Proverbs 29:25 “Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.”
What does it mean for the fear of man to be a snare? A snare is a lure or a trap, fisherman or hunters use snares to catch fish or animals. For us, we fear what people think or will do if we voice our beliefs. This manifests as people-pleasing, compromised values, peer pressure, and choosing to not share the gospel out of fear of rejection or unpleasant interactions.
We feel immense pressure from the culture around us to fit in or stay silent. Whether it’s religious, political, or societal issues, we fear the repercussions of what might happen if we are honest about what we believe.
To be perfectly candid, I have sat by for years, afraid to say certain things out of fear of pushing people away. I rationalized it by saying it was to enable me to reach more people with the gospel, but Jesus never did that. In fact, Jesus, the one who is the embodiment love, never watered down his message. Even in the face of mass walk outs, he stayed true to his doctrine.
John 6:52-53 “Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
John 6:60-61 “On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you?”
John 6:66-68“From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
For too long I’ve tried to walk the fence between my own convictions and trying not to get sucked into the extremes of the right or left. Unfortunately, this made me afraid to speak on many of the important issues our culture is facing today.
Cardinal Manning once said, “All human conflict is ultimately theological.”
As America has become less and less religious, we’ve mistakenly thought that people have become less religious. This isn’t true, people have an innate need for religion, it just usually manifests today in what we consider “secular” issues.
Politics has become the religion of many in America, we look to it to save us, to give us peace and assurance, we put all of our hope into candidates and demonize and dehumanize anyone who opposes our doctrines.
“Our politics has become religion. It has a religious fervor to it now that it didn’t have even 20 or 30 years ago,
Political conventions can have the feel of old-time denominational meetings. A stump speech is like a tent revival. Donating regularly to candidates is like tithing.”
- Professor Ryan Burge
Progressive Christianity is growing in popularity, not because it is more theologically sound, but because it is more willing to lean towards the culture. It’s the best of both worlds! We can love Jesus and have our cultural desires. We can love Jesus and still fit into an anti-Christ culture. But this ideology does more damage than good.
Instead of using the gospel of Jesus Christ to set people free from sin, we use it to justify people in their sin. Instead of showing people their need for repentance and forgiveness of sins, we tell people that love is supreme and God loves all of us just as we are.
When it comes to political issues, the progressive Christian will say, Christians shouldn’t be forcing their religion down people’s throat! We should be able to keep religion and politics separate!
But here’s the truth, this mindset is itself a religious mindset. The marriage of progressive Christianity with the cultural issues of today have created a new, more dangerous religion that is anti-Christ.
Anti means against, so this doctrine is against Christ. How? The doctrine of Christ is that ALL people are image bearers of God. We are all made in His image, this new religion wants the right to abort innocent image bearers in the womb for the sake of women’s freedom, they want children to be able to have unlimited access to gender affirming care causing irreversible damage to their bodies and abilities to reproduce, this is anti-creation.
The lie of the garden, that we can be like god, has led us to believe that we can do anything we want with no repercussions. The arguments in favor of abortion rights and trans rights both center on “This Is my body “, a selfishly demonic counterfeit to the words of Christ. “This is my body that was broken for you.”
I firmly believe in abolition of abortion, I understand the nuance in these arguments but the vast majority of abortions are not performed for any medical reasons or due to SA, the majority are performed because of choice.
The argument is not for freedom for women to choose, it’s freedom from consequences. This goes for both men and women. If we want to be consistent, men should never be allowed to abandon their responsibilities either. The choice is made before the pregnancy, you choose to sleep with someone knowing full well the consequences of that choice could potentially lead to a baby. Taking the life of an innocent child in order to remove the consequences is as selfish as you can get.
Jesus was very clear on how we should treat the least in our society.
Matthew 25:44-46 ““They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.””
The same goes for the trans issue. No doubt it’s not as easy of a conversation. But if we forbid tattoos, piercings, and other permanent modifications for minors the least we can do is wait for kids to turn 18 before we permanently alter their lives.
The Christian position should not be that trans people do not exist. It should be that children are precious and innocent and deserving of a life that is not permanently altered before they are old enough to make these kinds of decisions.
There should be support for children struggling with gender identity, there should be a safe place for them to grow up without the fear of judgment, but there should also not be a push or desire to see these kids transition or used for political gain from either side.
As a Christian my worldview is a biblical worldview, I believe God created male and female, both equal but uniquely different. I think all struggles are a result of the fall and the sin that entered the world, we should lovingly help those who are struggling with identity by pointing them to the one who created them and teaching them to rest in Him.
