Love and Truth
Recently I have been investigating the so-called “emerging church”. There are several things about it that I find disturbing. The prevalent idea in this "emerging church" movement is to make the church relevant to our modern culture. The emerging church seems to believe that in order to do that we must embrace the modern culture - including its relativistic and worldly viewpoints. The modern culture is nothing less than a "culture of death" and to embrace it will only take the emerging church down a pathway of death and away from the “testimony of Christ”. In other words toward apostasy!
From the beginning of time, starting with Adam and Eve, spiritual life and death have been the ultimate issues for humanity (see Genesis 2 and the tree of knowledge of good and evil). To flirt with the world and take on its culture is flirting with death and not life. I know the intentions of many of the emerging church leaders may be good and sincere. However, you can be sincere and sincerely wrong!
Among them there seems to be a departure away from “truth” which is mostly due to the modern acceptance of relativism. The emerging church wants to emphasize “love and community", which are good things, but they are willing to do so at the expense of “truth”! They make truth a relative and subjective thing. Abandoning moral absolutes.
Today the Catholic Church conclave voted for the pope who is to succeed John Paul II. They have selected Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from Bavaria. He is now to be called Pope Benedict the XVI. Before Ratzinger became pope he had some very interesting things to say about truth and love in one of his recent homilies. First he said; “truth and love coincide". They are NOT exclusive of one another BUT coincide and are interdependent! That is, they are to work together hand in hand. Not one to the exclusion of the other. You CANNOT and should not choose between love and truth. We cannot choose love over truth or truth over love. He then goes on to say that "love without truth is blind and truth without love is like a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal". That is to say that love, which does not have truth as it's foundation, cannot see spiritual realities, and truth that does not have love as it motivation has nothing of substance to last and is just a lot of noise.
How profound and timely were Cardinal Ratzinger’s words. The emergent church seems to want love at the expense of truth. John Nelson Darby, one of the early Plymouth Brethren leaders, once said, “love at the expense of truth is not true love at all”! How right he was! Most people have no real concept of love. Love in the emerging church is "friendship and community" and making yourself and others "feel" good about themselves. No talk of sin or judgement. Could this be the "strong delusion" that Paul talks about in 2 Thessalonians 2:11-14? The emerging church also seems to want to downplay truth and they boast and take pride in the abandoning of truth. The result, in my opinion, is a lack of reverence for God, which results in worldliness, and death. Many emerging church leaders think nothing whatsoever of acting worldly even to the point of using course language in their Blogs when they feel it serves their purpose. Not at all considering "who" they represent here as Christ's ambassadors to a lost and dying world. Instead of the emerging church taking character after the "heavenly man" i.e. Christ, they are taking character after the earthly man and allowing the Adamic nature to have ascendancy (i.e. man's fallen, depraved nature). This type of thinking is ineffectual and dangerous in regards to reaping positive eternal results.
It seems to me that the objective of the emerging church is just to “fill pews” and have nice social programs. The state of peoples souls is not really an issue for them. They want to have their “loving communities” and they are having them but at what cost? I’ll tell you...it is the cost of person’s eternal souls and damnation! That is at what cost! How can I make it more clear? Souls are being lost while you play church and community. Developing your feel-good and supportive friendships without being honest about people’s behavior and eternal destiny. The emerging church is setting up a lot of people for a destiny in Hell. I know Hell is not politically correct to speak about today but it’s the truth and I will not compromise it.
Now, don’t get me wrong here! I am all for reaching our modern culture. Lord knows they are lost, but you cannot effect anything for eternity by using “carnal’ means, and that is what I am seeing with this emerging church movement. I hope that somehow, and in someway, God will begin to raise up some responsible leadership among them and show them the error of their ways.
The world is not looking for some “Christianized” alternative of what they already have but they are really looking for answers in ultimate spiritual truth and ultimate spiritual truth can only be found in three places.
1. In the Lord Jesus Christ. He is “The Way, The Truth and the Life”, and nobody comes to God the Father but through Him. Paul says in Ephesians that the “truth” is in Jesus. If you want truth look at Him because he was and is the embodiment of truth.
2. In the Church. Christ promised to send to the Church the Holy Spirit to dwell with us and that the Holy Spirit would lead the Church into ALL truth. Not some truth but all. All means all!
3. In the scriptures. The word of God is God’s revealed truth to man. All that we need to know on how to live righteously before God is revealed therein. Righteousness, doing what is "right" before God, seems to be far from the emerging church’s thinking. All they care about is relating to the world and whatever means it takes to do so is OK with them. This is an "end justifies the means" mentality.
