I look across the landscape of Christianity in America and I see people and faces full of emotion and happiness, yet devoid of Biblical wisdom and joy. I see men and women standing at the head of their congregations waving their arms and telling clever stories in an attempt to entertain the masses. These shepherds pour out their empty chocolate candies as the atrophied souls of their flock crumble to dust from a lack of red meat.
The Church in America is teetering on the brink of spiritual bankruptcy, yet ministers and congregations seem perfectly willing to continue singing and dancing their way off the edge of the cliff. To one degree or another, the emotion-based charismatic movement has been able to get its wiry fingers into virtually every church in the country, and few understand what this really means. Because of this, I would like to discuss this tidal wave of empty, hollow emotionalism that has swept through our churches, explain the damage it causes and point to where the Church truly needs to be. My main interest here is to get people to wake up, wipe the sleep from their eyes and examine themselves and their churches in a new light.
A few years back I went to a church service once with some members of my family. I had never been to this church before, but I was fairly certain of what I would find there: the standard emotional, arm-waving service with a “message” that was heavy on cliche’s and childish stories, and extremely light on any sort of substance. I know that upon initial examination, that really doesn’t sound all that bad. But I guarantee you, the jazzing up and dumbing-down of our churches is a grave threat to true spirituality in America today.
So, on the car ride to the church I discussed the pitfalls of the impending empty emotional distraction with my captive family. I knew none of them was tuned in or very open to this concept, so by warning them beforehand, I had hoped it would enable them to see the phony facade more clearly when it jumped up and down in their face (if it were to make an appearance, of course). One of my relatives was definitely not pleased with my stance against the “happy happy joy joy” style of church. As we walked into the church building, she tried to convince me of the importance of ‘emotions.’ Her eyes were not to be opened this day it seemed. The service came and went and it had been far worse than I anticipated. The subject, that you should read your Bible regularly, was certainly a good one. However, I came away uncertain if this minister had ever read his. Putting aside his long and vapid presentation, punctuated by meaningless PowerPoint slides and failed attempts at prop humor, he misquoted and mangled the meanings of the only two Bible verses he bothered to mention in thirty minutes.
When I see a minister such as this, who has so clearly fallen short of his responsibility to illuminate the truths of the scriptures and to feed his congregations’ souls so they might grow in the fullness of the Spirit of Christ, I think of the parable of the talents (St Matthew 25:14-30) and the parable of the watching servants (St. Luke 12:35-48). Both of these parables tell the stories of servants who wasted their time and/or abused their positions while their master was away. When the master returned, he had his untrustworthy servants beaten and/or stripped of their positions of authority. I think of these ministers pretending to be stand-up comics and I thank the Lord that I do not stand among them, because in them I see the servant who has not taken seriously his responsibilities to his master and was found asleep upon his return. To whom much is given, much shall be required.
After the service, the family member of mine who was concerned about my assault on emotions came up to me and (referring to the service) said: “See, emotions aren’t bad.” Firstly, she missed the point of what I had been trying to tell her. She thought I was espousing the idea that we should all become like the Vulcans of Star Trek and suppress or purge all our emotions. I was not. A great minister of the last century, Dr. Harry Ironsides, put my feelings on this subject into far better perspective with the analogy of a train. The engine of the train is the Word of God, the cars represent your faith and at the very end there is the single caboose which represents emotions. Where is the power in this train? The Word of God! The power is in the Holy Spirit who speaks to us through the scriptures and it is our faith which links us to them. Emotions are present and necessary (and you should certainly be worried about someone without them), but they belong at the end, not the beginning of our train. The charismatic and emotionally charged culture that has taken over our churches is desperate to tell us the opposite.
Why is that? This kind of emotionalism has been a hallmark of nearly all religious cults for as long as they’ve been around. Mormonism, for example, pushes new converts to ignore what their head might be telling them and to trust their feelings instead, so that: “when we, the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints smile at you and shake your hand and tell you wonderful things you want to hear and you get that warm fuzzy feeling inside you, you will know that that is God telling you you’re in the right place, here with us.” Does that argument sound right to you? It doesn’t sound right to me, and let me tell you why. First off, nowhere in the Bible do we find the “warm fuzzies” as the absolute sign that God is speaking to us (also, II Corinthians 11:14 tells us that Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light). Conversely, if this WERE true, shouldn’t it therefore be impossible to get these “warm fuzzies” as we committed a sin? Seriously think about this for a second.
IF: Warm fuzzies = God AND: Sinful behavior also = warm fuzzies THEN: Sinful behavior can = God?
