The Humanist Gospel Rough draft of a letter by Bill Douglass

Thoughts have been brewing in my spirit for a few years about this particular issue and in recent months God has brought so much to my attention that I feel the need to totally change my message whenever I speak or sing or teach in the name of Jesus. Simply stated it is the revelation that the gospel that we have been preaching (I include myself in that – with songs I have written, or teachings I have done) is largely untrue. In fact, I reached a point a few months ago where I realized one day that I don’t even believe it anymore. I do believe that the true gospel is the power of God and that is what has saved me and continues to work in mine and every other believers life. But I don’t believe that in large part we are preaching that gospel anymore. It has been brought home to me so clearly in different ways that the Christian church in America largely preaches a humanist gospel, which is not the true one. I will try to lay out a few points of what I mean by this in the following paragraphs. This is not meant to sound bombastic or preachy but I just wrote it as it came out. Overlook the wordiness or lack of polish and try to appreciate the meaning as I tried my best to communicate it. Obviously there are many others who have recognized the humanist-leaning trends in America’s churches but I until recently didn’t become convinced of how strongly we have accepted the lie of humanism, built our message around it, and the extreme consequences that conformation has brought about. In a nutshell, the humanist approach to the gospel presents the gospel as something that we accept because it makes our lives better. This “gospel” implies the idea that through accepting Jesus, we can achieve our own desires and goals, with little or no real acknowledgement given to the reality of God’s right of ownership over our lives and our bodies, and all that that entails. In this context truth is not an end in itself, but a means for me to use it to attain something I want (this may even be a good thing). Being ones who have been given the task of preaching the gospel in various ways, we Christians have tried, in order to make the message appealing to people of our day, to present God as we believe people today would accept him – for example, as a great therapist, or a distant warm light of unconditional positive regard, or a bearded type of Father-figure that will always listen patiently to us as we present our frustrations and needs. This image we support somewhat accurately through scriptures which portray the compassion and mercy of Jesus – but in what I will call humanist presentations, these scriptures and emphases are exclusively used to the innaccurate exclusion of others equally prominent, which present Jesus as the light who has come into our darkness, demanding a response from men who love that darkness more than light, and as a manly, war-like (against the enemy), sober-minded son of God on a mission. These aspects of Jesus expose the true nature of our natural human condition without a Savior and therefore the urgent necessity of giving our whole lives over to God after coming to him in repentance. This same Jesus (the real one) does not speak only in tones of pity and Fatherly compassion to the people he encounters - as if they are innocent, lost, victimized children in need of a big hug from our friend God, but as responsible, wilful beings who need to urgently deal with the issue at hand – be it sin or doubt or pride or divided loyalties, lest their eternal destiny be sealed in the wrong direction. Some encounters of Jesus throughout a few chapters in the book of Luke summarized in a nutshell may illustrate: “My mother and brothers are those who hear God's word and put it into practice." (Jesus forthrightly … the sentimental bonds and obligations of his earthly lineage, emphasizing instead the duty of all to the Will of God and the superior reality of his ownership over us) Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." (Jesus laid out the cost of his own mission and that He and by extension his followers have no ownership in this world) "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God." (Again, the …urgency of divesting oneself of all human obligations to follow God’s call, in the face of apparent disregard for ones rightful familial responsibilities) No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God (The necessity of continually going forward without thoughts of regret or doubt) Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him (Necessity of courage in the face of potential suffering for the Will of God and that His will must be foremost in our decisions) I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. 9But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the angels of God (The essence of saving faith is identity with Christ and willingness to bear the shame of his name and message) The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers. (The apparent ruthlessness of the Master towards those that do not persist in the will of God and remain in a state of service and readiness, apart from the pleasures of this world) 47"That servant who knows his master's will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. 48But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; (Again, harsh language depicting the punishment awaiting those who are lax and unwilling to take seriously the call of God on their life) 51Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. 