Category: False Teaching

Posted on

Door Checking

“I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.” John 8:11

I read a disturbing blog post a couple of days ago from a popular and (among certain circles) well-known blogger, a self-professed “20-year Ministry veteran trying to… live out the red letters of Jesus.”

The post begins with a boastful “I’m going to hell.” After a lot of judgmental-sounding opinion condemning fellow Christians, he concludes with “Hell seems like a much more beautiful place.”

Consider that: “I’m going to hell, and that seems like a much more beautiful place than Heaven.” This from a man many consider a “pastor.”

I was unprepared for this.

And then I recalled Genesis 3:1 “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Indeed, has God said, You shall not eat from any tree of the garden?’” Three verses later the serpent says “you will not certainly die.”

“Fall and Expulsion from the Garden of Eden,” Michelangelo, 1510

Thus began the massive lie. The same lie being retold by popular bloggers claiming Christian credentials based on 20 years of ministry veteran-ship.

Which reminds me of a music video released 33 years left. In March of 1985 an all-star group if musicians got together to record a song called “We Are The World.” The song became an instant classic. The relevance for this post was the sign producer Quincy Jones famously posted on the studio door : “Check your Egos at the door.”

How does an intentionally-provocative blog post from an equally intentionally-provocative societal commentator using “Ministry” as a credentials shield relate to a 33 year-old song about unity?

Without diving into the commonalities of “everyone is ok, no matter what they choose to do” found in both philosophies, I want to focus instead on the idea of “living out the red letters of Jesus” vs. “Check Your Egos at the door.

Follow me here. The “red letters” of Jesus were all about ego. They were all about personal desire and gratification. They were all about pushing down what we believe in order to embrace what God tells us is true. Even when it hurts.

And they were all about “checking” something at the entryway to the Kingdom.

Regardless of whether we call that ego, or desire, or “enlightened Progressive opinion,” Jesus was clear: what we must check at the door of the Kingdom is our sin. We may enter the Kingdom broken by sin, but we cannot bring the love and practice of that sin with us.

Credit: Rolling Stone

What does this mean?

It means that as true Christians reborn in Faith through the blood and sacrifice of God reconciling Himself to us at Calvary, those red letters of Jesus actually mean something. They mean what Jesus intended, not what our modern relativistic interpretations wish them to be.

And the most important red letters are those punctuating two encounters where Jesus heals or forgives: “Go, and sin no more.”

These words were most famously spoken to the adulterous woman following the encounter described in John 8:11: “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.”

Notice the lesson here for Christians: we are not to condemn others for their sins, even as we forgive them.  Yet they are also to give up those sins.

Check your sins at the door.

Contrast this with the Ministry Veteran Blogger’s implied conclusion: “If Heaven means I can’t be whatever I define myself to be, do whatever I feel is right for me, I’ll take Hell.”

I’m not checking anything at the door, and if you ask me to you’re just a close-minded (insert favorite insult here).

Credit: www.johnmartinborg.com/spiritual-art

God’s forgiveness is freely-given, but it is not without cost.

Forgiveness requires a changed heart and a changed life. Ask any betrayed spouse who stays in a marriage what this means.

Forgiveness does not free us to repeat our past mistakes. It frees us from the condemnation of those mistakes.

Forgiveness only comes when we ask for it. Returning to past sins, or falling into new ones, requires returning to our knees and asking God once more to wash away our transgressions.

Forgiveness requires obedience and subservience to God’s Word. The writer of Hebrews 2:1 states: “Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away.” Believing we can rewrite God’s law to suit our lifestyles in the name of “inclusiveness” is a direct act of disobedience.

In today’s increasingly secularized world, Christians are too-often confused about the role God’s law and living a life of Christian love as defined by Jesus. We’re told the Jesus of modern worship invited everyone to the table, with no expectations or requirements. That God loves and forgives us in our sin rather than in spite of it. We seem to buy the massive lie that God does not mean what He has written on our hearts.

