Compromises, I should add, made for the sake of accommodating other gods. Christianism creates a façade of Christianity, but underneath it there are a lot of other religious practices which don’t follow Jesus much. They support other ideas. They seek other powers. They promote other movements. And if Jesus teaches otherwise, they mute him, reinterpret him, or ignore him, in favor of those less-than-Christian goals.
In a word, it’s
This resistance kinda exacerbates the problem. Because the Spirit is shouting so loud, in order to quench him Christianists try to keep themselves too busy to listen. They focus on public displays of piety. They pray and meditate less often, and when they pray in public, it’s always at God or towards God, never with God. (Lots of ’em
If you don’t listen to God, of course there’s gonna be way less fruit. Less repentance, change of heart, internal struggle against sin, or pursuit of holiness. Less worship.
And more idolatry.
Self-worship.
What do Christianists worship? Depends on the Christianist. Most of ’em worship the very same things
(And don’t get the wrong idea this isn’t just as true of the Christian Right. Look at the various Southern Baptists who wanna penalize Southern Baptist Convention leader Dr. Russell Moore just because he dares to critique the president.)
Human nature, thanks to
No, not enough to actually be
Of course it’s not real holiness;
In this way, you’ll discover a lot of Christianists actually value hypocrisy: All they gotta do is keep their inner thoughts secret, and never expose ’em to a world that’d be horrified by them. That’s why we see so many Christianists loudly condemn anybody who’s exposed as a hypocrite: Why can’t these people do a better job of hiding their dirty secrets? Why, people might get the idea such things are widespread, and next thing you know they’ll be found out! Everybody shush. Keep the act up.
But their lack of fruit tends to out ’em.
I’ve watched many a Christianist speaker on
Actually it’s not. Love is the most important thing. Truth is a close second. But if you don’t have love, you don’t have God.
And unwittingly, we Christians will give it to them. Especially when we ignore their misbehavior, their lack of fruit, because they please us so much, and make us feel validated and right.
The pursuit of honor and authority.
Other Christianists aren’t in it so they can feel good about themselves, but so they can gain, or make a profit, off Christianity. They covet power and wealth.
If you can get into a position of leadership in your church, and if you can convince naïve Christians the purpose of leadership isn’t to serve others but be served,
Fr’instance. One bothersome trend I see in too many churches, is this desire to create schools. Not real schools, where the students are trained to minister, graduate, then go forth and actually minister. More like programs where the “students” never really graduate, ’cause new classes are always created so they can learn more stuff. Where the “students” perpetually stay in the program, at the church which sponsors it, and wind up serving the pastors which teach it.
Where the students wind up doing all the grunt work which the people of the church won’t do. All that stuff ordinarily falls upon the pastor. (Shouldn’t, but does.) When the toilet gets clogged, and nobody else is around, pastors shrug, roll up their sleeves, and go deal with it—but some of ’em create “schools” and “internships” so they can delegate all this stuff away. They justify it by pointing to the apostles’ example: They delegated the food closet, while they focused on teaching and prayer.
Then there are “armor bearers.” These’d be interns whose job is obviously to do grunt work, but they have a really biblical-sounding title. However, their duties… I pulled this one list of duties off a church’s website. The “officer” is the pastor, I assume. Some of these are redundant, but this pastor wants it made clear he expects his armor bearers to have his back. Armor bearers are:
- To strengthen his officer.
- To exalt and uplift his officer.
- To respect his officer.
- To agree with and submit to his officer.
- To repel any kind of attack against his officer, especially his back.
- To rescue his officer from difficulty and hardship.
- To keep watch while his officer rests.
- To care for his officer’s belongings.
- To react, with total intolerance, to any false accusation against his officer. (This would include rumors, gossip, and talking behind his back.)
- To aid his officer in spiritual combat.
- To demonstrate extreme loyalty.
Does this sound like an intern? Not really. A worshiper, though.
See, that’s the real reason churches exploit their interns: Their pastors wanna be treated like royalty, and want courtiers. They want their position to be an exalted one. And they don’t want people to forget it: Note how armor bearers must “exalt and uplift his officer.” It flies entirely in the face of what Jesus taught his students.
Matthew 20.25-28 KWL - 25 Summoning them, Jesus said, “You know the leaders of other nations lord it over them.
- Nobles wield authority over them.
- 26 This is not for you: Your would-be nobles must instead become your servants.
- 27 Your would-be princes must become your slaves.
- 28 Likewise the Son of Man didn’t come to be served, but serve.
- He gives up his soul to ransom many people.”
Churches which fixate
The pursuit of worldly power.
Another bothersome trend is found in certain kinds of activist churches.
There’s nothing wrong with a church who condemns the evil in our society, and tries to do something positive to combat it. Nor is there anything wrong with meeting with politicians, seeking their advice, or seeking their help. The trouble is when churches get mixed up in political solutions to these problems: They think the solution is to pass a law. To get their guy elected. To get their party elected. To bring
Yeah, they’ll claim they’re not really doing that: They’ll claim they expect Jesus to inaugurate his kingdom when he returns, and all they’re really doing is trying to fix some of the woes of society. Of course, all their talk about how “this is a Christian nation” exposes their true goal: They wanna make this nation, as much as possible, look like they imagine the kingdom to be. They want their God’s will to be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
That’s where Christianists go too far. We’re meant to change the world using only God’s supernatural power. Using any other power means we’ve set aside God’s power, ’cause either we don’t trust it (or him) enough to try it… or the Holy Spirit’s not doing as we want, so we’ve decided to go around him.
So instead they work the wards. Promote and run candidates. Permit politicians to speak in Jesus’s pulpits, to proclaim their kingdom instead of his, and in so doing blatantly (though “unofficially,” which is a hypocritical way to describe it) endorse an alternative kingdom to Christ’s. Transform Christ’s churches, which are supposed to be the local headquarters of God’s kingdom, into unofficial headquarters for the Democratic or Republican Party.
But worldly power takes many forms, and it’s not merely political. Money’s a form of power. Those who worship money will still go to church. But they won’t tithe, won’t give to charity, and make darned sure their pastors never preach about offering grace and generosity to the undeserving poor. Or there are the prosperity-gospel churches, who claim God wants his people to have material, worldly wealth—but as a result they likewise reject the poor, ’cause if God considered them worthy, he wouldn’t leave ’em poor!
Various other idols.
We can identify all sorts of other idols Christianists follow.
Plenty of ’em worship their families, and only go to church ’cause they don’t want their kids to grow up pagan. But if youth soccer gets scheduled at the same time as Sunday morning worship, guess which one takes priority. And if anything, God forbid, happens to their kids, they drop their faith immediately… ’cause didn’t I just say “God forbid”? God was supposed to forbid.
Others
The easiest way for a Christianist to get away with idolatry: Pick something we oughta see in Christianity, and prioritize that above God himself. For that matter, it’s the easiest way for a Christian to slip into idolatry. It’s why we have to carefully guard ourselves against it.
So if you’re worried you may be more Christianist than Christian… well, the very fact you’re worried is a good sign. Start tightening up on your relationship with God instead of