52From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three (The clear-cut nature of the gospel in dividing earthly bonds and loyalties, even of family, that each person stands before God as one who accepts his truth or rejects it. The word of God divides betwee soul (and the ties of such to family and earthly bonds) and spirit(those of God’s truth)) Some questions we need to ask: “Is the same Jesus who said these statements the same Jesus we are presenting from pulpits today?” Do we ever use these scriptures or even hint that there is more to ‘coming to Christ’ than being healed from our wounds and accepted unconditionally? I believe we have reached the extreme edge of truth in our presenting the “warm-fuzzy” Jesus and that we are therefore in danger of presenting a total lie. It seems to me that today we are on the verge of characterizing God as a big Barney in the Sky singing “I love You, You love me”, one who bounds clumsily over to us, giving us a big hug thereby providing us with the unconditional love that will heal all our inner wounds that the cruel world (or the devil or our parents or spouse or ex-spouse etc.) has inflicted on us, yet demanding very little or nothing from us in return. In short, It is a gospel primarily for us, not for God. The former portrayal focuses on what God can do for us and presents little if any information that would lead its recipients to the understadning that that they have obligation to serve God, first and foremost – and that benefits are secondary to this revelation of service. In our altar calls, we go to great lengths to convince people how much Jesus loves them, believing that if they just got that revelation, then they will accept him, (which may mean coming to the front, crying, and saying a prayer). The questions are: does this accurately portray the God of the Bible offering one the salvation brought about by the real Jesus? And is the power of the living God released for the salvation and discipliship of its recipients under this presentation? Obviously our paradigm, to be correct, must be built from scripture – so we ask, did the original disciples go around telling everyone that "Jesus loves them" and that he has a "wonderful plan for their life"? Did they emphasize the things that God can give before emphasizing the things that he demands? (“repent and be baptized, and times of refreshing will come.”) The humanist gospel altar call often omits the directive to "repent" (change the way one thinks and acts in order to conform to God objective standard) and therefore implicitly affirms the view that many people today ignorantly hold - namely that there is no standard - that all behaviors (more or less) are okay. If the message given no longer creates a revelation of ones need for cleansing from wilful (or ignorant) disobedience to God (thereby soft-selling the idea of man’s obligation to live by God’s law), the calling of elimination of idols, a change in lifestyle, and the willingness to personally identify with the shame of bearing the name of Christ, then it is not the same message of the New Testament Christians. (I have wondered recently if the next stage in the evolution of the modern altar call will be the minister asking that if anyone doesn’t want to receive Christ, raise their hand – thereby “defaulting” everyone present into the Kingdom, and eliminating any feelings of uncomfortableness that our current method of publicly identifying with Christ brings.) We must ask ourselves, in light of previous generations of preachers and evangelists who saw nothing wrong with portraying the anger and judgement of God against sinners, and making people squirm in their pews before some of the greatest known revivals of our history broke out… In light of that, why we now consider ourselves so enlightened as to eliminate literally every hint of God’s character that does not line up with our perceptions of Barney-ness. Who are we catering to? We have developed a logic whereby any message that smacks overtly of the judgement of God or which directly addresses sin is deemed ‘religious’ and therefore has no place in our presentation of the “enlightened” image of God we have come to understand. Religion surely is an enemy – but humanism is as much a “religion” as what we consider ritualistic nonsense and, at this point in our modern church history, is more of a threat. True religion according to James, addresses itself to sin (keep one from being defiled by the world). We so much believe that any message that hints of those non-Barney aspects will be distastefully rejected by a society full of enabling, subjective truth, humanists that we have brought the gospel down to their level, thereby eliminating it’s power to save. I’m all in favor of contextualizing the gospel, using words and methods and music in line with the tastes of today. I believe many people are unncessarily alienated from the gospel message simply because a preacher doesn’t know how to talk in modern language and convey the meanings of it in terms other than those learned at seminaries or through church traditions. Certainly we must translate the gospel to be understandable and free of unnecessary stumbling blocks to a generation very un-spiritually minded and biblically ignorant. When missionaries go to Africa, they learn the language of the culture, they don’t expect the natives to learn English in order to be saved (how ridiculous!). But this has nothing to do with contextualization, it has to do ultimately with the message conveyed. The same missionaries would not combine elements of voodoo or allow gyrating sexual rituals within their Christian worship service in order to make it somehow more palatable to the natives (equally ridiculous!) I don’t even believe it necessary to use the word “sin” or “repent” because those words are not commonly used in our world – they draw blanks in the minds of normal non-churched people. But we must find equivalents to convey the same meanings of certain practices being ‘right’ in God’s eyes and some being ‘wrong’ and the necessity of each person to turn from the wrong ones as part of their contract in “accepting Jesus”. Surely there are passages of the gospel presented in Acts where repentance was not overtly mentioned – Phillips presentation to the Eunoch for instance. But the audience we are preaching to today – us flesh-indulging, we-deserve-a-break-today Americans, is not, by and large sitting around reading scripture passages, diligently trying to find the truth. The issue as it boils down to I believe, is to present the character of God in His correct proportions to the correct audience. Today’s average American has been deluded by the spirit of the world into believing that they are okay (meaning morally acceptable and in no way inherantly under God’s wrath as the Bible clearly teaches), otherwise our churches would be fuller. Our culture increasingly accepts many of the ideas of Eastern religions (new age) and paganism primarily because they conveniently fit into our increasingly pagan culture in that they place no demand for adherance to God’s fixed law, instead focusing on