"God My Friend" OR "True Religion"

There is an analogy that i read or heard someplace. I don't even remember what it was used to say, but it is a really nifty word picture. Imagine a lady sitting and listening to music. She is nodding her head and tapping her feet with the rhythm and smiling about the message in the lyrics. A deaf man is watching her. He knows from experience that when the lady gets done doing this at lunch break she is much easier to deal with in the afternoon. It is good for her soul. So he does the same thing she does. He sits down, nods his head, taps his feet and smiles for about 10 minutes like she does. Of course, since he cannot hear the music, it does nothing for him, except for the placebo effect. Because he tells himself it will help he has a better attitude in the afternoon.

The Christian church service is supposed to be putting into practice genuine relationship with God. People that observe the ritual but do not have a proper relationship with God – everyone has a PERSONAL relationship with God – for most that is not a right relationship, but rather is based on personal rebellion or unbelief – for people that only observe the outward manifestation of a right relationship with God, as they try to do religion correctly, they merely mimic those outward manifestations.

If true followers of Jesus get together to live out their faith together they will have some kind of method for doing so. That method will be kept fresh by the true followers, and will adapt to different situations of daily relationship with God. If the group becomes influenced by people who are no longer in a fresh relationship with God or never have had, then the method will get off track. That is where false religion comes in.

To the degree that the religion is influenced by people who do not have a fresh, living relationship with the Lord Jesus, to that degree it will simply be an unshrunk patch that will tear the fabric of the religion apart when the Holy Spirit actually rules in peoples hearts.

I am looking for work again. I have tried to seek God about it. I have attempted to get my heart right with Him so that He would be free to lead me in the best directions for the job search. I have looked up pertinent promises in the Bible and attempted to line up my prayers with what i know to be God's will based on the Bible. I have attempted to seek God's face and God's strength.

I have done a lousy job of it. I am so imperfect that there is no way that by my efforts i can do the job correctly or effectively. But as I went through the motions of the job hunt this morning i realized that God's peace is ruling in my heart. I reacted to situations not according to what logic would say but rather trusting God. It is not because of what is good in me that I can have peace and joy in my life. It is because God is good and faithful and honors my feeble attempts at friendship by being my friend and filling me with His Holy Spirit. As I type this i have tears pouring down my face because i know how GOOD God is to me. There is nothing I want more in this life than to know that God loves me and that I love God.

Only people that understand this kind of relationship with God can create true religion.

“Render to God and Render to Caesar” OR “American Idolatry”

Luke 20:25 “And He said to them, Therefore render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to God the things which are God's.”

What is the difference between what we rend to Caesar and what we rend to God? In order to put this into practice we need to understand what Caesar asks of us and what God asks of us.

First, what does Caesar ask of us? I think that everyone would agree that Caesar represents the Government. I am going to be talking about the government in the U.S.A. because that is what I am familiar with. For most western countries the basic issues will be the same. For short hand I am going to call our Caesar “Uncle Sam.”

What does our Caesar, Uncle Sam, ask of us? Uncle Sam asks that we obey the laws and he would kind of prefer that we vote. He is quite clear that we are to pay our taxes. Uncle Sam does NOT ask for our love and devotion. There IS pressure in the U.S.A. to love our country, stuff like “America, love it or leave it.” That does NOT come from law. For people that have been born into the U.S.A. there is no feeling or loyalty type stuff required of us by the government. For an immigrant who takes an “Oath of Citizenship” the rules are a little bit different. Here is a link to a copy of that oath:  <http://www.nps.gov/elis/forteachers/upload/Citizenship%20Oath.pdf>. What I am getting at though, is that Uncle Sam, as contrasted with God, does not require our absolute love to Him. Uncle Sam does not particularly care if the U.S. citizen born here even likes him.

On the other hand, what does God require of us? God requires that we love Him with all of our being:

Luke 10:27. “And he answered, 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.'”

We can see from the Sheep and Goats passage starting with Matthew 25:31 that loving people is a subcategory of loving God; we are taught in the New Testament job description to love three kinds of people, our brethren, our neighbors and our enemies.

We have a serious choice to make in this. In Luke 16:13 Jesus tells us that:

“No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

That King James word, “mammon” hides what this is talking about. In the NASB and many other modern versions it is translated to the word “wealth” which is what most agree that it means. What Christians do not admit to is that in loving Uncle Sam, in loving the American Dream, what they are loving is wealth. But loving wealth is what it is primarily all about. We are a rich country and Christians want very much to keep it that way. But then again, Christians have been taught that serving the state is serving God since the compromises with Constantine the Great.

