Rant on Lies I've Been Told

When you know God's love, you will simply love the right way. Much of the New Testament was written to specific people with specific problems. We shouldn't impose their weaknesses upon ourselves. It is like a non-smoker taking advice on how to quit smoking. For someone who has never smoked chewing nicotine gum does no good. Sadly most approach the bible this way. Regardless of if they share the struggle mentioned in a scripture people condemn themselves as if they must have that struggle simply because scripture said people struggled with that. People are worse off trying to obey scriptures that have nothing to do with them than they are if they ignored those scriptures all together.

I remember many times in churches being told that you need to question your salvation..
if you're not in a trial or coming out of a trial
if God doesn't regularly “take you to the woodshed" to beat you

To put those in other words, you need to question your salvation..
if you don't get mega-stressed in life to where you see everything as a trial & life as utter suffering
if you don't feel guilt & shame regularly (also called being “broken")

How are such lies justified? Like this..
When you don't feel guilty you must be especially guilty because you don't even recognize it.
If God isn't beating you it is because he has put you on the shelf (As if life were all about being ”used by God” as a tool, we aren't tools, don't let someone call you a tool).

I'm still told things like this today,
“Saying you don't struggle with the flesh is like saying you don't breathe.” Really? The bible says, “we wrestle not against FLESH & blood" thus if we struggle with the flesh something is wrong with our mindset. I have a victorious spirit. The bible teaches self control (spirit control over the flesh) it does not teach “death to self" or self degradation.

“God gets greatly offended at you for your behavior." Really? Offend means, ”to make angry.” ON THE BLOOD OF HIS OWN SON God promised to never be angry with me again (Isaiah 54:9-10, Matthew 26:28, Colossians 1:20). That takes care of the whole woodshed non-sense too. When ever I heard ”God whoops you or you aren't his kid” I thought to myself, “God doesn't do that to me maybe I'm not a Christian." Then I had to remind myself of how He saved me by grace & lovingly proved Himself to me over the years.

I've heard other people talk about being told the lie, “if things go wrong you must be in sin & God is punishing you." I believed that to some extent but I was also told the lie, “if things are going right for too long you need to question your salvation.“ What kind of sick messed up religious garbage is that? “If anything goes wrong it is your fault & God is punishing you for what you've done. But if things go right.. you need to question your salvation because you should ALWAYS be going through trials.“ That may sound “double minded" but in fact it is single minded, it is 100% condemnation! My heart never wanted to believe these lies but my mind felt like it should. Thank God for His truth which leads to freedom!

I typically hold back from speaking from personal experience & opinion but I don't care right now because I hate the bondage of lies so much. I've never told someone not to go to church because they need to listen to God & not to me. But deep inside I honestly believe that you cannot go to an institutional church service without being poisoned in some way every single time. As time goes on I become more & more convinced of that.

Instead of going to the box factory today, we'll be going to the...box factory

There shall be a time when people will not tolerate or listen to healthy teaching. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers who say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to falsehood & stories of fiction invented by men. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

While there is a beneficial place for teachers (this scripture was telling Timothy to be a good teacher) scripture is clear that it is the Holy Spirit who is to be our teacher and lead us to ALL truth. Surely He can do this through other people. However the problem arises when people trust in men to teach them more than they trust in God to teach them. Religion is designed to have people do this. So this scripture sounds like a prophecy of sermons, preachers, & authors to me. The Spirit cannot teach you if you hitch your cart to someone else's horse. Most of what people "know" are things they don't know for themselves. Most of their knowledge comes from preachers & predetermined doctrines that have been passed down. They have discovered few if anything themselves through the Spirit's teaching because they have signed up for the wrong class. They have signed up to be taught by indoctrinated or ego driven religious leaders. Those same religious leaders will deride those who don't preach what or how they preach using the verses above. They will say, "itching ears want to hear easy & happy teachings" but the truth is an itching ear mainly wants to hear what agrees with it already. It doesn't want to hear something new. It doesn't want to be challenged to believe something different.

For thousands of years doctrines (teachings) invented by men have been formulated & propagated. Every denomination & every church thereof has already decided what is true & what is false. There is no room for the Spirit to teach because everyone already has everything down in neat little packaged boxes. The church leaders, church fathers, & church history's most touted theologians are the ones people are taught to listen to directly or indirectly. People walk around as if they are fatherless while the Father longs to lead them Himself but they are imprisoned by lies or are fearful or unwilling to follow Him themselves. The living God has been traded for the dead teachings of men. Religion has hidden or deleted most truth from people's hearts & minds. The truth is what religion desperately seeks to destroy. Instead religion, as if designed by Satan himself, claims to have all the answers. It speaks shame, fear, & death. It sets up its own set of leaders who, knowingly or not, directly usurp the place & work of God in people's lives.

