One of These Things is Not Like the Other
Which took my
train-of-thought into Douglas Wilson’s, who had already switched
his onto Andrew Breitbart’s. He said, "Politics
is downstream of
culture, while
worship is upstream of
culture."
As much as I appreciate Songs of Surrender, I take umbrage with this phrase added into Sunday Bloody Sunday: “Religion is the enemy of the Holy Spirit guide”. No. No. Unequivocably, No. That statement is one of the lies which is attacking the church today, that being spiritual is better than being Biblical (see Rosaria Butterfield’s fourth book). Even still, I want to jump into that judgment with some grace and understanding.
WHAT RELIGION
ISN’T:
Poetic phrases, or
lyrics to a song, are not fleshed out theology. I get that –
they’re not the Psalms which are inspired by God. The context of
this particular song is the series of atrocities committed partly in
the name of either being Catholic or being Protestant. But that
religious claim was just on the surface. There were many
different aspects,
reasonably boiled down to identity-politics, which fueled the fire of
the The Troubles – proving what happens when people worship the
wrong things. Whatever they were worshiping in Ireland in the 70's,
it was not Christ.
The unsaid charge of
that new lyrical addition is the often repeated assertion that
religion has killed more people than anything else. Even taking into
account the Crusades, that claim is demonstrably false.*
What we’re told to think is that religion, all of them mindlessly
lumped together as a whole, is the problem. Under the surface of
that charge, is that all religions are somehow equivalent. That’s
only true if those religions don’t recognize the God who does for
us what we can’t do for ourselves. Those religions are false, and
can be identified by death, dismemberment, destruction, lies and the
twisting of truth – in short, evil.
Which rather proves
Douglas Wilson’s point that what we worship is upstream from
culture. Adding a car onto that train, there is a book by Jim Davis
and Michael Graham, The
Great Dechurching. Have you heard this
podcast from the White Horse Inn? It is so good in how it
systematically walks through this cultural shift in detail –
explaining what we have been feeling since 1997, but definitely since
2001. When we lose touch with the Gospel individually, the impact
may be great but it’s only felt within a small circle of people. When
we lose touch with the Gospel culturally, however, the impact slams into us all, because we’re all in that cultural stream. Davis and
Graham show how the dechurching of America is perhaps the greatest
cultural shift since the Reformation, and not in a good way. The
course of the river has been altered; the people have shifted to
another object of worship.
WHAT FALSE RELIGION IS:
Primarily, any faith
in something other than Jesus Christ is false. All those other
religions may appear to be the similar – but it’s only on the
surface with Christianity, such as the Golden Rule, where there is
overlap. But dig a little deeper and they differ vastly from
Christianity – while aligning with themselves, in that they all say that
Christianity is false. They do so either explicitly by saying Jesus
is not the Christ, like Islam and Judaism do – or they do so
implicitly by saying Jesus was one good teacher among many, like
Hindu and Buddhism do. Jesus Himself said He was God (Mark
14:62, John
14:6-11, Matthew
26:63-64). Jesus Himself is the One who took our sins upon
Himself (1
Peter 2:24). Jesus Himself has victory over death (1
Corinthians 15:53-57).
Secondly, there is
false religion in the name of Jesus. This one is tricky because it
makes the casual observer confused. Jesus spoke about this, as did
Paul (Matthew
24:3-4, 2
Corinthians 11:12-15). In fact, it’s fair to say that the
whole of the Bible is either teaching against the twisting of
Scripture, or warning about it. Getting the Gospel right is a matter
of life and death because good people get things wrong sometimes,
while lazy people take things out of context routinely – but there
are also bad people who have evil intentions as a matter of course (2
Timothy 3:1-9). Satan knows the Bible well, and is a master at
twisting God’s Word. The serpent did so to Eve in Genesis
3:1
and was successful, but he also tried to do the same to Jesus in Luke
4:1-13, and was not. There are lots of ‘christian’ churches,
whole denominations even, who sound convincing, but who are instead
promoting the self (John
8:42-47). Beware of them.**
The third false religion is secularism, or 'the self'. I lump secularism in with other terms like ‘atheism’, and ‘identity-politics’, among others. There is also a point where politics in general becomes a religion, referred to as, ‘statism’. Primarily this religion does one, if not two, things:
1- Acting like God doesn’t exist, which isn’t honest. Every scientist, no matter their political or religious stripe, used to tell you they were discovering aspects of the universe; not becoming its creator. Nowadays they say it’s, “gender assigned at birth,” when it was, “gender recognized at birth”.
2- Acting like you
are God, which is observably false. If you were a god unto yourself,
you’d have to acknowledge how every other person is also. I shall
quote the bad guy from The
Incredibles,“If every one is Super, then no one will be.”)