I don’t know what is truly in the heart of the blogger I mentioned at the beginning of this post. I do know this: his love for his own ego and self-defined version of Christian life is infinitely too big to check at any door, even the door of the Kingdom.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

Posted on

Untamed

“They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:53)

“Trust me – you’ll know when I’m mad!”

Ever hear anyone say that? We sometimes completely misread another person, assuming because they seem soft-spoken they’re easily manipulated or weak. Kind of like Captain McCluskey and Sollozzo thought Michael Corleone was just some “young punk.” We know how that turned out…

“It’s not personal, it’s strictly business…”

Every Lenten season, I’m bewildered by modern revisionist Christians (including pastors and pseudo-pastors like former minister turned political commentator John Pavlovitz) attempting to recast the Jesus and God of scripture into something more easily digested by today’s “delicate” or “enlightened” spiritual palettes with “woke” politically correct awareness.

As though an authentic Jesus, the acknowledged son of the Living God, Lion of Judah, Alpha and Omega, the very Word that spoke creation into being has mellowed with time, reconsidering the commandments he embodied.

A Different Jesus

Unlike the milk toast, lukewarm, tolerant-of-any-and-all-behaviors-as-long-as-you-mean-well Jesus popularized by scriptural-lite churches seeking ever-larger audiences and appeasing and increasingly secularized world, the real Jesus was convicted, fully “sold out” for the essential message of God to love Him and turn from all forms of sin.

Even in his quiet moments, Jesus was clear. Every encounter he had with a fallen soul ended with some form of instruction to repent. When challenged, he never retreated to meek and shy platitudes but rather reiterated the central role God and God’s Law must play in our lives. He lived out the words of Joshua when as a dying patriarch he told all of Israel “As for me and my house, I will follow the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)

If read with a discerning eye, Jesus’ words often plainly cut through the lackadaisical or deceitful attitudes of his listeners. Sometimes, bordering on the fiery and harsh.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. Cecco del Caravaggio’s “Christ expulses the money changers out of the temple,” 1610

In Luke 12:49-53, Jesus is recorded having a lengthy discussion with both his disciples and a “crowd of many thousands.” Near the end of this episode he offers these words: “I have come to bring fire on earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.” Earlier, he described the faithless and unwise manager being “cut to pieces” by his master, and those not doing their master’s will being “beaten with many blows.”

Not exactly the weak-kneed pacifist popular with the Richard Rohr crowd. In fact, neither Jesus nor God are ever described in Scripture as being “meek and mild,” tamed like house pets for our amusement.

Fear of God is a Real Thing

Instead, from Genesis to Revelation what you find is a God who is to be loved, but also respected in fear, worship, and yes, sometimes dread:

  • Leviticus 19:14 – “You shall fear your God, I am the Lord.”
  • Psalm 19:9 – “The fear of the Lord is pure”
  • Psalm 111:10 – “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
  • Proverbs 1:7 – “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”
  • Proverbs 14:27 – “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death.”
  • 1 Peter 2:17 – “Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.
  • Romans 3:18 – In Paul’s indictment of fallen mankind separated from God by sin he says, “there is no fear of God before their eyes.”

And what of the reactions Jesus’ own disciples had to his amazing works? In Mark 4 after Jesus spent the day teaching crowds beside a lake, he and his disciples cross the lake to find a bit of calm and piece. As they crossed, a terrible storm arose, threatening to capsize their boats and drown the men.

Roused from a sound sleep in the front of the boat, Jesus rebukes and calms the storm, scolding his disciples for having so little faith. Terrified, they asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

Hardly timid.

Biblical Truth

Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of Biblical truth. Encouraged by trendy terms such as “tolerance” and “inclusion” – which in and of themselves are worthy ideals and in the proper context wholly scriptural – we’ve somehow transformed God into a deity that looks very much like us, a kind and grandfatherly soul who tolerates our every transgression and gives us all the things we ask for.