attaining inner peace and oneness with the cosmos, etc. We are also a culture largely steeped in worldly cynicism towards anything Godly, having been so immersed in the humanist/tolerance/ mindset that stones of bigotry and hatred are quick to fly at the mention of the true Jesus and of the truth of peoples need to accept him. Many as we know, are vehemently committed to stamping out the offensive Judeo-Christian God because He does set up one standard for all. Because of this, many people believe that if they come to Christ, it is because of the improvements in their life they are promised from the pulpit of receiving (the means to the end). They oftentimes see Jesus as just one choice among many, and they certainly will continue to live their lives the way they want with some minor adjustments perhaps. Statistics bear this out, revealing divorce rates, abortion rates, teen pregs, drug use, etc. almost the same within churches as without. Many professing Christians today also have a very low knowledge of basic Christian teaching and doctrine compared to ages past (what are we teaching then ?). To present the gospel correctly then, the majority of people in our modern culture need not to be soft-sold on the perceived benefits – they are already immersed in idolatry and American intellectual pride. Nor are they in need of the Jesus who comes just to heal up the wounds of our past (in reality the past person is put to death and a totally new creation is made within the heart of an acceptant believer and that a life of identification with Christ is the way of ‘healing’– we should never leave that out of the message). They need instead to be broken out of that delusion – a wake-up call to the reality of the human condition without Christ. Christ cannot be our friend before he is our Savior – And he will not be that unless He is our Lord (director). To present Him as less than that is to patronize the gospel and conform it to meet our (perceived) need. They also need to be informed of the boot-camp type of training which lieth ahead for those who seek to follow Christ (more on this later). I believe it is important that we ask ourselves why we have become so bent on portraying God as having the disposition of a stuttering apologetic Father-figure asking ‘forgiveness’ from his self-absorbed resentful son or daughter. Where did this come from? It came from our age and the spirit of it. It came from humanism. The inoffensive good news, palatable with all politically-correct and new-age stereotypes. Society will allow our Christianity as long as that’s all it is – unconditional love, Barney in the sky, catering to us, beholden to us, serving us. Or how about Jesus the supporter of women, the minority, the outcast? What’s offensive about that? (Too bad it isn’t true). Is that what we’re really after, societal validation? The Humanist gospel has succeeded in casting God in the image of man. And today, the image of a truly Godly man are rarely seen. We, as a society, are a weak people creating a weak God to suit us, a weak Jesus who caters to our weakness. A Jesus that overlooks the insidious nature of human will infected with the sin of rebellion against God, instead of saying ‘cut off your hand if it offends you’. Why cut it off? Because the battle we are in is a real one. Our eternal destiny is determined by our obedience to God’s will or lack of it, but that fact is fearful and today distasteful and offensive to us – therefore it must not be true (we think). God could not be that way from all we’ve been taught. God must become more tolerant, more pacifist in his language, more docile, more like us. And in an age where perversion is legally validated, where the doctrine of ‘tolerance’ and political-correctness have become entrenched in media, education, government, and society in general, we have become afraid of being castigated for our intolerant, un-politically correct Jesus, we have become afraid at offending those that Jesus termed a ‘wicked and perverse generation’. Many believers in this age don’t like to think of the battle between heaven and hell so we downplay it, emphasizing that the battle has been won by Jesus, we put on God the responsibilty for the condition of our lives. But in actual fact, the battle is real and unless we are aware of that, we are most likely losing it. We are developing a dangerous delusion in which God becomes responsible for things that we ourselves are responsible for. (eg. “I don’t know why God allowed me to catch Herpes” instead of recognizing and admitting the sin/consequence of sexual immorality. “I don’t know why God allowed my son to suffer from a drug overdose” instead of recognizing the consequences of a choice to allow Satan to rule ones actions). To the degree we support the lie of a humanist gospel, we are contributing to a false world and its false hope of a false humanist Jesus. These ideas inevtiably lead to absurd scenarios which I have witnessed within modern Christendom – a person learning how to “forgive God” for his bad lot in life, rampant sexual immorality without even the recognition that there is anything truly wrong with it, The humanist preacher goes to great lengths to portray Jesus in humanly emotional terms, defined as a man truly palatable to our modern age. Jesus as laughing, Jesus as gleefully forgiving, Jesus defined in terms of the sentiment of the earthly mother-son relationship that people insist on dwelling upon (Jesus never did), Jesus as the baby in a manger, Jesus as the sensitive male, Jesus as effeminate, Jesus the anarchist. Obviously Jesus was a fully human as any man. To define emotional health, look at how Jesus acted and reacted to things. He lived in the moment, expressing the full range of emotions capable to humans (from crying to cursing). But to disproportionately emphasize the supposed humaness of Jesus by defining him in terms acceptable to modern culture and as the modern mind understands it is to represent a lie, it is to bring Christ down to our level. (And if Jesus is more a man (like us) than He is The Son of God, then we really don’t have to pay attention to those demands he makes on us to follow him at all costs, etc. – after all, he understands.) Jesus refused to identify with his mother and brothers when they misunderstood his plan, Jesus by age 12 already knew