Of course there is also the freedom stuff that goes with it. I am talking about things like freedom of speech, religion, happiness, to own property and the Miranda. We lump these all into things that God has proclaimed that we must have. We claimed in the Declaration of Independence that certain “inalienable rights” were given to us by God. Most Christians believe therefore that this is a Biblical principle. I am not sure where these Christians get this idea as I am sure most of them have not looked at the Bible and what it says closely enough to decide for themselves what the Bible says about it. These rights ARE very much a part of how we should treat each other. They were a very good thing to be put into law.

These rights are not, however, something that we should love. They are part of the world system, and we must choose between loving God and loving the things of the world. As for these rights being inalienable? What is true about this is that the principles about God commanding us to love people has always been there. We are commanded to love people, period. What is not true is that these rights are inalienable. If we look at both Biblical and secular history we will see that people have frequently been alienated from this type of treatment. For most of history these have not been the law of the land.

These American rights were put into place in the U.S.A. by God using solders and statesmen as tools to get this job done. It is ultimately God who determines history, not people. These rights were tools that God has used for a period of time to do tasks that He wanted done in our culture. I believe that these tasks had to do with calling us to Him, and that we mostly did not heed that call. This fits in with Biblical history. These freedoms are tools in God's tool chest. Throughout most of history God has kept these tools in the tool box unused. If in our culture God decides to put those tools away and pull out other tools, like perhaps persecution, we need to welcome God's working in our lives and culture in whatever way God wants to work. If we decide to love the tools rather than God, the infinite creator of the universe and every one of us in it, if we choose to love freedom rather than God, we are idolaters. No greater love has any man than this, that he lay down his life for his idols. We should not lay down our lives for these tools, these freedoms.

Mar 8:35-36 “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?”

We SHOULD lay down our lives for Jesus and His gospel. We should NOT spend our time and other resources protecting freedom rather than loving people into the Kingdom of God.

Simple logic, simple two plus two equals four reasoning, then tells us that we cannot love both Uncle Sam and God. We must choose, are we going to love God like He commands us to, or are we going to love Uncle Sam, the American Dream and the things of the world? James 4:4 tells us:

“You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

A Christian has a choice to make. They must choose between loving Caesar, our Uncle Sam, and loving God. Uncle Sam does not even care if we like him let alone love him. God on the other hand demands, commands, that we love Him totally. This has been a principle of God from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eve through the kingdom years of Israel, through the exile of Israel, through the days of Jesus' earthly ministry, through modern times and will always be the commandment. We are to love God with everything we are and with everything we have. Everything about loving God is good. Loving God is not only the right thing to do but is totally desirable. If we have clear minds and clear hearts and we know God we will want to love Him. God is GOOD and WORTHY to be loved. Followers of Jesus understand this and are always doing their best to love God more completely and more accurately.

"Fire Insurance Christianity" AKA "F.I.G."

Fire Insurance Christianity refers to the practice of saying a sinner's prayer, understanding that you will now spend eternity in Heaven instead of Hell, then going about one's life pretty much the same as before.

The misunderstanding stems, I believe from a wrong understanding of why Jesus gave His life for us. Jesus died to reconcile us with Him, with God and bring us into a right relationship with Him. In contrast the Fire Insurance Gospel (FIG) says that the primary reason Jesus died is to save us from Hell. Here is an analogy of what that means in the outcome.

Think about I-70 going across the state of Colorado. I-70 goes over the Rocky Mountains. At the top is the Eisenhower Tunnel. The motorist who is not real aware of what is happening thinks that as they exit the Eisenhower Tunnel and start down the hill they have been over the top of the Rock Mountains. In contrast is the trucker that has a 14 foot tall trailer or is carrying a hazardous materials load. This trucker is not allowed through the tunnel, but instead exits I-70 and continues going uphill, zigzagging up and up and up until they come to the summit of Loveland Pass. From here it really looks like you are at the top of something.

The FIG Christian who has said the sinners prayer is like the motorist that has passed through the Eisenhower Tunnel. They think that they have been to the cross, and go merrily on with their life believing that they are now on the road to Heaven.

The person that is truly engaged with the PROCESS of salvation continues in the PROCESS until they get to the top of Loveland Pass and truly find the Cross and leave their old life there (actually not a one time experience).

The important question at this point is WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY about all of this. I believe that as a whole the Bible calls FIG a false religion. In order to see that to be so, however, the FIG follower is going to have to go through a paradigm shift because they have gotten so use to twisting Bible verses to say something they do not actually say.

There are some very commonly used Bible passages that are twisted by FIG followers. Let me show how I see them. The key word will be PROCESS. (I am using the New American Standard Bible).

