DECONSTRUCTION
Lo, mine eye hath seen all this, mine ear hath heard and
understood it. What ye know, the same do
I know also: I am not inferior
unto you. Surely I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with
God. But ye are forgers of lies, ye are
all physicians of no value. Oh that ye would altogether hold your
peace! And it should be your wisdom. (Job13:1-5KJV)
Over the last 30 or so years, I’ve made an
observation that I haven’t been able to put into words until recently. It is
this; The Church has made much of calling The Lord Jesus Christ, ‘The
Great Physician’, but has instead made even more of treating
Him as if He were ‘The Great Plastic Surgeon’. As the dust of the
chaotic 60s, 70s, 80s & 90s Charismatic Movement appeared to begin
to settle, the body of Christ sat itself in an easy chair & readied itself
for something of a makeover, with modernising nips & tucks here, there
& everywhere.
The Church had a pedicure & slipped into its
silky socks & snug, handcrafted shoes that were so well made
they skilfully avoided treading on any toes whatsoever. Then The Church
had a manicure, after which it was so much easier to wear its
custom made kid gloves, afterall, the Gospel shouldn’t hurt people’s
feelings or threaten their misguided sensibilities, right? Finally, The Church
treated itself to liposuction in order to remove all of its unsightly doctrinal
weight & proceeded to dress itself extremely well, in tailor made designer
robes of its own righteousness.
All of this was done in an effort to attract
numbers, notoriety, fame, infamy, money & for some, a spot on the list of
best-selling books produced by a certain newspaper in New York. Whatever innovations
were utilised for this particular drive had worked; The Church was turning
heads & loving it. There was a spring in The Church’s step &
this new image & confidence brought a desire to be perceived differently.
It was out with the old & in with the new. If The Church looked
modern, sounded fashionable, became contemporary & acted
with audacity, it might become more attractive. But to whom?
Traditional Pentecostals were still busy trying to
make it over that one last mountain they had to climb, Reformers were happily singing
‘que sera sera, whatever’s predestined to be, will be’ &
Charismatics were propagating something akin to a marriage between organised
crime & an aptly dressed, but badly rehearsed, circus act. Others were working
elsewhere however, feverishly creating their own brand of church.
Eventually, this new & unexciting development in proceedings would grow &
come to overshadow its effervescent counterpart. However, this was nothing new
& it had been a long time coming.
And
the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of
the
garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou
shalt surely die…Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field
which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye
shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent,
We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the
tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of
it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the
woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat
thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good
and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it
was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took
of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and
he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were
naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons (Genesis2:16-17&3:1-7).
The current state of affairs within the body of
Christ is much like the remake of an old & tired, but much loved, classic
black & white film. The title & basic plot remain the same, but technological
advances in production techniques, an all-star cast & an astronomical
budget, made it possible for a new & improved version of a definitive
work to be brought to life for new audiences. In this, we see much of what
has happened to The Church at large.
Right before our eyes & under our very
noses, the faith once delivered to the saints is being re-organised,
re-packaged & re-presented as a consumer item that is acceptable &
palatable to all & sundry. There are younger & bolder leading
lights coming to the fore in fields of Christian endeavour. The latest &
greatest of the ‘new-kids-on-the-block’ are photogenic, articulate,
professionals who are hand-picked, sent straight to wardrobe & groomed for
the task ahead. They dutifully learn their lines from a new script, adlibbing
where necessary & shooting series after series of their carefully crafted
programming, filled with special effects, captured in glorious technicolour
& recorded in perfect digital sound. It’s quite a thing.
Gone are the dusty, grainy pictures & crackle
of yesteryear. The Church has ventured out onto very thin ice, but unfortunately,
The Church is not very good at skating.
Modern Christianity has succeeded in producing sophisticated
believers. We know exactly how to do it. We cannibalise our faith’s
history for the best bits, the pieces we like & the parts that are
convenient for us. However, even though we’re tempted to think that
we’re super-saints, constructed of the strongest possible spiritual materials known
to God & man, the truth is that we are but dust. Each popular &
historic ‘move of God’ that we claim to have seen & that we
have carefully documented for ourselves, have become organ donors for other
moves, but [as I said previously], instead of allowing The Lord to be ‘The
Great Physician’, performing necessary surgery on us to conform us to His
image, we have turned Him into ‘The Great Plastic Surgeon’, Whose sole
purpose is to make us look good. We want the whitened teeth but don’t want
Him to control our tongues. We want Him to give us bulging muscles &
flattened stomachs, but we’ll never embrace being disciples. We want to do
things in our own strength. Make us look the part Lord, but
please, don’t expect us to play the part. This is a rebellion of the
highest order.
