Contrasting Christianity

Have you talked in public to an evangelical woman with a cross hanging down into her revealed cleavage?  You see the cross juxtapositioned with the other as a backdrop.  Not a fit, is it?  Maybe you, like me, wonder about the vast differences in professing Christianity.  They both claim to believe in Jesus Christ.  What’s going on?

One church you attend uses superficial, short preaching that centers on men’s felt needs.  They do series on self-interest topics that will attract people.  They keep it short with lots of humor.  The other opens the Bible and explains and applies exactly what it says, word for word.

Some churches use rock or pop music and call it praise.  Others use sacred music, saying that God rejects and hates rock or pop music and doesn’t want to hear it.  The former accepts worldly and even sinful dress or apparel.  The latter preaches against that in a practical way.

A church that calls itself Christian uses world amusements that target every demographic with alluring activities.  The other does exactly what the Bible presents as an obedient practice.

I could go on and on with varied descriptions of these two extremes, both calling themselves Christian.  Both of them say they believe in Jesus.  The modern or postmodern form of a professing Christian church wants toleration from the church with strict conformity to scripture.  When the biblical church, a true one, rejects the belief and practice of the false one, the false one calls this unloving, even unChristian.

Similar Doctrinal Statement, But….

Very often I’ve said that two indistinguishable churches have a very similar doctrinal statement.  The drastic incongruence between the two does not relate to their doctrinal statement.  The contradiction relates to a true or false or a beautiful or ugly imagination of God.  One fashions a god made after lust and the other after reverence.  God and all associated with Him stays sacred in a true church.  That church turns off a lot of people, not the aesthetic or feeling many professing Christians want.

Changing the God in the imagination changes everything about believing in Him, obeying Him, and worshiping Him.  It distorts everything.  Let me give you a simple illustration.

Scripture commands not to use corrupt communication.  It does not say what that is.  What was corrupt at one time and with the different imagination of God becomes uncorrupt.  It’s fine now.  Are you using corrupt communication?  No, because the meaning changed.  You have a different God that allows for that communication, so it’s fine.

The Beauty of Holiness

Psalm 96:9 says, “Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.”  That’s a command that one might obey or disobey.  Let’s say someone does something he calls worship and it is not in the beauty of holiness.  That isn’t worship.  Here is a person claiming to worship, but not worshiping and in reality disobeying God.  People also do not know who God is because of the false portrayal of God presented.

The false god in the imagination that might have a pretty good doctrinal statement still completely misses.  This is how two professing Christianities portray such vast difference between the other.  The true presents something according to true churches through most of history.  The false presents a counterfeit, calling itself authentic or genuine.

Most of the false Christianity deemphasizes repentance.  Some of it will hold to repentance as an entrance unto salvation in Christ.  However, it’s just the word repentance used.  It isn’t repentance, because it doesn’t turn from these worldly things that dishonor God.  It hangs on to them.

False Repentance

What does the false repentance turn from?  It can be the superficial turning of not believing to believing.  However, at the same time holding to an impostor belief.  A person still has not turned from unbelief, because he distorts belief too.  Other forms of false repentance occur.  The Apostle Paul showed how that people replace true repentance with something short of it in 2 Corinthians 7.

I don’t think what I’m writing is beyond comprehension for people.  They know that two things that are different are not the same.  Only one of these turns from the belief and practice of historic Christianity.  That’s the false one.

Many, many people have shaped Jesus into their own image and then received the false one.  They read their chosen version of the Bible, which says, believe in Jesus.  They do.  Now they think they’re saved.  He must be Jesus.  If He isn’t, they haven’t believed in Him.  They are lost.

What’s different about those believing in the false Jesus?  Jesus is immanent.  He comes down and close in His manner as described in scripture.  He’s also transcendent.  1 Peter 1:16 says, “Be ye holy; for I am holy.”  Jesus is holy.  Their Jesus is not.  He isn’t sacred and He does not require holiness like Peter says.