Listening to radio preachers makes me angry. They will tell you that my anger is a result of offending the will of God in this world. This is probably the case but would you let me attempt to explain a large part of my anger? The radio preachers pervert the scriptures and they kidnap the message of Jesus so that it can to be used for religious purposes. These religious purposes include, enhancing their supposed spiritual authority, legitimizing their dogma and sending any voices of descent to a supposed fireball called hell. Shall we not mention the close proximity of money to their message?
This criticism, regrettably, is the norm in almost all Christian congregations, this kind of preaching and biblical exegesis is “how it’s done”! It is kind of like politics, there are extremes within the believers but even the best are polluted by these religious expectations. I am an old fogy, in my younger years I believed and sought confirmation in this life for those things that are espoused by radio preachers. Now it seems that my anger is giving way to sympathy and a pathos for their circumstance and the human limitations that religion puts upon the kingdom of God.
O.K., lets talk about the case in point. The radio preacher in question was expounding from the passage in St. John where Jesus teachers about the need to be “born again or born anew or born from above”. What do you know, he is sending this message to Nicodemus, a very religious Pharisee. Nicodemus was not the typical “sinner” within the context of Jerusalem, he had the respect of all because of his religious status. It would seem that this supposed respect and religiously ordered life means nothing to God or Jesus, it may be likened to a blind life ally. Jesus is contrasting the flesh, this earthly life against the life in the Spirit of God that has it’s own birth, they are different. Jesus is pitting religion against the Spirit!
The question we all have to answer is whether Jesus was teaching about freedom from religion or the proper combination of religion and the Spirit from above. What comes over the airways from those radio preachers is freedom from all religion except their true Christian religion. They claim that there is a divine, blessed recipe for the proper combination of Christian religious credibility and the blessings of the Spirit of God. They do not have the courage for a 100% break with religion for combining flesh and spirit is an unspoken assumption. Is this what Jesus was teaching?
The extreme disparity in methods to spread the news about the spirit of God on earth is the best clue to a scriptural answer this question. Did Jesus direct his disciples to point out the “sinners”? Did Jesus take up offerings to finance the mission? Did Jesus start a building program in every town he was to pass? Did Jesus erect monuments to every miracle to help the people? Did Jesus ensure that he and his disciples had adequate housing, a sure reservation in the next town? Did Jesus spit back in the face of rejection? Did Jesus use these and any other sensible and very human methods?
Nooooo! Jesus ordered his disciples, go and tell about the spirit of God on the earth and ask for nothing in return. Leave your families, leave your homes, leave your jobs, take no money, have no plan, just go and tell of the spirit of God on earth. Do we expect the spirit of God on earth to be influential enough to make this work, or don't we? Our insecure response, over the centuries, we sinners have thought to have devised a few prudent but seemingly necessary additives to this plan. The result has been two thousand years of just another religion.
What would this world be like if believers had been and are now telling it like it is? Just imagine all the wars and killing that would never have happened. Why then, are we so protective of our religions? You know why.
G.Goslaw
Landers, CA
