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June 29 

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If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.   ––Galatians 1:8,10

What version of Jesus do you worship? There’s the authentic Jesus—the one described in God’s Word, both in the Old and New Testaments—and there are versions of Jesus.

Some call it cultural Christianity, which can be defined as a false form of Christianity that filters God’s Word through one’s circumstances, rather than filtering the culture through God’s Word. The official phrase for this phenomena is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), a term coined by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton.[1] Here are the key beliefs:

  1. God exists and created the world.
  2. God wants people to be nice to each other.
  3. The main goal in life is to be happy and feel good about yourself.
  4. God isn’t really involved in your life unless you need Him to fix something.
  5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

We all know folks who ascribe to this shallow belief system, and who embrace the “Jesus is love” part  of Christianity, but who don’t understand the “take up my yoke”, sacrifice, and dying-to-oneself part. Or, like Friday night at Hometown Buffet, they pick and choose the items from the Bible that they find attractive.

But man of God, that’s not how Christianity works. The Truth is the same today as it was in the beginning, and Jesus has not changed. The Message of the Cross is one where Jesus was crucified, died, and then ascended to heaven and is now seated at the right hand of the Father. The Message of the Cross is that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus. The Message is unflinching, uncompromising, and utterly beautiful.

What version of Jesus are you following? Are you bending the Bible to fit your lifestyle, or changing your lifestyle to align with His Word? There are no half measures—and God loves you too much to allow you to languish in the desert of inauthenticity.

Lord, help me filter my life and my beliefs through the Bible, and not the other way around. I know that You want what is best for me, which is to fully understand You and Your Son, Jesus, and to follow Him with abandon.

[1] https://www.arizonachristian.edu/2021/04/27/counterfeit-christianity-moralistic-therapeutic-deism-most-popular-worldview-in-u-s-culture/