that his true Father was not Joseph and was obeying the voice of God the Father above all others. Jesus confronted political and religious injustice (but was not an angry rebel), He overturned tables and spoke in stark language that cut through the excuses and justifications of men, saying things which caused men either to swear allegiance to Him or to swear at Him. He never backed down from arguments or confrontations but did not go looking for them. Everything he did was open for all to see. He did not hide in a religious establishment nor present a system of thought and life that only ‘worked’ in select circles of society or religious sub-cultures. There are few models of true Godliness in our modern culture. Our conceptions of love are largely maternal in nature or otherwise tainted by the mischaracterizations of a perverted society. Society finds it difficult to fathom the Fatherly love of God, nor the warrior aspects, or the ruthlessness of the battle between good and evil and therefore the seemingly harsh sayings of Jesus. The gravity, the sobriety, the necessity of daily choices between good and evil, the judgemental aspects of God’s nature, ignoring a good portion of the New Testament to paint a picture of a humanized, man of the 90’s culture they insist on Jesus being - but isn’t. Many Humanist preachers believing themselves enlightened to some new insight of our age, are bent on correcting the errors of previous generations of preachers who presented God as hell-fire and brimstone, judgement-oriented. But according to the Bible, God is that, as much as he is the epitome of love and acceptance. We’ve mis-characterized the mercy of God to be a get-out-of-hell free card, and a sub-conscious license to live fleshly. We don’t believe that the race and the fight we are in are truly real because at the end of the day, God is going to always forgive me anyway. Barney will still sing for us. I have nothing to lose. Just our soul. To be sure, to the broken and dejected, the true victims of the world, Jesus comes as the merciful healer, the good samaritan, the Father of the prodigal son. But even in that context, we cannot leave out the sin issue – the nature intrinsic to every humans heart – inherited from Adam as much a part of our nature as the divine image we were created in – because that is the issue on which our salvation turns, the reason Jesus died. (Why else would Jesus say to the poor paralytic on a mat that his sins are forgiven before he healed him?) A fact unknown to many preachers is that the message “Jesus loves you” is not the gospel and it never has been. The message we are told to preach is ‘repent for the kingdom of God is near” – the words we may use today may be different, but the basic thought cannot be. We are also told to make disciples of all nations, teaching them to do all he has commanded us. Our current do-whatever-you-feel culture has a hard time with commandments and even harder time with relinquishing their perceived control over their lives (though in reality the Satan is in control of many of them) and so our response has been to ignore a lot of scripture and find how to make the gospel and its commandments to follow Jesus’ teaching a bit more palatable, more agreeable, more optional to such. Maybe if we present the Christian life to show the benefits we’ll have in this life, in terms of enlightened self-interest, that it really doesn’t cost anything (just believe, just say a prayer, just come forward, etc.) The problem is that you can’t. It is not possible. Jesus never chased anyone who did not come up to the level Jesus demanded. The issue for salvation as well as for the higher level of Chrstian living God calls believers to is not one of getting a revelation of God’s goodness or unconditional love but to grasp the urgency of our need and our current state of lostness without Christ, and that it is incumbent on us to choose to turn from our self-controlled lives, to one of renouncing flesh-oriented lifestyle to a Christ-directed one, regardless of the costs or absence of immediate benefits. One aspect of humanist gospel is the portrayal of believers as having their prime motivation for serving God be purely from a love for God (as opposed to fear in any of its forms). And that we abstain from sinning simply because of our sincere, heart-felt love of God. This of course, is the ideal. However, unless I am in the minority, I confess that without the fear of negative consequences of sin, many times my flesh would give in. Under those circumstances, I am (sorry to say) not acting out of love for God as much as a fear. But the humanist presents the love ideal in such a way that it denies that the fear factor has any relevance – and that any fear is not of God. The reality of the general low level of commitment to church and spiritual things on the part of many Christians today is evidence that Christians see their service to God as optional, as having no real consequence. Our message instills little or no respect for God or for Jesus in the way that we present it… By contrast the same people are extremely dedicated to work, career, etc. I suggest (at least partly) because of the fear factor involved. I’ve heard numerous preachers claim that God doesn’t punish anyone (against hundreds of scriptures that say the opposite), and in general they go out of their way to avoid usage of any language which paints a picture of God being at all upset, displeased, or angry with us, his dear children. To do so would, by our cultural norms, hint at God being abusive and would quickly cause offense with most people (we think). Yet fear of God and fear of sinning under God’s judgement are aspects relevant in the life of believers and those coming to God, and ones which all of us need to experience, especially in this culture of false bravado and brash, brazen disregard for things once considered honorable and sacred. “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews), “If your hand offend you cut it off”. “We should not ignore the one who warns from heaven”, “How will we be saved if we ignore…”. Such warnings are vividly and repeatedly brought to the New Testament believers attention as a motivation against sin and fleshly living. Have we become more enlightened than they? So far I have compared and contrasted some aspects of