Tearing Down Idols

We need a new vision.

If God is going to shake up his people, it has to happen inside the Church.

Recently, God has shown me that whenever a righteous king took over the thrones of Israel and Judah, two things happened:

The heathen idols and temples were torn down.
The broken-down things of God were raised up again.

I think that the Church in America has to start tearing down idols and getting back to the “main and the plain” in living out Christ’s life as believers in the 21st Century.

I believe there are a few idols that must immediately go:

1. Psychology
Psychology and Christianity are worldviews. Each has its own set of knowledge and practice. Both attempt to explain how people live. Only one leads to salvation.

Psychology attempts to build up the Self. Christianity deems the Self utterly corrupt and worthy only of death. This is the whole point of the cross. When a person comes to Christ, he crucifies the Self and let’s the Lord give him a new Self, a justified Self, a heavenly Self.

Disciples of modern psychology have overrun the Church, bringing us to a point where psychological theories have equal weight with Scripture. Our sermons are inundated with this syncretistic nonsense.

Transactional Analysis, the Human Potential Movement, B.F. Skinner, Carl Jung – we don’t need that so-called wisdom. We need Jesus. Please pastors, give us a revelation of Jesus! If knowing Jesus is eternal life itself, why are we getting so much Henry Cloud and so little Jesus Christ?

2. Cultural Relevancy
When the Spirit of God departs the temple, we compensate by saying, “Wow! Look at all the fancy gold things in here!”

Our churches have compensated for a lack of true, Spirit-filled preaching, worship, and community by shifting everything to be “culturally relevant”, hoping that by being as hip as the world, no one will notice what is missing.

Instead of being the counter-cultural people that will be hated by popular culture, we have assimilated that debased culture so effectively that we no longer have anything to say to the lost. We look just like what we are supposed to flee.

3. Seeker-Sensitivity
Here is a simple translation of “Seeker Sensitivity” – take the Gospel and remove the difficult parts (like the cross), promote a Jesus that asks nothing of anyone, mix in a man-centered “theology,” some sort of media overload, topical preaching based on tidbits of Bible verses taken from a hundred different translations, and messages that are three points and a conclusion (because we all know that is how the Spirit speaks.)

What you wind up getting is a “seeker” who never really gets a chance to meet the real Jesus, never understands the Bible, never learns how to let the Spirit lead, and never comes to the cross. In short, there is good reason to believe that this seeker, when he/she makes a profession of faith, perhaps is not putting their faith in Jesus, but in some manmade, syncretistic illusion of Jesus. Perhaps we are making them far more a child of Hell than they were when they walked into the church building.

The best way to be seeker-sensitive is to preach the full Gospel and not try to make it palatable. If we truly believe that the Spirit guides into all truth, then we must rely on the Spirit to work in the life of the seeker and not second-guess the Spirit’s ability to truly work conversion. The best way to be seeker-sensitive is to be utterly counter-cultural and let seekers see that we are the peculiar people, people who have rejected the debauched culture of our day and taken on a new culture: that of the Lord of All.

We now believe that it is about numbers and not real conversion or else we would be more willing to let people walk away. Not everyone will make it. We need to try to reach everyone, but compromising our message should not be the way to attempt this.

Next time, we’ll talk about raising up the broken-down things of God.

The Backstory Behind Cerulean Sanctum

Back in April 2003, I was in church worshipping and had an experience in which I was overwhelmed by the fact that many people were worshiping a god of their own creation, not truly knowing God to worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

I was staggered and had to sit down. This was in the midst of 3,000 worshipers.

I went home and could not think. But even as I lay there, I finally realized that what I had heard was true. As I examined my own heart by the light of the Spirit over the last few months, I realized that I was one of those people.

How can it be that I really don’t know the Lord? I gave my life to Christ twenty-six years ago on a cold, starry February night in the chill air of a Christian camp in Ohio. I’ve prayed, ministered in dozens of ministries, been baptized with the Holy Spirit (ironically at the same camp in a February years later), pursued a degree in Christian Ed, and certainly influenced lives in a number of places.

Truth is, over the years I was lulled to sleep. Much of that is my own fault, but I also believe that some of that fault rests with what is happening to American Christianity. We are falling asleep or abandoning the Truth altogether at an ever-increasing rate.

I’ve talked to others since that time and I am appalled by what people are telling me about what is going on in their Christian walk. More and more dedicated Christians are revealing to me that they really don’t know the Lord, either.

Now this is not a matter of salvation – at least I don’t believe it is in most cases – but it says how easily we have let the world consume us with its vacuous thrills and empty promises.

How many of us spend the hours a day needed in order to really know God? Is a half hour quiet time going to get us all that much closer to knowing the deep things of the Infinite One? How much of the Bible do I have memorized? If it really is so transforming, why have I not memorized it from cover to cover? We’ve held on to things that don’t matter and forsaken the eternal in favor of perishing things. We all know what they are, so I don’t have to state them all here.

I hope to think that like Paul, the scales are falling from my eyes and I am seeing the depths of how far we have fallen.

Through all this, I have realized that effort is needed and have been girding my own loins, so to speak. I hope to discuss all this here in days to come, but the point still remains that if we as the Church want to live out our calling we cannot let this continue.

Long ago, God called me to be a Barnabas that raised up Pauls. Perhaps now is the time for that to kick into high gear.

Do you really know Christ? Do you settle for tiny fragments of Him even though the fullness of His life can be lived in yours? Have you really died to this world at the foot of the cross? Are the sick healed when you lay hands on them? When you minister, do you get the feeling that it is mostly your own effort rather than the Spirit moving in power through you?

Good. Keep on asking those questions and let yourself be disturbed by the answers.

Then let’s do something about it.

Cults: What is not covered here…

In the midst of this examination of the major branches of practice within the American Church, a word must be said about cults.

Ask any two cult experts what defines a “cult” and you will find a variety of answers. For me, the two most common beliefs of pseudo-Christian cults are:

1. Non-Trinitarian
2. “Jesus and…”

Denying the orthodox truth of the Trinitarian nature of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is a surefire way to get a cult label. This test alone weeds out your major pseudo-Christian cults: Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons (Latter Day Saints), The Unity School of Christianity, and others.

“Jesus and…” is a more critical test. Adding to the finished work of Christ is an enormous mistake. Many supposedly Christian churches fall down here, insisting that salvation only comes when something else (i.e. – a ritual, practice, a human leader, or additional extra-biblical theology) is added to Christ’s propitiary work.

The “Jesus and…” test traps the major cults above, too. Sadly, this test also culls the Roman Catholic Church (for more on what the RCC adds, click here.)

For this reason, pseudo-Christian cults will not factor into anything we discuss here.

Our basis will always be that the Trinity reflects the true nature of God and that salvation comes from Jesus’s finished work alone operating in the life of the believer.