Because of the prevalence of relativism within the emerging church's philosophy and worldview there are no absolutes and with no absolutes there are no “real” answers either. Only a kind of feel good, goose bumpy, pretended spirituality. They think because they go to a so-called church on Sunday, and raise their arms, and sing some doctrinally watered down choruses, that they are worshiping the true God. yet all the while they don't really care about what the God of truth has to say about how they are to live in a world that has rejected Christ! It is a very sad state of affairs.
Below is a link to an article by T. Austin-Sparks that I think is very helpful to what I have brought forward. Brother Sparks has been with the Lord for over 30 years now but he still speaks as fresh as he did when he was alive. If you have never read T. Austin-Sparks I would recommend that you read the other articles on the website and immerse yourself in what the Lord gave him for the church universal. He is head and shoulders above anyone I have read in the emerging church leadership.
From the beginning of time, starting with Adam and Eve, spiritual life and death have been the ultimate issues for humanity (see Genesis 2 and the tree of knowledge of good and evil). To flirt with the world and take on its culture is flirting with death and not life. I know the intentions of many of the emerging church leaders may be good and sincere. However, you can be sincere and sincerely wrong!
Among them there seems to be a departure away from “truth” which is mostly due to the modern acceptance of relativism. The emerging church wants to emphasize “love and community", which are good things, but they are willing to do so at the expense of “truth”! They make truth a relative and subjective thing. Abandoning moral absolutes.
Today the Catholic Church conclave voted for the pope who is to succeed John Paul II. They have selected Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from Bavaria. He is now to be called Pope Benedict the XVI. Before Ratzinger became pope he had some very interesting things to say about truth and love in one of his recent homilies. First he said; “truth and love coincide". They are NOT exclusive of one another BUT coincide and are interdependent! That is, they are to work together hand in hand. Not one to the exclusion of the other. You CANNOT and should not choose between love and truth. We cannot choose love over truth or truth over love. He then goes on to say that "love without truth is blind and truth without love is like a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal". That is to say that love, which does not have truth as it's foundation, cannot see spiritual realities, and truth that does not have love as it motivation has nothing of substance to last and is just a lot of noise.
How profound and timely were Cardinal Ratzinger’s words. The emergent church seems to want love at the expense of truth. John Nelson Darby, one of the early Plymouth Brethren leaders, once said, “love at the expense of truth is not true love at all”! How right he was! Most people have no real concept of love. Love in the emerging church is "friendship and community" and making yourself and others "feel" good about themselves. No talk of sin or judgement. Could this be the "strong delusion" that Paul talks about in 2 Thessalonians 2:11-14? The emerging church also seems to want to downplay truth and they boast and take pride in the abandoning of truth. The result, in my opinion, is a lack of reverence for God, which results in worldliness, and death. Many emerging church leaders think nothing whatsoever of acting worldly even to the point of using course language in their Blogs when they feel it serves their purpose. Not at all considering "who" they represent here as Christ's ambassadors to a lost and dying world. Instead of the emerging church taking character after the "heavenly man" i.e. Christ, they are taking character after the earthly man and allowing the Adamic nature to have ascendancy (i.e. man's fallen, depraved nature). This type of thinking is ineffectual and dangerous in regards to reaping positive eternal results.
It seems to me that the objective of the emerging church is just to “fill pews” and have nice social programs. The state of peoples souls is not really an issue for them. They want to have their “loving communities” and they are having them but at what cost? I’ll tell you...it is the cost of person’s eternal souls and damnation! That is at what cost! How can I make it more clear? Souls are being lost while you play church and community. Developing your feel-good and supportive friendships without being honest about people’s behavior and eternal destiny. The emerging church is setting up a lot of people for a destiny in Hell. I know Hell is not politically correct to speak about today but it’s the truth and I will not compromise it.
Now, don’t get me wrong here! I am all for reaching our modern culture. Lord knows they are lost, but you cannot effect anything for eternity by using “carnal’ means, and that is what I am seeing with this emerging church movement. I hope that somehow, and in someway, God will begin to raise up some responsible leadership among them and show them the error of their ways.
The world is not looking for some “Christianized” alternative of what they already have but they are really looking for answers in ultimate spiritual truth and ultimate spiritual truth can only be found in three places.
1. In the Lord Jesus Christ. He is “The Way, The Truth and the Life”, and nobody comes to God the Father but through Him. Paul says in Ephesians that the “truth” is in Jesus. If you want truth look at Him because he was and is the embodiment of truth.
