SO NOT IMPRISONED BY OUR OWN IDEAS

When I was a young person in office in my local church, from time to time one would come across a difficult person with bizarre ideas. Time would usually prove that the person was mentally ill. This may not be so in the present season. They may be unable to be taught. This will be so if we are addicted to our own ideas or given to inventing your own reality. Not uncommon  because an unconditional commitment to truth is the road less travelled.

POPULAR CONCEIT
We may encounter people with popular but misguided ideas like conspiracy theories, justifications for institutional greed, obstinate climate change denial and rationalised support for the lies of public figures.  But the truth is that some popular messiahs are persons of low ability and poor character.

We need to be saved from these kinds of people and their ideas that produce confusion or cause society to implode. “They usually claim any opposing thought that isn't from their conspiratorial sources, aka the "mainstream media," is false, and any peer-reviewed scientific documents are [deemed] false." The fool has said out loud, ‘I am god.’ Folly is known by its actions. There’s a proverb that says, ‘Society groans when a fool becomes king’.

FALSE CHRIST’S
Since these populist views are sometimes held by Christians one must wonder what kind of Christianity and what kind of Christ they have embraced. It is improbable that persons incarnated by Christ and who live as one with the Father are the bearers of such perversions of Christ’s Kingdom.  The book of Proverbs indicates that Godliness and wisdom go together. Jesus Christ is wisdom, light and LIFE which is to say that anything that is not really alive will be exposed by Him in His witness to you.

THE PROOF OF DISCIPLESHIP
Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life,” John 8.12 NIV.

His light is both specific to issues and generalised to life. It’s the opposite to futility, and populist ravings. Being full of wisdom and the Holy Spirit is exhibited by people with wisdom and discernment everywhere. It’s following Jesus. Beware of those whose interest is in the healing of limbs and eyes but not at all in the healing of the Political Economy or the Earth.

BLAMELESS
‘Better the poor whose walk is blameless than a fool whose lips are perverse’ Prov 19.1 NIV.
Sure, as Christians we will not all have the same political views but neither will we embrace weird and ridiculous fables – unless we only think we follow Jesus and all along are hooked on to a religious construct of Christ that is but a shadow of the real. False christ’s produce false light which is darkness and folly. Is our Christianity more a variety of Gnosticism than the Gospel of Jesus and Paul?

INIQUITY
Thomas Torrance writing of the coming of the Messiah observes, “Many of the Jews, even of the scribes and priests, knew that Jesus was the Messiah, and yet wilfully blinded themselves because he was not the kind of Messiah they wanted, and they still insisted in trying to bend the will of God to their ideas and desires. And so to the very last, they resisted the purpose of God’s wonderful love and actually crucified the Messiah, the Son of God. (1)

‘They conceive trouble and give birth to evil; their womb fashions deceit’ Job 15.35 NIV.

CHRISTIAN SELF-HARM
We do ourselves a grave disservice by embracing false christs and false gospels of any kind. Not only do we deny the Christ of God and inhibit the spread of His genuine light and life. We increase the darkness and multiply death in the name of life. The fool has said in his heart ‘I have my god.’ He spreads this curse when he speaks it out loud.

EVIL DOERS
‘Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ Matt 7.21-22 NIV. Christ was not their life. Religion was.

(1) Thomas Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ p.43.