JOHN 1:12 & 13. "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." Look at the phrase "He GAVE THE RIGHT to become". This phrase is almost always ignored. The PROCESS is ignored. The common understanding of this verse is that one receives Jesus and is immediately converted into a child of God. That is not what this verse says. Consider this word picture. John and Don are sitting in a cafe in Hood River, OR about 50 or 60 miles east of Portland, OR. They are talking about the zoo in San Diego. They would like to visit this zoo, so John gets on the phone and calls up an airline and pays for tickets to take them from the Portland airport to San Diego. He then asks the waitress how long their food will take. She says, “Unfortunately, we don't have any chicken so the cook is next door buying one. It will probably be an hour before you get your dinner.” John says "Nifty! So we have time to go visit the San Diego zoo. Come on Don, we can walk over to to the zoo, see the reptile collection and be back before the food gets here." Don says, "John, the airplane tickets only means that after we go from here to Portland we HAVE THE RIGHT to get on the plane to San Diego. We are not in San Diego, we are still in Hood River!!!" Equally, the person who has received Jesus still needs to go through the PROCESS of becoming a child of God. They HAVE THE RIGHT to become a child of God.

JOHN 3:3 "Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." NEW BIRTH is commonly said to be put into practice by having someone say the sinner's prayer and then telling that person they are now born again and on their way to Heaven. They ignore the obvious problem that birth is the end result of a 9 month long PROCESS which began with conception. Equally, to be born again, to be born spiritually, one must engage in a PROCESS. Check out the parable of the sower in like Matthew 13, Mark 4 or Luke 8. The word of God being planted in one's heart does not make them a Christian. The seed needs to reach maturity and produce fruit. There is a PROCESS which begins but is not completed when the Word is planted in the heart. That PROCESS can not be entered into and completed by simply saying a prayer. If it could, then all three of the final types of soil would represent saved Christians. I believe that this does not agree with the Bible as a whole.

John 3:16

ROMANS 6:23. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The way this verse is typically explained is like this. The person explaining the gospel will hold something in their hand (like a dollar bill maybe) and tell them this is a free gift. ¿What do you need to do to receive it? All you need to do is simply reach out and take it. Equally, all you have do do to receive eternal life is simply say the sinner's prayer (and mean is with all your heart of course) and you will be on your way to Heaven. Remember the word PROCESS? To find the process look at the preceding verse, Rom 6:22. One should never memorize Romans 6:23 without also memorizing Romans 6:22. “But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.” Eternal life is a PROCESS which begins with being “freed from sin and enslaved to God”, then continues with the PROCESS of “sanctification” and has the “outcome” of “eternal life.” Again, to decide if the PROCESS has resulted in new birth look at my comments about I John 5:13. The PROCESS is not engaged in by saying the sinner's prayer.

ROMANS 10:9-11 “ . . . that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, 'WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.'" The word “confess”. It fits the teaching of the Bible as a whole much better to understand confession as an ongoing practice rather than as just saying something one time. The word “believe”, go back to comments about it under John 3:16. Salvation is the result of a PROCESS.

ROMANS 10:9a “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord . . .” The word LORD is often misunderstood. The word LORD does not mean the same thing as the word GOD. The words LORD and GOD are not at all synonyms. LORD is what a slave calls their master. I once picked up a hitch hiker who believed that because he had said the sinners prayer that he was on his way to Heaven and could live any way that he wanted to. I asked him, “¿What would your wife mean if she were to call you Lord?” He gave an absolutely beautiful description of what our relationship with God is supposed to look like. I told him that his beautiful description is what our relationship with God is supposed to be. It totally shocked him. As we engage in the PROCESS of confessing Jesus as LORD, this is what we are learning to confess. (I am NOT saying that wives should call their husbands Lord.)

I JOHN 5:13. “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” This verse is typically brought out in the gospel presentation with all of the emphasis on “You can KNOW that you are saved.” So once you have said the sinners prayer you KNOW that you have been saved. This understanding ignores the first part of the verse, “THESE THINGS I have written to you”. What things? We need to look at the rest of I John and find out what he (John) had written concerning knowing whether we have eternal life. We need to explore I John for a check list to compare our life and our heart against to decide whether or not we have eternal life. Have we engaged in the PROCESS that will assure us that we have eternal life? We do not know the answer because we said a sinner's prayer, no matter how sincere we were when we said it.


I believe that the FIG (Fire Insurance Gospel) is not just inexact; it is not simply a small problem. I believe that it results in FALSE RELIGION. To come to that conclusion we need to look at the Bible as a whole. But one verse that says it succinctly is JAMES 1:27. “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” Focus on “ . . . keep oneself UNSTAINED by the world.” We do not keep ourselves unstained by the world by simply saying a sinner's prayer and going merrily on our way living however we feel like living. The Fire Insurance Gospel produces individual Christianity in which God is only loved and obeyed while it is convenient and feels good. They continue to love the things of the world, and Jesus is not truly their LORD no how many times they confess it to be so. To truly know that we have eternal life we need to engage in the PROCESS until completion.

