Sunday.....Christianity.....Peculiarities And Deception

I am a person of many peculiarities as my family and friends can testify to. Here are some of the habits, formed over time:

-I fly the Stars and Stripes six days a week. I won't hang it outside on the Lord's Day so as not to confuse the Gospel with patriotism.
-My back has not touched the back of a pew in church in probably the last 15 years; for listening to God speaking directly to us, through His minister, deserves our full attention. And it is too joyful anyway, when Christ is preached, to do otherwise.
-My eyes never leave the pulpit during a service. I don't know who passes the collection plate, nor do I know who is sitting in the same pew across the aisle. I do this to lessen distractions from His message, distractions that we are so prone to invite.
-I would not become a member of our church until the problem that I had with the oath could be resolved. That problem being, taking an oath where I had to make promises that I was in no way confident that I could keep. It was resolved when the pastor added "through the grace of God" before the promise.
I, in no way, recommend anyone else to do what I do and acknowledge that they may not even be wise. I'm simply well aware of our own frailties and have added these habits as reminders. I might seem to others to go overboard at times in defense of the Gospel, to seem intractable, but I also know the power of deception in and around the church. Christian cults are prima facie evidence of this deception. A man, usually a man, claims to have had a vision from either God or an angel. He is given a mission to restore the true church to the world. Within a short period of time, sacred scriptures, peculiar to this person's teaching, become the foundation of truth. I have had many conversations with such followers where their eyes seem to stare above my head as they repeat the mantras, or the interpretations, indelibly etched into there minds. The evidence against the founder is clear but few, only those who God had opened their eyes, escape. Subversions of the gospel within the church are a different kind of deception but deception nonetheless. Testimonies laden with miracles are usually used here to support a particular doctrine. Christ's name and good works are everywhere while the deception can range from outright heresy to sad tangents from the gospel. Prophesy teachers can concoct outrageous predictions and I was not immune from some of these in my earlier days. Huge attendance at certain churches can serve as a testimony that all is well within, entertainments and personal ministries can keep fertile minds barren, even the outright blasphemy of books like The DaVinci Code allure Christians. Other books with serious deviations from the gospel rise to the top of Christian best selling lists, but there is another type of deception that I have to be concerned with all the time and that is realizing the deception all around and writing about it like this can puff one up, and make one think that a poor interpretation of Scripture is worse than failing to love. John Bunyan once gave a sermon where he described Satan as a lion, close on our heels and devouring all he can catch, but he also wrote in Pilgrim's Progress that he is tethered if our eyes remain on the truth that Scripture proclaims. There is no contradiction here. We are in a seriously precarious situation all the days of our lives but with our eyes on Christ and His gospel we are secure in His love.

I took a break in writing here to listen to the weekly broadcast of The White Horse Inn (www.whitehorseinn.org ) and I want to repeat a verse they related from 1st Timothy, This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. (1st Tim 1:15) Paying heed to this verse is infinitely more important than any peculiarities that I might construct. Paul was encouraging Timothy here to defend true doctrine and be aware and wary of false teachers. I'll leave you with another admonition of Paul to Timothy in his second letter no one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier (2nd Timothy 2: 4). We have work to do in this life, and enjoyments, but to let them entangle us so as to constrict us is falling for yet another kind of deception.