Alternative or Opposition?

I was driving around town on Saturday, October 31, and saw many people at a particular church. There were inflatable slides and all types of “carnival” type rides and I figured they were having a celebration of the anniversary of the Reformation. Not really, but wouldn’t that be a good idea? I knew the real reason why all the hoopla was going on. It was a “fall festival” that the church was having for the young people. This has grown to be common all over the south, and I suppose the rest of the country. The “fall festival” always seems to fall on Halloween. Why is that? The reason is the church is trying to give young people an alternative to Halloween. I’ve never understood Halloween. I stopped trick or treating in the second grade because I thought it was childish. Really. Now I have come to realize that Halloween should probably be called Beg-o-ween because it teaches children to go up to their neighbors and total strangers and ask for a handout. But I digress. Why as the church do we think we need to give an alternative? Alternative means something is a choice that is comparable to something else. Hamburger or chicken? Steak or shrimp? How about both? Do we really want to give an “alternative” to a day that has come to be a celebration of death of sorts? Or should instead of giving an alternative we present our opposition? This concept doesn’t just go with Halloween. We should not present our faith as a healthy alternative to what the world has. If that is the case we our saying that our faith is just as valid as any other faith or even no faith. We must love those in the world while opposing the world. Martin Luther opposed the worldly Catholic Church. Maybe we should celebrate that opposition with a Reformation Day. Instead of going to people and asking for candy, we could give them the gospel. We could put sound doctrinal tracts in the hands of the people or put them on their doors as Luther did the 95 Theses on the door of Wittenburg church. Perhaps instead of turning off our lights to tell others that we have nothing to give we could give to them the message of the Light of the world. Just a thought.

Pragmatism and Magnetism

Another excerpt from the book. This comes from chapter 3.

For the most part the world likes the messages on the marquees. They don’t like them because they are great ideas or wonderful thoughts that they will hold on to for the day or even for the rest of their lives. They like them because they really do not say anything. Many of the signs try to give an inspirational thought or provide someone with a little friendly pop-psychology. The message of the church simply becomes a quip from one of the many self-help books. If the carnally minded, unregenerate, depraved, God hating world likes what the church signs say, then the churches are saying the wrong thing.
Most of the churches in putting up a sign are using the concept of pragmatism. They are doing something practical; something they think is useful, believing that the end result, that is bringing people into the church, justifies the means. What Scripture indicates though is not the use of pragmatism but the concept of magnetism. When the poles of two magnets are placed end to end one of two things will happen. They will either repel or they will attract. Of course this all depends on how the poles of the magnets are in relation to one another. Like poles repel and opposites attract. In many cases, one can force the two like poles together with a little bit of effort, but once the effort force is lessened, the repulsion begins again. Pragmatism works this way.
The pragmatic church puts up signs that they believe the world will like. They put up messages with catchy sayings in an attempt to speak the world’s language in order to show that those on the inside of the church are not withdrawn from society or eccentric. They do not want to appear illogical, out of touch with reality, or unintelligent. They want to show that anyone and everyone would feel comfortable in the church, because basically we are all alike. This, however, is the problem- we are not alike. We are not supposed to be like the world. We are to be in the world but not of it. Jesus, in praying to the Father in John 17:14, says, “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”
Being like the world may work for a little while in bringing people inside the church, but the result is that those same people who are drawn in are many times pushed further away from God because they are not being spiritually fed and discipled. This is why many people leave the faith. They are not truly connected with Christ; they are just close enough to Him where there is just a minute change in their lives that is noticeable just like two like magnets causing each other to move. The problem, however, is that the closer they come to Him, the further they want to be. The good news of Christ, His standard of righteousness, and the idea of being His slave becomes repulsive to them. They are not attracted to Him; instead the barrier between them and Christ becomes their comfort and they are satisfied with being pushed and pulled away from Christ. The efforts of the church with their music styles, their “relevant” messages, and plethora of programs will not keep the lost in the church for long if true doctrine begins to be proclaimed. The constant effort of trying to bind a lost person to Christ through anything but the Scriptures will not work. Magnetism is the key, not pragmatism.
Opposites attract. The interesting and ironic thing about preaching and teaching the word of God is that even though it is the only thing that draws the human heart to God it is the one thing that the heart does not want to hear. The words that give spiritual life are the same that kill the old man. The same words that heal the seared conscience are the same that pierce the soul and tear out the heart of stone. The same words that free us from the bondage of sin are the same that enslave us to our Savior. This is magnetism. Holy God calls unholy sinners. The righteousness of Christ is given to the unrighteous. The love of God reaches out and claims the unlovable. The spiritually dead are given life in Christ. The worker of iniquity becomes His beloved child.

