Protestant but not Pro-Bible

Walking past a beautiful old Methodist Church in midtown Manhattan yesterday I noticed its sermon board had a quote about how life's not the cards dealt you but how well you play them. No Bible verse or mention of anything related to Jesus Christ, just some garden variety platitude with a gambling origin. Of course, several months back I actually saw a quote by Gandhi displayed on the glass-enclosed board of another prominent Protestant church in the city. Why not just quote the Upanishads or Krishna.

The other night, in an interview with Charlie Rose on PBS, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman made the point that Iraqis were not as concerned with our power as they were our powerlessness. I would say the same could be said for the Protestant faith today. Not only are they ineffectual, they have lost the most basic premise for their existence -- sharing the gospel.

On Easter, I visited a very large Methodist church in southern Ohio in which the pastor gave a 25-minute sermon on how "God will not do for us what we can do for ourselves." Without mentioning the need for a Savior, he rattled off a series of stories on famous individuals in history who overcame early failures, including Albert Einstein (a self-proclaimed atheist, last I checked), Winston Churchill, Walt Disney, Michael Jordan and the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. It sounded more like a Dale Carnegie seminar than a sermon.

The pastor closed with an anecdote about how he had recently gone into a unisex hair salon to get his hair cut and overheard the young stylists, dressed in punk clothes with tattoos and body piercings, make some off-color remarks. While dismayed by their behavior at first, the pastor said he realized he was just being fuddy-duddy. "Every time you think about the problems of younger generations, you are officially old because that's what old people do," he explained. If it isn't the role of a preacher to provide guidance to younger generations and encourage his flock to do the same, what hope is there? The whole problem today is less and less adults care to tell young people right from wrong.

Certainly, we are given new indicators each day that Protestant denominations are either rejecting or ignoring sound Bible doctrine. At a leadership conference of the Presbyterian denomination this past week, new hope was expressed that gays would hold top hierarchical positions in the church by 2005. A front-page story in Friday's New York Times about evangelical Christians reaching out to Muslims included a quote from the general secretary of the National Council of Churches, which represents many Protestant denominations, saying, "God calls all of us to have an open mind and an open heart and many of the people who are part of the National Council of Churches believe that if judgment is to be made it needs to be made by God and not by those of us who have divided ourselves up around a particular ideology."

Has this guy ever even picked up the New Testament?! All it gets done saying is God will judge men and we as Believers and "ambassadors for Christ" are to share the Bible's message of Salvation in order that others might believe it too and avoid the penalty of sin which is eternal damnation. Referring to judgment as a big "if" that is none of our business, this church leader seems to be saying we are wrong to even want to warn anyone of God's judgment--just let them find out on their own after they die and it's too late to do anything about it.

As a Free Methodist minister pointed out in a magazine column recently, tolerance has been "elevated to the noblest of human characteristics," but actually represents indifference. "Many people try to act as if tolerance and love are synonymous, but they are not," writes Kent Olney in the magazine Holiness Today. "(Tolerance) implies that your ideas and behaviors are not my business, so I will leave you alone and not worry about you...Love is active. Love is based on compassion. It says that I do care what you think or do, and because I care, I am compelled to confront you with the truth when I see error."

The Apostle Paul tells us that in the "last days" there will be a "falling away" of the Church the Body of Christ, in which even the basic Gospel message of salvation through Jesus Christ alone will be lost on some "Christians." "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron," he writes in I Timothy 4: 1-2. In II Timothy 4, Paul further states, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables."

Since it is a primary goal of Satan to hinder people's understanding of the need to place their faith solely in Jesus Christ for their salvation, what better way to spread this deception than from directly inside the Christian churches? Paul warns of this being just the case in II Corinthians 11: 13-15: "For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.[14] And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.[15] Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.