what I call the humanist gospel with the real one. I believe a clear example of that contrast can be seen with the current generally accepted approach to youth ministry. I see the youth of many modern church youth groups by and large reflecting the culture of the world: they are disrespectful to parents (and authority in general), sexually loose, gossippy and slanderous, consumed with vanity and worldly-minded values and pursuits, idolatrous, and generally non-chalant in their approach to spiritual things. And they think that they are perfectly fine in this way and being a Christian. And why shouldn’t they? Most youth ministries place little emphasis on addressing these issues – no one is talking about them. Rather they are presenting Jesus as the friend who will never leave, the one who you can take all your problems to, the one who understands that life is unfair, the one who loves you unconditionally etc. etc. Christ, the perfect humanist, the one who becomes to us what we want him to be. Obviously this is far removed from the reality of God’s expectations of holiness and from the real Jesus. The same issues (of course) prevail in typical adult ministry as I’ve already mentioned. Obviously children will follow the standards or lack of standards handed down to them. But the message to both groups cannot be filtered through societal norms, it has to be presented as is. In altar calls to believers we continually present the power of God for deliverance from depression, anxiety, and a variety of emotional and physical ills, unwilling to, at some point, reveal the connection between these things regularly occurring in the believers life and habitual patterns which create opportunity for Satan to come in this way. Sin brings death. A fleshly-oriented lifestyle is an open door for Satanic oppression and influence. The issue as it boils down to I believe, is to present the character of God in His correct proportions to the correct audience. To people that are broken and who have truly been victimized, then obviously the mercy of God is emphasized, the ability to bring wholeness etc. But I would submit that this is not the case in the average American. I believe that the humanist message we have been preaching, with a teary-eyed Jesus, is actually creating (or reinforcing) the perception that we are all victims and that God’s attitude is one of only sympathy for the human race. Implied in this message is the idea that we, being victims, are therefore are not responsible for our own actions. This conveniently excuses our obligation to adhere to God’s law/ Christ’s commands and to awake out of the cloud of sin’s deception. We have lost this awareness. The humanist gospel dovetails with our cultures acceptance of self-esteem psychology, presenting itself as the ultimate answer for ‘feeling good about yourself’. I once attended a meeting at a church I went to which was designed along the lines of a support group. The topic was “dealing with rejection” and was supposed to be from a Christian perspective. After listening to a number of people express their feelings about being rejected by family, friends, parents, or whoever for varying reasons, I felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to speak a word of scripture. It was the passage where Jesus said that we are blessed when men reject us for His sake. And that the expectation of every Christian can be rejection on many levels, but that it is part of the cost as well as the great glory of being a Christian. This point met with blank stares and then the meeting continued, where the leader of the event dredged up scriptures which attempted to portray Christ as a teary-eyed sensitive male figure, validating each attendees view of the unfairness of life (theirs especially) doling out sympathy and validating their self-pity to the point of extreme unreality and nausea. The view which seemed to being solidified in peoples minds was one of “me and God” against the cruel world, never addressing the issue of personal responsibilty, duty to Christian service, let alone personal sin and God’s demand toward holy living. It’s all about me. Humanist Christianity fully accepts the current humanist worldview and psycholocgical understanding of man and human behavior in favor of the Biblical explanation of spiritual rebirth, the death of the old self (so we don’t have to rebuild/reform him), as well as denying the importance of the identity we now (must) have with Christ. In its place, it places the self. The humanist view affirms our need to learn about ourselves, the inner workings of our emotions, our past, how our upbringing and circumstances have made us the wrecks we are today, etc. in order to somehow through that knowledge attain some measure of wholeness. The Bible rejects this view totally, affirming that wholeness is found in Christ (Col.) through a process of spiritual rebirth centered around Christ, the one only who is truly whole. This rebirth and transformation happens through the internal working of the holy spirit in revealing truth about ourselves (conviction), and giving understanding and illumination about all things. This process however, is not one of reforming the old sinful nature, it is building on the foundation of our "new creation" which is created to be like God, in all "righteousness and holiness." Many Christians are trapped in the lost cause of trying to fit the humanist framework over their spirit-filled reborn selves. It is a futile trap for the truly spirit-filled Christian to get ensconced in humanistic ideas because in a word, they do not apply to us. We are no longer of this world, we are new creations, born of a different Spirit. And it is only in the identity with Christ that the newly created self is found. Only within that process is the Christian promised not just a false sense of “feeling good about oneself” but is transformed into a high place of authority, seated with Christ in heavenly places, far above into a state of total guilt-free, condemnation-free living. It is the ultimate in self-esteem but comes paradoxically when we lift up, not ourselves, but Christ. And this new life is one of learning to be directed by the inclinations of the Spirit of God within us. When we increasingly submit ourselves to the leadings of the Spirit of God, we put to death the aspects