2. In the Church. Christ promised to send to the Church the Holy Spirit to dwell with us and that the Holy Spirit would lead the Church into ALL truth. Not some truth but all. All means all!
3. In the scriptures. The word of God is God’s revealed truth to man. All that we need to know on how to live righteously before God is revealed therein. Righteousness, doing what is "right" before God, seems to be far from the emerging church’s thinking. All they care about is relating to the world and whatever means it takes to do so is OK with them. This is an "end justifies the means" mentality.
Because of the prevalence of relativism within the emerging church's philosophy and worldview there are no absolutes and with no absolutes there are no “real” answers either. Only a kind of feel good, goose bumpy, pretended spirituality. They think because they go to a so-called church on Sunday, and raise their arms, and sing some doctrinally watered down choruses, that they are worshiping the true God. yet all the while they don't really care about what the God of truth has to say about how they are to live in a world that has rejected Christ! It is a very sad state of affairs.
Below is a link to an article by T. Austin-Sparks that I think is very helpful to what I have brought forward. Brother Sparks has been with the Lord for over 30 years now but he still speaks as fresh as he did when he was alive. If you have never read T. Austin-Sparks I would recommend that you read the other articles on the website and immerse yourself in what the Lord gave him for the church universal. He is head and shoulders above anyone I have read in the emerging church leadership.
Click here:
The Continuance of Divine Instrumentalities
Divine continuance is what we need and that continuance God provides through Christ, by the Spirit, in the church. His testimony will remain regardless of the apostasy on every hand. He will have a people for Himself even if it is but a few. I pray that you will have the strength to stand into the testimony of Christ and be “separate” not following and giving in to the course of “this present age” but holding on to truth and laboring in love until the Lord returns.
Your brother in Christ,
Philologus
The Continuance of Divine Instrumentalities
Divine continuance is what we need and that continuance God provides through Christ, by the Spirit, in the church. His testimony will remain regardless of the apostasy on every hand. He will have a people for Himself even if it is but a few. I pray that you will have the strength to stand into the testimony of Christ and be “separate” not following and giving in to the course of “this present age” but holding on to truth and laboring in love until the Lord returns.
Your brother in Christ,
Philologus
posted by Ktrek | 10:09 PM
5 Comments:
Hi brother. As a part of what has been called the "emerging church," I can say that becoming more culturally relevant isn't our goal...though it would be easy to get that misunderstanding. What we're saying is that the "modern" church (and we're using modern to denote a very specific cultural understanding here) has "sold out" to modern values, to "warm pews" rather than meaningfully incarnate the gospel. We feel that too much culutral accomadtion has gone on, too--to consumerism and materialism.
We're not relativistic, though we realize that language can often be co-opted by people in power, with less than noble motives. Speaking for myself, I have come to know Jesus as the Absolute Truth--Truth as a Person.
If the 'emerging church' websites you've been reading seem too insubstantial, check out http://www.ekklesiaproject.org or
http://www.newmonasticism.org
your thoughts on the emerging church are unfounded and your argument is unsupported. you are speaking too abstractly bro. as a part of emergent over the past few years, i have never read or heard any individual claim that we should leave truth out. that simply isn't true.
I want to thank you brothers for taking the time to read my page and even to comment. I would like to adress each of you separately.
Mike,
Thanks for the two links you provided. I have visited the New Monasticism site before. I wish there was a little more doctrinal substance to the site. It is a cool concept though. I'll definitely check out the other site. Thanks for the info and if you know of any others that would be helpful please feel free to pass them on.
Jon,
Perhaps I have been looking at the wrong websites and have drawn a judgement that does not hold true across the board but I definitely see a pattern among emerging church folks. I won't say that they abandon the truth but there is a tendency to minimalise it. If you don't fall into this category I applaud you. Most of my contact with emerging church has been either in blogs or in the house church movement, which I have been a part of for many years on and off. Many of the ideas and philosphies of emerging church have been debated and talked about for years among house church leadership. One of the areas where there does seem to be a difference is that the emerging church seems to not want to address the "clerical" issue. In fact many clerics are taking the lead in this movement and so they are actually unlikely to ever address it.
I do appreciate both of your thoughts and hope that you will continue to stop by and peruse my ramblings from time to time.
Much love in Christ,
Philologus
Oh, Frank Viola has written an interesting critique of emerging forms of a church, from a "friendly" perspective. See Oxegen for this piece.
I am with the emerging house church movement. The article starting this thread isn't an accurate representation of what is going on. The idea is to make the church have a stronger Scriptural basis. Here is how I explain it.
http://www.loveofchrist.info/church/noninstitutional.html
Regards,
M Paul
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