People say and sing with their mouth that it is all about Jesus. But if we observe them, it’s all about them – their church, their pastor, their baptism, their evangelism, their charity, their spiritual gifts, their community.
It’s like listening to a sermon where the preacher says that it is the grace of God what saves us and it is the grace of God what sustains us and it is all about His grace and at the end of His sermon he would give a list of things to do to improve our spiritual life. And the entire congregation has no problem with these clearly contradicting points that they would receive it with applause. What is wrong with us? To see the contradicting concepts in Christianity, I do not think we need to be seminary trained or to have a possession of deep theological knowledge; all we need is some common sense.
A pastor once told me that New Covenant is a continuation of Old covenant. At the same time he believes in the FULL gospel and the forgiveness by the death of Christ. How can these two concepts go hand in hand? Under the New covenant we are forgiven by the death of Christ, which was a one time act, whereas per the Old Covenant the High priest has to go to the altar with the blood of bulls and goats day after day, year after year, again and again and again. To me, I can either believe that the one time sacrifice of the perfect lamb of God (Jesus) took my entire sins away OR I can believe that I need to do some kind of sacrifice (killing bulls and goats, confession, walking the aisle etc) to keep me forgiven. How can I believe both at the same time? It simply negates logic.
Another big one is, it is not by works we are saved. I knew it and I memorized Ephesians 2:8-9. But then I heard, we need to ‘work out our salvation' or we may 'fall from grace' and lose our salvation.
Again, both these concepts cannot be true. It’s like C.S Lewis said: either Jesus is a liar OR He is God. He cannot be both and He cannot be someone in between.
I wrote a post back in January on Christian Double talk. I am still amazed at the fact that people can believe with all their heart the two totally contradicting concepts, which totally defies any human logic and reasoning. It is one thing that Bible says ‘My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge’, but it is whole another thing that people don’t even use simple logic when it comes to their religious beliefs.
6 comments:
Bino,
I love how you "tell it how it is." Much like Dr. Phil, but even better.
It's so true (unfortunately) in modern churches people/pastors say one thing, but underneath and between the lines, they really believe another. Common Christian cliche's are all self-less, yet I'd say 99.9% of sermons are all selfish..."what YOU SHOULD/SHOULD NOT do" focus.
I am convinced the reason it's like this: people don't know Father, and don't know His LOVE. If one understands LOVE, then they will WANT to LIVE love and BE love.
Now, I want to fully confess, when I was attending the IC, I bought into such messages. I didn't take time to THINK about it. Or, I allowed fear to keep me inside the Religious construct. I lived (as messages in most IC's are now) pretty hypocritically.
Sigh... It grieves my heart when other bros, sisters & leaders continue this very harmful teaching and way of living. I love them so much. I just want them to live in the Truth.
You're absolutely correct that such messages, when one even looks at them simply, completely are contractive, thus defying basic logic and reasoning.
I'm very excited how books such as "The Shack" and "Pagan Christianity" among many others have not only surfaced, but are exploding in readership. I believe these books help expose such hypocracy in the modern church. They help show who Father, Son and Spirit are in a much gentler, and certainly Truth-filled manner.
~Amy :)
Bino,
I totally agree, brother. My favorite is when people try to explain parables like the the parable of the talents or the parable of the hidden treasure and teach things like, "Well, we know salvation is a free gift from God, but you had better be willing to sacrifice some stuff! I'm not saying you earn it, but you had better work for it!"
I honestly do not see how someone can claim to be under the Law and have faith in Jesus at the same time. It is not possible. I've tried and the Law just kept nullifying my faith in Jesus. I could never trust in Him because I always felt compelled to fix things about myself. After all, isn't all the Christian life a "balance"?
Amy,
I too lived it myself for a while. Religion took my ability to think and fed me poison all those days and eventually I became immune to it. It didn't make me sick, so why bother? We preach love but we practice lovelessness. We preach grace, but we don't show grace to others.
I remember, there was a lady who came to the church which I attended few years ago. She was a former prostitute, rescued from streets and as people came to know this, a group of 'righteous ones' objected her participation in communion. They said, if she is allowed to participate the communion, it becomes 'Devil's meal'. She left the third or fourth Sunday never came back again.
Where is love? Where is grace? Where is Jesus who said 'neither do I condemn you'?
Matthew,
I know what you are talking about those parables. It is ridiculously double talk.
We are under a covenant of grace, but yet we are to keep our 'balance' between grace and law. WOW!
We are either under grace OR under law, certainly not under a 'covenant of balance'.
Isn't it interesting that some pastors would tell us that all God's children are anointed, and they pray for 'special anointing'?
Isn't it interesting that the ones who are on the pulpit are more 'anointed' than the ones who sit in the pew?
What happens to the Scripture which says we are all priests (holy and chosen ones) when the church requires a pastor to 'officiate' Lord's supper?
Good points, Bino and everyone else. Unfortunately, for many years, I was one of those people who left my brain in the parking lot when I went into the building. I accepted what I was told without thinking about it.
I believe it's a form of brainwashing. For so long, we've been made to believe that only the pastor really knows the truth and we should never question what he says to us. As a result, we end up not trusting our hearts.
When questions about what we've been told begin to come up, we cram them down because, after all, the pastor can't be wrong. It's not until we begin to ralize that we've been lied to all of these years that we start to believe that we may have been right all along.
Aida,
To me, it is like teaching evolution in a Christian School. It's double talk. Did God create man or did man evolve from monkeys? But we all learned it, believed it and passed out exams. We didn't think the 'printed authority' can be wrong we we followed the crowd...
I feel angry on my own foolishness that I subscribed to so many lies...
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