We are living in an age where social justice is one of the most important aspects of society. It’s seeped into everything. If you’re interviewing for a new job position, social media posts from 10 years ago can disqualify you for candidacy. Conversely, if a company is not perfectly politically correct or deemed “woke” by mainstream culture, they may struggle to find people to put on their payroll. In schools, kids walk around endlessly barraged by political and social agenda, being led to believe that if they think differently than the mob, they’ll be rejected and hated. Don’t even think about logging onto Facebook without coming across some kind of argument or call to cancel someone else.

Up until this point, we’ve gone through a lot of false gospels that run rampant in the charismatic or modern-day church, but we haven’t talked about the ways that traditional, old-school church can lead people astray from true, God-glorifying faith. Because the traditional church was so popular 50-60 years ago, chances are, you’ve been to at least one service and know what I’m talking about.

A pitfall of the American church is that it relies on carnal means to try and entice lost and worldly people into saving grace. The issue is, when we know real grace ourselves, we understand that there is nothing a person can say or do that can convince someone to sacrifice their worldly comforts to live a God-honoring life. Instead, we have to rely on God’s revealing Himself to someone in order to draw the lost to Him. And because we minimize that fact into a minor detail of church culture, Christians tend to strive in certain things in order to try and get imperfect people to see Jesus using imperfect means and methods.

As long as the church survives, there will be a conversation about growth, numbers, and membership. Pragmatically, for many of them, a church is not only a spiritual house, but a business. More numbers means more tithing and giving means more resources and that helps ensure that the church not only remains open and serving the community, but that it continues to glorify God– or so you hope. No matter where you go, what theology that church teaches, there will always be that goal: to reach unbelievers, new families, and trying to get more people to stay and engage. But over the past 20-30 years, with the addition of social media, globalization, and mega churches, that idea has lent itself to a whole new pitfall of false gospel: attractionalism.

In 2019, I left the church I attended my whole life. As a child, teenager, and young adult, it was a wonderful place to learn about and develop a relationship with God. The leadership was amenable to allowing youth to serve and be heard, and in turn, that made me and my friends excited to be a part of that body of believers for many, many years. But at the age of 25, I felt the Lord leading me into a new direction. In a lot of ways, that transition out of everything I knew was scary. I was comfortable in that church and it had a large hand in shaping me into who I was. I loved my pastor and the community that I’d trusted and gotten so used to. But once I left, I realized that up until that point, I didn’t really know my Bible. I had taken everything that was preached from the pulpit as gospel. And that’s not to say that my pastor was a false teacher or anything, but it is to say that I never really tested the full measure of scripture for myself, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal Himself in the Word to me on a personal level.

Last week, we discussed the prosperity gospel– what it entails and why it isn’t gospel. Primarily, we focused on the financial side of the movement and how teachers of prosperity gospel twist the Bible to claim that God is the way to health, wealth, and material success. In my personal life as someone who wants to make freelance writing into a career, I follow a lot of freelancers or writing coaches to study their business models and tips. The weird thing is, without fail when talking about the “spirituality” or “mindset” of the lifestyle, they tend to mention that they subscribe to people that are known teachers of prosperity gospel: Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes, Kenneth Copeland, and the list goes on.

You’re probably tired of hearing from me at this point, but it’s a concept we need to constantly be reminded of: The Bible is the only thing we need in order to understand God. Are commentaries helpful? Yes. Are there teachers out there that are helpful in taking scripture, unpacking it, and explaining it to us? Yes. What’s the problem with that? You can’t always trust people to be right in exegeting scripture, and you certainly can’t depend on a person to reveal the heart of God.

Hey Pops, It’s been weighing on my heart that I’m not necessarily the best “evangelist” of your gospel. Sure, I post devotions, I serve at church, and I try to live my life to glorify you, but I think I mostly fall short. Am I quick to share your Word with my friends? With my family? And not just the synopsis that the world already knows: That you were born, died on the cross for our sins, and rose from the grave to save us. I’m talking about something deeper, more mature. Do I encourage my friends and family to seek out the true Gospel?

False teaching. False Gospel. Counterfeit Jesus. This week, I was reminded big time of just how much we need to be on guard against these things. I’m sure that by now, you’ve all seen the Plandemic video that’s gone viral. If you haven’t, it’s basically a documentary that’s been put out to spin a conspiracy that questions the government’s intentions behind the COVID-19. Whether or not the video is based in fact isn’t what I want to jump into today, but I will admit, the video caused me to anxiety spiral for a few hours.

When I was a little girl, my grandma had this bookshelf with a series of short story books on it. I remember I loved to look at them, the spines straight like soldiers in a row, all the same color, all the same size, and lined from one end of the shelf to the other, yet all incredibly different on the inside.

Just over a month after Jesus’ birth, Mary and Joseph took their newborn to Jerusalem to dedicate Him back to the Lord, as was customary for firstborn sons in that time. They were prepared to sacrifice two turtle doves in the temple and present Him as His parents back to God. What they didn’t expect to encounter was Simeon.