Churchtainment

For centuries the Church stood solidly against every form of worldly entertainment, recognizing it for what it was—a device for wasting time, a refuge from the disturbing voice of conscience, a scheme to divert attention from moral accountability. For this she got herself abused roundly by the sons of this world. But of late she has become tired of the abuse and has given over the struggle. She appears to have decided that if she cannot conquer the great god Entertainment she may as well join forces with him and make what use she can of his powers. So today we have the astonishing spectacle of millions of dollars being poured into the unholy job of providing earthly entertainment for the so-called sons of heaven.

Religious entertainment is in many places rapidly crowding out the serious things of God. Many churches these days have become little more than poor theatres where fifth-rate ”producers” peddle their shoddy wares with the full approval of evangelical leaders who can even quote a holy text in defense of their delinquency. And hardly a man dares raise his voice against it.

The great god Entertainment amuses his devotees mainly by telling them stories. The love of stories, which is a characteristic of childhood, has taken fast hold of the minds of the retarded saints of our day, so much so that not a few persons manage to make a comfortable living by spinning yams and serving them up in various disguises to church people. What is natural and beautiful in a child may be shocking when it persists into adulthood, and more so when it appears in the sanctuary and seeks to pass for true religion.

Is it not a strange thing and a wonder that, with the shadow of atomic destruction hanging over the world and with the coming of Christ drawing near, the professed followers of the Lord should be giving themselves up to religious amusements? That in an hour when mature saints are so desperately needed vast numbers of believers should revert to spiritual childhood and clamor for religious toys?

Aiden W. Tozer

Even though this was written by Tozer in 1955 - how relevant [or prophetic] are his words of wisdom.

Church - a good walk spoiled

Following along the points from Charismatic Defects 1 and 2 are the far too common results of not being the church that Christ wanted us to be. With good and noble intentions churches start their walk with God but the main problem - people! (and all their self grandizing egos and hunger for power, control and money etc etc) Grace has also posted on this subject and is very worth your while the trip over to check out "How to Ruin a Church".

It is difficult for people to grasp that the reality is drastically different from the idealistic picture that they want to believe is true.

Now it has become more of a pseudo-community. The teaching emphasizes the necessity of unity and being likeminded. The corporate ideal is promoted, and anything threatening corporate unity is challenged. Disrupting corporate unity will hurt one's social standing in the group.

This produces the attitude that in order to be accepted, you must get with the program. The fear of losing relationships silences questions and keeps people in line. They have seen that if you disagree or leave, then you will lose your friends.

Flattery is used to nurture people's feelings of inclusion and importance. Prophetic words are given to reward those who perform well and to lure back those who appear to be wavering.

New titles and positions have been fabricated to reward those who want to move up in the organization. These positions add requirements and standards of commitment to prove who really is a team player. Compulsory meetings keep the members involved to the point that most of their time and relationships revolve around the church.

This creates an environment where people are eager to prove their commitment to the leaders and afraid to be seen as disagreeable. One way of proving loyalty is to be an informant to the leadership, letting them know of anyone who is questioning or struggling. Often thoughts shared in deepest confidence are reported to leadership...

..Elitism is another subtle form of control. When a group claims to have a better understanding of truth, it is implied that to leave the group will cost you your opportunity to be successful in what God is doing. The evidence that this is at work is in the attitude taken toward those who leave. Are they still viewed as brothers, or is it implied that they have fallen away?

Liberty from the fear of death

Who is the man who does not fear to die? I will tell you - the man who is a believer. Fear to die? Thank God, I do not. The cholera may come again. I pray to God it will not, but if it does, it matters not to me. I will toil and visit the sick by night and by day until I drop If it takes me, sudden death is sudden glory.

And so it is with the weakest saint. The prospect of dissolution does not make you tremble. Sometimes you fear, but more often you rejoice. You sit down and calmly think of dying. What is death? It is a low porch through which you stoop to enter heaven. What is life? It is a narrow screen that separates us from glory, and death kindly removes it!

C. H. Spurgeon

(H.T. Sunshine)

Athanasius contra mundum

We were made "in the likeness of God." But in course of time that image has become obscured, like a face on a very old portrait, dimmed with dust and dirt.

When a portrait is spoiled, the only way to renew it is for the Subject to come back to the studio and sit for the artist all over again. That is why Christ came--to make it possible for the divine image in man to be recreated. We were made in God's likeness; we are remade in the likeness of his Son.