So many people see through religion because it is lifeless, Godless, & loveless. Yet religion has claimed the concept of God for its own so people who reject religion often reject the concept of God. Religion seeks only to devour & deceive the many well intentioned people who choose to adhere themselves to it. The dangerous few who tell the truth are continually told to be silent. Even some who know the truth fear what would happen if other people knew it. My God is The Truth & He sets people free. Freedom is the enemy of religion because religion enslaves people & causes them to act like shame filled beggars who plead for God's mercy and forgiveness as if Christ had never died & rose again. Religion empties the cross of its power. At most the cross is taught as a ticket to a far off heaven.

You can fit a lot of dirt & rock into a box but you can't fit the whole planet earth in there. Likewise you can find truth while in religion & its systems but you can't find the vast majority of it in there. Knowing truth lets us experience freedom. There isn't much freedom inside of a box so there can't be much truth either. Each doctrine is a box as well, prohibiting anything that disagrees with it. After enough time in religion people themselves become box like, excluding any ideas or people who don't fit into their box. As sad as it is, the box of religion, its systems, & its doctrines will always restrict truth, leaving most of it outside. All of us are ignorant about something and there are countless things we could be deceived about too. Who do you trust more, ignorant, deceived men, alive or dead, who have followed their own itching ears or our all knowing, all loving, completely trustworthy Father?

In the World

I think "being in the world but not of the world" has more to do with how we treat people not issues of personal purity which most seem to focus more on today than actual relationships. Love does no harm to a neighbor. If the entertainment I intake doesn't harm my neighbor then there probably isn't a problem with it.

Sadly Christians are very afraid of sin because they think & live as if it is more powerful than Christ in them. It is not in the slightest. Satan's only attack is trying to get you to believe lies. Christians are in far more danger of Satan's attacks from the falsehoods spread at most pulpits than they are with secular entertainment. A lie about God is the most dangerous kind of lie & can make you miserable your entire life. Performance based religion that says Jesus didn't take care of our sin problem is the most worldly thing of all.

When we think we "step away from God" by our actions He is always right there. You can't "step away from God." Nothing you can do separates you from His love. Trust in that truth and your worries about "being taken away from Christ," "stepping away from God," "breaking fellowship with God" will fall off and you will get to bask in His true love that never lets you go. If you fall He goes down with you to help you back up.

Our faith is what overcomes the world (1 John 5:4). "Our faith" isn't our morality. Faith means you trust in God, in His love and goodness towards you. That faith is weakened or nullified when you believe His love and goodness have barriers. Christ removed all barriers at the cross. Fear not for He is with you.

Three of The Most Widespread & Destructive Lies Christians Believe

• Lie:  Christians have to confess sins to God or they break fellowship with God
  
• 1 John 1 wasn't written for Christians. It was an explanation of how to be saved using inclusive language. John starts off this section of scripture saying "Now this is the message we have heard from Jesus and announce to you." The message is about God and how to be saved in verses 5b-10. (For an in-depth explanation see my post Inseparable & Unforsakable, Fellowship Never Broken, See also Forgiven and Loving)
  
• Fellowship with God cannot be broken by anything but perception. God counts sins against no one (2 Corinthians 5:19).
• Lie: The Holy Spirit Convicts Christians of Sin
  
• Nowhere does scripture say the Holy Spirit convicts Christians of sin, it says (in John 16) that He convicts those who don't trust Jesus of sin & that He convicts (convinces) saints of their righteousness. Convict and condemn are synonyms, there is no condemnation in Christ.
• Lie:  We should look at David as an example of how to live the Christian life.
• David wasn't a Christian. He wasn't born again because of the blood of Jesus. David was a man of faith who trusted God and he will be in heaven. But he didn't have a new born spirit, he didn't have the Holy Spirit living inside of Him, he didn't have the wonderful promises and realities of the new covenant of Christ. We shouldn't take his shame laden psalms and aspire to view things like he did. Christ made a HUGE difference when He died for us. (For more on this see my Psalms in the Light of The Messiah series).

I used to believe all three of these lies. I learned the heart of God & studied the scriptures and found these things to all be false and horribly devaluing of the blood of Christ & of us. We've been sold a pile of lies that empower sin, devalue us, and put conditions on God's love.

How I View the Deceived

Being someone who was once deceived by religion myself I can't really look down on others. I think I have always been open to God rather than having a strong affinity about what I believe as to be unwilling to let it go. However there were some times I changed my mind about things too fast.

I wonder why I've learned what I've learned and experienced what I've experienced. I ask "Why me God?" in a positive way. So much of who I am, not willing to conform to the world, willing to research and study, is just natural. I didn't try to be like this. It was easy. As I go on I realize much is because my parents loved me so well.

