Monday, August 28, 2017
563 - Who's Responsible?
Spirituality
Column No. 563
August
29, 2017
Common
Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Who’s Responsible?
By Bob Walters
There’s a preacher over here on the radio holding our feet
to the fire for every sin we’ve ever committed.
Oh Lord, I can’t bear the guilt
… Fearful punishment awaits.
There’s a
preacher over there on TV who owns a private jet and says the secret to health,
happiness and financial well-being lies in how well we pray … and if we send
money to support his “ministry.” Oh Lord,
give me more stuff!!! Prosperity
rules.
Punishment
and prosperity are alarmingly ascendant aesthetics of today’s public
Christianity. Too bad that’s what the
“outside” world often and untrustingly sees when deciding whether Christ and
Christianity are what humanity needs to broaden, give purpose to, and heal our earthly
lives. And I’m telling you, folks, fear
and “more stuff” are not the road upon which to have a joyous, loving,
self-sacrificing, trusting, faithful, certain and obedient walk with Jesus
Christ. His road is as true as it is eternal.
Picking on
broadcast preachers certainly amounts to going after the easy targets not
because they are all bad but because they are so visible. I listen to doctrinally deep and uplifting Christian
radio all the time (though I have to confess, with just a couple of exceptions
I gave up on TV preachers a long time ago).
Discernment is a must.
But the tendency – or maybe it’s a
strategy – of dangling either guilt or greed from a public pulpit as bait for Jesus
Christ can’t possibly be what Jesus was talking about when he told his
disciples they would become “fishers of
men” (Matthew 4:19).
We live in a “me-first” world of concerns
for our own well-being. “Today” overtakes
“eternity” when our rightful joy in Jesus is overwritten by disingenuous
bait-and-switch gospel pandering to fears of “what God will do to us” or the dead-end
lust of worldly wealth. The hook is,
“Can we get you to worry about it?”
Come
back next week for more.
An Indianapolis TV news director
told me a few years back that after 9/11, surveys proved that the No. 1 concern
of folks tuning in to the news is, “Am I safe?”
The far better question, in my mind, would be, “Is it true?” But safety is what we crave while truth, in
the public square, has taken hit after hit.
Certainly, people have always had existential worries – famine, wars,
etc. – but if you are fishing for an audience and that audience wants to worry about
safety, then you preach fear and danger. Anxiety, whether about what to fear or what to
want, dependably tickles the ears (2 Timothy 4:3).
Christianity is best, and only truly is “Christianity,” when it preaches
truth. When our outward Christian lives
suggest full confidence in the words of Jesus that He is our savior, shepherd,
forgiver, eternal light and our “all in all,” “safety” takes on a far larger
context in faith, and worry a much smaller one in our daily trials. Boldness in
Christ 1) frees us from the guilt and 2) shrinks the greed that diminishes joy
and limits hope.
Jesus promises us a big, big,
glorious world – His Kingdom – that we can barely glimpse from this side. But it is our responsibility – and
opportunity – to seek it first.
Forego the guilt and greed, and listen
for truth. Jesus is trying to reach you.
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