Jesus said to the crowd at the “Sermon on the Mount” that the
gate that leads to eternal life is narrow. He said that there would be few
people who find that gate and subsequently, find eternal life. (Matt. 5:13-14) Greek and Roman writers fairly
often employed the image of the two paths in life.[1] Such
thinking receives its fair amount of scorn in modern, western cultures. What is
more, much of that scorn comes from the religious community. Such thinking is
continually viewed as legalistic, hypocritical, and often associated with the
sect of religious leaders known as the Pharisees. But these are the words of
Jesus Christ Himself. In addition, Jesus was speaking to a crowd of people who
were primarily religious. Yet, according to Jesus, most of this crowd was lost.
Most Jewish people in Jesus’ day were religious; respecting God and keeping his
commandments were important parts of their culture.[2] We
can relate to this sort of culture in America. Our country is filled with
churches like this and our churches are filled with people like this. They do
not drink beer, fornicate, commit adultery, lie (at least not really big lies),
or commit a variety of other sins they think are the worse kind of sins. They
have never been born again. They think they are morally good and therefore that
makes them a Christian.
There is
another component now filling our churches. This element thinks that Scripture
is simply a good guide in that it points in a certain moral direction but that
it should not be taken overly-literally, even in its prohibitions. These are
the people who divorce their husbands and wives at will when they feel they
have the ground to do so. They are the churches filling their pulpits with
female pastors who denounce and deny God’s ordained role for women. These are
the people who think there is nothing necessarily wrong with abortion and who
suggest one can be gay and Christian. Essentially, they destroy the Christian
standard revealed in Scripture and replace it with one that meets with their
preferences. They deny the exclusive claims of Christ, believing that eternal
judgment is an outdated doctrine. In their mind, Jesus was not talking about
eternal judgment but rather, temporal happiness. For them, it is merely an
attitudinal issue that Jesus was concerned about. Christianity is about loving
your neighbor in precisely the terms they would define them. Christianity is about
social causes, racial issues, gay marriage, income equality, gun control,
utopia in the here and the now. Christianity is more of a socio-political
movement than it is a supernatural religion making outrageous claims about
morality and eternal judgment. After all, that is the stuff that bigots are
made of.
Second, this unpopular Christianity, as opposed to
pop-Christianity, is something the world actually hates. Jesus did not say that
if Christians would be just the right kind of Christians that the world would
come flocking to Christ. I realize that men in the emergent church and in Rick
Warren’s seeker-sensitive model and Andy Stanley’s psychological version think
that Christ is just about relationships and that if we just show people we
care, they will want Christ and all that He offers. Where that nonsense comes
from I am not sure. I am sure however, that it does not come from biblical
exegesis. That much is not difficult to ascertain. Jesus said to His disciples
that all men because of the name of Jesus would hate them. (Matt. 10:22) Now,
if we listen to men like Perry Noble, Rick Warren, Andy Stanley, and Joel
Osteen, we are led to believe that if we are doing it the way Jesus told us to
do it, then the world would flock to our churches in groves, literally tens of
thousands of people would pound the doors down wanting this Jesus we have to
offer. Moreover, we are told that if the world hates you and rejects your
message; that the reason is in how we deliver that message. You’ve heard it:
man, you just turn people off with that repentance stuff. That kind of
preaching just doesn’t work. You need to get with the times if you want your
message and your church to be relevant. Yet, in stark contrast to this, Jesus
told His disciples not to stop doing what they are doing when men hate them,
despise them, and say evil things against them falsely, but rather, to rejoice
that they are considered worthy to suffer for His name’s sake. Biblical
Christianity is despised by the world while pop-Christianity is embraced by the
world and despised by Christ.
Finally, unpopular Christianity brings division and
controversy. Jesus said that He did not come to bring peace on the earth.
Rather, Jesus came to bring division. (Lu. 12:51) Those who think that Jesus
came in order to make it so that we could all stand around, holding hands, and
singing “We are the world” while ignoring our serious theological differences
(such as exclusion, homosexuality, illicit divorce, Christology, the Nature of
Scripture, et al) exhibit a profound ignorance of the very words spoken by
Jesus Himself. Biblical Christianity is a profoundly unpopular, and from a
worldly standpoint, an intensely disturbing religion. Biblical Christianity
leaves no stone unturned. It leaves no behavior to human autonomy. It demands
that everything that we are and do be subject to the Creator of all that is.
Nothing is left to itself. There is no independence. The idea of individual
“rights” simply does not exist in such a system. The demands of the Christ of
Scripture are higher than any demands any man could place on himself. The
Christian dictum that one must die to oneself if one is to find life is at the
heartbeat of Biblical Christianity. It is any wonder why such a system would be
so unpopular among the world? It is for this very reason that only those that
are the objects of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit do actually come to
embrace this profoundly unpopular religion. Who, in their right mind, would
ever want to die their own self?
Popular Christianity in the west and especially in the
Americas has become a religion that is, in a strict sense, unknown to Scripture
and Scripture unknown to it. For decades this religion has denied the authority
of Scripture, changed the image of God, perverted the teachings of Christ, and
removed every offense from Scripture it could find. Popular Christianity is
little more than a psychological subscription to moralistic principles derived
from the image of God within man, modified of course, by each individual’s
preferences. For some, it is little more than having a clubhouse of friends to
chat with on Sundays. For others, it is a means to positive thinking, to better
parenting, to career enhancement, and to a better over all self-esteem, albeit
entrenched in a subtle self-righteousness that resides hidden deep within, but,
nevertheless is at the core of it’s philosophy.
Jesus said he who loves his life will lose it and he who
hates his life will find it. (Jn. 12:25) Jesus said if you were of the world,
the world would love you. But because I have chosen you out of the world, the
world hates you! (Jn. 15:19) So, Christian, if the world hates you, then
rejoice! But if the world loves you, you must be the world too.