The important thing to ask God right now is how is it between you and Him right now?  And the better thing to be thankful for right now is not that you are going to Heaven, but rather that you have the kind of relationship with God that is awesome and life giving. We want to stay engaged in the process of maintaining that relationship with God.

"Taco Feeds" OR "Is your Christian fellowship Christ Centered?"

The notice in the church bulletin or the flier on the church bulletin board says, “TACO FEED” in great big print and in smaller print tells where, when and what to bring. Implied, by the fact that this is in the church bulletin or in some way located in church stuff, implied is that this will be Christian fellowship and thus will be a sub-category of loving and serving God.

When you actually attend the taco feed and really pay attention you will notice that as far as loving and serving God, there is a quick prayer at the beginning of the taco feed and then if everyone leaves at the same time another at the end. Between the two quick prayers no one has Bibles with them (I am dating myself a little, have not been involved since iPhones have come along.) Conversations are centered on what their friends are doing, fixing cars, football and raising kids. The Bible is not talked about or referred to. There is not prayer going on and no one is singing praises to God.

The assumption is that where ever two or more are gathered there Jesus will be in the midst of them. Everyone would agree that if three Christians were all three paying the same prostitute for her services that Jesus is not in their midst. One reason is that they are probably not really Christians. True followers of Jesus act like Jesus is the center of their lives.

Imagine having a conversation with someone who is married and in love with their spouse. Is it hard to get them to talk about their spouse? No. Imagine a proud grandma, is it hard to get her to talk about her grandchild? No. Imagine someone who likes to fish, is it hard to get them talking about fishing? No. Imagine a group of Christians, is it hard to get them to talk about Jesus? Yes! Huh?!?

I say that if conversations do not come back to Jesus from time to time, the people involved are not involved in Christian fellowship and Jesus is not truly in their midst. They also need to ask themselves if they are really, actively following Jesus.

If the flier on the door advertises “Taco Feed”, you can expect tacos to be the center of the celebration, not Jesus and it is not a fellowship of believers. Their may be a few frustrated believers in attendance, but you have not satisfied their need for true fellowship. If it did satisfy you, Huh?!?

The Fundamental Question

A difference between the follower of Jesus and the religious Christian is the primary question they ask. The follower of Jesus asks, “How is my relationship with God?” The religious Christian asks, “Am I going to heaven or hell?”

The fundamental question asked determines the focus of ones life. The follower of Jesus goes on tweaking their life to get their relationship with God right. They want to live as close to God as possible. The religious Christian rejoices that they don't have to worry about hell and just plain goes on with their life.

The reward for seeking to live as close to God as possible is a life lived in God's presence. Of course this means we ask God to show us the things in our lives that screw up our relationship with Him, and we ask Him to help us get rid of those barriers. There is nothing better than a life lived close to God, and the decisions we make to draw closer to Him and the actions we take to follow through with those decisions all bring us closer to Jesus.

The starting place for living close to God is the Cross of Jesus.  Jesus died  on the Cross so that we could have a right relationship with Him.  He died to forgive us for our rebellion against Him, and we need to continually ask Him to forgive us for our new rebellion.

There are also rewards for the religious Christian who stops with confirmation (frequently a false comfort) that they are on the way to heaven. The religious experience that they have can be a genuine strength to help them live life. They can stop worrying about spiritual things and go about their life confident that everything is going to work out. Romans 8:28 can comfort with a false comfort, but to do that one has to ignore half of the verse and the context of the verse. Look at the whole verse in context:

Rom 8:28 & 29. “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren”

The religious Christian stops reading the verse with, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God.” They believe that this talks about them as they confuse their gratefulness to God for rubber stamping their ticket out of hell for actually loving God. They will then have some funky understanding of how their circumstances work out.

The follower of Jesus understands that the highest priority of God for their life is that God wants to make His followers more and more like Jesus. The fact that He will definitely accomplish this for those who truly follow Him is awesome. We want very much to be changed to be like Jesus, and whatever is going on with our circumstances, we can rejoice that we will be more like Jesus when God gets us through it. We also know that whatever happens, there is no possibility that those circumstances will separate us from the love of God (look at the rest of the chapter.)

How is it between you and God today? How is it between you and God right now?

Burning for Jesus.

Burning for Jesus. One of the arguments for participating in Christian fellowship is the analogy of logs burning on a fire. If the logs are close together they will help each other burn hotter. If you separate the logs they tend to go out. The problem is that if most of the logs are wet and not on fire they will tend to suffocate the log that is on fire, and the burning log would burn better without the other logs. We need to understand that we are not neutral in this. Either we do our part to let people know that this is a place where we practice our spirituality, or we let them know that it is not permitted, that this place is a mere social club. We WILL have an influence one way or another. I have some practical (I hope) suggestions for how to do this, but we need to think about the problem a little more.

