Stop Preaching God's Love, For Heavens Sake
My heart is, and has been, burdened about the state of the Church for more than 30 years. We have taken on so many traditions of men. These are traditions that annul Scripture just as Jesus scolded the Pharisees for. I have been feeling compelled by God to write and expose what I believe to be the main or root cause that allows us to build these unbiblical traditions. Sadly, when I have discussed these things with pastors and Christians in general, while they agree that we now more often than not, preach a sugar-coated gospel, they just cannot see the depth of the problem. It challenges their basic assumptions far too much. I needed to write a fact-based work, with much data that can prove what I am trying to convey and what God is saying to the Western Church today. Over the many years, I have not read many books of the well known Christian authors. I read my Bible in many different versions and I have built up a large resource library of study books for research. But about five years ago in the midst of a personal tragedy, I needed Christian support and opened my business Facebook account up to friends. I gathered about 100 friends and friends of friends. It was a wonderful support, but more than that, I found there were people who thought as I did. I was amazed. There were memes of prominent Christian writers and preachers, that I knew of, but had not read any of their work. These were so confirmational for me, that I have placed many in this book. Stop Preaching God's Love, For Heaven's Sake' My basic thesis: we have preached, taught, written, read and talked far too much about how 'God loves us soooo much and has a wonderful plan for our life.' This was then pushed into the background, God's justice, hell, defeating sin, obedience, suffering, how truly evil sin is, how important holiness is, etc..... and it has caused us to interpret the Bible incorrectly in a host of ways. We have developed a wrong theology that directs our lives and our churches. Things like, never judge anyone; never create conflict over sin; unity at all costs; anyone who says anything that might upset someone is 'not being like Jesus'........etc. For some, it will sound like I am making a mountain out of a molehill, but that is only because we have been so conditioned by this over emphasis. It is and has been solidly part of our paradigm for so many years now. Christianity now in some ways, resembles pacifist Buddhism rather than the sin-hating Son of God who loved us enough to try and save us from hell with the clear, unapologetic hard truths. I have researched the New Testament by going through each verse and counted up every single occasion that we are told that 'God loves us'. And to find if Jesus ever publically teach that God loves us. And how often Jesus told hard truths and to who, etc... Did the apostles ever teach it, where, in the New Testament do we find this overemphasis on God's great love for us? How many times was there a specific teaching on it in the NT? I also look at aspects of the Old Testament - prophecies, etc.., the writings of the early Church Fathers, the Didache, the great preachers of Church history - Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, Calvin, Wesley's, Whitfield, Spurgeon.....etc In all of these things, I find no strong emphasis on it like the emphasis we have now. Yet Christians believe that the Bible speaks a great deal about it. How could anyone possibly believe that 60% or 80% of the NT Verses state that God loves us? But they do. It reveals that the Church in general, is not only compromised by a false conditioning but that the Church has become effectively biblically illiterate, even pastors. So much of what is said comes not from Scripture, but from what 'we sort of, kind of remember' the Bible says. We quote much that is not Scripture but it is modern church tradition. That explains why Christians do not really even know the All-powerful Holy God and Judge of the Bible now. Or, how to properly interpret their Bible. If so many Christians believe that God emphasizes His love for us in the NT, their view of God is skewed, then no wonder the Church is full of people who are largely self-centred, biblically illiterate, undisciplined, immature... I would put myself in that category too because it is the environment I live in and have lived in all my life. Notwithstanding, I battle with it and have victories over this conditioning. I am more free of this thinking than ever before and shall continue to grow in maturity. Of course, God does love us, this is not in question, the problem is in how much we focus on it and how much should we be focusing on it. Rather, we ought to be going on to maturity and the harder things in Scripture. We grow in the hard times, they are assigned by God, but we seem to avoid them as best we can. If we are going to have a strong effective Church again that pleases God, we need to hear and do what God is saying in this. Then, we can be a really effective witness of God to the world. We must have a revival, restoration in the Church. We must rediscover the God as revealed in the Bible, not the god of what we 'sort of, kind of' remember.
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