(Today we will take a brief holiday from the usual press of current events. We will look at why we act as we do instead of as we should. This, I write from the perspective of a Christian seeking a truer understanding than what mainstream religiosity offers or even tolerates. I believe what follows can be weighed in the balance by those who adhere to any faith or who have no faith in faith at all. I invite you to read on….)
The end of the year draws nigh. By itself, this makes special the season. For those who believe in Jesus the season is made even more special. The number of days between now and Christmas strikes ten. Holiday lights and ornaments flash and sparkle in affluent homes and in establishments seeking to entice the pubic to spend more money than it has. If you take an objective look at this practice, it is a rather strange way to commemorate the one who came from Heaven to save our souls. The connection between one’s spiritual well-being and slipping into debt to purchase another computer, toy or bottle of wine escapes me.
Many things escape me these days. The longer I am in this world, the less accustomed I am to it. It is like a familiar location where the furniture and fixtures are constantly moved about for obscure reasons. Attend your average church this time of year. It advertises itself as a place of breakthrough. Visit the church but once; your life will never be the same. Such language attracts the bedraggled and the desperate. Those in the hard grip of Need will hearken to the call. They enter the church moving swiftly to their seats, hoping to be fed from the eternal mean. They will leave not even realizing they had been fleeced by one of the world’s most successful swindles.
After the carols are sung in loud, shrill chorus by cacophonous voices better left unheard, pastors will solemnly mount their pulpits and methodically clear their throats. Anticipation passes through the gathering like an electric current; the hum barely audible to the human ear.
The pastor tells the people to thank God for surviving the year. All nod in agreement. Next, he commands them to rejoice. The coming year will be one of untold bounty. Don’t fret that your heaping helping of gaudy wealth has yet appeared. The longer the wait, the more massive will be the haul. Your tears of sorrow will become tears of joy when that new car drops from the clouds to land at your front door. They will promise these things because this is what they foretold last year, the year before that and the year before that. It was a lie then. It remains a lie now.
The congregation turns febrile with enthusiasm. Shrieks of ecstatic joy rebound off the ceiling to echo throughout agitated space. People rise and fall back into their chairs as if the seats are afire but they cannot escape because they are tethered to the chairs by invisible elastic bands. Those taking solace in the false comfort shed real tears of relief; they cry for an end to the pain that poverty makes them endure. The preacher will hawk this gospel of venal treasure not because God commanded it. In fact, God abhors such things for they lead people away from, not toward Him. Yet pastors traffic this narcotic because they know it titillates us to the point where we abandon all wisdom and spiritual balance.
The hope of riches has become like strong drink or an opiate. We must have it. In the words of the swindler at the altar “you must key into the vision” or risk seeing your blessing pass you by to nestle in another’s lap. We become so transfixed by fear that we will pay dearly just to maintain our claim on that hope without even having a legitimate claim on the actual things hoped for. Paralyzed by fear that hope will abandon us, we gladly place our last naira in the collection box. The preacher now can key into his special individual vision. The collection will help pay for the new car he desires or for a bigger church building. On our way back to our chairs from our dance to the collection plate, reality sets in. We slip deeply into our seats. Our mind now grapples with the fact we have no way home. We just emptied our pockets of even our taxi fare.
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Dunned by this reality, we scan the rest of the congregation with vulture eyes. We pinpoint someone of affluence to jostle after service to shake some money from him. Once service ends, we dash to accost the person before he even leaves the building. That man knows such a game is on. He has severally been its victim. He also knows his wallet is not as ample as we suppose. His lifestyle is beyond him. He himself has been sitting in church half listening to the service half thinking about borrowing money from his brother. He does his best to rush to his car before any of a dozen people like us extends an empty beggar’s hand in his face. His massive belly penalizes him. He moves not fast at all. We catch him before he nears his car and his escape.
He reaches into his pocket to thrust a crumpled note into our hand. He pushes past us, resuming his trot to the car before another hand grabs him. Once inside the car, he curses us with words that would make a profane lorry driver seem chaste. We look down at the grimy note given us. The small amount can only get us halfway home. We curse under our breath, murmuring how could such a big man pinch such small bills? Yet we haven’t the time to pelt him with proper malediction; we have to search out another target to give us money to make up the rest of our fare.