Confessing Jesus as Lord. Every time we let people know that Jesus is Lord of our life we get blessed. God loves it when we declare that we belong to Him and He blesses us for it. One of the easiest places to do this should be among our fellow believers, but there is a problem. We are supposed to be modest. Two Bible passages immediately come to mind that on this subject.

Why NOT confess Jesus as Lord? The first passage starts with: Mat 6:1 "Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” When I think of starting a spiritual conversation one thing that the enemy tells me is that I will lose my rewards if I try to make myself look good. A good response to this is that I care more about my friends rewards than my own rewards. I determine in my heart that if I am going to lose a reward because I am doing right, then so be it. It is ridiculous to think that God will take away rewards because we do right. But I will determine to help my brothers and sisters in Christ even if that means me losing out on a reward. Am I going to lose out on social rewards because I act spiritual? Are you going to be a TRUE friend or are you really only there to get what you can for yourself? (and the heck with your “friends” which in this case should be called acquaintances rather than friends.) If I confess Jesus as my Lord, it helps give my FRIENDS the freedom to do the same.

The second passage is Proverbs Pro 16:5: “Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD; Assuredly, he will not be unpunished.” We need to determine in our hearts that it is does not make us proud in heart to confess that Jesus is our Lord. It will not damage other people to turn up the spiritual temperature, but rather it will help them.

How can we be a part of turning up the spiritual temperature rather than lower it? How can we confess Jesus as our Lord? In a social setting in which spiritual matters will generally not be talked about (conversation at church for example) we need to have a strategy for making it happen. I can think of several things that we can do in church to confess that Jesus is our Lord and turn up the spiritual temperature.
     Pray. We can ask people to pray with us and we can actually pray rather than tell them we will in the future (which is a lie if we will not actually do it.) We can determine in advance what prayer requests we can make in our conversation.
     Ask Questions. We can ask people things like, “How is your prayer time going?” “How is it between you and God these days?” “Have you been studying your Bible on a regular basis?” Most of us are not going to be comfortable asking these questions, but we need to ask ourselves why not. I say that the Christian culture does not permit it because it is really about loving God only in theory and not in practice, and that is why I am not there. If you don't believe me than you should feel comfortable actually doing it, right? Perhaps you argue that this stuff is private? Why is it private? Because people have a right to live a fake Christian life if they feel like it? It is not being a true friend to let your friend live as a fake. Ask the questions. Determine in advance to ask tough questions.
     Sing. Two verses come to mind about this. “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.“ Col 3:16. I do not think that this is talking about a predetermined song service. I think that we should be doing this in social situations. It fits better with what the verse is talking about. A similar verse is: “And do not get drunk with wine . . . but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord” (Eph 5:18-19). I am not a musician, and have a horrible time memorizing songs. I need to get a lot better at working hard to memorize songs so that I can at least speak the words of songs. People who are musical need to realize that formal song services are not the only place to use their gifts. One can sing softer, to just people in the conversational group, no?
     Testimony. We can decide in advance to tell about a particular incident in which God talked to us, helped us, protected us or in some other way blessed us. We don't have to wait for a formal invitation to use it, we can just insert into a conversation.
     Talk Bible. The Bible is our owner's manual for living life. We need to be wrestling continually with tweaking our life according to the Bible. As we wrestle it helps to get the other person's insight into what the Bible says about it. Sure, there are things we are wrestling with that we should only talk to with very close friends, but there are also many topics not nearly so private we can talk Bible about. We can, for example ask does anyone have any insight into applying a particular Bible verse. We can say how we got blessed applying a particular Bible verse, etc. How about asking if anyone has any ideas on doing the great commission during coffee break or how can you get involved in the stuff that separate the sheep from the goats? (Matthew 25:32+. This is a verse that actually should be used to ask ourselves if we are really following Jesus; if I am not participating in these things I am not. Very scary.) We need to prepare ahead of social situations to turn up the heat in social situations and we need concrete plans on how to do it. 


I personally don't believe that Christianity is about truly loving God and following Jesus. People leave church regularly with unmet needs that could have been easily met if following Jesus was permitted. Christian churches are social clubs. If you believe Christianity is about loving Jesus, then I challenge you to put action to your theory and live it out. I do a lousy job at putting into practice the suggestions that I have just made. One of the reasons I am so bad at it is that I have almost never seen it modeled. I have pretty much never seen this stuff done. This is not what Christianity is about. Christianity is a social club.

One goes to church partly to escape from the cold uncaring world. Leave the stresses of the world behind and relax among family. As far as confessing Jesus as Lord, however, this is stressful, even in church. But think about what we really want here. There is a major difference between being “friendly” and being an actual friend. Being friendly means using proper manners, saying the right thing and using the correct tone of voice. It also means not intruding on peoples personal space, either physically or conversationally.

