With the churches in a coma when it comes to teaching the Bible, American Christians have collected some pretty funny ideas about theology. These may be described as Pop Christianity, as distinct from the real thing propounded in the Bible. Here are three of its major tenets.
1. If Jesus didn’t explicitly say it was wrong, it must be all right. This is the fallback position for liberals in the Church to excuse their espousal of sodomy: Jesus never gave a sermon against it. He didn’t explicitly condemn pedophilia, drunk driving, or voter fraud, either. But it’s a great excuse for supporting something that the Bible calls abomination.
2. Judge not. Never, never, never! Especially do not judge prominent “progressives” and their policies, notorious perverts, morality-less celebrities, or anybody who says God’s Word is poobah. This precept is based on two words lifted from one verse (Matthew 5:25) and used to cancel out the whole rest of the Bible. But really, it’s not inexcusably self-righteous to judge Jerry Sandusky or the U. S. Senate.
3. Our beliefs must conform to Science. All the stuff in the Bible that jars with Big Science dogmas like Evolution, the Big Bang, or whatever–that Bible content must either be totally ignored, or else dismissed as “poetry” or “just a figure of speech” (making it confusing to keep track of the real poetry and real figurative language in the Bible). This is to make the pronouncements of sinful mortals in lab coats a higher standard of truth than God’s own Word.
These are the Big Three of Pop Christianity, and very much responsible for our country being the way it is. It has rushed into the vacuum created by the negligence of churches.
Go ahead: quiz your pastor, and see how much of this pop pablum has crept into his theology.
i went to someone’s else Bible study this morning and heard that their pastor does not believe in confronting anyone about anything because, now get this Lee, confronting them would make them mad at him and he didn’t want to put anyone into a position of anger…in other words, pure passivity – even about sin.
Makes things nice and easy for the pastor, though–doesn’t it?
Don’t you just love when the “don’t be judgmental” folks get all judgmental about those who make judgments? Or, rather, don’t you just love pointing out to them that they’ve just been judgmental in saying it’s wrong to be judgmental?
We’ll stated, Lee.
Ultimately, God’s laws are not at all harmful and protect us from all sorts of evil. Which is preferable, a law that condemns fornication, or a world where substantial portions of the population have STDs? Is the “freedom” to divorce at will making families stronger, or leading to more fractured families? The list goes on and on.
These lame excuses will be found to be useless at the Judgement, and that will be the cause of all the weeping, and gnashing of teeth. If one has
any doubt whatsoever about an activity, the safest path is to avoid it, whether the Scripture names it specifically or not.
1 Cor. 6: 1-8
1. Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints?
2. Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?
3. Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?
4. If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.
5. I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren?
6. But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers.
7. Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?
8. Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.
Right on as usual, Lee. How about, “Hate has no home here.” Yet, hate is a natural human emotion. God hates sin, so we should hate sin. But then pop Christianity comes back with, “We are to hate the sin, but not the sinner.” My wife calls it “sloppy agape.”
“sloppy agape” she is right on. It is pathetic how things have gone down hill.