As a non-believer you are free to disagree with me, but you do not have more right to your doctrines than I do. Contrary to public opinion neither the left nor the right are the morally superior group. Both sides have good people and horrible people. Demonizing everyone who disagrees is only going to further divide our nation.
But, they argue, God is love! That isn’t a quality He possesses, it’s literally who He is! Of course, but what is love? What does it mean to love?
Before we get into that, it’s important to understand how heresy starts. It doesn’t start with someone seeking to create heresy, it’s started most often by someone focusing in too narrowly on one truth in spite of other just as important truths.
“A heretic may begin with the best of intentions. Sometimes, it’s the person concerned about orthodoxy who slips toward error or heresy. The good and right impulse to defend and promote a crucial element of Christian truth can turn into an overly narrow and one-sided obsession.
Someone becomes so convinced and zealous about a particular truth that other, complementary truths within the Christian tradition get eclipsed. Myopic focus on one truth can set us up for a departure from orthodoxy. One truth disconnected from other truths will lead us to insist again and again on whatever principle or doctrine we favor, and over time that doctrine—now isolated from others and exaggerated by the attention we give it—becomes distorted itself, eventually severing us from the rest of the church.“
— The Thrill of Orthodoxy: Rediscovering the Adventure of Christian Faith by Trevin K. Wax
Love is god or God is love? (1 John 4:7-21)
This seems like a silly question until you realize our culture has decided that as Christians love has to be supreme. That sounds good, but love isn’t supreme, God is. Why does this matter?
If God is love then God becomes the standard that love conforms to. In other words the more I learn and connect to God the more that impacts how I love.
This is a good thing because God is just, holy, perfect, and the literal embodiment of love. I am not.
If love is god, then love (or our concept of it) becomes the standard that God has to conform to. This means that we re-interpret who God is through our understanding of love and essentially create a god in our own image. That’s idolatry.
When Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment in Matthew 22:37 he replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”
What does this look like? It means I love everyone, but I cannot affirm every lifestyle or choice someone makes. I love you, but I love God more. God is the standard, not love.
100 percent agree that we should walk in love, but sometimes to walk in love means to stand for truth, not my truth or your truth, but His truth.
Ephesians 4:15 “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”
Culture and Progressive Christianity
when talking about the fear of man, it manifests most evidently within the progressive Christian movement. I understand that statement will face pushback, but I believe it to be true. Culture is having a profound effect of Christianity. I recognize the issues that push people into deconstruction. Toxic churches, abusive leaders, hypocrisy, judgmental and non-loving Christians. As believers we have to own up to a lot of this.
What troubles me is that most people that go the route of deconstruction end up allowing culture to dictate biblical principles. If God is love shouldn’t we love and affirm everything and everyone? I said it earlier, but love isn’t god, God is love. God defines what love is, not us.
We can’t divorce the teachings on love, respect, and grace from the teachings of sin and repentance. We can’t pick and choose which parts of the Bible are correct.
We think we are bringing fresh ideas and questions to the topic of Christianity but this stuff has been argued about for centuries.
I have said for some time that progressive Christianity is the biggest threat to Christianity. I believe this sincerely because it takes everything attractive with culture and society and blends it with poor hermeneutics to create a theology that is affirming and loving at the expense of Biblical truth.
The other side of the same coin is extreme fundamentalism. This is usually seen in churches who have strict rules and standards for their members. This is seen in standards of dress, dictating what families can and cannot do, such as prohibitions against movie theaters, sporting events, or restaurants with bars inside, etc…
In the past 3 and a half years since I transitioned out of my former theology I’ve interacted with and seen the YouTube videos of a lot of people who grew up in harsh, fundamental churches. Extreme fundamentalism is just modern day Phariseeism, they are adding to the commands of God and making righteousness something we attain by our effort and works. That’s not biblical righteousness.
Unfortunately, the deconstruction movement is very attractive to people who’ve been in these fundamental churches. People who were controlled their whole lives or who were raised in a strict environment see an alternative based on love and they are drawn in.
The issue with deconstruction is that it’s not a biblical concept. The root of the deconstruction movement had nothing to do with Christianity, deconstructionism theory was popularized by the philosopher Jacque Derrida, it is tied very closely to postmodernism.
To be fair, Faith deconstruction differs slightly from traditional deconstructionism, although you can still recognize the influence deconstructionism has had on the faith deconstruction movement.
