The Problem with Those Who Claim to Know the Problem with the Church

Those who would shepherd the church of Jesus Christ must always be on their guard against the perils of worldliness, worship via entertainment, secularism, success syndrome, materialism, authoritarianism, formalism, the cult of personality, etc. Having said that, I am content, when such warnings are lovingly set forth, to trust that if shepherds DO indeed have a heart for their flocks, they will prayerfully take such warnings to heart and wrestle with them within their own respective fellowships.

I have to be content with that pattern because of the equally dangerous peril presented by some who see themselves as prophetic voices to the church at large. You know the type. They speak as though they know “the problem with the church today.” They speak very generally, indicting most churches at once. They paint all churches with sweeping brush strokes. They allow for no wisdom, discernment or sensitivity to the Spirit on the part of local leaders. No one within Christendom is enlightened except those within their own camp. To put it in the simplest terms I can find: They nitpick everything. But, I guess “nitpick” is too weak of a word. In fact, they indict everything of which they disapprove as heresy and apostasy.

I recently ran across a YouTube video that attempted to be an indictment of what it called “the 

false church system.” It fussed about everything from platform speakers, paid pastors, offerings, worship practices, church polity, buildings … if you can identify it with the twentieth-century church, the video fussed about it. There were a number of points worth pondering, but just as many counterpoints left unmentioned. There was much scripture set forth. However, there were also many relevant Bible texts not addressed at all.

Ultimately, the model that was being endorsed was a home-church model based on the worship gatherings in 1 Corinthians. Lots of people spoke. There were no visible leaders of the gatherings and no conspicuous authorities over the gathered congregation. However, there was no mention of the later pastoral epistles with the worship guidelines that Paul installed after of a few decades of the church’s existence. There was no mention of the order and polity that he prescribed in those letters. There was no mention from Ephesians of the role of gifted leaders in the church whose task it is to equip others for ministry.

I have no criticism of home-church models, provided that these other guidelines are in place. But, I also have no criticism of the plethora of models and issues that this video essentially condemned. I reserve the right to voice the same cautions that I mentioned in the first sentence of these thoughts, but I choose to keep my words of condemnation a little closer to the vest.

A closer look at this particular YouTube channel revealed that exposing heresy and apostasy is pretty much all this channel is about. The problem seemed to be that no one is safe from indictment … from Benny Hinn, who many would number with the apostates, to John MacArthur, a name that rarely comes up in discussions of heresy.

What actually prompted this current rant was a perusal of the comments section for the video. There were an alarming number of respondents who have checked-out from going to church at some point in the past who now seemed to feel very affirmed in that decision. There were others who I sense now feel emboldened to drop out. And, there were some who thought they might like to try a home-church (as though those are easy to locate). In short, there was much spiritualized rhetoric from non-church-attenders lamenting the shortcomings of the churches of their assorted experiences.

I guess I took the long route to getting here, but I essentially have two takeaways:

1) If you have checked-out from any association with any church fellowship, no matter how piously you make your argument, you are living perilously. You cannot refuse to be a part of that vessel which God has provided for your safety. You cannot refuse to love that which Christ Himself loves.

2) Any spiritual curiosity remaining in you will probably not be nurtured in a healthy fashion on the Internet. The fellowship of you and the similarly critical and disengaged is not a healthy recipe for your spiritual growth.

What God Will You Follow?

Unprovoked, I prefer to be didactic rather than snarky, but I like to think that I can do either in a pinch. A friend forwarded the following link to me prefaced with these words: “I would love to hear what you think. There are so many wrong points that I don’t know where to start …” I will provide the link so that the reader can judge the article at the end of the link for himself or herself.

