People believe many things about Jesus that are just not true. The Christ of their deluded minds never existed.Podcast version here
John 2:25 He did not need man's testimony about man, for He knew what was in a man.
Jesus did not exist.
Let me qualify that statement: the huggy-touchy, airy-fairy, freely feely, open-minded, peace happy hippy Jesus never existed. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve come across Christians in the world and on the internet who believe that Christ was a totally tolerant freedom worshipper Who completely accepted everyone’s ideas about God and inclusively embraced their individual opinions. They obviously have only scanned the Gospels and have never truly read, believed, or accepted what Jesus actually thought, said, and did.
I feel sorry for those who shape Christ into their own kind of savior and make Him into a happy collage of their own misunderstanding. Instead of being challenged and changed by Jesus, they toy with and turn Him into a tolerable figment of their own imagination. They want Jesus to be always joyful and never judgmental. They want Christ to be carefree and never constrictive. They want Him to be the Prince of peace and harmony, but never the Absolute Monarch of heaven and earth. They want fiction, not facts. They want grandiose tales and not the Gospel truth.
It’s time to stand up to them because they’re leading the church astray and heading down a path that leads to death. Jesus does not need their untrue testimony because He knows what is in man: arrogance and self-deception, delusion and narcissism, pride and hedonism.
As I wrote before, this modern-conceptualized Jesus did not exist. It’s time to step back from the abyss of heresy, hearsay, and unbelief. It’s time to truly read the Gospels and let God reveal to the Church His Holy Son once again.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, sadly there are many people who think they are Christians because they worship a Christ of their own making. They are deluded and dangerous; heretical and harmful; rebellious and wrong. Keep us true to Your ways and words. Protect us from their misguidance and malevolence. In Your Holy Name, we faithfully pray. Amen.
2 comments:
I've read several of your devotionals that come to this theme of "heresy" in the church and how the PC(USA) is falling further and further away from the life and message of Jesus. I would really enjoy a post that outlined how you think the church should look and what the core confessions of our faith should be. When were we the community you wish we would return to?
That's a great question, Andrew. If I was to say the 1950's that would take us back to segregation and no women pastors. I would not be party to either.
The context for the post is a direct to response that I received to my wordpress blog (www.stushie.wordpress.com) where I've been taking a lot of flak for writing against Eckhart Tolle's book "A New Earth"
A number of my critics are Christians who believe in their own live and let live theology. I wrote the criticisms as a means of Christian apologetics, which a field of our theology that is sadly dying.
I think that CS Lewis and Tertullian would have been writing just as seriously about the creeping heresy which is destroying the heart of Presbyterianism. We need some bold theological warriors in our present generation who are willing to say we are heading the wrong way. It's a hard calling and you end up like Jeremiah, constantly weeping for the people.
Thanks for reading and pondering the post.
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