of our old nature (as opposed to attempting to patch that old nature back together through psychological analysis, the foundation of which does not even acknowledge or understand the reality of spiritual rebirth or anything spiritual for that matter). And this new life is one of learning to live continually in that new position of high authority, in idenfication with Christ. Christian Humanism has lost those spiritual truths through its unbelief of or ignorance of biblical truth, substituting instead the love of human intellectual ideas that simply do not apply to the born-again believer. The message of the Christian humanist entraps a believer again into his old self (which is dead) instead of focusing on the Christ identity/new creation that is truly who the believer is now. This topic itself one could write an entire book on but I will return instead to the idea of personal responsibility and the differences between the the two “gospels”. I read an Oswald Chambers devotional passage awhile ago and was struck with the stark contrast between it and any modern devotional equivalent. One contrast that leaped out at me (aside from the general depth of spirituality in the Chambers book and lack of it in modern ones) was that in all of Chambers writing (just one example among many of his day), the burden of responsibility for our behavior was unequivocably placed on our human will. Unlike todays mamby-pamby everyone’s a victim of their circumstance viewpoint, Chambers (who represented the common Christian worldview of His time) recognized and mercilessly exposed the capacity of the sinful mind/heart (aided by demonic influence) to create excuses and justifications for its bad behavior, whereas, by contrast, the majority of modern Christian thought actually validates excuses, propogating the view that we are truly ignorant victims (or even “the Devil made me do it” mindset). The healing lines at many churches fill up with the same people, repeatedly needing deliverance from the same self-inflicted problems because they cannot or will not see the connection between their patterns of bad action and the manifestations of physical or emotional ailments. The humanist accomodates the latter view. Where modern humanist Christianity is soooo slow to hint at any tone of self responsibility lest bringing the dreaded condemnation, the former view held by scripturally sound preachers of ages past (Chambers among them) instantly recognizes and condemns the tendencies of us humans to be slothful by nature, to be experts at denying our sin to ourselves, to accept the lie of reliance on our own ability, to be intrinsically proud, to be open to so many avenues of deluded thinking, the tendency of sinful man to cater to our fleshly impulses, whereas modern thought is so full of baby-like coddling, cooing, and stroking, conveniently affirming all our excuses and justifications for our bad behavior (we’re genetically predisposed, or we have been diagnosed with this syndrome, or addiction runs in our family, etc.). Grace is presented as blanket coverage for anything done wrong, so the idea implanted in our subconscious is that “there is no real cost to sin since I can be forgiven anyway” or “God loves me unconditionally so I know that He understands when I have this weakness I can’t (or don’t want to) get rid of”. We present Jesus as a puppy-eyed Grandfatherly figure or a Santa-Claus-like character that will always “understand” and just wants to hold us in his arms, comfort us from our little victimized lives, and bless us with new toys. We’re so afraid to hint at that the notion of human responsibility that we are causing our own problems. The root cause (gasp) might be us. One side-effect of acceptance of this thinking is confusion – questioning “why God?” at every bad turn instead of recognizing thineself and thine bad habitual behavior (ones that you’ve lost site of because of the blindness of your spiritual eyes) as the main source of the problem. To counterbalance this somewhat, I do not believe it wrong to present the goodness of God – Jesus fed the 5000, healed the sick, offered the woman at the well living water etc. “Taste and see the Lord is good”. To the unbeliever God first offers himself positively, overlooking sins comitted in ignorance and liberally pouring out signs to prove himself real, desiring to wash and renew and bring home. But in the experience of Jesus New Testament life, there was always a dividing line that differentiated the followers and those that chose not to. And Jesus was quick to get to the heart issue that determined on which side of that dividing line each person he encountered stood. Jesus confronted the woman at the well with her sin before allowing her to continue to talk about worshipping God. “Let the dead bury their own” was his answer to the man confused between his loyalties to family and God. To the 5000 he said “you must eat my flesh and drink my blood” painting a gruesome picture illustrating the total commitment required by His followers. To the paralytic he announced forgiveness of sin before he healed, to the rich man who refused Christ Lord-ship over his life, he held out no hope. In all this discussion of humanism versus the true gospel, I believe the issue truly may be a question of emphasis as much as one of mis-stating facts. Certainly I am not denying that God does love us in one sense unconditionally. Yet that love alone cannot save us – unless we respond in wholehearted obedience to him. So should we represent just the unconditional love of God and downplay His demand for our obedience? “God forbid” as Paul would say. It is also an issue of mis-repesenting the character of God by only showing one side of him – and from presenting that same side to each audience or recipient, regardless of their need or situation. Obviously not everyone is in the same situation and therefore, a different face of Jesus is necessary. The mistake is that the humanist presentation of the gospels as I have stated, approaches everyone as a victim – almost to a childish degree. And this clearly is not reality. There are victims in this world – those that, through no fault of there own, have need of the pure compassion, mercy, and healing of God the Father. But the majority of people in our present society are not in this category, (as much as