I've seen people be unable to entertain the idea that they could be wrong about something. I've heard of Christians on their death bed dying in misery thinking God was punishing them all because they don't understand God's love for them. My life does seem to be "There but for the grace of God go I." I don't think God will punish His children for their disbelief but He might show them what kind of wonderful life on earth they could have had if they had trusted Him more.

I guess I see people as victims of lies, even those who teach the lies are victims of them. Seldom does someone knowingly teach a lie, but they are certain about things which are terribly false. While I hate the positions and traditions that harm people I don't wish people would "get what's coming to them" based on what they believe and how they behave. What every Christian has coming to them is the love of God because of what Christ did for them. I just wish they knew it. The first step to believing the truth is to know that it exists.

Matthew 9:36 really shows me how God views the world, not with contempt for disbelief and disobedience, but with compassion. "When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."

The Problem with Mistranslations

Example 1
Imagine that I do not speak English and I always have a translator accompanying me. I am a farmer but for whatever reason every time I say "farmer" my translator says "salesman." Let us presume that my translator gets everything else I say right. If you talk with me there are only a few ways to find out that I am a farmer and not as salesman.

One is to pick up on clues in the context when I speak about my job. I may mention livestock and farm equipment but even then you could assume that I sell those things.

Another way, if you ever even get to the point of questioning my translator's accuracy, is to look up the word salesman in the language I speak. You can find that the word I am saying is not salesman. You then need to find a way to discover the meaning of the word I am actually using.

The power of the word salesman being used by my otherwise trustworthy translator makes you believe something that is not true. It shapes how you view the context of my conversation. It perhaps makes you think that I sell farm equipment rather than farm the land myself.

Example 2
Imagine that your job position originated in a country that spoke a different language than you and they are just now expanding into your country. The person they have to translate their operating manuals grew up in a part of their country that has a slightly different dialect, where words mean slightly or drastically different things than they do where the manuals were originally written. The language barriers prevent you and others from doing the best job that you can and the business as a whole suffers. Everyone thought that they were doing the right thing and going exactly by the book but they never questioned the translation when one part of the book contradicted the other.

The Problem
These situations pale in comparison to the problems with our English translations of the Bible. Some words were intentionally mistranslated in the first place and tradition has kept them there (church, pastor, minister, deacon). Other words are unclear in meaning because they have little to no secular use (grace, faith, repent). These religious words are defined in many different ways but were not religious words in the original language. They were common words easily understood by anyone who spoke the language (grace=favor, faith=trust, repent=change of mind).

Some words are influenced by the beliefs of those who translated them (usually the institutional church). These translators and subsequently those who read their translation believe that the way things are today is the way things have always been and read the present situation into past events. When they see the word "church" in the bible they think of an organization or building, seeing "pastor" they think of the man in charge who preaches at the church, seeing the word "minister" they think of a leader, etc. People are thinking that the farmer is the salesman. Soon they hire salesmen to farm and all sense of meaning is lost to the masses.

From Guardians to Gurus
Untold damage is done by these mistranslations. One English word poorly translated in one verse (pastor in Ephesians 4:11) is part of the basis for thousands upon thousands of men to unwittingly usurp the headship of Christ. Too often I have heard people happily repeat things from sermons they've heard recently which are actually destructive lies. They instantly believe what they are told no matter how shame-filled, self-centered, unloving, or absurd  it is simply because the pastor said so. Pastors need only to point to the word "pastors" in Ephesians 4:11 to justify their office to most despite the fact that the word "pastors" only appears once in all of scripture, the word is plural, the context says little about what the pastor actually is, and the word is a mistranslation (it is supposed to be translated as "shepherds").

I specifically talked with two pastors who knew I was out of the church system and Ephesians 4:11 was the only scripture they used to support their existence. When asked if all Christian groups need pastors I said "Jesus is the Good Shepherd and speaking of Him in Ezekiel 34:15 God says, 'I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord.'"

The mistranslation perpetuates the false office and false authority. While not all motives are pure most pastors are simply following the traditions of the church thinking that it is what God intends. Sadly those traditions and falsehoods existed 400 years ago and certain words were placed into scripture to support them. While I wish pastors would research their supposed position solely using the scriptures, they aren't to blame. Hundreds of years of man made traditions, falsehoods, and mistranslations stand against the people of God.

Here two questions to ask yourself, "Am I believing false things because of traditions or mistranslations?" & "Do I trust what I hear over trusting the living God?"

Related Posts
Older People as Guides not Officials as Governors:  Explains what a shepherd (mistranslated pastor) actually is.
All Posts on Mistranslations