What is the greatest idol in the lives of most Americans?
I know what I consider it to be, but Bob Russell, a grad of the local CIncinnati Christian University, came away from a pastor’s meeting with a different answer. Thinking about it, his may be right, at least for many Americans.
“The Number One False God in America”
Check it out. Is he right?
What do you think?
A quick thought for the day…
I have often heard this said:
Have faith in God for your circumstances.
When people are in trouble or life is not going as planned, their supporters often make this comment. I’m beginning to understand that as common as that sentiment is, it’s not the right perspective.
Long after we’ve settled this nation from shore to shore, Americans still believe in Manifest Destiny. We believe we are entitled—regardless of what that entitlement might now include—and it makes its way into our theology.
No matter what we believe our above-mentioned circumstances might be, or how we envision them working out as we imagine, God remains. And as much as we think we know what’s good for us, our faith in God does not entitle us.
In an age of an increasingly vocal atheist minority, one very common thread weaves through the cries of the most shrill: They expected for a particular circumstance, resolved in their own way, and they did not receive it. What got abandoned in the aftermath is their faith in God.
Our dependence on God for our “circumstances” is what inevitiably gets us in trouble.
The more pure faith is this: Have faith in God.
No enthronement of our will. No expectations. No add-ons, amendments, clauses, or qualifiers. No idols.
Just God.
If He alone is our object of faith, we will always be satisfied.
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:
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.