A New Gospel
In 1859 Charles Darwin shook the Christianized western world by publishing a book of seemingly irrefutable scientific proofs against the Bible.
On the Origin of the Species undermined people’s faith in God as Creator and in the Bible as His infallible revelation to mankind.
Many people, feeling they could no longer wholeheartedly trust God and the Bible, left the church. Others, wanting to preserve what was good and helpful in the church, introduced a new gospel.
This was their new and false gospel:
People are important and God is the means of helping them.
Sound familiar? It should, because it underlies most Christian theology and ministry today.
It is so pervasive and widely accepted that we don’t easily see why it is dangerous and misleading.
Humanizing the Divine
Before Darwin, the common Gospel message was completely God-focused: God is supreme and humans are His chosen means to help spread His Kingdom on earth.
The shift from a God-to-man Gospel to a man-to-God gospel is extremely subtle. It is so subtle that the two appear identical even under close scrutiny.
Such is the way of Satan’s deceptions. False doctrine comes wrapped in neat little sound bites that appear Biblical and honorable. Otherwise, it wouldn’t deceive us.
The true Gospel of Jesus Christ leads us to repentance unto God. It gradually conforms us to the image of His Son.
Underlying the true Gospel are:
- Christ’s supremacy (as God), and
- Christ’s example (as a man).
The false gospel of Humanity’s Need leads us to abhor the wickedness in ourselves. It drives us inwardly, to self-evaluate and better ourselves (“for God’s glory,” we would add).
Underlying this false gospel are:
- self-help (as fallible humans), and
- self-expression (as unique individuals).
The latter gospel sounds reasonable enough.
Self-Awareness in the Divine Gospel
God created mankind to be self-aware. This is good. We are aware of our needs and our desires and our will and our emotions and our abilities.
God wants us to trust Him enough to direct all of our being and awareness to Him and His agenda (Matthew 6:33). Jesus’ parable of the wheat and tares reveals that we are planted as seeds in the world, to grow God’s Kingdom on earth through our natural lives.
Here is what is not good: Through cultural ignorance of God’s holy ways and His desires for mankind, we have shifted our outlook.
We confidently expect God to direct all of His power and attention to meeting our needs, helping us grow in grace, acquire Biblical knowledge, and expand our public ministry. Though these may be sincerely Christ-centered things in their way, they are actually self-indulgent.
We have become focused on our search for God, forgetting that He, as the Good Shepherd, first loved us, and sought us, and saved us to know Him. “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you . . .” (John 15:16).
It’s a subtle but powerful difference. And the consequences of having the wrong perspective are terrible.
Through a Microscope
In 1849 a university student made a breakthrough scientific discovery.
A problem puzzling scientists of the day was how two basically similar liquid solutions could produce vastly different effects on polarized light. One solution turned a polarized light beam clockwise. The other solution had no effect on polarized light.
In crystal form, the solutions appeared identical.
Student Louis Pasteur carefully arranged the crystals under a microscope and noticed a tiny and overlooked detail. The crystals were mirror images of each other—some had a facet cut on the right-hand side, some had a facet cut on the left-hand side. (See Illustration 1.)
Illustration 1. Pasteur separated the left and right crystal shapes from each other to form two piles, which he dissolved into separate solutions.
What had baffled scientists for decades was now simply explained. The solution of right-handed crystals reflected light to the right. The solution of left-handed crystals reflected light to the left. A solution containing equal amounts of left- and right-handed crystals had no effect on light.
This was the beginning of Pasteur’s amazing work at the microscopic level, the study of invisible causes to visible problems. Pasteur later birthed and specialized in microbiology—the micro-causes of biological problems.
Micro studies are my hobby too. My special interest is, as I like to say, microsociology—the micro-causes of societal problems.
It fascinates me how people explain and justify human failures and problems in so many different ways, and try in so many ways to correct them. And still they fail, generation after generation, to improve society. Particularly, the society that professes to follow the Lord Jesus Christ.
Germ Theory of the Gospel
We, as cultural representatives of the Lord, are losing what it means to seek God in the way that Jesus and the apostles embraced it (e.g., willing martyrdom).
We live in a pragmatic, self-satisfying, individualistic, “Christian” culture, and we unconsciously approach everything from that cultural worldview. We seek first our Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Did I say subtle?
In one sense, we can’t help our cultural worldview, in the same way we can’t stop our physical bodies from being exposed to potentially harmful germs. On the other hand, we as believers have the Holy Spirit to fill us and lead us in righteousness, as our physical bodies have immune systems to keep us healthy.
However, new diseases and disorders arise, in the spiritual realm as in the physical. We can quickly quench the Spirit of God in our lives by believing false doctrines, just as our physical immune systems can be overcome by new strains of harmful germs.
The compromise and apathy I see in our churches today scares me, because it’s spreading and we are powerless to stop it—apart from the mercy and grace of the One True God.
As Louis Pasteur noticed the small difference between left- and right-handed crystals through his microscope, I notice a very subtle differences in our churches’ Gospel messages. The difference leads people just far enough away from the truth to keep them from serving the Lord in earnest, while keeping them earnestly involved in fellowship and ministry.
We are in serious need of a spiritual breakthrough on the microscopic level.
Pardon Me, Your Germs Are Showing
The “man-to-God” approach to the Gospel grew rapidly after Darwin’s book was published in 1859. Some of its more virulent forms in the church are seen in the “social gospel” movement of the early 1900s, the “Jesus” movement of the 1970s, and the “emergent” movement of today.
But the false gospel isn’t confined to wacky liberals. The most conservative churches today, many sincerely seeking to glorify God and make Christ known, have acute yet potentially deadly strains of this disease.
Its key symptom is believers who struggle year after year with habitual sin patterns, as opposed to believers who gradually overcome temptations.
- Fruitless struggling comes from emotional responses to truth (e.g., hating evil in ourselves).
- Fruitful maturing comes from spiritual responses to truth (e.g., begging God for mercy).
Outward forms of repentance and renewal appear to have a standard shape (like Pasteur’s crystals). But over time we see completely different results in equally sincere believers.
| Struggling with Sin | Resting in the Lord | Following the World |
| Groveling over failures | Cleaving to the Lord | Setting spiritual life apart from “everyday” life |
| Emotional response turns us the wrong way | Spiritual response turns us the right way | Double-minded response doesn’t turn us at all |
These responses are actually left- and right-handed variations of each other.
The means to maturing grace lies in our understanding of the true Gospel: Are we looking to improve? or are we looking to God?