Different Gospel?

 

The Church seems full of what I call “religioneers.” Religioneers attempt to re-engineer Church to fit their agenda and promote their idea of how to operate in the mainstream. These attempts to make the church powerful and palatable are quite simply pitiful. Jesus was ticked off at those who were religious but void of the true message of God, not the people stranded outside of life with God who didn’t know any better than to follow the current leadership. 

 

In our religious culture it seems now implied that a Christian is quite literally anyone that’s nice once in awhile, lives in America, or at least the Western Hemisphere, goes to some church when there isn’t a child’s soccer game to attend, hasn’t murdered anyone or stolen anything big - or at least hasn’t gotten caught yet. That’s bad enough, but here’s what really sucks: when we, the Church, imply that to be a Christian one must be aligned with a political ideology! Shame on us! This is an example of the work of Religioneers: to make up man-centered systems of appearing to be aligned with God’s kingdom. If you’re in this category, you should repent! Jesus said, “my kingdom is NOT of this world.” So why the heck are we trying to re-engineer this world instead of preaching the one to come? 

 

We attempt to create systems and organizations that exalt ourselves instead of movements about Christ, that exalt Christ. We’ve attempted to force those ‘sinners’ to repent from ungodliness without even knowing the God to whom they are to repent! Maybe we are the ones who must first repent! I think so. I love the story told by Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz about the true Christian attitude that lead some college students to set up a confession booth on Reid College campus. Then when the party animals came by to see what was really going on, their little booth became a reverse confessional! The Church began confessing to the world for our religioneering of the gospel which has produced some horrid aberrations of the teachings of Jesus Christ in years past. I Repent!