-Bryan H. Rhoden

The Slide

This is another excerpt from the book “Signs of the Times”. This is the end of chapter 2 entitled “The Slide”. The first part of the chapter deals with Charles Spurgeon and his discernment concerning the issues going on in his time. It’s a longer chapter so here’s just a little bit for you.

Discernment is dying in our churches because our churches are made of people that our concerned more about themselves than the name of Christ. We live in a post-modern society where one truth is just as valid as another. Yet this approach is a result of sin. There is truth. There is absolute truth. Yet we entangle ourselves with our culture, and we decide that what is important to us is not really important to anybody else. The things of the church, the preaching and the teaching, need not be critiqued because there really is no right and wrong way of performing those tasks. It all comes down to just being a personal preference. Right?
Many assume that leaders in the church know best or at least know more than they do. This is why the majority of those in a church that has poor theology on display in front of their buildings do not say a word. People in a church have a tendency to have a dependence on those who are in leadership that is unnecessary and dangerous. It is the leader’s responsibility to shepherd the sheep and bring them to good pastures in their study, but it is the sheep’s responsibility to actually eat. A member of a church should not depend totally on what they receive from the pastor. If they do, then they are only getting fed spiritually two to three times a week, while starving themselves the rest of the time. Not only do congregants many times depend on the pastor to teach them, but sadly they rely on the pastor to think for them as well.
One of the saddest things I see on television are church services where the camera keys in on some members of the congregation and they have their Bibles open, their pen and paper ready and they are not writing a thing. Why is that? They are not writing anything because the pastor is not really saying anything. They really do not need their Bibles open because the pastor never really uses it himself. But even worse than this is when I see those in a congregation who hear false doctrine and they write it down feverishly and nod their head in approval as if what they heard was the most profound thing that was ever said. They don’t question what the pastor says; they don’t think about it, they don’t test it against the Scriptures. It is just readily accepted. Why? It is accepted because he is seen as having moral clout, intelligence, blessings from God, God-given status, good intentions, and whatever else can be ascribed to him.
Paul tells Timothy in his last letter before his death that “the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4). Notice it is the congregation who will- by their own accord- put teachers in place that will say what they want to hear. These are not false teachers who have crept in as Jude 4 states. These teachers were placed there by the church for a purpose- no doctrine, no theology. The choice of these types of teachers shows a lack of discernment. We live in a time when the most famous of preachers in this country do not even consider themselves preachers. They think of themselves more like coaches and administrators. Will there ever be another Spurgeon to decry the lack of discernment? Yet if there is, will not he be criticized and censured as well? Discernment may not be dead, but it is fading quickly.
When my son was three I took him to a local park. The new play-set had lots of ladders, climbing walls, and slides. One particular slide looked particularly appealing. It was a tubular slide starting at the highest level of the play-set, about fifteen or so feet up. My son and I eagerly climbed the steps and stood there, looking down into our dark destiny. I put him on my lap and away we went. The first four feet were fine, but then there was a sharp turn and a drop. As we began our freefall I put my feet out to the side, and while grasping my son with one arm, I reached with my free hand to find the inside of the tube to somehow slow our descent. We slowed only a little. I had never been on a slide like that before, and I wondered as we fell when the ride would end.
By our flippant use of Scripture and the desire to be humorous rather than holy, the messages of church signs are a clear indication to the world that the church has willfully left its lofty position in society. We have begun down the slide. It may have started out as an innocent experiment, but wisdom was laid aside at the very beginning. The catchy phrases and the supposed “thought evoking” messages seemed to start out as a new and exciting way of bringing people inside the church building. The end of discernment, however, was the sharp turn into the darkness. Now we are in the midst of the descent. The question no longer is, “How can we stop the fall?” We are far past that. The question now is, “How much farther will we fall until we reach the bottom?”