Christianity Without Christ is Crap
“A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God’s truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.” John Calvin
As Paul writes to the churches of Galatia he is livid.
He had invested time with them in preaching the gospel and as a result, new churches were birthed. He left to continue that mission elsewhere when news got back to him that the Galatians were being seduced to believe a false gospel. Paul is not one to quarrel over secondary matters but this is no secondary matter; this is a matter of first importance; a cause worth fighting for: The centrality of gospel. And it must be defended!
In our day, there are false teachings that have crept into our churches, Christian bookstores, and imaginations and once again, the centrality of the gospel must be defended!
Spotting false teaching is easy. Just follow the glory. False gospels always diminish Christ and elevate someone or something else. It’s Christianity without Christ which is nothing but crap.
What are these false teachings that are seducing us today?
There are three major ones and we will illustrate them as three characters: The Taskmaster, The Game Show Host, and The Mad Chef.
The Taskmaster
His message is moralism. The idea is to make sinners better behaved. In following the taskmaster, we not only earn our salvation, but we earn the keeping of it by following rules (or principles as they’re called today). Any blessings from God is directly in proportion to our production, nothing more, nothing less. “Try harder” is our mantra.
When we do good, we feel really good. Over time, we climb the ladder of spiritual superiority and work our way up to middle management with a critical eye on the performance of others. We feel very proud of our accomplishments.
When we do bad, we feel really bad. Over time, we just give up. What’s the use in trying when all we do is fail? The Taskmaster cracks a whip to motivate us on but when you’ve been beaten your whole life, you form scar tissues, and lose all feeling. Hopelessness and complacency sets in and you often go from believing a false gospel to believing in nothing. It’s the only way you can live with yourself.
This is not the gospel.
The Game Show Host
His message is prosperity driven. God is a genie in the bottle and if you do these seven things you will have the good life. God is a pinata and is here to supply you with what you really want: Happy relationships, wealth, position, possessions, good health, you name it, you claim it, it’s yours. After all, it’s all about you.
The Game Show Host, with his fancy suit and pearly whites sparkling through his smile, points you to believe in a better future and it will be yours. In this game, you are like god and the one, true God is a means to your end: to give you the desires of your heart. After all, it’s right there in the Bible, so it must be true. Believe in God and you will get your gods.
There’s only one problem. The storms of life still come. When they do, we will cling to something to make it through. That which we cling to is what we actually place our trust in. The winds blow, the rain beats down, and in the prosperity gospel we are left holding onto pillars of sand.
This is not the gospel.
The Mad Chef
His message is a religion made your way. A stew of spirituality created with a little bit of Bible (only with verses we like which are out-of-context), our own life experiences, a slice of philosophy, a pinch of pop culture, a dose of our family tradition, a song lyrics to two. Combine that with our fears, anxieties, and personal preferences, a little bit from other religions, add in some love to make it seem reasonable and VOILA!, a spirituality customized just for us.
The beauty of this one is it can never contradict us and never tell us when we’re wrong because all we have to do is change the ingredients to fit our taste.
Then again, we’ve all been wrong about many things before. In fact, most of us can’t even figure out how to change the oil in our car yet we’ve somehow unlocked the meaning of life? No man has fully understood a woman yet somehow we fully understand the Divine? Something seems amiss.
The Mad Chef lets us create whatever self-help stew of spirituality we want yet all it leaves us with are stomach aches. We keep tweaking with the ingredients but end up with the same result. Our lives still have problems, our soul is still restless, and we’re still left holding a bottle of Pepto blaming God.
This is not the gospel.
So what is the gospel?
That’s where you come in.
The Gospel is Jesus.
I’ve been thinking about this post…and I think the key portion of the Gospel is that God is not ‘out there,’ but that’s He’s relational. Through Jesus Christ, the Father reached us, too.
That this earth is not all it can be, but that in Christ, who lives in those who choose Him, we can become to creation what the Father was to Jesus and Jesus is to us, all by the power of His Holy Spirit.
It’s huge. It’s like you say, color to a gray world of humanity that’s locked away in a padded-cell of deception. We can’t fully find earthly words to describe it so we’re left clinging to trust and faith and hope in Jesus–and that’s okay.
Jesus is the key to everything that’s been missing. He’s totally God, totally man, and we need to be totally about Him. We can be doubting portions, confused, not sure about secondary issues, but we can do that, because we have a relationship.
Religion doesn’t allow for questions…it’s about performance.
I don’t want Christianity, if it doesn’t have Christ.
Christianity Without Christ is Crap.
The gospel is good news! It is not some limited good news about my personal wants being met, it is the GREAT news that the Messiah has come, Jesus Christ came to take away the sin of the world, bringing glory to God while freeing us to obey and worship Him. Praise Him!