Church people are usually very friendly. And to be honest, friendly meets emotional needs. There are also aspects to it that are important.  Think about the fruits of the spirit,  "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law" (Gal 5:22-23).  Also, "But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits . . . And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace" (Jas 3:17-18).  Then there is the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13.  There is an appropriate way to behave.

The problem with “friendly” however is that people (not just the other guy but us as well) leave church with very important needs not met. Every one of us needs to leave church more motivated to run the race that God has set before us. Many times that means we need help dealing with issues in our lives. To do that we need an environment where it is OK to talk about spiritual stuff. We need an environment where it is OK to be true friends. It is more important to be a friend than run the risk of letting people leave with unmet needs you could have helped them with. To be a true friend you have to increase the stress level temporarily.


The Bible verse quoted mostly to tell people to go to church is “don't forsake assembling together.” But look at the verse in context. “and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near. For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins” (Heb 10:24-26). Regardless of how you interpret the end of that passage, it tells us that it is very important to encourage each other to really, truly live out our faith. In fact, if we go to church and do not encourage someone else to get with the program and do not leave having been encouraged to to do the same, we have not done what the verse talks about, and we have misapplied the verse.

If you think you are about following Jesus I challenge you: decide to turn up the spiritual temperature, decide in advance some strategies you will use when you get to that Christian social setting, and develop some kind of accountability system to actually make sure you do it.

Twisting Bible Verses to enable Fire Insurance Christianity

Verses Twisted 

to enable 

Fire Insurance Christianity

Fire Insurance Christianity

This refers to the practice of saying a sinner's prayer, understanding that you will now spend eternity in Heaven instead of Hell, then going about one's life pretty much the same as before.

The misunderstanding stems, I believe from a wrong understanding of why Jesus gave His life for us. Jesus died to reconcile us with Him, with God and bring us into a right relationship with Him. In contrast, the Fire Insurance Gospel (FIG) says that the primary reason Jesus died is to save us from Hell. Here is an analogy of what that means in the outcome. 

Think about I-70 going across the state of Colorado. I-70 goes over the Rocky Mountains. At the top is the Eisenhower Tunnel. The motorist who is not real aware of what is happening thinks that as they exit the Eisenhower Tunnel and start down the hill they have been over the top of the Rock Mountains. In contrast is the trucker that has a 14 foot tall trailer or is carrying a hazardous materials load. This trucker is not allowed through the tunnel, but instead exits I-70 and continues going uphill, zigzagging up and up and up until they come to the summit of Loveland Pass. From here it really looks like you are at the top of something. 

The FIG Christian who has said the sinners prayer is like the motorist that has passed through the Eisenhower Tunnel. They think that they have been to the cross, and go merrily on with their life believing that they are now on the road to Heaven.

The person that is truly engaged with the PROCESS of salvation continues in the PROCESS until they get to the top of Loveland Pass and truly find the Cross and leave their old life there (actually not a one time experience).

The important question at this point is WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY about all of this. I believe that as a whole the Bible calls FIG a false religion. In order to see that to be so, however, the FIG follower is going to have to go through a paradigm shift because they have gotten so use to twisting Bible verses to say something they do not actually say.

There are some very commonly used Bible passages that are twisted by FIG followers. Let me show how I see them. The key word will be PROCESS. (I am using the New American Standard Bible).

JOHN 1:12 & 13. "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." Look at the phrase "He GAVE THE RIGHT to become". This phrase is almost always ignored. The PROCESS is ignored. The common understanding of this verse is that one receives Jesus and is immediately converted into a child of God. That is not what this verse says. Consider this word picture. John and Don are sitting in a cafe in Hood River, OR about 50 or 60 miles east of Portland, OR. They are talking about the zoo in San Diego. They would like to visit this zoo, so John gets on the phone and calls up an airline and pays for tickets to take them from the Portland airport to San Diego. He then asks the waitress how long their food will take. She says, “Unfortunately, we don't have any chicken so the cook is next door buying one. It will probably be an hour before you get your dinner.” John says "Nifty! So we have time to go visit the San Diego zoo. Come on Don, we can walk over to to the zoo, see the reptile collection and be back before the food gets here." Don says, "John, the airplane tickets only means that after we go from here to Portland we HAVE THE RIGHT to get on the plane to San Diego. We are not in San Diego, we are still in Hood River!!!" Equally, the person who has received Jesus still needs to go through the PROCESS of becoming a child of God. They HAVE THE RIGHT to become a child of God.

