have been doing something similar for a long time.

We’ve spent 2,000 years updating Christianity. Adding requirements, changing the rules, locking people out of certain features, and occasionally getting rid of things we probably should’ve kept. And somehow, we’ve convinced ourselves all those changes were there from the beginning.

So I got to wondering what Christianity’s Terms and Conditions would look like if somebody actually bothered to publish the updates.

Turns out, we’ve made some pretty significant changes.

I’m not entirely sure Jesus would agree to them.

Christianity User Agreement, Version 2026

Section 1: Eligibility Requirements

ORIGINAL: “Follow me.”

UPDATED: Follow Jesus, provided you first agree with our understanding of who Jesus is, why Jesus died, what happened afterward, how the Bible works, and which people God is disappointed in.

Oh, and depending on your denomination, you may need to be baptized again. Apparently, the first one didn’t take.

Compatibility Notice: Acceptance by one Christian organization does not guarantee acceptance by another. Some users may discover they were never Christians in the first place.

Section 2: Neighbor Coverage

ORIGINAL: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

UPDATED: Love your neighbor as yourself, unless your neighbor is gay, undocumented, Muslim, transgender, or votes for the wrong people.

In those cases, loving your neighbor may be replaced with praying that God changes them, passing laws to make their lives more difficult, or explaining why they’re going to hell.

Terms and exclusions apply. Apparently.

Section 3: Wealth Management

ORIGINAL: “You cannot serve both God and money.”

UPDATED: Wealth is now considered evidence that God likes you. The more money you have, the more God apparently approves of your life choices.

This does raise some awkward questions about Jesus, who didn’t seem to have much money at all. But the finance committee has assured us that we’re taking those passages out of context.

Premium membership benefits include preferred parking, your name on a building, and the comforting assurance that Jesus was speaking metaphorically when he mentioned camels and needles.

Section 4: Customer Support and Troubleshooting

ORIGINAL: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”

UPDATED: Questions may be submitted to authorized religious representatives during normal business hours.

Questions concerning biblical contradictions, church history, institutional abuse, or the possibility that your pastor might be wrong may require additional verification.

Repeated questioning may result in suspension of membership privileges.

Known Issue: Some administrators are unable to distinguish between a sincere theological question and an attempted system intrusion.

A fix is not currently scheduled.

Section 5: Judgment and Enforcement

ORIGINAL: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.”

UPDATED: Members are encouraged to monitor the behavior, relationships, clothing, political affiliations, and reproductive decisions of others.

Violations should be reported promptly to the appropriate religious authorities, preferably through Facebook.

Privacy Notice: Your personal sins remain confidential. Everybody else’s may be shared publicly for accountability purposes.

Section 6: Service and Leadership

ORIGINAL: “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.”

UPDATED: Leadership positions may include elevated status, exclusive access, preferential treatment, and authority over individuals of lower organizational rank.

Senior leadership is exempt from certain accountability provisions.

Security Advisory: Reports of misconduct involving administrators may be automatically redirected to the administrators themselves.

In I.T., we’d call that a spectacularly stupid security policy.

Multiple Versions Now Available!

Of course, Christianity isn’t running a single operating system anymore.

We’ve got options.

Catholic Enterprise Edition: Centralized administration, extensive documentation, and a very long history of version control. Some legacy features cannot be uninstalled.

Protestant Open Source: Anybody can fork the project. And boy, have they. Half the forks happened because somebody didn’t like the previous developer. The other half happened over the color of the carpet.

Evangelical Premium: Advertises a return to the original software while requiring several proprietary plugins. Certain features are disabled for women and LGBTQ+ users.

Progressive Christianity Beta: Actively removing legacy restrictions. Still debating what to call the software. The committee has been meeting for six years.

I use that last version myself.

It’s got its bugs.

Trust me.

Important Legal Disclaimer

And because no modern user agreement would be complete without a paragraph designed to protect the organization from responsibility, I present:

Section 14.3: Divine Liability Disclaimer

The Church makes no warranty, express or implied, that its interpretation of the Divine accurately represents the intentions of the Divine.

All theological claims are provided “AS IS” and may vary substantially by denomination, geographic location, historical period, and the political opinions of the senior pastor.

The Church assumes no responsibility for spiritual distress, unnecessary guilt, religious trauma, or the discovery that a doctrine presented as eternal truth was actually invented at a committee meeting in the fourth century.

By continuing to participate, users acknowledge that they may be required to defend positions Jesus never expressed.

Management reserves the right to change these terms without notice.

Amen.

But Here’s the Thing About Updates

Before somebody accuses me of suggesting Christianity was perfect until people started messing with it, let me be clear.

It wasn’t.

The earliest Christians disagreed about all sorts of things. They argued over theology, authority, who belonged, and whether Gentiles needed to be circumcised. (I can’t imagine the attendance was great at the meeting where they discussed circumcision).

Christianity has always changed, and some of those changes were long overdue. We’ve reconsidered interpretations that justified slavery, excluded women, and treated entire groups of people as less than fully human.

There’s still work to do.

The trouble starts when the people writing the updates are mostly interested in protecting their own authority, their money, or their ability to tell everybody else how to live.

I worked in I.T. long enough to know that when a system keeps hurting its users, you don’t solve the problem by blaming the users. You examine the system, figure out who has administrator privileges, and check what they’ve changed.

And if the same people who caused the problems are the only ones allowed to fix them, well, good luck with that.

One Final Update

Before you go, please review the following notice:

Christianity has updated its Terms and Conditions.

By clicking “I Agree,” you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and accepted approximately 2,000 years of theological revisions, denominational disputes, ecclesiastical power struggles, and interpretive disagreements.

You further acknowledge that failure to comply may result in consequences extending well beyond the cancellation of your subscription.

[ I AGREE ]

[ I HAVE QUESTIONS ]

Error 403: Access Denied.

Your account has been flagged for suspicious theological activity.

Please contact your local religious administrator.

Which is funny, considering that the more I read the Terms and Conditions, the more I suspect Jesus wouldn’t qualify for membership in the religion that bears his name.

And I’m pretty sure he’d have some questions.