Category Archives: Biblical Worldview

What an age we live in. When I was growing up, the Women’s Lib movement was strong and influential. Women burned their bras (I’ve never figured out why), marched for equal rights and equal pay and recognition. Now Women’s Rights have exploded, gone too far, in many ways, straight into the gutter, without any objective moral guideline.

I entered college determined to follow that “equal rights” route, heading into a career in which I could be independent and strong and powerful. Get my “MRS degree” in college? No way. Only God got in the way, introducing me to my husband early in my freshman year.  I married after my sophomore year, and thirty years later I am certain that was the second-best thing that ever happened. (The best, of course, was God calling my name and saving me!)

The last thing I wanted was to be a mom at home. That was for mindless housewives who had nothing better to do. Or so I believed, until I held my firstborn and fell in love with mothering. But the women’s movement had taken us so far as to have us believe that mothering full-time was shameful, an abandonment of our full potential.

Women’s Lib has brought us abortion on demand, considered a “right to privacy” (except for the privacy of the unborn, some of whom happen to be girls with a potential right to privacy…).

It has ignored the plight of women in our midst, who have been taught that somehow covering up one’s entire body in submission to an oppressive religion is “empowering.” It has totally ignored the same plight of the women overseas who are beaten, whipped, have their hands lopped off, or are even killed in pursuit of the purity of the same oppressive religion.

Somehow Women’s Rights have become selective. And now that same movement of equality has reached into a shameful area, pornography, and has declared that women have the same right to access porn as men. Pornography, then, has been given equal time.

The bestselling book Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels are nothing more than pornography for women, and the books are selling like crazy.  The books, like many bodice-rippers of romances before them, has idealized the sexual relationship, making women wish for something more or better.

Isn’t that what porn does for men as well? Idealizes women, makes them into objects of fantasy and desire rather than human beings with whom one has a meaningful, lasting, enjoyable relationship. Wow, equal rights means we can objectify men now? Way to go! What once was considered shameful is now equal opportunity, equal rights, equal shame.

On to the movies: Magic Mike is hitting the theaters with its objectified males, those men who strip for women. No need for even a story line; let’s just watch men strip. I thought that the Women’s Movement had at one time said objectification of women was wrong, but now that men have taken that stage, so to speak, everything’s equal again. Women AND men can pursue their lust, long for some representation of human perfection, become dissatisfied with what they already have, replace real relationships with something altogether different.

Great job, Women’s Movement. What once strived for equal pay for equal work and a blasting of the glass ceiling, has now placed itself in a filthy sewer.

When we have no moral guideline, this is what happens. If we wish to publicly pursue porn, or if we include the right to kill an unborn baby as part of the right to privacy, or if we look the other way when women are beaten into submission in the name of an oppressive religion, then it’s all classified under the hideous umbrella of Women’s Rights. When no moral compass is objectively showing us right from wrong, all of it becomes a Right, then, doesn’t it?

For years I have said that the National Organization for Women did not represent me. I’ve taken a totally different path than the one they paved, and I have felt “fulfilled” (a term that makes me twitch) all these many years. It’s a shame, now, that equal rights also means equal filth and the right to objectify whomever we wish.

George Santayana is credited with the famous saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The lesson he teaches here is that ignoring the study of history, the lessons of history, will leave an ignorant public prone to fall prey to the same sorts of events in the future.

We can extend this argument further to Christian theology and Church history.  I believe that those professing Christians who do not study theology, including the history of Christianity, could very well fall prey to the heresies of the past. We see it today,  where Christianity is being redefined by men and women whose audiences do not discern truth from error because they do not know their theology.

In an earlier post I bemoaned the lack of Christian theology in a Christian bookstore packed full of cute little kitschy trinkets instead of the meat of Christian thinkers. There’s a reason this former bookstore has taken the word “books” out of its title. It seems more interested in selling trinkets that sell Jesus’ name than books that teach about His word.

I mentioned in that other post that I saw plenty of Christian Fiction and Christian Romance. Will readers get their theology from these books? I hope not!