This new God accepts our modern secularized morality, agreeing with our redacted and reinterpreted scripture to fit the whims and desires of the moment. This God has no standard we must meet, as long as we consider ourselves “good people.” This God is a God taken for granted.

Pastor Steven “God Broke the Law for Sin” Furtick and Pastor Rick “Works First, Faith Second” Warren

The true God – the God of Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, Paul, you and me – that God is not to be taken lightly. That God allows us the follies of our own will but holds us accountable. That God “has authority to throw you into hell,” as Jesus warned in Luke 12:5.

Yet underlying this awesome and omniscient power over our lives is a God of love, a God filled with kindness, a God faithful in all He promises for those who fear and love Him. He desires our hearts but will ultimately destroy those who harden their hearts and minds to His will.

God Won’t be Tamed

.

Simply put, there’s no way to “tame” or “tone down” God. We can’t redefine Him to fit our modern tastes any more than we can change the law of gravity to soften our fall if we accidentally step off a 20 story building. We can’t negotiate with His eternal and perfect nature. And we can’t avoid the consequences when we try to do these things.

Yet God is also gracious, loving, overflowing with kindness and mercy, willing to forgive us and welcome us home when we remember that in the end everything is about Him, and never about us.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

Posted on

Surviving the World

“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” – Romans 12:2

Dear Christian – we live in confusing times. Every day it seems we’re bombarded with admonitions and rebukes:

“You can say this but you can’t say that.”

“Live the way we think you should and embrace anything anyone else feels or you’re X-cist and X-phobic.”

“You don’t really believe that stuff about a literal Hell do you?”

“What?? You actually buy that immaculate conception story? Are you crazy”

“Don’t tell me you actually think the Bible is literally the inspired Word of God. Surely you must realize it’s just a book written by men with all their biases and limitations.”

Or one of my favorites from a recent popular daytime talk show featuring five B- and C-list celebrity women commenting on the weighty matters of the day: “Talking to God and hearing Him talk back is what I call mental illness.”

Things Have Changed

Life for Christians today seems different than when many of us first became Believers. Back before social media created John the Baptists out of anyone with a laptop or a smartphone or offered easy pulpits for anyone with a grievance of hate to spew.

Credit: Diialia from youtube.com

Before it seemed like our Bibles had been tossed into cultural blenders, only to be rearranged and reinterpreted to mean anything anyone wishes, at any time and for any reason.

Before secular debates forced changes in our understanding of sacred Scripture to conform Christian faith to the sensibilities of “enlightened” Society.

Before faith was publicly ridiculed as casually as we comment on the weather.

Before our sensitivities to “feelings” overshadows our concerns for the very lives of those around us.

As an unashamed follower of Christ, I’m saddened by what is happening to the message of love and authentic obedience to God’s Word espoused by the Jesus of scripture.

I’m disappointed with celebrities and pastors who place their number of followers, book sales, and secular adoration over Truth and Salvation. With religious pundits politicize faith.

I’m angered over preachers of the Word who build treasures for themselves at the expense of the very congregants they profess to serve.

I’m disheartened by churches that remove crosses and sermons about sacrifice in favor of blithe self-help sermon series and bland walls filled with nondescript portrayals of perfect lives because Biblical truth is somehow “too harsh and depressing.”

Listening to The Truth

When God’s Word became flesh, and God’s voice spoke to both that generation and all of creation about His son, saying a “Listen to him,” His instruction wasn’t a suggestion, or an illustration of just one out of many ways to reach salvation. Jesus embodied the definition of received grace and substitutionary atonement.

Jesus’ life was the fulfillment of God’s promise first made in Genesis 3:14-15, where in response to the serpent’s lies and the subsequent downfall of man God proclaimed: “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” 

Credit: www.e-watchman.com

We see this struggle playing out daily before our very eyes.

Rebellion in Our DNA

When we read this account of Genesis, and then the next few chapters, we get a more complete picture of the fullness in God’s promise of a Savior, and how deeply desperate we are in need of salvation. Rebellion is in our DNA, embedded at the core of our collective psyche, masquerading as “enlightenment” and “independence.” Our search for self-salvation allows sin to constantly lurk outside the doors of our hearts, desiring to consume us.