Without realising it, successive generations of
Church leadership have slowly [but surely] turned the body of Christ
into a caricature; a Frankenstein’s Monster, bolts & all, made up of
incompatible attachments. Initially, the body rejected the introduction of
these ‘new parts’ & rightly so; they were utterly false.
Nevertheless, these mad men persisted in putting together a creation that they
wanted. There was a bit of Mind Science here & New Age there. Some
centring, contemplative prayer, a dash of Buddhism, a sprinkling of New Thought
& copious amounts of subjective Atheism dressed up as objective Agnosticism.
The thing could hardly walk due to its lack of balance & direction.
However, generous doses of ‘the new anointing’ animated it enough to
make it appear to be alive.
We will see that the foundational truths of the
faith once delivered to the saints have been systematically chipped away.
They’ve been de-constructed in order that they might be re-constituted later
& replaced with cheaper materials, otherwise known as error & false
doctrine. Our foreparents in the garden suffered the same sales pitch …& it
did not go well. When we view this ‘con-versation’ in the Genesis
narrative it becomes abundantly clear that part of The Church has
swallowed the same deceptive rhetoric as the first woman Eve &
entered into wholesale apostasy, just like the first man Adam.
This set of circumstances reveals much to us about
the way in which deceivers deceive & believers believe. Man wasn’t given a general
principle, he received a specific command from The Lord & His
commandments are not grievous (1John5:3).
Adam was commanded not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good &
evil. There were consequences. He obviously informed Eve of this commandment
because when she was approached & questioned by the serpent, she answered based
on what she had been told. She wasn’t present when Adam received the
commandment. However, as we will see, the archetypal progenitor of false
doctrine always uses the same mode of subtilty to whisper his
chief lies.
The very first thing that we see, is an irrelevant
over-statement disguised as a simple & innocent question. This is
the opening gambit of all deception. ‘Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?’ The serpent asks a question that doesn’t
need to be asked, in order to solicit an answer that casually draws away
from a genuine doctrinal position or issue at hand. In this way, any objections
can be handled as mere ‘misunderstandings’, but if an individual is
caught off guard, if they’re unprepared or if they’re gullible, the results can
[quite literally] be deadly.
The short answer to the question presented to the
woman by the serpent was ‘no,
that’s not what The Lord said, so
get on ya bike’, but instead of responding emphatically, Eve says ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees of
the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die’.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. The response [of the
unlearned] to something God hasn’t said, is very often something else
He hasn’t said. He didn’t say the fruit couldn’t be touched. Of
course, the logic in Eve’s answer presents itself in the fact that in order to eat
the fruit it would have to be touched, but eating the fruit wasn’t in
the equation. This is the original & proverbial fence law. The serpent’s
question stank, as all red herrings do.
As well as this, Eve failed to be specific in her
answer. She refers to ‘[a] tree which is in the midst of the garden’,
but there were two trees there. The tree of life & the tree of the
knowledge of good & evil. To which of these trees was she making reference?
A lack of familiarity with God’s Word will always leave victims of
deception vulnerable & unprotected, led out of their depth into deep, uncharted
waters where they will easily drown. The serpent knew this, as all
deceivers do.
The serpent continues but changes the tactic,
moving quickly from asking a subtle question, to making a statement
& offering his relative interpretation. ‘Ye shall not surely die:
for God doth know that in the day ye
eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened,
and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil’.
Of course, as with all sin, the temptation is
packaged in such a way that it has to be practiced. It directly confronts
whatever we receive as the truth & openly invites us to question God. An objective
Doctrine, is always challenged by a subjective experience. ‘And
when the woman saw that the tree was good
for food, and that it was pleasant
to the eyes, and a tree to be
desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and
gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both
were opened, and they knew that they were naked;’
At this point it’s obvious that the serpent only appears
to know something our foreparents didn’t. But he then fills that gap with untruths.
‘And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the
man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every
tree that is pleasant to the sight,
and good for food; the tree of life
also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil’
(Genesis2:8-9). There were already
trees that bore the same qualities as the tree of the knowledge of good
& evil, except, the ability to deliver a sure death. It was this
quality that the serpent dressed up in his chief lie; ye shall be as gods.
With these things in mind, as we look at The Church
today, we can see the same pattern of an ignorant entertainment of
falsehoods & a willing participation in prescribed deception for personal
gain, recognition & advancement. This decline isn’t a full frontal attack
bearing false teaching & outright lies. It begins subtly, reasonably &
rationally. It begins in a most civilised manner, with a conversation.
Although this is nothing new, harping back to the garden, the enemy no longer
comes to us as a serpent.
