Have you noticed that, like clockwork, the mainstream magazines (Time, National Geographic, Life, etc.) will come out with a special edition about every year with a title like, “Discovering the real Jesus” or “Historic Jesus”, “Understanding the World’s Religions” and “Lost Books of the Bible” or some other such dribble? They have been doing this for decades, and it is all very predictable. The hook that gets people to buy the magazines is to spark curiosity in some “new” historic discovery that has the potential for suddenly changing people’s minds about what they have believed about God and the Bible, or religion in general. It is all very syncretic, basically seeking to affirm the validity of and pragmatic usefulness of everyone’s ideas, opinions and beliefs. The basic conclusion goes something like this: “Regardless of whether your faith is based on “the” correct interpretation of all things spiritual, or whether your beliefs can even be proven to be true of false, as long as it serves the purpose of making you happy and content, and improves your life, then it has value and you should probably keep doing it.
I heard Joel Osteen saying this to Morgan Freeman recently when I watched National Geographic’s “The Story of God”: “I don’t go into a lot of doctrine”. (And that is definately true!) “I go practical, using what God has given you so when you leave you can say, ‘You know what? It was worth me going to church today!'” Morgan Freeman left church with the warm fuzzies because he witnessed thousands of people getting worked up into an ecstatic frenzy. This validated the experience for him because people left feeling good and encouraged. Don’t get me wrong, people need to be encouraged. But encouraged the right way and encouraged with truth.
I have watched videos of these NAR (New Apostolic Reformation) and ARC (Association of Related Churches) services where lots of people will get worked up into mass hysteria and manifest bizarre behavior such as falling down, (“being slain in the spirit” which is nowhere spoken of or witnessed in the Biblical accounts of things happening in church), babbling incoherently in what can’t even be defined as a language, making noises like animals, shaking uncontrollably, and a host of other such things. Getting a crowd worked into a frenzy is NOT a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit. This can happen at a magic show or a rock concert. It doesn’t prove anything except that people are fickle, gullible and easily influenced by those around them. Think of the time recorded in the Gospels when the crowd went from shouting out “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” to “Crucify Him!” all within a matter of hours.
In the video I mentioned, Morgan Freeman concluded with this statement, “The god in me is who I really am at my core.” This is true, but it is not good. Who we really are at our core is a lost sinner in rebellion against a Holy God. If that is our god, we are desperately lost. We are guilty because we break His moral law, but we justify ourselves by comparing ourselves to each other and others, not by comparing our heart’s orientation to God’s law, and to Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of the Living God. When our hearts are exposed, we see that we are in desperate need of a merciful Savior, not a smooth talking “preacher” who tells us that we are all basically good, and we just need some pointers on how to live a better life.
The troubling fact is that this “self-help, self-improvement” cacophony is being taught in many modern churches as if that is the Gospel message, when it most certainly is not. There is a great deal of wisdom to be found in the Bible for life, and we should take it seriously, but at it’s core the Bible is NOT a self-help, self-improvement book as if you can simply use random verses taken out of context for life tips. Despite what is taught in many churches about how God has a perfect plan for your life, about how God gives us dreams and visions that He calls us to seek out and fulfill, and finding your “purpose” is the most important thing in life, it is not. The Bible is the account of how a perfect, Holy Creator created and rules over all and we, as human beings are in big trouble because we have sinned against Him, and we need salvation. The Good News (Gospel) is that we can be forgiven by the shed blood of Jesus Christ and made right with God, no matter how circumstantial things play out for us in this life. This life most certainly is not your best life now. Life is fraught with all kinds of challenges, trials, tribulations and uncertainty. The salvation of your eternal soul is THE most important thing, and even if you can use the Bible principles to make a more enjoyable life for yourself right now, if you miss the main message, you ultimately miss the whole thing and your soul is damned to a Godless eternity. As Christ said, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” “Those who seek to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives will find them.” Seeker friendly churches that water down the Gospel message to make it less offensive to people are NOT serving those people, they are damning their souls to hell.
The Gospel message is offensive to our delicate sensibilities because it confronts our sin. It is supposed to. Our pride is our worse enemy. It makes us think we are “not all that bad” or worse still, “we are basically good” and we just need to tidy up some things to get us on the track to have a good life. Don’t buy into this hogwash. It is not true. I want to make an analogy: suppose you have a rare disease that can only be cured by one very specific food. If you do not find that food and eat it, you will die. Your well-meaning friends take you to a great banquet with all kinds of delicious and enticing foods. It is a smorgasbord of wonderful foods. You can have any one of the dishes that tantalize your senses, but the one food you need is not there. The world offers a million varieties of “religions” to choose from. Just pick one that suits your fancy and tells you what you want to hear and go with that. But the true Gospel message of sin and redemption is that one food you need to save your eternal soul. No matter how much you partake of the world’s banquet, without the truth, you will die and spend eternity in hell. Find the truth and do not forsake it, “come hell or high water” as the saying goes.
Danny's Stump 