A Feel-Good Religious Culture
Commenting on the situation in the United States, Newsweek magazine candidly stated: “Many clergy, who are competing in a buyer’s market, feel they cannot afford to alienate.” They fear that if they make great moral demands on their hearers, they will lose them as parishioners. People do not want to hear that they should cultivate humility, self-discipline, and virtue or that they should heed their nagging conscience and repent of their sins. Hence, many churches are adopting what the Chicago Sun-Times called “a therapeutic, utilitarian, even narcissistic ‘all about me’ Christian message [and] leaving the gospel behind.”
The outgrowth of this type of thinking is a religious culture that defines God in its own terms, churches whose focus is, not on God and what he requires of us, but on man and what will increase his self-esteem. The sole aim is to cater to the needs of the congregation. The fruit is religion emptied of doctrine. “What fills the hole at the center, where the Christian moral code used to be?” asks The Wall Street Journal. “An ethic of conspicuous compassion, where ‘being a nice person’ excuses everything.”
Logically, the harvest from all of this is the attitude that any religion with a feel-good effect is just fine. Anyone adopting such a view, observes The Wall Street Journal, “can embrace any faith, so long as it makes no real moral demands—consoles but does not judge.” And the churches, in turn, are willing to accept people “exactly for who they are,” without making any moral demands on them.
The foregoing may remind Bible readers of a prophecy penned by the apostle Paul in the first century C.E. He said: “There will be a period of time when they will not put up with the healthful teaching, but, in accord with their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves to have their ears tickled; and they will turn their ears away from the truth.”—2 Timothy 4:3, 4.
When religious leaders excuse sin, deny its existence, and ‘tickle’ the ears of their congregants by telling them what they want to hear instead of what the Bible says, they are doing people a grave disservice. Such a message is false and dangerous. It represents a travesty of one of the fundamental teachings of Christianity. Sin and forgiveness occupy a central position in the good news taught by Jesus and his apostles.
Excerpt from Sin—What Has Changed? — Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY
So has the definition of sin morphed into a definition of permissiveness? Will the churches answer for their failure to uphold the teachings of the one they claim to worship?
Commenting on the situation in the United States, Newsweek magazine candidly stated: “Many clergy, who are competing in a buyer’s market, feel they cannot afford to alienate.” They fear that if they make great moral demands on their hearers, they will lose them as parishioners. People do not want to hear that they should cultivate humility, self-discipline, and virtue or that they should heed their nagging conscience and repent of their sins. Hence, many churches are adopting what the Chicago Sun-Times called “a therapeutic, utilitarian, even narcissistic ‘all about me’ Christian message [and] leaving the gospel behind.”
The outgrowth of this type of thinking is a religious culture that defines God in its own terms, churches whose focus is, not on God and what he requires of us, but on man and what will increase his self-esteem. The sole aim is to cater to the needs of the congregation. The fruit is religion emptied of doctrine. “What fills the hole at the center, where the Christian moral code used to be?” asks The Wall Street Journal. “An ethic of conspicuous compassion, where ‘being a nice person’ excuses everything.”
Logically, the harvest from all of this is the attitude that any religion with a feel-good effect is just fine. Anyone adopting such a view, observes The Wall Street Journal, “can embrace any faith, so long as it makes no real moral demands—consoles but does not judge.” And the churches, in turn, are willing to accept people “exactly for who they are,” without making any moral demands on them.
The foregoing may remind Bible readers of a prophecy penned by the apostle Paul in the first century C.E. He said: “There will be a period of time when they will not put up with the healthful teaching, but, in accord with their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves to have their ears tickled; and they will turn their ears away from the truth.”—2 Timothy 4:3, 4.
When religious leaders excuse sin, deny its existence, and ‘tickle’ the ears of their congregants by telling them what they want to hear instead of what the Bible says, they are doing people a grave disservice. Such a message is false and dangerous. It represents a travesty of one of the fundamental teachings of Christianity. Sin and forgiveness occupy a central position in the good news taught by Jesus and his apostles.
Excerpt from Sin—What Has Changed? — Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY
So has the definition of sin morphed into a definition of permissiveness? Will the churches answer for their failure to uphold the teachings of the one they claim to worship?