Embarrassed By My Brethren

~DISCLAIMER~

The following comments do not represent the opinions of your local Christian television station or most best-selling Christian authors.

Okay...this is gonna sound harsh. Some won't agree with me. Some will accuse me of being mean-spirited or judgemental...but honestly, I don't really care.

I'm angry. I'm angry because I'm embarrassed. I recently joined another local "religion" forum online with people from the Augusta area. There are a lot of atheists who come in daily to post messages of ridicule against Christianity and Christians. I joined the forum to get to know some of these people, maybe get into relationship with them. Honestly...we give them so much good ammunition with which to ridicule us.

Lynn and I were at Barnes & Noble tonight and, as usual, I spent some time perusing the Christian section. I took note of Joel Osteen's best-seller with the subtitle of something like, "Seven Step to Living At Your Full Potential." I took note of John Hagee's book "The Seven Secrets" with the subtitle of, "Unlocking Genuine Greatness."

We have a local Christian television station and I recently heard the guest preacher saying, "In preparing for tonight, God told me that 1200 people would have all of their life struggles disappear tonight if they called in to the station. This is your divine moment of destiny, all of your struggles gone if you'll call in now."

Give me a break!!!! What ridiculous crap! I am so sick of "preachers" on television or in their best-selling books reducing a relationship with God down to "seven simple steps" or "seven secrets" or one "divine moment of destiny." All of this is such an empty, shallow, cotton-candy version of Christianity that in my opinion destroys the faith of more people than it does leading people into a relationship with God.

Somebody forks over the $15 or $20 to purchase the book containing the latest "seven steps," reads it, does all of the seven steps exactly the way the author says, and while anticipating their "life of greatness" to begin, their world falls apart when a child dies, or a job is lost, or cancer strikes. "What happened? I did all the steps! I guess God just doesn't like me. I'll give Buddhism a try."

The elderly widow who is one meal away from starvation calls into the Christian station and pledges her $38 per month because according to the preacher, "$38 is the divinely ordained donation amount to eliminate all of your life struggles because on three different occassions Moses confronted 8 disobedient Hebrews before victory came and since three and eight make $38 that's what you need to give to make your problems go away." Her problems don't go away. In fact, they're worse because since she's now giving $38 per month she can't afford the medication she needs. And she wonders what she's done wrong to disappoint God.

Any spiritual life than can be reduced to "seven simple steps," or "seven secret keys" is not a life of faith worth pursuing. It's like settling for a candy store when there's a gourmet restaurant around the corner.

As I continued looking over the books I saw volumes by great men of God like Aquinas, Augustine, Wesley, C.S. Lewis, Francis Shaeffer, the Desert Fathers, etc. And in there writings I see men who understood that the Christian life is a journey of discovery. It's a journey of good days and bad days. It's a journey of prosperity, but it's also a journey of difficulty. It's a journey of both tragedy and triumph. And God's desire is not to make all of our troubles go away and paint rainbows in our skies and give us perfect teeth and shiny jewelry and gold-plated pianos. God's desire is for us to find and worship him intimately and passionately in good days and bad days, prosperity and difficulty, tragedy and triumph, sickness and health.

It's not until we can experience the richness of God's presence in all of life's difficulties that we know in the deepest places of our soul how much He truly loves us and can say like Job, "Though he slay me, I will praise Him."

This next statement will make a lot of people mad. Fortunately, not many people read this blog so I shouldn't infuriate very many people. But I believe that the Kingdom of God would take a quantum leap in filling the earth if the plug was pulled on every single Christian television network and station. We would eliminate a lot of heresy. We would bring a lot less shame to the Kingdom of God. And the gospel would spread through actual one-on-one relationships the way it was intended.

Okay. I'm done.