PUTTING UP READILY WITH A DIFFERENT GOSPEL (PART VI)

“Blinded by the Love Bombing & Generosity of False Teachers”

By Akin Ojumu

Apostle Paul was a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. This Father of faith was a deeply emotional and passionate person who felt constant anguish and great sorrow for his followers. Far from being a detached missionary and aloof theologian, his Epistles reveal intense love, frustration, tears, and anxiety for the various congregations he founded.

In his Epistles, Paul often utilized intense emotional rhetoric to persuade readers. This is especially true when it came to false doctrines and the ease with which some of the congregations he spent years teaching sound doctrines and nurturing in the faith fell for false teachers and embraced doctrines of demons as true Gospel.

For instance, Paul was so exasperated with the Galatians, he blurted out, “O foolish Galatians!” for the way they rolled the red carpet for the Judaizers, i.e., early Jewish-Christian believers who demanded that Gentile converts adhere to the Mosaic Law – specifically circumcision and dietary laws – as a requirement for salvation and inclusion in the church.

Galatians 3:1-6

“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain – if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith – just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness?””

While scolding the Corinthians, Paul pointed out how readily they put up with impostors who came to them preaching a different Gospel than the one that he taught them.

2 Corinthians 11:4

“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.”

Sadly, this problem has not gone away. Easy-believism continues to plague the contemporary Church. Not only do modern-day Christians readily accept a different Gospel than the traditional Gospel preached by the original Twelve Apostles, but they also go out of their way to idolize the purveyors of such aberrant gospel, celebrating them as true men of God.

So far in this commentary series, we’ve enumerated a number of the reasons why the vast majority of church folks of our day celebrate, and don’t seem to recognize, false teachers who bring nothing but destructive heresies.

1) People Don’t Denounce a Teaching that Scratches their Itching Ears

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, variously described as 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.

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. 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 the appealing and pleasurable message of false teachers, the same way drug addicts crave the next fix.

3) Pharmacodynamics of the Gospel

Sound doctrine is repulsive to church folks because it pierces the human soul, exposing our guilt and wretchedness. When the Word of God is accurately and precisely preached, it cuts through the BS and lays bare our nakedness.

Today’s installment of the commentary series will focus on another important reason why church folks are so readily accepting of false teachers.

4) Love Bombing & Collective Narcissism

Love bombing is a manipulative tactic where someone overwhelms another person with excessive attention, affection, and praise to gain influence or control early in a relationship. While it often feels like a “fairytale” at first, it is typically a precursor to emotional abuse or coercive control (Source: Google AI).

Collective narcissism, in social psychology, is the tendency to exaggerate the positive image and importance of a group to which one belongs (Source: Wikipedia).

Unfortunately, church folks continue to fall for the image laundering strategy of charlatans. We have individuals today who point to the benevolence of false teachers as validation of their calling, ministry, and message while ignoring the poison of their false teachings. Simply because a so-called “pastor” decides to award large sums of money as grants for youth empowerment, or that he distributes bags of rice and garri to the poor, he is hailed as a hero of the faith and a true man of God.

The fact that the supposed “man of God” is nothing but the firstborn of Satan who is leading people to hell by his doctrines of demons doesn’t seem to matter at all. What’s important to his fans, and what they choose to see, is the red meat of charitable deeds that he dangles before their eyes. And like Pavlov dogs, they fall for the psychological conditioning.

But guess what? History has shown that some of the most dangerous religious cults in the world are also the most generous and caring organizations you’d ever find. Religious cults deploys love bombing as a tool to capture their prey. Many of the victims who find themselves trapped in religious cults were lured into it by what they, at first, perceived to be love and affection shown to them by the cult members.

Cult leaders tend to disguise their true identity by hiding behind a façade of love and charitable deeds. They use charitable deeds to mask their evil by creating a façade of benevolence, trust, and legitimacy that disarms critics and attracts new members. By performing public acts of charity, they curate a wholesome image that hides abuse, financial exploitation, and manipulation, often creating a “communal narcissism” where charitable actions serve to inflate the group’s ego rather than help others (Source: Google AI).

The history books are filled with stories of religious cults which projected to the outside a virtue of social benevolence but were, on the inside, synagogues of Satan. Here are just a few examples.

1) Jim Jones, Guyana Tragedy

Jim Jones was an American cult leader, Pentecostal preacher, and mass murderer who founded and led the Peoples Temple between 1955 and 1978. Jones and the members of his inner circle planned and orchestrated a mass murder–suicide that resulted in the deaths of over 900 people including 304 children, which he described as “revolutionary suicide,” in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978, including the assassination of U.S. congressman Leo Ryan. Jonestown had a defining influence on society’s perception of cults.

2) Marshall Applewhite, Heaven’s Gate Mass Suicide

On March 26, 1997, Marshall Applewhite and 38 other members of a cult called Heaven’s Gate were found dead in a mass suicide at a rented mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California. The group members, who killed themselves by eating applesauce and pudding mixed with drugs, believed that a spaceship following the Hale-Bopp comet (which made its closest approach to Earth on March 22, 1997) would pick them up and take them to a higher plane of existence.

3) Pastor Paul Mackenzie, Shakahola Forest Cult Kenya

Led by former taxi driver Paul Mackenzie, the Good News International Church in Kenya is a group considered to be one of the deadliest cult-related tragedies in recent history. Four hundred followers were instructed to starve themselves to death in Shakahola forest under Pastor Paul Mackenzie to “meet Jesus.” Many bodies were found buried in mass graves.

What attracted people to, and kept them trapped in, these dangerous religious cults was the love shown to them by the cult members and the charitable works they performed in the society. These people got hooked by the bait of the charisma and generosity of the cult leader.

And it is a similar dynamics that exists between false teachers and their followers. Hypnotized by the love bombing, church folks easily succumb to the magnetism of the false teachers. Blinded by communal narcissism, they readily accept the false teachings of charlatans. Because they view their doctrinally perverse denominations with rose-colored glasses, they are unable to see that they are drinking from a theological sewer.

Sadly, it doesn’t matter the eloquence or soundness of the argument made to get them to see that they are in error, unless God removes the veil and opens their eyes, they are never going to be free. Until God breaks the chain and delivers them from the clutches of false teachers, they will continue to rebuff any and all attempts to point them to the truth.  

We’ll take it from here next time.