A person following this religion works out their ‘salvation’ using the sacraments of death,
dismemberment, destruction, lies, and the twisting of truth. Since the dechurching of
America, death has increased (abortion, assisted suicide),
dismemberment is trying to mainstream (trans ideology), destruction
has become background noise (domestic violence, gang wars), lies have
become “your truth” (abusive ‘christianity’, progressive
‘christianity’), and there are celebrations as the actual truth
is twisted (gay culture, BLM).
WHAT TRUE RELIGION IS:
James, the brother
of Jesus, tells us that true religion cares for the widows and the
orphans (James
1:27). Jesus Himself tells us that the greatest commandment is
to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength, and
that the second is like it: to love your neighbor as yourself (Mark
12:28-31)
ASIDE. He instituted the
sacraments of baptism (Ephesians
4:5), which joins us with Him, as well as the Lord’s
Supper,which reminds us that He is returning (Luke
22:18-20). Scripture gives us clear instruction to not forsake
the assembling of ourselves together (Hebrews
10:25). And the Great Commission instills in us the desire to
share this Good News with others and to bring them up into maturity
in the faith (Matthew
28:18-20).
Jesus was the One
who was with God in the beginning and He was identified as the One
who would crush the head of Satan in the end (Genesis
3:15). Why? Because all gods other than the God of the
universe, all gods other than the One who created and saved us, all
these false gods are on His leash (Romans
16:20). He is the way, the Truth and the Life, and no one comes
to the Father except through Him (John
14:6).
Every week when we come to the church building, as the Church, as the Bride of Christ, we become more like Him (John 14:15). True religion is where the words of life are. Where else should we be (John 6:67-69)? Come join us.
ASIDE:
I hate the
misrepresentation that the Bible says that we should love ourselves.
No. Nowhere in Scripture does it say that we are to love ourselves,
explicitly or implicitly. The verse that is taken so very wrongly to
justify this perception, Mark
12:31, simply recognizes that we already love ourselves. The
point of this commandment (it’s not a suggestion), is that we are
to love other people that much.
META-ASIDE:
For those people who
say they hate themselves: 1- You’re not that important (Galatians
6:3). 2- Do you really? Lean into that thought and see if it
might be that you hate other people for them not approving of some of
your behavior. Or maybe you are ashamed over something you’ve
done. Or perhaps there is shame stemming from something that was
done to you, over which you had no control. It’s possible that you
hate yourself, but it might very well be there was a depression that
worked itself out with lies you told yourself so often that you are
now convinced. Have a willingness to explore your self-perceptions,
and perhaps it might bring some clarity. With proper insight, there
is a way forward in the Truth of Christ.
DEEPER INTO THE META-ASIDE:
For those who
actually are self-loathing, I would ask that you consider your pride;
which is loving yourself more than you love God. Pride is our
natural inclination toward ourselves, and as authentic as it may feel
(it is authentic in that it is our indwelling sin), it goes against
what God has done for you. If anything is evidence as to how much God loves you,
it is that He traded places with you on the cross. Learning to accept His love is humility, not pride.
We aren’t supposed
to love ourselves more – we are instead to love others as radically
as we already love ourselves, and true religion shows us how. It is
other-focused – first God (don’t forget that), and then other
people. We aren’t even identified in Jesus’ instructions. Look
again at Matthew
22:36-40.
*In
these last hundred years alone, it is the secular state which has
killed scores of millions of people, even if only taking into account
Stalin,
Mao,
Hitler,
Pol Pot,
and Mbonyumutwa.
I know that some people throw Hitler into the category of zealous
Christian, but
that’s
patently false – he understood how propaganda works; that
emotions can outweigh clear thinking and good intentions.
Since Christianity
became accessible to the general population with the Reformation,
Christians could hold off a lot of evil done in the name of Jesus.
Heresies have victims, and atrocities in the name of Jesus have
unequivocally continued. Modern history is replete with abuses in
the name of the One, True God. The Spanish Inquisition had the
support of the Pope, the KKK had the support of many southern
churches, and the LRA claimed the authority of the God of the Bible.
A lot of profoundly evil men have done Satan’s bidding in the name
of God. I don’t diminish their atrocities. They, and many others
like them, will meet the God they claimed to represent and receive
His judgment. God cares deeply about the poor and oppressed people
who bear His image (Galatians
2:10, James
2:5-7).
**When you read Scripture – please read it – try to have your only agenda be that God would speak to you. Satan won against Eve, who didn’t show knowledge of God’s Word. But he did not win against Jesus, who not only is the Word (John 1:1-5), but He also used it.