Christianity - Doctrines Without Christ?

CHRISTIANITY

DOCTRINES WITHOUT JESUS?

I do not have health insurance and I do have health issues. So from time to time I must go to one of those Doctor’s Walk-In deals. So I like to go very early for obvious reasons. This place opens at 8:00 AM so I got there at 7:30 AM and sat on the bench outside. A few minutes later a lady drove up with her husband in the passenger’s seat. She told her husband to stay in the car and she came and sat next to me. She was in her ‘70s.

We said hello and I mentioned that we were supposed to get rain. She agreed and said we needed it and God supplied it. I replied that yes, it rained on the just and the unjust. She asked me if I was part of the just. That opened a door for me to share Christ and she told me she was a believer and attended the Assembly of God church just down the street. I mentioned that perhaps we would not have to wait long for Jesus to come. She agreed, but here is where she revealed what millions of professing believers have living in their hearts and what thousands of churches feed them from the pulpit.

She said that the end would come quickly if Obama had his way. What?? Where did President Obama come into this conversation? I told her that President Obama was just a man and that the growing evil was because of spiritual wickedness in the unseen realm. And she replied that Obama was the king of those wicked spirits. Just then the clinic opened and we both walked in.

Now that kind of conversation is a replica of millions of conversations between believers. Some, if not most, are much more virulent and caustic as it pertains to President Obama. Yes, this lady was in her 70s but she is indicative of the spirit and attitude that now pervades the evangelical church. It is nothing less than hatred, pure and unvarnished. Dress it up in red, white, and blue, or hide it behind a convoluted righteous indignation, or contend you dislike socialism, or even suggest you are standing for truth, but regardless of how you present it, it is at odds with the gospel and the teachings of Jesus. Completely.

But this is what has happened to the western church. We have fallen in love with the Babylonian system and we have become accustomed to our hedonistic surroundings and with that we have turned our back on the teachings of the One we say we love and follow. And the political system has assimilated the church at large and now people who claim to be followers of Jesus can and do openly express hatred for men like President Obama, even to a stranger like me. I remember Franklin Graham on television referring to the President as “Obama” and after someone corrected him he said “President Obama” but you can be sure in the company of his own peers referring to the president as “Obama” is not only commonplace and used as a pejorative, but there are probably more labels that are much more demeaning.

This kind of rhetoric reveals not only a hatred for liberals and gays and the President, but it reveals a hatred for Jesus and His teachings. It is the language of darkness. You cannot serve Jesus and America. You cannot serve Jesus and conservatism. You cannot serve Jesus and hate sinners. You cannot serve Jesus and love money. We have lost the faith and now churches live and preach a diluted brand that is not only mangled by the culture but it is spiritually toxic. I say it again, Christianity as defined by believing in and following Jesus has become rare here in America.

It is baffling how we can get so deceived that we can no longer even read anymore. Just read the words in red and you have to see just how incongruous the practice of our faith is from that which was lived out and taught by our Master. Patriotism, nationalism, capitalism, and other philosophies have muscled out the faith that portends to follow Christ. And not only do people like the woman at the walk in clinic remain blind to it, but for the most part they practice it daily. And anyone who listens to men like Limbaugh and Hannity and Beck and agree with them is not walking in the Spirit but in the flesh. You cannot fill your spirit with hatred and falsehoods and then pretend to love and follow Jesus.

We have a handful of neatly crafted doctrines but void of Christ. Oh we may present our Trinitarian and virgin birth and Scriptural inspiration credentials, and we may even be clear about the exclusivity of Christ, but somewhere between those doctrines and our living revelations Christ has become lost. George Washington and Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich and even Mitt Romney have replaced Jesus. Do you thing that is hyperbole or an overstatement? I contend it is even much worse than that, and since we have completely lost the truth, we are blind to the depth of the deception.

Even men like Ravi Zacharius appear on Joyce Myers’ program and laud her with compliments about her teachings. Why? Because he also is imprisoned by nationalism and the ghost chasing of healing the morals of the culture. The evangelical world has absolutely lost its spiritual mind. And woven into this deception is a type of Christianity that can literally practice things completely at odds with the teachings of Jesus and yet claim to be “orthodox”. Our hollow doctrines have become our idols.

Following Jesus within a fallen culture is not easy, but we have made it quite convenient. We are allowed to have a critical spirit and criticize lost sinners. We are allowed to collect sums of money to one day lavish upon ourselves. We are allowed to offer poor excuses for a prayer life. We are allowed to seek out worldly entertainments. We are allowed to visit great monuments erected to men. We are allowed to hate and despise. We are allowed to complain about the cost of living while others starve. And all this under the banner of following Jesus. But we are only fooling ourselves.

Christianity without Christ is paganism. We can still have our baptisms, our communion, our Sunday gatherings, and even our Bible readings, but without sincerely following His teachings we are just following ourselves, and that is paganism. Or as I might define it - Pagianity.