PUTTING UP READILY WITH A DIFFERENT GOSPEL (PART IV)

“Preaching of the Cross is to them that Perish Foolishness”

By Akin Ojumu

When it comes to false teachers and their false teachings, the vast majority of people who call themselves Christians are nonchalant. The typical attitude of church folks to the distortion and twisting of Scriptures by preachers that have become pervasive in the Church today is nothing short of cavalier. In the typical laissez-faire fashion, they assume the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” posture.

There are several reasons church folks refrain from confronting false teachers and their false teachings. In the previous two installments of this commentary series, we explored one of the reasons church folks readily accept false teachers and shy away from criticizing false teachings. We pointed out that because of the symbiotic relationship that exists between false teachers and those who consume their poison, there is hesitancy on the part of church folks to confront the peddlers of erroneous teachings. People don’t criticize what they agree with. If someone tells you exactly what you want to hear, you are not likely going to denounce them.

False teachers and their followers feed off of each other. Like the typical obligate mutualism found among animals, false teachers and their followers are entirely dependent on each other. In the false teacher, the followers get a leader, somebody to take them where they want to go, i.e., their purpose and destiny. The false teachers teach them what they want to hear, justify their lust and greed, vindicate their selfishness and pride, and legitimize their sin and rebellion.

Beyond the fact that the false teachings of false teachers are exactly the type of message church folks crave, another reason they don’t criticize the perversion of the Gospel by Gospel hucksters is because the desires of the human heart are directly antithetical to the truth of God.

2) The True Gospel Doesn’t Taste Like Cotton Candy

Authentic Gospel is an unattractive message. God’s truth doesn’t scratch itching ears, rather, it heals deadly infection. Sound doctrine doesn’t taste like cotton candy; it doesn’t give the same sugar-high that cotton candy sermonizing gives their consumers.

Entertainment culture defines modern society by shaping social norms, identities, and economic trends through media, performance, and technology. It is a fast-paced environment where pop culture – ranging from film and music to digital platforms – dominates public consciousness and creates shared, often ephemeral, experiences (Source: Google AI).

In a world shaped by an entertainment culture, people love to be entertained. Rivers of dopamine gush out of the brain’s reward system, particularly the nucleus accumbens, of people of this generation. A brain perpetually floating in the stream of dopamine is bound to consistently and addictively crave pleasure, the same way drug addicts crave the next fix.

So, the flashy-splashy high-sounding nonsense of false teachers catches the fancy of church folks and gets them excited. The unregenerate mind is tickled by the razzle-dazzle gobbledygook of the Gospel hucksters. Those are the types of preachings that they often describe as “heavily anointed messages.”

On the other hand, because the preaching of sound doctrine is a tedious endeavor requiring a careful examination of the literary context and the historical-cultural-grammatical background to uncover the original meaning of the text, it doesn’t generate the same excitement and pleasant sensation of the Disneyfied gospel of false teachers. As a result, it can sound boring and come across as mundane and dull.

1 Corinthians 1:18

“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.”

2 Corinthians 2:15-17

“For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s Word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.”

Professing Christians and nominal believers in the church follow their own desires. They flock to preachers who offer them God’s blessings apart from His forgiveness, and His salvation apart from their repentance. They have an itch to be entertained by teachings that will produce pleasant sensations and leave them with good feelings about themselves. Their goal is that men preach “according to their own desires.” Under those conditions, people will dictate what men preach, rather than God dictating it by His Word (Source: The MacArthur Bible Commentary).

As we said last time, there’s a huge market for false gospel, and it pays lucratively well. False teachers rise up to meet the demand that is there amongst the people, and the people reciprocate by supporting those who meet that demand. The crowd demands the cannibalized gospel that excites the carnal mind, and the teachers meet the demand. The false teacher demands a following and the generous donations, and the crowd that follows after him is more than willing to meet the demand.

Next time, we’ll discuss another reason church folks are so accommodating to false teachers who twist and distort the Gospel. We are going to see why many in the Church are so drawn to those who reduce the Gospel of salvation to mere pop psychology which are nothing but quick fixes, actionable insights, or catchy buzzwords sold as spiritualized solutions to temporal problems.