Every day, each of us makes moral/spiritual decisions. The pressure to make those decisions based on ever-changing social “norms” is overwhelming. We’re told to “feel” our way through life using contemporary measurements, not make decisions based on outdated and archaic writings of men who lived 2,000 or 3,000 years ago.

And so it’s been from the beginning, even with Jesus’ earliest followers after his resurrection and ascension. We read in Paul’s epistles an admonition to the congregations in Galatia to turn from prideful legalism as they fell away from the gospel of grace. He rebuked the church in Corinth not turn a blind eye to the division and rampant immorality that had crept into its midst. To the Colossians he warned against the false teachings of those who were questioning the very identity and deity of Jesus.

Credit: www.messianicpublications.com

Late, when John penned the Book of Revelation as a letter to the seven churches in Asia Minor, Jesus’ own words reinforced the message of vigilance against a diluted faith. They – like many today – had abandoned God’s Word as the only standard for guiding belief and behaviors.

Unchanging Hearts

Yet have we as a people really changed that much over the centuries? Our technology may be different, our ability to see the world in larger terms has expanded, but have our hearts grown?

Just like Christians today, early Believers were surrounded by those advocating lifestyles and philosophies in direct conflict with scriptural teaching, often in the name of “tolerance” and “love.” And just like many of us today, early Christians faced harsh criticism, ridicule, and ostracizing for holding to the authentic teachings passed from God through Jesus.

Even popular pseudo-pastors with catchy-sounding blog sites tell us our faith is wrong, distorted, irrelevant in a world where nothing is out of bounds if it’s done under the catch-all of “love,” nothing is counter to God’s direction (unless, of course, it disagrees with their vision of the world).

A Hard Truth

Here’s the hard truth for all who believe in the timelessness of God’s sovereign Word. If we are to heed Paul’s warning not to conform to this world, to immunize ourselves from the moral and spiritual confusion surrounding us, we must first resist the pressure to conform to the Godless standards of our culture.

In his epistle to the Romans, acknowledged by many as the clearest and most systematic presentation of Christian doctrine in all Scripture, Paul warns us that the pagan world system will continually pressure us to fit in and endorse its belief system, to be “normal” and “mainstream.” The true #Resist movement in society is pushing back against this system of societal enslavement.

The enticements never feel like shackles, of course. Just as the Moabites corrupted the Israelites in Numbers 31-33, or the Nicolaitans attempting to corrupt the Ephesians in Revelation 2, these seductions are most often presented as assurances of pleasure, self-gratification, and personal gain. False teachings are filled with prisons masquerading as promises.

Avoiding False Teachings

How do we avoid the whispers of an enemy waiting at our door? At some point, we must simply choose not to listen, refuse to embrace them as enlightened truths of a more openly aware society, and shut them out.

False doctrines, watering-down our beliefs to accommodate a more “tolerant” expression of faith, are like poisonous vipers. We may escape unharmed after one or two encounters. Over time, their bite becomes toxic to our spiritual health.

The lure of cultural conformity works its way into every aspect of our lives – how we live, how we relate, how we worship, how some in society respond to social pressures. When we remove the guardrails of obedience to God’s Word from our lives, all we have left is moral equivalency (that is, morality is what I say it is). And with every example of behavior straying from ever-evolving social norms, the outcry for another man-made remedy in the form of a law or rule emerges.

We’ve forgotten the direct simplicity of God’s plan, replacing it with a society demanding only one rule: agree with us or be exiled. How much more infinitely pure is the direct Word of our Creator?

Scripture tells us “every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood,” (Genesis 8:21). How much truer is that today, as the world crowds in to replace God with cultural conformity?

Over the next few days, pause a moment and reflect on where you look for guidance. Is it from the peer pressure screaming at you to fit in or is it from the timeless, inerrant Word of God? The answer may surprise you.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17