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2019/04/11/the-terribly-tiny-god-of-maga-christians/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=John%20Pavlovitz

I’ll give you the title and the first couple of lines:

The Terribly Tiny God of MAGA Christians

“I feel sorry for professed Christians who support this President. They have a profound and fundamental spiritual problem: their God is too small.
“They passionately worship a deity made in their own image: white, American, Republican, male …”  - John Pavlovitz

I suppose I should say at the outset that I have people in my life who see the world through a different political spectrum than I do. I try not to diminish them. They don’t seem to be bent on diminishing me. What follows is my own reaction to one man’s article; one man, that is, who appears to think that all professed Christians that support the current President should be painted with a single brush. I do not think I am stepping over any lines to suggest that the author seems to be a snarky arrogant person who does what snarky arrogant people of every ilk typically do. They belittle opposing points of view. Mr. Pavlovitz takes it a step further. He comments on the “smallness” of the god of those who do not share his political views. 

I guess I’m not sure what a MAGA Christian is supposed to be. I am a Christian. I am a conservative. I don’t own a MAGA hat, but I don’t belittle anyone who does. I support this president whenever he stands for conservative and Christian values as I understand them. That does not mean that I am at all persuaded that he bears the fruit of new birth. I believe that he HAS to tweet due to the axiomatic bias of the media, Hollywood, and much of academia. At the same time, I cringe when his tweets reflect a thin skin, boorishness, childishness or other expressions of questionable decorum. I wish he would be a little cleverer at times with those tweets.

I’ve always struggled with the proper balance between political activism and simply attempting to live as a reflection of God’s light in the world. That, no doubt, will put me on the outs with those MAGA Christian boogeymen wherever they exist (my bad, boogey-persons). Having said that, those MAGA enthusiasts are as entitled to a seat in the marketplace of ideas as is any attendee at any women’s march where the participants wear hats fashioned in the image of their most private body parts, as any persons who lobby for as many abortions as possible, as any Occupy Whatever advocate, as any Black Lives Matter devotee, or as any ANTIFA thug.

So, let’s get down to the size of my God, Mr. Pavlovitz. First of all, I have never thought of Him as white or Republican. On the contrary, I believe in a Creator Who spoke everything into existence by divine fiat. I believe in a God Who insists that He be regarded by His creatures, particularly those made in His image, as holy-other. I believe one of the perks of being the Creator of everything is that He is entitled to set the norms for human morality, something He has done through natural revelation, through His prophets of old, through the testimony of the Twelve, through the apostles and prophets of the New Testament era, through His self-revelation in the fully-God and fully-man Christ, as well as in the Holy Scriptures that encapsulate all these concepts and that steer us, in every Bible book, to Jesus as the remedy for our fallen condition.

And, though all have sinned and missed the moral mark of perfection, I believe in a God Who is big enough to rescue any penitent sinner while remaining immutable enough to not need to lower His standards with every new cultural whim. He maintains His holiness and justice in the same act by which He expresses His love and mercy … the cross of Christ. Deviations from the moral norms established in creation remain sinful whether they be theft, incontrollable rage, sexual aberration, slander, divisiveness, cruelty, lawlessness, or any other vice. Any sinner can make a claim that he is wired toward the way of his iniquity of choice, and one claim is as invalid as the next.

So, let’s take a look at your god, Mr. Pavlovitz. Your god does not seem to be able to stick to his guns in terms of moral law. Your god seems to be afraid to allow others, who do not share a progressive frame of reference, into the debate without disparaging them. Your god is so small that he seems to feel compelled to back away from his original declarations of truth for fear of being rejected by the masses. He is so insecure that he wants to cling to whatever will preserve his popularity. So, he is now content to be known solely as a god of alleged social justice, because he is powerless to rescue and transform sinners or to sanctify them for eternity. Yours is the deity of that “form of godliness” devoid of power of which Paul spoke. It seems to me that if anyone is guilty of erecting an idol in his own image, and declaring said block of wood, hunk of metal, bar of soap, or figment of imagination to be his “god,” it is you, Mr. Pavlovitz. 