JOHN 3:3 "Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." NEW BIRTH is commonly said to be put into practice by having someone say the sinner's prayer and then telling that person they are now born again and on their way to Heaven. They ignore the obvious problem that birth is the end result of a 9 month long PROCESS which began with conception. Equally, to be born again, to be born spiritually, one must engage in a PROCESS. Check out the parable of the sower in like Matthew 13, Mark 4 or Luke 8. The word of God being planted in one's heart does not make them a Christian. The seed needs to reach maturity and produce fruit. There is a PROCESS which begins but is not completed when the Word is planted in the heart. That PROCESS can not be entered into and completed by simply saying a prayer. If it could, then all three of the final types of soil would represent saved Christians. I believe that this does not agree with the Bible as a whole.

 

ROMANS 6:23. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The way this verse is typically explained is like this. The person explaining the gospel will hold something in their hand (like a dollar bill maybe) and tell them this is a free gift. ¿What do you need to do to receive it? All you need to do is simply reach out and take it. Equally, all you have do do to receive eternal life is simply say the sinner's prayer (and mean is with all your heart of course) and you will be on your way to Heaven. Remember the word PROCESS? To find the process look at the preceding verse, Rom 6:22. One should never memorize Romans 6:23 without also memorizing Romans 6:22. “But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.” Eternal life is a PROCESS which begins with being “freed from sin and enslaved to God”, then continues with the PROCESS of “sanctification” and has the “outcome” of “eternal life.” Again, to decide if the PROCESS has resulted in new birth look at my comments about I John 5:13. The PROCESS is not engaged in by saying the sinner's prayer.

ROMANS 10:9-11 “ . . . that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, 'WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.'" The word “confess”. It fits the teaching of the Bible as a whole much better to understand confession as an ongoing practice rather than as just saying something one time. The word “believe”, go back to comments about it under John 3:16. Salvation is the result of a PROCESS. 

ROMANS 10:9a “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord . . .” The word LORD is often misunderstood. The word LORD does not mean the same thing as the word GOD. The words LORD and GOD are not at all synonyms. LORD is what a slave calls their master. I once picked up a hitch hiker who believed that because he had said the sinners prayer that he was on his way to Heaven and could live any way that he wanted to. I asked him, "¿What would your wife mean if she were to call you Lord?" He gave an absolutely beautiful description of what our relationship with God is supposed to look like. I told him that his beautiful description is what our relationship with God is supposed to be. It totally shocked him. As we engage in the PROCESS of confessing Jesus as LORD, this is what we are learning to confess. (I am NOT saying that wives should call their husbands Lord.)

I JOHN 5:13. “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” This verse is typically brought out in the gospel presentation with all of the emphasis on “You can KNOW that you are saved.” So once you have said the sinners prayer you KNOW that you have been saved. This understanding ignores the first part of the verse, “THESE THINGS I have written to you”. What things? We need to look at the rest of I John and find out what he (John) had written concerning knowing whether we have eternal life. We need to explore I John for a check list to compare our life and our heart against to decide whether or not we have eternal life. Have we engaged in the PROCESS that will assure us that we have eternal life? We do not know the answer because we said a sinner's prayer, no matter how sincere we were when we said it.

I believe that the FIG (Fire Insurance Gospel) is not just inexact; it is not a teeny little problem. I believe that it results in FALSE RELIGION. To come to that conclusion we need to look at the Bible as a whole. But one verse that says it succinctly is JAMES 1:27. “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” Focus on “ . . . keep oneself UNSTAINED by the world.” We do not keep ourselves unstained by the world by simply saying a sinner's prayer and going merrily on our way living however we feel like living. The Fire Insurance Gospel produces individual Christianity in which God is only loved and obeyed while it is convenient and feels good. They continue to love the things of the world, and Jesus is not truly their LORD no how many times they confess it to be so. To truly know that we have eternal life we need to engage in the PROCESS until completion.


Jesus did not die on the cross primarily so we could escape Hell.  He died on the cross primarily so we could enter into a beautiful relationship with God.  That relationship is based on submission, love, respect, integrity, Fear of God.   When we convert people to the faith primarily to escape Hell, we set their course in a direction that is not good.  We fill the churches with people that are there for the wrong reason.  Sure, miracles can, and often do happen where people come in to escape Hell and learn to love God.  The problem is that this is in spite of the conversion methods, not because of them.


May we all determine in our heats to love God with everything we have and everything we are!!

A true follower of the Lord Jesus wants to understand the Bible. They don't twist its words. Alternate title: Understanding the Bible vs twisting Bible verses.

Twisting Bible Verses

A true follower of the Lord Jesus wants to understand what the Bible really says, they do not want to twist its meaning around.

