Wacky Wednesday--We Shouldn’t Have Sacraments

Note: Before reading the following arguments, please understand that they are not what I believe. On Wednesdays, I deliberately argue for wrong ideas, challenging my listeners to call and defend the obvious right answer, which is usually far harder than one would expect. This is a summary of what Wacky Andrew will be arguing, not a representation of what real Andrew believes.

~God is everywhere in everything.
~Sacraments try to make a distinction between the sacred and the profane.
~But as Christians, don’t we believe that every day all the day what we are supposed to be doing is reaching out into this corrupted world and redeeming it? What sort of a message does it carry to say that the only place you can receive redemption is from a special ceremony conducted in a special place by a special person?
~Most Evangelicals believe that sacraments don’t actually do anything. They are really just vestigial versions of the Roman Catholic sacraments.
~Most Evangelicals believe they are purely symbolic, and if so, isn’t it better to avoid the mistake of letting them indicate to people something more than is actually going on?
~They distract people from the real message of the Gospel which is love of God and love of people and instead get them focused on an empty ritual, which is in any case external rather than internal.
~External rituals are at best a crutch or training wheels for people of weak faith.
~There is a mistaken notion that God is only shown by miracles and that we are supposed to go directly and only to Him for everything we need. Sacraments are just another version of this fallacy.
~You don’t need a sacrament to bring you into relationship with God, Jesus did that when He died on the cross for you. Everything else is derivative.
~God is available to all who seek and wait upon Him. These other practices run contrary to this simple truth.
~Sacramental rituals are apostacies because they lead people to mistake outward form for inward substance.
~Sacraments mistakenly treat ongoing spiritual processes as one-time events.