As you can see, the only way this argument holds any water is if it were impossible for us to get happy feelings from sinful behavior. (I believe it takes very little imagination to determine if that is possible or not.) If God spoke to us through happy emotions, then how could it be possible for us to tell the difference between what is right and what is wrong when we can get those same happy feelings from a sin? The truth is that you can’t trust your emotions, they’ve lied to me throughout my life and they WILL lie to you. They are the first area Satan looks to exploit in his attempts to pry us from out of God’s tender embrace. When I recall the times in my life where I was successfully conned or lied to, nearly all of them started with my emotions being twisted around and played with. Once you’ve allowed this to happen, the person who wants to use you sets you off down the wrong track from the very beginning, making it much more difficult to realize you’re nowhere near where you wanted to be. So, if you expect your caboose of emotions to pull your train, don’t be surprised when the only place you find you’re able to go is straight downhill.
Why can’t we find the truth in the world of charismatic emotionalism? It doesn’t have to be destructive to the church, right? Ask yourself this: Is all the razzle dazzle, PowerPoint slides, anemic jokes, arm waving and excitement there to reveal the mysteries of the scriptures and help you to surrender yourself to the divine will of God, OR is it there to keep your attention and entertain you? Let me put it another way. I asked some of my family if they had learned anything about the Bible after that service we went to. They said no, but (they were quick to point out) they had learned practical things, like that it was important to read your Bible regularly. WOW! Stop the presses. If only someone had informed me of the wisdom of this sooner. Now, to be serious, reading your Bible is terribly important and there is nothing wrong with reminders on the subject (I am often terribly remiss in this area, and I know it is full well to my detriment). But when this is the deepest thought you can pick out of an hour of communion with two hundred other believers, there is something very wrong. I then asked my family which of them would remember anything from this service an hour from now. No one could give a positive answer to that. It’s quite possible that I’m the only person in that entire church who remembered anything about that sermon. Unfortunately, it’s for all the wrong reasons.
This, of course, is all part of the plan. Picture it: millions of Christians going to Church every Sunday listening to empty stories that have little to nothing to do with the Word of God, made up of carefully chosen words so as not to offend anyone, pumped up by a rock band on stage or by a ministers magic or comedy act, they leave with an emotional high and a big smile on their face. All is well with the world… until reality strikes. Life goes bad for all of us, and if we are well grounded souls with faith in God and an understanding of His scriptures and His plan for us and the Church, your house is built upon solid rock and you have set sail on a ship which will see you through the worst storm. But this isn’t what those millions of Christians in all those churches have. When reality comes crashing down, what is there for them to grasp and hold on to? Their happy worship songs? Their ministers’ bad jokes? The PowerPoint slides with checklists of trivial minutiae? No. Their empty emotional religiosity is the sand they built their house on, and when the tide rolls in, there’s nothing to keep it from collapsing and washing out to sea. When things are bad, “don’t worry, be happy” just doesn’t get you as far as you thought it would. These people are left disillusioned and hurt by the church. “God was supposed to help me, make me happy, make my life easier.” But instead of comfort, they find themselves adrift, confused as to why they can’t navigate their rudderless ship through the storm. Many are then left with the conclusion that God is just a big phony. They leave their churches to spread their disaffection to their family and friends. It is here that we see the plan succeeding. What plan? Satan’s plan to destroy our churches from the inside out. “Get rid of that dusty old Bible and put those emotions at the front of your train.” This is the present and coming epidemic in the Church in America.
Of course, not all people will come crashing down in this way. Those who remain in those pews continue to subsist on the sugary drinks of empty speeches, frivolous distractions, and loud music instead of the rich milk of God’s wisdom as revealed through serious and sober consideration of the scriptures. These poor souls have been fooled into thinking that in their idleness, this is all that Christianity is, a social club. The tragedy is that while they may have escaped from their captivity to sin and made it across the Red Sea… just like the Israelites, they’re stuck wandering through the wilderness! But unlike the Israelites, they don’t even realize that there is a promised land that is right there waiting for them! Sanctification is the land of milk and honey that we, as Christians, filled with the Spirit of God, can enter TODAY.
