Mister Preacher: Dividing the Gospel Kills it

R. Scott Clark wrote that social media is a covenant of works. He said we have to watch our step, not showing our true faces, but “what we must seem to others lest the wrath of the ‘righteous’ fall upon us.” 

I’ve actually thought a lot about this idea over the last year or so.

While we all have to watch what we say among the people of this easily upset time in which we find ourselves, no one is as easily scandalized as the religious. While I’ll admit to some rather seriously religious moments—in the cultural sense of that word, not all that wonderful James: helping orphans and widows stuff—I’m generally fairly unreligious. In other words, I don’t take myself very seriously, nor do I take most of the cultural ideas we falsely associate with Christianity to heart very often. 

I do, however, try to be respectful of other people’s preferences. But some people just want to lay their rules on your back like heavy burdens no matter what--in short: they want to control you.

That ticks me off, but, man, it’s surprising how much power those people have. 

A Convenient Example

For example, when you write for a living, you get so weary of dealing with the pointless reprimands that you start self-editing. And, like I said, I’m all about laying my rights aside for the weaker brother (well, I’m in love with myself, so it’s not always easy), but sometimes it’s a fine line between self-editing out of love for someone’s conscience and just being bullied into doing and saying things in certain ways.

Jerk Faces

They say things that are just plain mean, clearly unbiblical, and toss out superficial judgments like candy at a parade. I can’t do anything about those people. (I said that more for me, than for you. …I have to remind myself.) But if you care about showing love and humbly marrying it with truth, you’re going to be sensitive to how what you say is taken. Which makes you more likely to back off from the truth in the name of love.

That may be acceptable when dealing with your smaller freedoms. But it's downright dangerous when you start talking about the gospel.

Lying About the Truth

When the message is that it took the death of God’s own Son to cover our sins, there’s not many places your pride can go to run from that truth. It reveals two things at once—our deep, deadly sin and God’s deep, abiding love for us. When we add a single thing to that message we’re building a theology of works.

If I say that my good works, my sanctification, has anything to do with God’s being morally satisfied with me, I'm negating the message. I'm saying my political activism, my time in the soup kitchen, the church nursery, or all the money I've given to good causes is as effective as the death of God's own Son. Even if they just give us that last 1% we need to cross over the line; even if we say it's with God's help--it's still partially us, and we can take pride in that. If I say that anything I do at all adds or detracts from God’s free gift, I’m making it about me. 

And people love a message about themselves. And it's a dangerous thing to mess with people's loves. They can get mean. Real fast.

So, the temptation to back off from the true message is huge. Especially when people are making you feel guilty for not being hard enough on sin, or not talking enough about how bad sex or booze or gay people or cigarettes or blue states or red states or whatever, are.

One side will tempt you to focus more on the law, and how our works, especially side-issues that do more to make us feel self-righteous than help anyone, are so vitally important. (and they are, just not in the way they're saying.) The other side will push you to talk about people’s felt needs, and giving them a therapeutic answer to assuage their guilt rather the gospel.

If you sell the lie, you might also sell more books, get more friends, and get a lot of kindly notes and pats on the back, but it isn’t the Message--you're also selling your soul. There’s only one message—one name under heaven by which men may be saved—Jesus, and him crucified for the ungodly. And that kind of love is offensive.

-Chad West