The pastor well knows the hugger-mugger unfolding outside. He does nothing to cure it. At some point during the year, he could have made clear to his members that they should not place their last bit of food or fare money in the offering plate. But he ventures no such remedial advice. It would bring to many beggars his way, requiring him to spend too much on the actual welfare of people. Their welfare is not his prime mission. He already is barely satisfied with what he has collected. He is not in the mood to lessen it in any way for some senseless humanitarian gesture. What happens beyond his hold on the money is of no grave concern.
In the end, it is everyman for himself for if God were wise He would run away from us all. Man remains not his brother’s keeper. If you are the run-of-the-mill pastor, you are likely your brother’s deceiver. For all involved, the time spent in church is but a parody of spiritual uplift; and even this counterfeit item lasted but a fleeting minute after leaving the edifice. For us, for the fake rich man, for the pastor and most of the emotion-driven congregation it was never about emulating the spirit of Jesus. It is mostly about the long and strong pull of money.
God commanded pastors to take care of their flocks. Thinking himself smarter than God, the pastor tends summarily to the flock that he may primarily focus on building a farmhouse and barn. The barn and house stand majestically while the sheep wander about befuddled and underfed. The medicine he gives to the flock is to tell them to feel better by gazing at the barn and to have a sense of pride that they live in such a handsome structure. However, time comes for him to take the flock to market. Putting little into them, he gets little for them because they are unkempt and malnourished. In the end, he will find that the barn was but a self-built jail that profited him nothing at all.
In their worldview, God has been relegated to the status of an investment broker. We give him a bit of money then he is categorically required to provide us a large return. In this universe, the positions of master and servant are reversed. God is no longer sovereign. He serves as errand boy. He is reduced to the very same role ancient pagans gave their gods. In that belief system, when a worshiper give a sufficiently ample sacrifice, the amoral god must fulfill that person’s desire no matter how vile. Feed the god’s appetite; and he does even your most dishonest bidding. The God of the Christian faith is of a different sort. For this reason, He instructed Moses to tell the people “I Am That I Am” (Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh) sent Moses unto them. The divine name means God is Being itself. As the Supreme Being, he is sovereign above all things.
He is unlike the mercurial idols of pagan worship who move for or against a person at the slightest whim. It also means he cannot be bought via sacrifice. He does only that which comports with His nature. Notwithstanding the breadth of a person’s sacrifice, God will not act contrary to His own laws. Any such sacrifice is but waste. We are to bend to His will, not Him to ours. Thus, it is written God prefers obedience more than sacrifice. Somehow, this vital point the preachers of today miss. When they sing “Give Me That Old Time Religion,” they pine not for the times of the early Christians, They actually dream of the days of the ancient pagans, the times when man influenced the gods as much as the gods influenced man.
Thus, they espouse the power of positive confession. They have their flocks duped that if they say a thing long enough that thing shall come to pass. This has been taken to inane extremes. The other day, an early morning call punctured my sleep. The voice on the other end proclaimed that he was “rich.” I congratulated him on his newfound bounty and started to return to my slumber. Before I could drop the phone, the man asked for money.
That woke me. I was curious why a newly enriched man would need to borrow from the likes of me. We talked. I found out his cupboard was bare. However, his religious teacher had taught him to practice positive confession. After inquiring whether he had changed faiths, I told him it was his right to belief as he wished. However, Christianity and the doctrine of positive confession cannot easily coexist; to hold to one you must eventually discard the other. If you believe God is sovereign, then only He can call things into being. Humans have no such power.
Jesus admonished that we cannot add an inch to our height or change anything by obsessing over a matter. To believe that we can bring something into existence is to arrogate the power of God. Anyone who claims Christianity as their faith should avoid that misstep and certainly avoid teaching it to others.
Combined with the belief in positive confession, the exercise known as the Sinners Prayer leads many into a spiritual cul-de-sac. At most of our church services comes the dramatic moment toward the end of the session. The frocked man in the front persuades the wayward in the back pews to step forth and accept Christ. All we must do is mutter a 30 second prayer. Then, forever saved we are. No additional spiritual growth required; nor do we need to improve our conduct. Since we have already qualified for Heaven, there is no need for change. This facile message enables us to affix our sights on the material things we want. This enables us to cloak our materialism as the workings of the spirit. Greed acquisition masquerades as righteous virtue. Instead of bringing people closer to God, this device works much like the sayings of the Pharisees. It hardens the heart, erecting a barrier between God and man where He continues to see us but we cannot get nearer to Him.