So what is faith deconstruction?
“A relatively new idea that arose out of the world of textual criticism, the word “deconstruction” takes on different meanings depending on the field in which it’s being used. For our purposes—that is, regarding religious faith—we’ll define it as the taking apart of an idea, practice, tradition, belief, or system into smaller components in order to examine their foundation, truthfulness, usefulness, and impact. Or, as Rachel Held Evans wrote in her book Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church, it is taking a “massive inventory of [your] faith, tearing every doctrine from the cupboard and turning each one over in [your] hand” (p. 50).“
In a way you can say that I went through a deconstruction process when I left my apostolic church, however, I never considered myself to be deconstructing but rather testing the things I had previously believed with Scripture. Some would argue that’s exactly what deconstructing your faith looks like and that might be true, but the movement behind deconstruction is what I’m most concerned about.
The danger of the deconstruction movement isn’t that it calls people to re-evaluate their faith, there’s nothing wrong with examining your theology to see if it’s Biblical or not. The danger is that the faith deconstruction movement is strictly tied to progressive Christian ideas and influencers.
There’s not too many people I’ve seen or interacted with that have gone through a deconstruction that caused them to end up in historic orthodox Christianity. Almost all deconstructing Christians end up in some form of progressive Christianity or find themselves identifying as an agnostic or atheist.
Some of these issues that are leading people to progressive Christianity are issues that have been settled by the church for thousands of years. Today, people are pushing back on them because of preconceived Ideas and cultural norms.
We are trusting our hearts and following what we think is right. the Bible speaks to both of these issues.
Here’s another quote from the same source linked above,
“Note: Deconstruction is not destruction, but rather the step that may precede destruction. Ultimately, a person engages in deconstruction in order to see what of their faith is worth keeping and what needs rebuilding. If they determine that nothing was worth salvaging—that they can no longer believe—they will ultimately choose to walk away, or “deconvert.” However, if they determine that something is worth salvaging, they will then begin reconstructing from that foundation, rebuilding a faith that feels more authentic to how they perceive God. Because the faith journey is so personal, the choice of what to do after deconstruction is up to the person and no one else.”
The issue here is that this leaves truth in the hands of the individual. Anything can be accepted or rejected on nothing more than personal choice. But Christianity is not a me and Jesus concept. It’s a people following the life and teachings of Christ.
There’s more to this than that, I understand that. There’s questions about the authority of the Bible, the inerrancy of Scripture, and many other questions that need answered too. Hopefully I will dive into those topics soon, but for now I want to leave with a quote.👇🏼
“Being orthodox, in the sense of affirming what the vast majority of Christians in history have believed, is fundamentally a posture of humility, for it involves believing that the untold millions of faithful Christians, leaders and theologians have been guided by the Holy Spirit into all the truth.
It can often be presented as if orthodoxy is heavy-handed, authoritarian dogmatism, and unorthodoxy or heresy simply represent the humble and impish whippersnappers trying to get their gentle voices heard - but in general, there is an arrogance to believing that you are right and almost everyone else is wrong, especially when the “everyone else” includes Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Wesley, Barth and co.
That doesn’t mean we can never challenge an orthodox consensus, of course; it would be naive to act as if the church’s historic teaching had never been wrong. But when we do, we must do so from a position of humility, and give the benefit of the doubt to the weight of orthodoxy.
The humility of Orthodoxy is to say, “I’ll stay where the church is unless I’m ‘sure’ that the church has always been wrong about this.”
- Andrew Wilson
As Christians we can’t continue keeping our faith separate from politics, those on the left are promoting their doctrines and demanding silence from anyone who disagrees. Abortion issues and trans issues in children are not political issues, these are moral issues.
It’s going to take men and women like myself, who do not like conflict, to take Proverbs 29:25 to heart. The fear of man will prove to be a snare. That’s something that traps you and takes away your freedom. The antidote to fear is not hate, it’s love. Biblical love that says, because I love you, I’m willing to tell you the truth even at the expense of our relationship. I can’t love my children by allowing them to chase cars in the street, and I can’t love my neighbor by watching them march towards a destructive ideology.
You can only watch someone walk into the street for so long, sooner or later you will be compelled to run and tackle the person in order to save their life. That’s love.
We might not ever agree on anything in this life, you can think I am as wrong as they come. But what we can’t do is continue down this path of demonizing each other as if our political affiliations are religious affiliations. We must resist the urge to hate.
1 Peter 4:8 “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”
Comments