they believe otherwise). They have grown up perhaps ignorant of God, with an imbred attitude of worldly selfishness – a sense of entitlement, a materially-centered existence, a spiritual void into which they attempt to pour various false ideas, intellectual headiness that creates a huge wall of self-sufficiency, pride, and perhaps skepticism against anything spiritual - all of this must be eliminated before the light of the gospel can shine through. Thus, the message to this majority should be far removed from presenting the smiling Jesus as one who somehow validates all that and who just wants to hug us and show us how much he loves them all, (arrogant bunch that they are). That is to patronize God and to cheapen the death of Christ. There is little perception of need in the eyes of this majority (obviously I’m speaking in very general terms). The grave error of the humanist gospel is that instead of exposing their state of lostness and the false basis of confidence in material or intellectual assets many have grown up in, we have opted to actually go along with it all, soft-selling Jesus as the great healer of inner wounds (this is not an offensive thought to the majority – “sure, why shouldn’t I be treated for all the abuse I’ve undergone – I deserve it”). Instead of exposing the falseness of the religion of real humanism which they believe, we cater to it, probably for various reasons – to fill churches, to get a ”commitment”, to make them like us, or because everyone else seems to be preaching the same message. It is also more difficult to preach a biblical gospel if we ourselves are not living up to it. Tempting as it may be to preach an "I'm okay, you're okay as long as we try our best" message, we are obligated to pass on the sober truths of Christ: "the narrow road", the "striving continually to enter", the demand for total comittment, and to continually guard against the deceptions of the "wide and broad road" and of falling away. Maybe we figure down the road, we’ll try to fit in the other aspects of our faith, about that cross thing and sacrifice and commitment and all the stuff that takes too much time away from Sunday mornings. But it doesn’t fit. And so we add to the lie – actually contribute to the justifcation of the current societal mindset. “Hey, give Jesus a chance, your life will be better”. It is true enough in the long wrong – but are we telling the whole truth? The army used to run “be all you can be” TV ads with smiling, manly looking guys working at computers and doing other important-looking things they purportedly learned how to do after they joined the Army. But in those ads they never showed the grueling boot camp or the guy assigned to a desk in Timbuktu wondering how the heck he got there. I think the humanist gospel mind has slipped (subconsciously in many ways) into this line of thinking: “We know that the psychologists all tell you you’re hurt and in need of inner healing so we’ll present Jesus in that way too. The fact is, we know that he can. But salvation is so much more than that, as much as joining the army is more than a way to learn computers. And the guy who signed up only to get a nice smiling job will probably far less likely to get a purple heart for bravery in action. In other words, converts quickly fall away when they find out that they have to change their life to conform to Jesus demands – it is not easy. Conversion is a death of the old self and the old life, and the relinquishing of the will to a new source – one who seeks to totally possess the mind, emotions, spirit, and body of each believer, to use for His own purpose and for His glory. In light of being presented with those facts, the only way a person would say ‘yes’ to all of that, would be if he recognized who he truly is (totally lost, going to hell, without any rights or alternatives) and who God is (the one source of salvation and the one to whom all rights are given). This is where the humanist gospel falls short. Before salvation can be appreciated in its correct perspective we must see what the alternative is – our lost state of going to hell and being estranged from God forever. The correct message, like the first given on the streets of Jerusalem by Peter, creates an attitude of the heart whereby we offer our lives to God unconditionally because He deserves nothing less for who He is and for what He did, not one in which we haultingly come as God pleads with us with puppy-dog eyes, almost that He would apologize to us for how unfair the life is He has given us is. After a big hug we cry and accept his apology – we’re saved. Glad that’s over with. But God never saved anyone that didn’t become fully aware of their need for salvation. As I spew these things out as they are coming to me, this is not at all written with an air of cynicism or self-righteousness. It is a recognition that we have been so saturated with humanism in our society that the typical gospel message preached in a modern church is no longer powerful to save, because it is mixed with the antithesis of God’s saving power – the will of man. Hell is full of humanists in one form or another - those that perhaps did not openly rebel against God, but those who never saw the need for God because they thought that they were ‘okay’ the way they were, that they were smart enough or talented enough, that the power for life was already inside them, that they could create their own destiny (apart from Christ), that they were special, or that whatever God exists in the universe, he surely would never send anyone to hell because of his unconditional Barney-like love. And they could have gotten those ideas through attending one of our churches. I have spoken as if there is a clear-cut defining line between that which constitutes humanism (the lie) and the truth of the gospel. But I truly don’t know where that line is. I cannot make a blanket judgement about where the lie is and where the truth is within a given church, function, event, or minister. I believe it becomes a matter of emphasis, of motivations, of degrees. I believe the answer though, is to raise the bar to where it belongs and to set the standard back to its rightful place, and to define our presentations of God according to scriptural paradigms. To be unafraid to address the Lordship (the Directorship) of Jesus, the