Those who espouse this combination of positive confession and sinner’s prayer mix an injurious mix. They lead their flock to the slaughter. When Jesus referred to wolves in sheep’s clothing, it is of such men he spoke. Read the gospels of Jesus backward and forward 100 times. No inkling of instant salvation by uttering a prayer is to be found. Throughout his teachings, the constant theme is obey and follow Jesus’s commandments. Pick up your cross daily, not drive that new Mercedes. That is the command. However, sitting behind the wheel of a new car is so much more enjoyable.
If you mentioned the sinner’s prayer to Christ’s disciples they would have looked at you with bewilderment. They knew of no such doctrine. None of the great teachers of antiquity or the Middle Ages would have known what you meant. This prayer did not creep into the belief until the 19th century. The advent of revivalism and sensationalist itinerant ministers in America during that period sparked this innovation. It was basically a device used to attract to the revival tent those who otherwise would not attend a church service. If offered eternal salvation in exchange for standing before a crowd and repeating a few words for less than a minute, even the flintiest person will take the offer. This prayer that so many of us take so seriously began as a public relations gimmick by performer-pastors seeking to fill their revival tents with standing room only crowds.
Many will say I am wrong. They will say that Paul wrote about confessing the name of Jesus. Sadly, the English translation for the Greek is again rather poor. “Confess” is used as the translation of the Greek word “homologeo,” meaning of the same mind. The deeper meaning of the term is that of discarding one’s former beliefs to fully embrace those of Jesus. It means to proclaim you will begin to reshape your mind to comport to the teachings of the Nazarene. Merely saying you believe in him is insufficient. You must think like him which means to move from your prior attitudes toward using his to guide your life. The sinner’s prayer is futile to this more intensive transformation.
If Christians are to do better and make for a better society we must erase the confusion and better explain things to our people so they come to fully understand that the requirements of their faith are much more stringent than they had been led to believe. They must also be told that many things previously given them as articles of the faith were made of fabric woven on a different spindle. A starting point is December 25. We are more likely to find a city of dancing whales in the middle of the desert than Jesus was born on December 25. Again, if you went to the Disciples suggesting they celebrate their teacher’s birthday on December 25, they would hurriedly depart from you as one would from a rapid canine. Unlike you, they would be well aware that, for centuries before them, December 25 was date for celebrating Saturnalia, the sun god (Sol Invictus), and the Winter Solstice. These celebrations were of the raucous libertine sort. Sol Invictus was the official deity of ancient Rome before the advent of the Roman Catholic Church. When the Church became the official religion, a dilemma ensued. The new Church needed to attract sun god worshippers. The solution was to continue the old festivals but in the name of Jesus instead of the sun god.
Because of this history, early protestant groups, upon breaking from the Papacy in the Reformation, refused to celebrate Christmas. The holiday was outlawed in several states in America until the 19th century. Due partially to the Industrial Revolution and the resultant commercialization of society, Christmas became popular. Merchants saw it as a profit maker. Its commercial popularity quickly influenced the Protestant church and changed attitudes within decades. By the early 20th century, what had been outlawed was now a core church belief and ritual.
I raise this not to condemn the observation of Christmas. Many people will say the pagan origins of the celebration have been overcome. This is a plausible stance. However, people should not be kept in the dark regarding the origins of their spiritual beliefs. People who place their trust in the frocked man in the pulpit should be given the fullest picture of what they are being taught. I am a layman whose knowledge of my faith is unsatisfactory low. Yet, I know these core precepts while many purported men of the cloth seem unaware. This says nothing special about me. It reveals the extraordinary ignorance of too many of the pastors who seek to preside over us.
That they know not gives no cause to condemn them; what is wrong is that they seek not the deeper truths available to them. They’d rather fill the gaps in their knowledge with speculation and blind guess. They then cast their lazy conjecture as the word of God. Instead of spiritually helping people, they impair us. Tis’ not the season to be jolly. Tis’ the season to be wary.
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