My next blog (not this one) is going to deal with a few commonly twisted Bible verses. There are people who will tell me that I simply do not understand them correctly, that I obviously do not have a proper amount of education. This blog is written partly to them. If you do not have the time or inclination to deal with the abstract ideas in this blog, then I don't want to scare you off from the rest of my blogs; you may want to go on to the next one. I am going to try to write rubber meats the road stuff. If I am not, then I need some feedback. Anyhow, this blog may be dry reading.

Bible twisting – accidentally or on purpose. Some do it on purpose, others accidentally.

Twisting the Bible on purpose. It seems to me there are two groups of people who claim the Bible is ambiguous. One group is those who have never read the Bible carefully enough to realize it is not ambiguous. The other group has put the Bible in some type of genre or category which is not to be read literally, but rather to be read with the idea that the meaning is totally in the mind of the reader. People have done the same thing with modern poetry, to the extent that many poets do not expect people to try to figure out what they are really saying. They expect their words to be twisted to the readers needs, and then they write poetry based on that understanding. It seems to me that when an author writes with the understanding people don't respect them enough to care what they are really trying to say, that the author is to a some degree dysfunctional (or maybe has little to say).

Another way to look at this – If you write a letter to a friend about a topic you feel is important, and your friend twists your words so that your letter ends up saying something different than what you actually said, you would say your friend is twisted. If I did that to my biology book my biology teacher would say I was delusional, not just twisted. Why? Because what the author has to say is important.

God is absolutely not dysfunctional, and He expects us to care immensely about what He is trying to tell us in the Bible. Yes, the Bible was written by humans, but it was all written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It was written over an extremely long period of time and written by many different human authors, and yet when we read it to understand what the original human authors were saying we find that they had one common message. The message of the human authors agrees with our understanding that the ultimate author of the Bible is the Holy Spirit. Since God is the ultimate authority we should read the Bible understanding He is not dysfunctional and we need to try very hard to get at what He is trying to tell us. If we really care what the Bible says we do not twist it to say whatever we want it to say. We do not twist the words of the creator of the universe unless we are delusional.

A comment on genre – the Bible is composed of different genres and different genres have some different rules of interpretation. This does not change however that we want to know what the original authors of the Bible – both God and humans – had to say. People who twist words are not neutral in their investigation and are not at all likely to find truth. If someone twists the meaning of what I write I tend to think of them as at least partially my enemy.

Twisting the Bible accidentally. There is another group of people . . .watch out now, I am probably talking about YOU and will probably step on your toes. When you feel the pain in the toes, please do not attack the messenger. Please continue to try real hard to understand the message.

There is another group of people who also twist scripture . . . the majority of evangelical theologians, and they follow a respected historic precedent. Evangelical theologians do not claim that the Bible is ambiguous, but they also do not read the Bible itself to understand what it actually says. They study theology to understand the Bible. This ends up with twisted Bible verses. You can tell that this is what they are about by the way they teach the Bible. They do not go to other Bible passages to explain scripture, they primarily go to theology to explain scripture. Take notes in church and you will find that much of the time the teacher says they will teach what the Bible says and then what they really do is teach what theology (or history or some other source) has to say. Then they conclude with, “and that is what the Bible says about that!” Take notes! If you look at one of the passages that they twist they will tell you your interpretation is based on a lack of understanding about the subject, and go on to teach theology. You can know it is theology because if they are correct, the Bible translators screwed up. I would prefer to trust the translators of a good respected Bible version rather than trust a chain of Bible teachers I don't know who are probably playing follow the leader.

I also don't buy into the idea that the translators did the best they could given the limits of the English language. If the original ideas are not expressed properly the translation still needs to be tweaked. I believe the translators finished the tweaking process.

The way to get a good idea of the source of different understandings of a particular verse is to combine common sense and context. Does the interpretation give clarity to the verse in light of both common sense and the verse's context? If not, then it is likely a place where theology disagrees with the Bible and the theologians have to twist it's meaning to hold on to their theology. Evangelical theologians have been working with the Bible for a long, long time. They indoctrinate future Bible readers into their theology before the future Bible reader has a chance to read the Bible for themselves. This indoctrination makes it very hard for them to see past the paradigms of their theology teachers. One Bible passage seen to not actually fit in with theology is not powerful enough to change their theology, and correctly so. We do not build our belief system on one single fact. We build it on the whole of facts. For them to do the kind of paradigm shift necessary to see what the Bible actually says would itself take a miracle. An indoctrinated believer takes one verse at a time, says that's weird – but it doesn't fit in with how they see scripture as a whole – resets it's meaning to agree with their former paradigm – and goes on to the next verse. They don't get to the truth that way.

We will not understand the Bible if we twist its meaning, either accidentally or on purpose. A true follower of the Lord Jesus wants to understand what the Bible really says. A Christian on the other hand wants more evidence to back up their theology. The two are likely to diverge with the subject of loving the things of the world, or rather, they diverge just upstream from there.