The American Christian Church Goes Off The Deep End

Preaching The Gospel of Nonsense

What is going on with the modern American Christian church? It seems to have lost it’s way. What started out on the Day of Pentecost, in Acts 2, seems to have devolved (in many cases) into nothing more that a business model for those that are good at speaking in public. This business model is not about discipleship towards Jesus, but rather about getting the unsaved to feel good about themselves without demanding that they decide who’s side they are on: Satan’s or God’s. But this isn’t new.

When I was young, I went to a church that called themselves Christians. More accurately, they called themselves disciples of Christ. Strangely, they had their own doctrine that they used, that actually violated biblical principles. I was a teenager when I realized that my opinions about what Jesus wanted us to do and how we were to act towards our neighbors was as valid as the next person. If the elders of that church could decide not to follow the Word of God who was I to disagree. There was no standard of interpreting scripture. The day that I moved out of my parents house was the day that I stopped going to church.

I just didn’t see the point in not having any standards. It wasn’t until I married my high school sweetheart, and we moved to Miami where I was stationed in the army. That I actually spent time reading God’s word. She wanted to go to a church of Christ in Miami and I was ambivalent enough to say sure why not. I believed in Jesus, but I didn’t know what to do beyond that belief. I didn’t realize that I could actually read the Bible. And know about Jesus. And know how I should act as a disciple.

The first thing I noticed when we started going to the North Miami Avenue Church of Christ was that everyone brought their Bible to the Sunday morning meeting. Everybody. Any time there was a disagreement on something of a spiritual nature , everyone would open up their Bibles and look for scriptures that had to do with the subject matter being discussed. I was dumbstruck. I thought to myself “Wait a minute. I could read the Bible and understand what God wants me to do with my life?”. Talk about a game changer.

It was then that I learned an important lesson.

Whenever you go to a new church, think, oh this church is wonderful. It’s great. I’m glad I’m here. But since you’re new, you don’t know it’s members and you don’t know where all the bodies are buried. I learned an important axiom: If you ever find the perfect church, don’t join it. You’ll just screw it up. As my wife and I attended this church, over a couple of years we realized that even this church had its problems. Usually it had to do with the humans. Humans are imperfect and sometimes they have personality issues. As it turns out, they were doing the same thing my home church was doing, when I was a kid. Since they were human, they had their own blind spots, and they interpreted scriptures based on their blind spots.

When we moved from Miami back to our hometown, we started attending a church of Christ there.

We found out that they had the same issues that the church in Miami had with their doctrine. But I learned from the Church of Christ that you could not go to a church that wasn’t perfect in its doctrine. I didn’t learn that from the Holy Scriptures, I learned that from people. Since every church is made up of human beings, I realized that this was impossible. Every church has its imperfections as far as its doctrine, in means of interpreting scripture is concerned. I realized that it’s not my job to correct the leadership of my church community. My job, as a member of the church community, is to simply bring up problems that I see with interpreting scripture. What the leadership at that church does with that information is totally up to them. I’m not responsible for what they do. I’m only responsible for informing them of a problem that I see.

We ended up leaving the Church of Christ denomination and started attending independent Christian churches. Churches that weren’t connected to a larger organization. We found the same issues with independent churches. The perfect congregation, as I saw, it did not exist. So I stopped looking for one.

What I ended up struggling with, and still do to this day, is when does a church cross the line between merely having a difference of opinion on a subject, and when they start violating scripture?

The perfect example of this is the answer to the question: “What must I do to be saved?” When I left the church that I was raised in 50 years ago, I could not answer that question. If you had asked me, when I moved to Miami, what you needed to do to be saved, I would not have been able to answer that question. After studying God’s Word for a few decades, I can now answer that question. I can back my answer up with multiple scriptures. You would think that there would be just one answer to that question as far as Christianity is concerned.

Strangely, there is not. This is where non-biblical nonsense enters into the picture.

King Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes said “There is nothing new under the sun.” (1:9). Boy, was he right about that. He wasn’t talking about things like bluetooth technology or or the outsourcing of jobs of your citizens just so you can make more money. He was talking about people, and what people do. This idea of people distorting or simply ignoring the word of God and making up their own rules and doctrines is not new. Jesus dealt with this during His ministry. In Mark 7, the Jewish leaders asked Jesus why his disciples ignored the tradition of the elders of ceremonially washing their hands and eating utensils before they ate. Jesus quotes to them from Isaiah 29:13 (written approximately 750 years earlier):

• “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are from me. They worship me in vain, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men.”

Jesus then says “Abandoning the command of God, you hold on to human tradition.” He was not one to mince words. And guess what? There are people and congregations of believers that still do this today. I’m not talking about minor stuff like how to take communion or how long the worship service is. I’m talking about important things, like how does a congregation answer the question: What do I need to do to be saved. Some of the answers or actions are complete and utter nonsense.

Nonsense #1 -baptism is “an outward visible sign of the inward, spiritual work God is doing in your heart.”. Baptism is a sign of obedience (Acts 2:38, Acts 22:16 ) and the call of a good conscience to God (1 Peter 3:20-21). It must be done for the right reason (Acts 19:1-9). To people that buy into this notion, they think it’s ok for someone to be born again, then bury them alive in baptism. If they get baptized at all.

Nonsense #2 – Pray the Sinner’s prayer. Completely unbiblical. In Romans 6:1-5, the Apostle Paul shows that just like Jesus died, was buried and was resurrected, we too, through baptism die (to self) are buried (in water) and are resurrected. If we are saved first (born again), why would God want us to be buried alive, so to speak, through baptism? It makes no sense. Colossians 2:12 backs up that idea. Titus 3:5 uses the term “washing of regeneration…”, which makes a lot of sense, since we die to self and then are reborn (regenerated).

While on the subject of baptism, Dr. Frank Turek at #crossexamined says that baptism is a command, but not required for salvation Youtube Short of Frank Turek . Whaaaaat?

The newest craze, no doubt perpetrated by the countless church consultant businesses that are out there, is a church being closed on Sunday for Christmas. That’s right. Closed. On. Sunday. Just like the worship of Mary by the Catholic church started with the idea “original sin”, churches being closed on Sunday starts out with modern worship being nothing more than a short concert followed by a T.ED. talk. It begins with entertaining the crowd. You MUST have a professional, dynamic worship band. Next, to draw in the “unchurched” , that usually wants nothing to do with God, Jesus or his church, during Christmas, you must offer multiple “candlelight” Christmas services. Try 10 services in 2 days. Your worship team and volunteers are exhausted. What to do? Prioritize! What’s more important? Bringing in the masses or following the word of God? That’s easy: bring in the masses. Create a video worship service ahead of time and then play it on the Sunday after Christmas. One person on the video crew comes in (or works remote) to play it at the appropriate time. Easy peasy. The rest of the staff is chillin’ at home.

Your longtime members? Don’t worry about them. They’re locked in, out of habit. Them going out to find a new church is too much of a hassle. If they really want to worship God on Sunday, there’s plenty of other churches out there that don’t hire church consultants and are open. Your members can go there.

What about discipleship? Don’t worry about that either. Get the newbs involved in “Next Steps” or “Getting Connected” programs and volunteering. Those led to be actual disciples of Jesus will figure it out.

Granted not all large churches have bought into the nonsense. But they are rare. There’s big money in all this. But it takes money to make money. It takes a large staff and loads of expensive equipment. And then you need people to run it. You end up with a lot of balls in the air. But most people are just interested in playing church. I guess it comes down to the church consultants just giving people what they want.