I can’t believe some of the stuff that comes across my desk from time to time, especially as it relates to theology. Of course, I probably should expect outlandish stuff as I am reminded about an event that happened in high school.
I won’t use the student’s name but he was kind of an odd duck and when we became juniors, he decided to start a church. That’s right, a legal non-profit church. In filing the paperwork, the name of the church was to be, “The Church of What’s Happening Now.” He defined the ideal person that they were trying to impact as “living, dead or otherwise…” He thought it was pretty cute – I thought he was going to get struck by lightning… He wanted to attract the largest audience possible and not put any boundaries in place. The church had no rules – it was pretty much whatever and whoever – everyone do their own thing… Now, fifty years later or more, we are starting to see this isolated occurrence become part of our everyday lives.
It’s not strange enough to have open borders and gangs taking over apartment complexes; and all the other problems we are currently facing in this country. We also have zealots who remind me of our high school days with all kinds of nonsense regarding the church.
Several days ago I ran across article that I couldn’t actually believe. It was written by a guy who apparently shares some of the views of our classmate half a century ago. This particular writer submitted a treatise on his “theological” thoughts.
After an introductory paragraph, the author acknowledges that some people may have a strong faith in God, but he also allows that others are only concerned with Goodness and still others worship Gus. What or who is Gus? Why, that’s the acronym for the “Great Universal Spirit.” Go figure. It sounds like some of the stuff I heard in high school. Apparently, the Great Universal Spirit is whatever you want him, her or they to be.
The author of this article goes on to affirm that he subscribes to a particular church, the “Church of 80% Sincerity” – yep, that is apparently the real name of the church. A direct quote from him states we “keep the faith 80% of the time, trust in the democratic process 80% of the time, try not to hate the opponents 80% of the time and not try to stress eat his body weight in fried food 80% of the time.” He quotes the apparent founder of the church who states, “We in the Church of 80% Sincerity do not believe in miracles. But we do believe that you have to stay alert, because good things happen…” I find his whole position exceedingly sad.
This kind of thinking leads to eternal damnation – complete separation from God. For those who believe in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, we are told that we will have eternal life – forever with God. And for those who do not believe, they are doomed to eternal “death.” In fact, those of us who believe have already started our eternal lives when we chose to accept Christ as Lord and Savior. You don’t have to physically die to begin your eternal life… although many Christians don’t realize this.
By the way, God isn’t an 80% God. You’re in or you’re out – you can’t have one foot in and other foot out. It just doesn’t work that way. Lack of sincerity, allowances for anger, hatred and all other human frailties are not the standard that God calls us to.
Now, none of us approaches perfection. Only Jesus did that. But the idea is that when you accept Christ as Lord and Savior, sin is the exception rather than the default setting for your life. If you continue to willfully sin and you don’t change as a result of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, I would seriously wonder if a person had ever truly acknowledged Jesus as the Lord and Savior. I want to stress that we are not going to be perfect in our walk here on life. But we can become more like Jesus as we are drawn closer to Him – it’s called progressive sanctification.
Our verse for tonight comes from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah the prophet. Jeremiah admonishes us in Jeremiah 17:7-8, “But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
Notice that Jeremiah doesn’t say anything about 80% of the time. Trust in God means 100% of the time. My encouragement this evening is that we serve an awesome God who gives 100% of Himself to us. My prayer is that we will always work to make sure that we are striving to give Him 100% of our best. Have a great day in the Lord, grace and peace…