The Easter sermon I won’t preach… but wish I could
I wish I could say how they are missing the point. I want to share with them how they are not OK. I want to say quit being offended because we thought you were a visitor. I want to say Christianity is so much more than membership. That baptism is not just some step they took to get saved. It was a death and a resurrection into new life. The life they quit living somewhere along the way.
I want to tell them to wake up, return to their first love, and start fighting Satan.
No, All Christian Content Shouldn’t Be Free
But let’s trust that these are a few examples out of the many faithful believers who serve the body well and deserve to be paid fairly for their labors. Let’s not simply rush to the conspiratorial idea that “That publisher/organization/church/pastor is just out to make money.” You actually don’t know that. It could be they are serving with an earnest desire to bring the good news of the gospel to those who need to hear it.
As I share in a post about Dr. Eben Alexander’s visit-to-heaven book, while I am not the judge of who has really been to Heaven or Hell, I believe every near-death (or supposed “after-death”) experience must be evaluated in light of God’s Word. While curiosity is understandable, don’t base your theology of Heaven on any book or movie that tells of someone’s personal experience and memories, no matter how sincere they may be. And as I share in another post about Mary Neal’s book To Heaven and Back, I am concerned that even evangelical publishers are now disseminating false doctrine through personal stories of visits to Heaven.
I am sure you can see the problem here. We have a culture awash in a neo-gnosticism that gobbles up personal experience like samples at Costco. We cannot resist them. Then we have people everywhere telling their own stories and then interpreting them with authority. And of course we have a church that goes right along with it to reinforce sola experiencia to the thousands who attend each Sunday morning.