A Gospel Rant

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel -- which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!
-- Galatians 1:6-9

I read "astonished" there and think you could substitute "pissed off."

I really am in a good mood; I promise I am. But something got into me last night at Element as I, preaching from Exodus 5-6, was talking about the groanings of a "broken spirit and harsh slavery," about dark nights of the soul (yes, we used the new Mother Theresa "revelations" as an illustration), and I began to be overcome with how glorious the cross of Christ is and how satisfactorily it speaks to the cries of the human heart and yet the places where one might find the sufficiency of grace and the satisfaction of Jesus Christ in the American Church are few and far between. It sucks. It really sucks. And it made me really, really angry last night. I had to pause for a second to compose myself, lest I go off on a rant detracting from the point of the message.

So I'm saving that rant for you, dear readers. :-)
Please forgive me if it's disjointed. I really do get emotional about this stuff.

It started, actually, a day or two ago when I saw these heinous videos.

This is total b.s. Complete and utter b.s.
This pitting of "real" against "lame" ones is spiritually bankrupt dreck from the pit of hell. The guy on the right calls himself "authentic," and the people who made these clearly have no clue what "authentic" means. For them, as for most pomo em-church poseurs, it means "cool." Do you see what they're doing here? They are saying the "authentic" Christian is the cool one. That's why the dude on the left has on a nerdy suit and has limp hair.

They could have made a statement about grace vs. works, and under the idiocy, I suppose it might be there, but what they are really doing is mocking fellow believers. We are the cool ones, we are the ones who have it figured out. Plus we have product in our hair.
This has got to stop. This cult of the cool in the church must stop. This fetishizing of hipness must stop. It is idolatry.

And the reality of it is, when you walk into one of these so-called "authentic" churches, you just get the same ol' works religion. Look at the sermon titles and message points. It's all about principles and steps and tips to what-not and hoo-ha. It's just the same behavioristic gospel . . . only cooler.
That's not authentic. That's works religion.

The interesting thing about the above linked videos is that they aren't even original. That's something else that irks me to no end -- the claiming of authenticity all the while ripping off everybody else. These are obviously parodies of the Mac/PC ads, which is admittedly a clever concept. But these folks did the same thing months ago. (So much for innovation.)
And they propagated the same tragic "us vs. them"-ism, pitting a cool Christian (called Christ-follower) against the uncool one (merely called a Christian).
Look, if you're gonna claim authenticity, at least be original.

I just hate this stuff. I hate it. It reduces the glory of the Gospel to a marketing campaign based on who's cooler than whom. That works well when you're selling computers (or soft drinks or what-have-you). But it is flat-out anti-Christian when you're ridiculing other members of the Body to sell your spiritual product.

This is reverse pharisaism. It really is. "I thank you God that I'm not like that lame, religious retard over there."
This is just symptomatic of the consumerist, self-centered, behavioristic, culture-driven lunacy passing for ministry today. It is an anti-gospel, and it is the spirit of the anti-christ at work.

As I was reading over some of Mother Theresa's laments this week, confessions of feeling unwanted by God and hated by God and thrown away by God (when she believed God even existed), groans and cries from the despair deep in her heart, I recalled that anti-christ Benny Hinn once telling a story about being home sick and watching himself on TV and deciding to put his hand on his own hand on the television screen and healing himself. What a lying bastard.
Do you think he would ever admit to feeling that way? One of the guys I watched on TV this week couldn't even admit to ever being sick. They'd no sooner admit they've ever doubted or felt distant from God or unloved by Him.

You will not hear about dark nights of the soul from the likes of Benny Hinn and Joel Osteen and Paula White (who, with her husband, is treating their divorce this week like a hiccup that doesn't matter much to their "ministry" aims -- which means keeping the gravy train running). You will not hear about the real world and the real gospel in response to it from these charlatans because they are afraid you might actually become satisfied in Christ and tire of their lies. They need you discontent so that you will still need them to pick you up.

And if you think this crap is limited to the name-it-claim-it crowd, you are mistaken. It has been creeping into our evangelical churches for years, and you see this discontentment with the Gospel every time you hear a message that treats the Bible like an advice column or a self-help quote book or that treats worship like a performance. Any time the purpose of worship is YOU, you might as well be getting the holy spirit pixie dust from Rod Parsley. It's the same false gospel, just packaged for a different crowd.

The really ridiculous thing is, they don't even take the biblical values and preach those behaviors. I for one don't think the Sermon on the Mount is about behavior and works, but you'd think that if one is going to preach on "what to do" or "how to be," you'd think you might occasionally hear a message about meekness or humility. When was the last time any of these guys preached on "blessed are the poor"? I mean, if you're going to treat Scripture like a self-help resource, you'd think they'd at least come away with some Scriptural values to distort. Instead we get health, wealth, prosperity, "success" -- things the Bible almost cares NOTHING about. At least, not in the ways these liars care about them.

This stuff burns me up.
This is life or death stuff. We are dealing with nothing less than the full glory of God revealed in the complete atoning work of Jesus Christ. We are meant to be living and dying the brutal sacrifice and the triumphant resurrection of Jesus. That this gets reduced to "how to win at work" is evil.

I don't know what Bible these people are reading. Because when I drink deeply from the well of Scripture, when I even barely taste the riches of Christ's work on my behalf, the amazing truth that by grace alone Christ has reconciled me to the God of the Universe, that in the gift of the Holy Spirit I can live a life near and dear to the Father's heart, with the quality of the cross and the power of the resurrection, and then I hear some dude doing this cool/uncool thing or this "how to succeed" thing, I get very, very angry. Like Moses coming down from visiting the LORD on the mountain to discover the Israelites bowing down to a statue wanted to take a sword and destroy the lot of them, I want to curse this idolatry to hell.

And yet, of course, I confess I am no stranger to idolatry myself.

Dear God, make us crave the gospel, make us desire grace, make us satisfied in and with You alone for Your glory alone. Make us satisfied -- joyously, exuberantly, righteously satisfied -- in Your Son for Your glory.

As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!
-- Galatians 5:12