*It’s important to point out
that the movement now independently identified as ‘The Emergent Church’
had its main root within The Charismatic Movement. Although the two entities bear little or no real resemblance to
each other now, they share a common model. We will discuss that model &
the separate emergent movement within The Church at a later date.
While some Pentecostals & Charismatics were
busy either rolling in the aisles of their churches or pampering themselves
with their newly acquired prosperity, they created a vacuum into which The New
Age & Metaphysics were sucked. These forces became standardised sources for
the movement’s teaching & easily interchangeable psychological ‘principles’
replaced sound doctrine. This first step was relatively easy to execute because
of the [over] popularised trend for clichés & pseudo aphorisms
within some Pentecostal/Charismatic rhetoric. Confession brings possession. If
you have a need, then sow a seed. Name it & claim it. Fake it until you
make it.
The sliced bread of orthodox Church history was perceived
as having become stale & the best thing since it, was becoming stale
too. At this point, post-modernity stirred & reared its ugly head posing
questions that seemed important, but were not. Despite the apparent
invalid nature of the questions being raised to The Church, its responses were
equally & woefully inadequate. No one had any idea what they
were talking about & The Church was in the midst of a doctrinal free for
all. This was [& is] a breeding ground for doubt, deception & eventually
an inevitable apostasy.
What did The Church do in the face of it all? What
did the elders do? What did the leadership do? What did seasoned believers do? I’ll
tell you exactly what happened. The Church did exactly the same thing
that Adam did in Eden when Eve was tempted; The Church did absolutely nothing
whatsoever!
Deep errors within parts of The Charismatic
Movement & Pentecostalism respectively, spawned a generation that were very
thin on doctrine but rich in experience. It was to this
younger generation that post-modernism appealed & just like Eve, they
entertained questions that their predecessors either could not or would
not answer. Previously [& most certainly within the Pentecostal
tradition that I was a part of] there had been a valid questioning of
denominational practises & the traditions of men. However, the
foundational, orthodox doctrines of the faith had remained out of bounds & sacred.
When the waters steadied over issues concerning modes of dress, jewellery,
make-up, hat wearing & styles of worship, everyone assumed that the
worse was over & it was this method of assumption that was to become The
Church’s undoing.
Somewhere in the historic fracas, one generation thought
that it was diligently teaching God’s Word & the other generation wasn’t really
listening or paying any dedicated attention to anything that it
was being taught. Therefore, when the serpent came to offer a dialogue, he was
listened to. The questions he asked were not about whether women could
wear trousers, whether drums were acceptable in worship, or whether they were
post, mid, or pre-trib. The enemy went for the jugular. He questioned the
fundamentals of the faith & they listened to him.
Like Eve, the new, younger generation were not
as well versed in doctrinal orthodoxy as the one before them. They may very
well have gotten the gist of what they were taught about Salvation, The
Trinity or the inerrancy of Scripture et cetera, but there was little or no
conviction in their breast about it. Like Adam, the previous generation was right
there & said nothing of any consequence to put a stop to the
seduction of The Church that was taking place right under their noses. This
never happens overnight, neither does it happen by accident. But again,
this had been a long time coming.
The Apostle Paul said, ‘For whatsoever things
were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience
and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope’ (Romans15:4). Again, writing to The Church in Corinth he
states, ‘Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not
lust after evil things, as they also lusted….
Now all these things happened unto
them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends
of the world are come. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed
lest he fall.’
(1Corinthians10:6&11-12).
It would seem that The Church has forgotten its
Apostolic exhortation. A return to fundamental Doctrine is a must. We have
to go back, but we have to go further back, much further back than
our forebears & their traditions, which are nothing more than the inventions
of men. We have to go much further back than their Church splits &
disputes. We have to go much further back than the past moves of The
Holy Spirit we’re so proud of. We need to return to Apostolic Doctrine;
the Doctrine of Christ.
The more popular teachers within the Charismatic
Movement claimed that they were restoring revelation knowledge that The Church
had lost sight of during its painful meandering into the dark ages, but had
this been a genuine restoration of truths, the emphases would most
definitely have been that of precious Doctrine instead of cheap principle.
Charismania systematically set about redefining The Church’s fundamental
beliefs concerning God’s Word, The Deity of Christ, The Holy Spirit,
Eschatology, Eternal Punishment & Redemption to name but a few. This
onslaught went on relatively unchecked because when the question was asked ‘Yea,
hath God said’, like Eve, we answered their arrogance with our ignorance
& eventually we were sold the very same lie that was offered to our
foreparents in Eden; we can become as gods …little ‘g’.
End of Part One
no part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system in any form or by
any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which
it is presented & without a similar condition including this condition
being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
