Like females in past cigarette commercials, professing Christendom has come a long way over the past 2000 years. What is commonly referred to as “the church” has broken away from the strict, “My-way-or-the-highway” theology of the past to a more progressive “Any-way-you-want-it” structure. A more enlightened body has rejected the strict adherence to the commands of a repressive Biblical God and embraced the kinder, gentler suggestions of a more understanding earthly god. The Church of God, once the bastion of Truth and the purveyor of His one-way-only walk as established by Jesus Christ on the Day of Pentecost, 31 A.D., has been replaced by a more modern version founded on a series of assumptions based on feel-good, majority-determined religiosity

One such assumption is that if a church attender is uber-religious he/she is by definition “saved,” is a member of “the body of Christ” and is “walking in grace.” As is the case in politics, it’s all about the visuals. What one does in one’s private life is not under consideration; it’s what one appears to be that counts. According to church theology, anyone who shows up, ‘fesses up and pays up is ready to go up. For such a “sinner saved by grace,” the following ditty applies perfectly: “Pie in the sky, sin ’till you die, for in the sweet by in by, you’ll still get to fly.”

As a general rule I do not listen to contemporary music, but once in a great while a song comes along that grabs my attention. Such a song was produced several years ago by a famous musician named Ray Stevens who obviously grew up in the same type of church setting as did I and billions of other church people. The name of his song was “Mississippi Church Revival.” In this song we find all the religious ingredients necessary for the Institutional Church’s “If it looks good it must be good” theology to freely operate. There was “Sister Better Than You,” and her male counterpart. There was the false prophet who knew that, due to Adam’s sin transfer, he needed to orchestrate an annual “revival” to put his wayward congregants back on the “straight and narrow path,” albeit temporarily. As the song goes (I have a copy of it and play it occasionally), the good sister, who always sat in “her place” located on the front row to the right of the preacher, came under conviction and spilled the religious beans relative to her and Brother Better Than You. It seems that the two of them routinely met away from the public eye, and not to discuss the Holy Bible. It seems that she and the good brother were not exactly as their visuals portrayed them–the church’s bastions of virtue. With this in mind, let us take the church’s use of outward appearance as “proof” of one’s standing with the Lord and compare it to His version as stated repeatedly in His Holy Scriptures. As I have spent many years proving by those same Scriptures, the two version are diametrically opposed. L.J.