We also found on the shelves plenty of Christian Living books by Joyce Meyer, Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, Rick Warren, and Joel Osteen. However, there was no Francis Schaeffer, no Spurgeon, Augustine, Grudem, Machen, Walther, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, or others. None of the great church fathers, nothing of early Christian church history lined the shelves.

Why does that matter? On the shelves of this bookstore there were NONE of the Church Fathers or the great theologians to counter the drivel coming out of the Emergent Church, which produces a swill of sewage that reinterprets Christianity according to its own sensibility and not according to the truth of Scripture. On that store’s website you can find theology if you want it, but you cannot find it walking into the store. Around the corner from this store, at Barnes and Noble, we found more Christian theology than in this Christian store! Oh, and on the website of this store you can also find a whole category called Emergent Community. Apparently the heresy sells well enough to garner its own category. So the “Christian” in  this Christian store name is actually a catch-all for whatever heresy sells.

So how will people walking into the local Christian bookstore learn theology, outside of God’s word? Apparently your only option is to study the words of the Emergent leaders to find reinvented theology, not biblical theology. There, among the swill, you will find new gnosticism; methods for hearing God’s voice according to some secret, mystical method; or perhaps a new kind of Christianity in case what you grew up with dissatisfied you. And why not reinvent it? Theology and history no longer matter when you no longer rely on the Word of God for your source of all truth.

Hebrews 5: 11-14 talks about those who just want to take the easy, I-don’t-want-to-work-too-hard-on-this-theology route, likening them to those who would prefer gumming baby food as compared to those who enjoy the work of chewing a good steak.

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

The Emergent books tickle the ear. They are sometimes easier for the uninquisitive to digest, because the Emergent Church is geared toward the unquestioning mindset of today’s consumers. The Bible talks about this very thing, likening the watered-down versions of Christianity to baby food versus the meat of Christian theology.

A group called the Christian Research Service put out a study in 2006 about Christian bookstores. It published a scathing report about where most Christian bookstores are headed.

For a national 2006 conference of Christian retailers, “apparently, not one Training session or Workshop is devoted to:

• teaching Christian bookstore owners, managers, and employees the importance of putting books and materials to the Biblical test, and not compromising God’s holy word under any circumstances;
• encouraging those within the Christian bookstore industry not to compromise the faith by catering to authors and books that promote non-Christian beliefs and religions;
• to deny authors, books, and materials that are in opposition to God’s word from entering their stores;
• apologetics, cult-evangelism, guarding the spiritual welfare of the believer, and defending the faith;
• witnessing to the lost, and gaining discernment through the study of God’s word;
• placing emphasis on the salvation of the lost, sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, repentance, Bible study, and that there is a real hell and eternal separation from God.” (http://www.christianresearchservice.com/bookstores4.htm)

This store’s display of kitsch, this paucity of the richness of the early Church Fathers and other great theologians, this embracing of the Christian romance (not too far from the Harlequin Romance) and of Emergent Church writers–this is the sign of the times, in which people will run after whatever tickles the ear instead of the meat of Christian truth.

Just at the times in history when people began to invent their own new Christianity, taking it down dangerous, heretical paths, adherents to the pure truth of Scripture stepped forward and refused to back down to those who would rather take the easier path of heresy. I am crying out to those of you who love the pure meat of the truth, to study.

Study theology; study the history of the Christian church, and you will find it out for yourself. And you will grow sad when you see the watered-down version of popular “Christianity” out there, like I have. And perhaps you too will seek out other like-minded Christians who refuse to budge on the purity of the Gospel in their church.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem and went to the temple, he found his holy place filled with moneychangers and money-lenders. Its open walkways were lined with people trying to make a profit off of Jews, exploiting the fervently devout ones who had made a pilgrimage to the temple during holy days. (Matthew 21:12-13) The rabbis and other holy men seemed to turn a blind eye to the whole enterprise.

