I have spent some time recently on a relatively new (at least to  me) social media platform, reading the “Christian” post section and follow-up comments.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was astounded by the range of error, heresy, and just plain biblically illiterate posts there are. Some of the posts are from people genuinely seeking guidance or information, but most make me shake my head. 

Like any form of social media, it was filled with plenty of people who hold the view, “my mind is made up, don’t clutter it with facts or truth.”

Every cliche and trope imaginable is out there.

The Bible has too many, or too few, books. The church has deliberately hidden books from the Bible. You can only trust that person’s favorite translation. You can’t trust any translation and must read it in the original languages.

If you don’t belong to a specific denomination, you are going to hell. 

The cults are out recruiting. The Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Latter-day Saints are trolling for the unwary. Other weird groups I had never even heard of are doing the same.

The Roman Catholics and Protestants are busy bashing each other. Still, neither side has any understanding of church history, or what their own position actually believes, let alone what the opposition thinks. Now, there is a lot to debate, but it should be done in love and with understanding.

The God of Islam is the same as the God of Christianity.

Everyone is going to be saved, or no one needs saving. Hell isn’t real.

The range of poor understanding and deliberate twisting of Scripture is nothing short of phenomenal. 

The church worship wars still rage, with only the poster’s personal choice of music being from God, and everything else is from Satan.

The doctrine of salvation by faith is disputed. You need to add various combinations of church membership, tithing, good works, baptism, and more to be saved, at least according to many posters who claim to be believers.

Church buildings are too simple, too extravagant, or not needed at all.

This one hurt my head, “I don’t believe in God, but I’m a Christian because I follow the teachings of Christ.” I think it was George Bernard Shaw who initially said it, but it still boggles my mind.

I could carry on and list all the heresies that have plagued the church, and every conceivable form of divisiveness, but I think you can get a sense of things from what I have said.

The apostle Paul would need to be writing corrective letters nonstop and employing a huge ministry team to deal with it all. We’re as messy as the first-century church, and every century since then. The church is messy because it’s filled with redeemed sinners and incomplete knowledge, but it remains God’s church.

If you ever needed proof that God was loving and patient, look no further than the church. Only God could keep such a messed-up, disparate group of people somehow functioning together despite our flaws and best intentions.

There isn’t a church group or a Christian alive who hasn’t got at least some part of the picture wrong.

Now, it isn’t proper theology that saves us. Yet, being saved is just the entry point to becoming all Christ calls us to. We are called to grow in knowledge, understanding, faith, and love.

We are called to both right beliefs and right living; both orthodoxy and orthopraxy are huge.

But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:20-24

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1-2

Let’s have the beliefs and lives that Christ calls us to. Let’s strive together to represent the hope and image of Jesus better.

Be blessed, 

Kevin

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Right belief or right living?

Where do you find the truth? Read the Word.

Well done good and faithful servant