I sing it at the top of my lungs with my kids while driving:
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like that’s what you wanna do
No question, it’s a catchy song! It’s also the anthem of a culture: Whatever makes ME happy by making me FEEL good must be the RIGHT thing for me to DO.
In today’s culture, to be modern is to believe one’s individual desires are the locus of authority and self-definition. Long gone is any sense of responsibility to a larger community of which I am a part, but not the center. Long gone is any individual desire to sacrifice what he or she wants for the good of someone else. I vote for myself.
We consistently find this “truth” in the stories and songs of our culture. Now, we are beginning to find this “truth” in the sermons of our churches. Millions in person and billions online now hear messages that tell us that not only must we believe in God’s Son, Jesus Christ, but we must also of equal importance and necessity believe in ourselves, because only when we do both will our faith come alive. Our faith is the vehicle by which God brings all His blessings to us. This vehicle is driven by our desires. Instead of God’s desires becoming ours (Psalm 37:4), our desires become His.
This message says that while God can speak and promise to do something, it can only come into existence and become our reality when our self-esteem is high and good and when we do our very best. The implication is that God’s word and promise is dependent upon man, rooted in man and oriented around man, and that without our self-esteem-empowered-faith, God’s hands are tied.
We can now, according to this gospel, prophesy our future. We can create our own destiny, either fulfilling our own dreams or our own nightmares. If you’re sick or poor it’s your fault, due to a wrong belief within you, and so you have only to discover it by looking inward and then replace it through the power of repeatedly thinking positive thoughts and speaking positive words, i.e. what you want to be true. Happiness depends now on our thoughts and words which are subject to our feelings for guidance, not God’s Word. If we want it and it makes us happy, surely God wants to give it to me, because God wants me to be happy, to feel good. Or so we’re led to believe.
This preaching, among other things, is a form of the Law of Attraction and New Thought Metaphysics simply re-branded and promoted as “word of faith” and many other catchy tunes. It revolves around self, not Jesus. It says God demands nothing of me because He’s chiefly concerned with making me feel good. God is invited only when He’s needed to solve our problems, like a therapist or a butler, never as God and King.
Some of the creeds of this gospel revolving around self are, “Do your best”, Believe in yourself”, Say to yourself”, “Think positive”, “You’re a child of the Almighty”. Now, it’s true: a christian is a child of the Almighty. But being His child presupposes something radical, anti-culture and now anti-church-culture: The gospel. The Biblical gospel is concerned with the objective – God over man and man before God. The gospel preaches that God demands everything of me (my love, my obedience, my passions, my desires), because He is holy, and that I have chosen not to give it to Him, because I am a sinner.
The Biblical gospel presupposes God is love and God is holy, and He is never one apart from the other.
In Luke 18:10-14, Jesus describes two men praying in the temple. The first, the Pharisee, is certain of his right-standing before God. His certainty is based on his doing good; he probably feels good for doing good; he has no problems or needs, which he believes is synonymous with being accepted by God. The tax collector, on the other hand, confesses He is a “sinner” before a righteous God. He has done bad; he feels bad for doing bad; he has many problems and needs. And, yet, he believes that his sin and salvation go deeper than just doing bad, feeling bad and having problems.
The sinner asks for “mercy”, a word which means, “be propitiated”. It’s a word used only one other time in Hebrews 2:17. Describing Jesus Christ, it says that, “he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” Here, then, we see the essence of the gospel packed into the word “propitiation”. There is an offense: our sin. There is the offended: God. There is an offender: you and I. There is a cost to be paid: a wrath-absorbing sacrifice.
At the cross, God’s wrath and love were poured out on Jesus Christ. In and through Him, God’s holiness was upheld and His love was offered freely.
Both our sin and Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension are an objective reality, not subjective. The salvation offered sinful humanity in Jesus Christ goes deeper than doing good things, having good feelings and having no problems. Sin goes deeper than therapeutic needs God meets by giving material blessings and by boosting our self-esteem. While God’s salvation can and does change our whole lives, making them better and happier, God saves us to re-orient our lives around Him, not Him around us. Whatever “better and happier” looks like or feels like, it now comes as a result of denying our self and dying to our self daily (Luke 9:23).
In all that He has created, God can be absent nowhere but the human heart enslaved to sin. Yet, God is present nowhere else in all of creation like He is in the redeemed heart of man. The gospel – Jesus’ death in my place – is the entry point, not the end point of the unselfed life, a life that starts with Jesus, not with the self; a life where Jesus is at the center, not the self; a life where knowing Jesus is worth the loss of everything the self holds closer (Philippians 3:8).
Do you really want more of you?
“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Philippians 1:21
Thanks Jonathan for this very needed - and unpopular message in our culture. I am continually stunned whenever I really slow down enough in reading the Gospels to reflect on the self-emptying of Jesus, which is so backwards from our normal way! I am personally one who struggles and must battle against a sense of entitlement, and I think being a westerner only further drives it.
Posted by: Liveloveleadtoday.wordpress.com | 06/10/2014 at 10:09 AM