Mr. Pavlovitz, I see that you are a representative of a denomination that has a noble history of pursuing legitimate social justice causes. In the meantime, social justice has become that movement’s identity to the point that its other fine history, that of proclaiming a sanctifying gospel, has been surrendered in the pursuit of attempting to remain viable. Currently, that movement is disintegrating on a very public stage, because fully half of its leaders and pastors, so it seems, are more interested in pursuing a progressive concept of social justice than they are of simply proclaiming the gospel of Christ entrusted to them.

You keep your sentimental little god that you have whittled on the back porch of your progressive mind, Mr. Pavlovitz. I will continue to try and understand the God Who has made Himself known to us in the Person of His Son.

It Is So When God Says It Is So

Malachi, the final writing prophet of the Old Testament, left Israel with this provocative word from the Lord:

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes.”  - Malachi 4:5

Four centuries later, John the Baptist began to preach in the wilderness about the nearness of God’s kingdom. Priests and Levites came from Jerusalem and asked him, quite bluntly, “Are you Elijah?” to which John answered, “No, I am simply a man trying to fulfill his calling. I am just a voice in the wilderness.” (see John 1:19-21)

But on another occasion, Jesus spoke about John as something “more than a prophet”:

… “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? 8What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses. 9What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet …

… 13For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, 14and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.  – Matthew 11: 7-9; 13,14

Obviously, there is a conflict in how these two cousins assessed the ministry of John. What is even more obvious is that we ought to trust Jesus’ appraisal of the issue; that John was indeed the reappearance of Elijah of which Malachi spoke. So, why did John himself seem to be left in the dark as to what was his very significant role in the kingdom?

No one can seriously consider that John was being falsely humble. His mission was consistently and simply to honor Christ: “Behold! The lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” … “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 1:29; 3:30).  I can only conclude that John truly had no idea that he himself was a prophetic fulfillment. Jesus knew something of John’s worth that John did not know about himself.

We are servants of God and we must each learn to find our highest personal fulfillment in that simple reality. If we over-assess our value to the work of the kingdom, we will inevitably find ourselves humiliated. If we under-assess our value, we will likely sink into a mindset that we are superfluous to God, and that will be followed by seasons of inactivity, either due to despondency or due to distractions into other pursuits. When we finally learn to see ourselves as the servants that we are, we will find our satisfaction in that status, knowing that self-exaltation will result in a humbling experience, while playing the servant to all will result in some exaltation. Of course, one cannot know the precise nature of that exaltation, so it is folly to preoccupy oneself with what that exaltation might entail.

Suffice it to say that each member of the triune Godhead sees things about us that we cannot see. This truth is a source of wonder, but it is also a source of great comfort when that is what is needed as well as a source of stark realignment to His thoughts and ways when that is the need of the hour. God is the God of reality. We are fallen creatures prone to fanciful imaginings.

There is a particular phrase, wrenched from its proper place in Scripture and recklessly bandied about by “Word of Faith” proponents (Osteen, Copeland, Hinn, Meyers, etc.); “calling those things that be not as though they already were.” They present the phrase as though believers in God have the power, through the use of their words, to speak realities into existence. These powerful words, these “positive confessions” are the dynamic that will ultimately bring healing and prosperity into the lives of the adherents of these nutty doctrines. The advocates of this notion cannot even lift an entire sentence from the real text because that would blow the scam.

Romans 4:13-25 makes it abundantly clear that any reference to the power to speak something into existence (verse 17) belongs to God, not to man. The immediate context means that God would bring forth a nation from one-hundred-year-old Abraham and his previously barren wife. Inescapable as well is an acknowledgement of God’s creative prowess. There is no hint that the believer inherits any such power from God.

Still, Christians are in no way diminished by lacking such a power. On the contrary, we are encouraged and steeled for everything we encounter in this world by the knowledge that God sees and brings into existence things that we cannot see. We are cleansed of sin, we are children of the Father, we are regarded as friends of Christ, we are seated with Him in the heavenly realm, we are represented before the throne of God by Christ Himself, we are destined for eternity in the Father’s presence … not because current circumstances or human appearances so dictate, but because God has thusly spoken, and that is sufficient to make it our reality.