What is sanctification? Nearly all the epistles of the New Testament deal with this subject of sanctification. Once we have died to ourselves and the world and been resurrected as a new man in Christ, is that it? Well, in the day of Judgment, your name will be found in the Book of Life and you won’t be cast into the fiery pit. But in this life, is that it? Hardly. Sanctification is the next step in your life as a Christian. It is essentially, Christian living. Now this is not legalism, like the Jews of old. “See, look at me, I’m following all the rules and doing what I’m supposed to do. Shame on you for not conforming to the rules as well as I do.” That is an outward-in approach. I make the outside look good and eventually the insides start to look right too. As exemplified by the Jews’ dramatic and continual failure, that does not work and cannot be made to work. God works from the inside out. You are either hungry for the things of God and truly want to seek out His mysteries and understand His mind, or you don’t. Here is a simple example (and I really mean simple, honestly don’t read too much into it, it’s just an example): “uh oh, I’d better smile and hold the door open for these old ladies, because I know that’s what I’m supposed to do, and I really need to keep up my appearances or people will think I’m not a good Christian.” That is legalism. Sanctification would be holding the door open, not because you knew you were supposed to, but because you wanted to. You weren’t reacting to a set of expectations, you were simply acting out of the joy in your heart that comes from searching earnestly after the things of God.
When asked why there is no real teaching of the Bible in their sermons, ministers will usually respond with something like: “Well, I think it’s important to keep things relevant (or practical) for my congregation.” If we move through this argument logically, then by telling people simplistic stories about day-to-day life and bypassing the Bible completely, we are being relevant. What does that make the Bible? I believe it makes it irrelevant, doesn’t it? “Who wants to talk about that boring old thing? It doesn’t really speak to our modern problems, does it? We need to solve our problems today with fresh new ideas and approaches.” Right? (I’m now going to crash two ideas together for you so, stay with me.) This approach, of being relevant and stepping around the Bible is the same outward-in approach of legalism. Instead of dealing with the root cause of man’s problem, his soul, we are instead dealing with the superficial problems of his day-to-day life. It cannot work! Our lives can only change for the better through the working of the Holy Spirit in our inner selves. We are not Christians because we held the door open for the old ladies, we are Christians because the joy of the Holy Spirit was within us and opening the door was the natural outpouring of that joy.
Think of it this way: A parishioner comes to his minister and says, “Pastor, I have problems being nice to people, I’m not a charitable person and I don’t love my wife the way I should. How do I fix these problems in my life?” This minister, wanting to be practical and relevant, pulls out a copy of the latest Christian self-help book and rattles off the appropriate tips, tricks and techniques that, as advertised, should solve these everyday problems. Now, let’s say another parishioner came to this minister with the same problems. But, instead of being “relevant,” this time the minister decides to deal with this persons’ soul. He asks probing questions of the mans’ soul and tried to determine his spiritual state of mind. He finds the man is lacking in good Christian fellowship and does not read (or really understand) the true meanings of the scriptures. The minister sees this man is interested in learning and helps to get him involved in a substantive Bible study program. The minister even meets with the parishioner on a regular basis to encourage and instruct him in understanding the scriptures. Of these two men, which of their problems do you think was truly solved? The man who received some pop-culture quick fixes, or the man whose soul is now filled with the Holy Spirit? But, you might say, the second man’s problems were not directly addressed. That’s correct. Now, for very serious problems, you may need to tackle them head on, but you will be surprised my friend, when once you set yourself to focusing on God and His goodness, you will find many of those seemingly insurmountable everyday problems in your life falling off to the wayside. The more “relevant” a minister tries to be, the less truly relevant he is.
People generally come to church because they are hungry for meaning and purpose. Is that purpose found in loud music and emotional highs or in the truth of Jesus Christ? How do we find truth? Do we find the truth through the superficial or the emotional, or do we find it from where Christians have always found it over the past two thousand years? The Word of God is our best and ONLY guide to the faith. “But so many people come to hear our great music and rock out at our exciting services. People come to church to feel happy, they don’t want to hear all that boring stuff about the Bible and what you should and shouldn’t be doing.” You’re right they don’t want to hear it. That is the real crux of the matter. The truth is never popular. It never has been, nor will it ever be. “But running this church isn’t cheap, we need to get people through the door. Besides, what’s wrong with being well-liked and popular? If we’re not hip and happening and relevant, then no one come to hear us.” I think Jesus had a few words to say on the subject:
St. Luke 6:22Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake.
St. Luke 6:23Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.
St. Luke 6:26Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.
The next time you’re at your church, consider these things. If you’re a serious Christian and want to move forward and grow in the love of Christ, then you need to ask yourself this question: Do I want to stand with Christ and bear the shame of His cross, or do I want to be popular? Make no mistake and do not be deceived, these two things are completely incompatible. Think on it, I pray you.
Credit claire wallisAs one of Americas oldest