Jesus, zealous for his Father’s house, tore down the commercialism, overturning the sellers’ tables. Crass commercialism, profit-making off the backs of the devout—and zeal for his Father’s house aroused Christ’s wrath on its behalf. I wonder what he would say about the crass commercialization of Christianity today.

Recently we visited a Christian bookstore in search of some Francis Schaeffer books. This was not the Christian bookstore I remember from 20 years ago.

This was a large store. Before even making it through the front door, we passed tables of kitsch: toys and pens, teacups and plaques, all decorated with Christian sayings and feel-good slogans. There was even a basket of bath scrubbies–Christian bath scrubbies! Getting clean for Jesus!

Walking in, we saw that fully HALF the store was the same kind of kitsch. Cutesy pictures, wallets, glassware, candles, all with some theme meant to make us think of God. Some have trite sayings empty of content. Some are serious paintings meant to inspire but belonging to some stuffy leather-bound study of a different era.

An eighth of the store is Christian music and DVDs. Another eighth is Sunday school materials for children. That leaves a quarter of the large store for books. No wonder this line of Christian store removed the name “Bookstore” from its familiar logo. There weren’t enough books to pass for a serious bookstore.

We found Bibles and Bible commentaries, plus Christian fiction/Christian romance, and Christian living. In the Christian living portion we found Joel Osteen, Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, Rick Warren–but not Francis Schaeffer, Spurgeon, Augustine, Grudem, Walther, Sproul, Packer, or Machen. (Around the corner at Barnes and Noble we found more theology than in this store. Seriously.)

I will discuss the lack of theology in another blog post. Today, however, I want to talk about my imperfect analogy of Jesus in the temple versus the Christian bookstore. (I do realize the bookstore is not a holy place; it is a place of business. My analogy falls apart there.)

The Christian “subculture” makes up a huge number of individuals, who purchase music, books, and (some of them) kitsch. I get it. But when is it too much? And why do we purchase and sell such cheap, crass, cutesy-cuddly representations of our faith? (Remember the scrubbies? Some of them were duckies. Christian ducky scrubbies. Yes, they bothered me.) But why are we selling them? The businessman will tell me it’s because they sell. My faith tells me it is a thin veneer.

Is my display of Christian decor meant to please man or God?  And then the question is begged, does that cutesy stuff please God or man? Now, I don’t think God is offended if I have a sequined coin purse that says “I Heart Jesus.” However, is my money best spend on such nonsense? And who am I trying to please? Is this an outward display of piety meant to impress man or God?

Zechariah 7:4-10 asks and answers the question of what God thinks of the outward display of piety, the kitsch and glitz:

Then the word of the LORD of hosts came to me, saying,  “Say to all the people of the land and to the priests, `When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months these seventy years, was it actually for Me that you fasted? `When you eat and drink, do you not eat for yourselves and do you not drink for yourselves?’ “… Then the word of the LORD came to Zechariah saying, “Thus has the LORD of hosts said, `Dispense true justice and practice kindness and compassion each to his brother; and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.'” (ESV)

In other words, man devises all sorts of ways to show his piety, but God wants something altogether different.

All the sequins and scrubbies, candles and cups can’t possibly do much more than fill the pockets of those who sell them. They don’t save me, and they certainly don’t win me more Jesus-points.

Do we buy and display all those glitzy Christian-lite trinkets in order to show off our faith? Is this an outward display used to impress others–hollow, without the internal conviction—like whitewashed tombs? Or is it an effort to make ourselves more holy?

That last thought is the most devastating–and I believe it is the closest to the truth. The beautiful truth of Christianity, which is not taught much these days, is that I cannot keep myself holy. I cannot save myself, nor can I be holy; only God can save me.

The simple truth of biblical Christianity is that God is sovereign; he is holy, and only he can save me and keep me. There is nothing I can do.

And the simple truth about all the Christian kitsch is that if this is the trend these days—to decorate one’s home so that I look better or feel better about myself, I am awfully empty inside and desperately in need of a real savior who requires nothing more of me than just me.