character and attitude of Jesus when dealing with sin, the effect of sin (spiritual death) on us, and the reality of the battles we face every day. And that the gospel is true and therefore we dedicate our lives to it – not because it improves my sex life or because all my dreams will come true, but because it is God’s truth. I do believe that God gives us promises of blessing and reward, and that they should not be discarded or de-emphasized. I believe though, as I said, that it’s a matter of emphasis, motivation, and fact filtering, and that our direction in the current American church has leaned so much toward presenting only the blessings, only the usefulness to us that God is, that we are in grave error. Are we glossing over the lordship of Christ because we know that won’t go over well with this generation that considers itself the “lord” of its own destiny? Are we humanizing Jesus too much, to the exclusion of the manly life and death aspects of our Christian warfare because we increasingly live in an age of pacifism and softness? The warfare has never changed. The enemy has not become weaker just because we have. The clear-cut black and white “intolerance” of Jesus when dealing with sin and its purveyors would surely be grounds for rejection by our society if Jesus were to appear today – but He does appear in our message (or He’s supposed to). Why are we not rejected as He was? The standards of God have not changed. Homosexuality is perversion and it should be stated as such. We will never love any homosexual into any Kingdom except the Kingdom of Hell unless we make them aware that they must, through God’s power, change. Now more than ever, the softness of our lives has to be exposed – not that we would suffer humiliation from the exposure, but that we might then become strong enough to be true overcomers of the enemy, instead of non world-impacting church-goers who are hip to the latest Christian singers and speakers, at home at the center of our self-created church counter-culture. God still demands lordship – “He who loves family more than me is not worthy of me”. It’s not for us to eliminate the hard sayings of Christ but to set them back up as the standard so that maybe some may attain them. We surely won’t if we don’t know what they are. The theme of this writing stated again is that humanism has so influenced the gospel that it is no longer the gospel. Under humanism, a believer’s motivation becomes “what can God do for me” with the accepted underlying motivation being: “I come to God because he will make me succeed in business, or because my marriage will be better, or because it’s ‘cool’ to be a Christian” (a theme presented to youth these days). I will now talk (more) about what I see as some of the outcomes of the humanist message. The worst-case outcome of humanist preaching is that people think they are saved when they are not: because of the false sense of security that is created in people who show up in church once a week and do not establish a relationship with Christ nor give over their lives to him, and who will have a rude awakening come judgement day. The next worse outcome is the disillusionment which occurs when people realize that the real Christ is calling for more than their church attendance, he calls for our lives. And that all the slick marketing techniques of the humanist preacher in promising wealth and riches (in a way that prioritizes material wealth over Christ’s lordship) was not what Christ was talking about. The response (usually) then is falling away. To clarify my background a little - I am not coming from any predisposed denominational slant which castigates any one denomination (eg 'charismatic' or 'spirit-filled' churches). I have spent most of my life in them, and am more or less in agreement with their basic doctrinal stance concerning the relevance and working of the holy spirit, the necessity of the operation of the various gifts - prophecy, healings, etc., and also their general committment to Christs mandate to evangelize. I believe also that Jesus came, as was announced by the angels at his birth, for "all people" - and that we need therefore to present the gospel, as Jesus did, in a variety of ways that people in our current culture will understand it (much as Jesus used parables which related the principles of the Kingdom of God in terms that the average working class person of that culture understood). As I mentioned earlier, I believe it is important to remove all man-made barriers to the understanding of the pure gospel message. I believe many such barriers erected over the last 20 or so years are in language, phraseology, traditions, subtle or not-so-subtle pressure to conform to a particular style of dress, social class, or any other cultural and generational differences whereby people feel unrelated to or ostracized by the 'church crowd'. If we examine Jesus life we see that he related to people of all types and sizes, cultural classes, walks of life, etc. In so doing, he very often raised the eyebrows (and occassionally the fists) of the 'religious' establishment because of his lack of inhibition in relating to those whom they were too righteous' (in their own eyes) to relate to. But it was and still is the mission of Jesus to "seek and save that which was lost" and to come to the sick, not those who are already healthy. With that being said, and in light of many churches moving towards 'seeker-sensitive' approaches, I believe, again, that with all our 'contextualization' and making the gospel 'culturally-relevant', we are still obliged as believers entrusted with the great commission, to preach the gospel, the whole gospel, and nothing but the gospel with its directive to individuals to respond firstly by "turning from evil" and towards God, its warnings of remaining in sin ("it is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God"), etc. It is time to de-optionalize it, to start giving equal time to the consequences of remaining in a state of separation from God, and to the fear of God, to stop filtering out the hard sayings of Jesus and picking and choosing only the "feel-good" scriptures, and in essence creating false doctrines which gloss over or completely deny the conditional aspects to God's promises - namely that they demand our obedience to God before they come into play.