To bring about this re-creation, Christ still comes to men and Lives among them. In a special way he comes to his Church, his "body", to show us what the "image of God" is really like.

What a responsibility the Church has, to be Christ's "body". Showing him to those who are unwilling or unable to see him in providence, or in creation! Through the Word of God lived out in the Body of Christ they can come to the Father, and themselves be made again "in the likeness of God."

IF... it is by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ That death is trampled underfoot, it is clear that it is Christ Himself and none other Who is the Archvictor over death and has robbed it of its power. Death used to be strong and terrible, but now, since the sojourn of the Savior and the death and resurrection of His body, it is despised; and obviously it is by the very Christ Who mounted on the cross that it has been destroyed and vanquished finally.

When the sun rises after the night and the whole world is lit Up by it, nobody doubts that it is the sun which has thus shed its light everywhere and driven away the dark. Equally clear is it, since this utter scorning and trampling down of death has ensued upon the Savior's manifestation in the body and His death on the cross, that it is He Himself Who brought death to nought and daily raises monuments to His victory in His own disciples. How can you think otherwise, when you see men naturally weak hastening to death, unafraid at the prospect of corruption, fearless of the descent into Hades, even indeed with eager soul provoking it, not shrinking from tortures, but preferring thus to rush on death for Christ's sake, rather than to remain in this present life?

If you see with your own eyes men and women and children, even, Thus welcoming death for the sake of Christ's religion, how can you be so utterly silly and incredulous and maimed in your mind as not to realize that Christ, to Whom these all bear witness, Himself gives the victory to each, making death completely powerless for those who hold His faith and bear the sign of the cross? No one in his senses doubts that a snake is dead when he sees it trampled underfoot, especially when he knows how savage it used to be; nor, if he sees boys making fun of a lion, does he doubt that the brute is either dead or completely bereft of strength. These things can be seen with our own eyes, and it is the same with the conquest of death. Doubt no longer, then, when you see death mocked and scorned by those who believe in Christ, that by Christ death was destroyed, and the corruption that goes with it resolved and brought to end.

Dumb as Sheep

H.T. David


Maybe the metaphor of a pastor being a shepherd for his flock is because they are as dumb as sheep?

Charismatic Defects - Part 2

Following on from Defects 1 and the positive Effects are another 5 points worth considering and evaluating about the charismatic movement:-

• 6. Charismania - or the description for the habit of the mind which measures spiritual health, growth and maturity by the number and impressiveness of people's gifts, and spiritual power by public charismatic manifestations(as described by O'Conner in The Pentecostal Movement in the Catholic Church). Again this a negative and a habit that is bad, for the principle of judgment is false and where it operates, real growth and maturity are likely to be retarded.

• 7. Super-supernaturalism - For those amongst the movement that exaggerate and over emphasize the extraordinary of the supernatural and those that reduce the ordinary to a lower class of spiritual life. When the desire to become extra supernatural is not in accordance with Scriptures and the disdain given to others who don't go in for the weirdness associated with the charismatic movement in comparison to the more staid or orthodox. When the natural, regular and ordinary is undervalued it shows that they are immature and weak in grasping the realities of creation and providence as basic to God's work of grace.

• 8. Eudaemonism - Dr Packer's use of the word for the belief that God means us to spend our time in this fallen world feeling well, and in a state of euphoria based on that fact. The regular and expected projection of euphoria from their stages with their standard theology of healing, and awesomeness, shows that the assumption and presumption of euphoria to which they want their followers to adhere. Hence the term 'happy clappy'. Good health at all times is not God's will for all believers which is evidenced by the fact of many Christian leaders that have not been supernaturally healed - and this includes many of the charismatic leaders also.
  

• 9. Demon-obsession - If all of life is seen as a battle with demons in such a way that Satan and his hosts get blamed for bad health, bad thoughts and bad behaviour without reference to physical, psychological and relational factors then a very unhealthy demonic counterpart of super-supernaturalism is developed. Also the personal evil and personal responsibility and culpability is shifted away by blaming the devil made me do it.
  

• 10. Conformism - Group pressure and group think is tyrannical when the group believes itself to be super-spiritual and finds the evidence of its members' spirituality in their power to perform along approved lines. The pressure imposed (sometimes subtly) for members to perform and copy others such as in hand waving, tongues, prophecy, laughing, etc encourages the individual to follow the group instead of following the Lord and can become another legalistic type of bondage.

Some of these listed defects are not only confined to the charismatic movement but are a threat to the maturity of Christians in and out of the charismatic movement.