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...let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
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Christianity Today's Anti-Christianity Today
T. A. McMahon -"Berean Call" August 2010
According to the online encyclopedia wikipedia.org, "Christianity Today
[CT] is an Evangelical Christian periodical based in Carol Stream,
IL. It is the flagship publication of its parent company Christianity Today
International, claiming readership of 290,000. The founder, Billy Graham,
stated that he wanted to 'plant the evangelical flag in the middle-of-the-road,
taking the conservative theological position but a definite liberal approach to
social problems.'
"Today it, and its 13 sister publications, reach well over 2 million
readers in its traditional paperbound form, and more than 10 million pageviews
per month in their Internet form."
It was right after I became a born-again Christian more than thirty years ago
that I encountered my first copy of Christianity Today. Having grown up
Roman Catholic, my appetite for anything evangelical was ravenous. Yet even in
those early years of my faith, there were things that I read in that magazine
that troubled me. I recognized, in Mr. Graham's own words, "a definite
liberal approach to social problems" in the promotion of "Christian"
psychological counseling (see TBC, July 1999).
Of even more concern, however, were articles that clearly favored Roman
Catholicism. This was disconcerting for one who had recently been delivered
from the bondage of the false gospel of Rome. I remembered also reading an old
quote from Billy Graham, which he had spoken nearly a decade before he started CT.
He declared that "The three gravest menaces faced by orthodox Christianity
are Communism, Roman Catholicism, and Mohammedanism" (Plains Baptist
Challenger, March 1984). Incredibly, years later, among CT's
contributing editors and writers were Roman Catholics, including Catholic
priest Richard John Neuhaus. It was Neuhaus, along with CT editors Chuck
Colson, J. I. Packer, Timothy George, Thomas Oden, Richard Mouw, and Mark Noll,
among others, who formed, were promoters of, and/or were signers of
"Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third
Millennium." Their news release proclaimed: "[L]eading Catholics and
evangelicals are asking their flocks for a remarkable leap of faith: to finally
accept each other as Christians....[E]vangelicals including Pat Robertson and
Charles Colson joined with conservative Roman Catholic leaders today in
upholding the ties of faith that bind [them]....They urged Catholics and
evangelicals...to stop aggressive proselytization of each other's flocks."
The Catholic bias of CT is reflected in the modus operandi of
Graham's crusades: they were, and continue to be, publicized and subsidized by
each Catholic diocese where they take place. Additionally, the crusades
continue to be outfitted with Catholic counselors who guide those Catholics
that "come forward" to return to their local Catholic churches.
The list of Catholic luminaries celebrated by CT includes popes Benedict
XVI and John Paul II (Graham told Larry King that he and the pope "agree
on almost everything"), Mother Teresa, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen,
Buddhist/Catholic monk Thomas Merton, and mystic Catholic priest Henry Nouwen.
Catholic mysticism is further promoted by CT contributing editor Richard
Foster, who is the godfather of the modern contemplative/mystical (read
"Eastern") movement within evangelical Christianity.
It seems that no voice that advances apostasy has been omitted from CT's
list of contributing editors or writers: Ron Sider, President Obama's leftist
theologian; Notre Dame professor Mark Noll; Eugene Peterson (who wrote his own
bible called The Message); Eastern Orthodox followers Frederica
Mathewes-Green and Bradley Nassif; former executive editor Terry Muck (who
writes of his love for the Buddha); Leith Anderson (who promotes the
experiential over the propositional, i.e., that emergent experience trumps
doctrine); and psychology and Bible integrationist Eric L. Johnson, to name but
a few.
All of this leads us to Christianity Today's senior managing editor,
Mark Galli, and his article of July 15, 2010, titled "Divine Drama
Queen," which is his characterization of the God of the Bible. We've
reprinted here extensive excerpts of CT's God-demeaning/man-exalting
article (albeit reluctantly, due to its wicked content) as further evidence of
this "evangelical" magazine's continuing slither into the last days'
apostasy. What Galli has written is CT's latest installment of corrupting
the faith, generated from decades of undermining the Word of God and distorting
the God of the Bible. Editor Galli makes this so obvious that what he writes
needs few comments on my part. Nevertheless, his writing is in italics, and my
words appear in brackets and regular type:
I like a tranquil, even-keeled, self-controlled God. A God who doesn't fly
off the handle at the least provocation. A God who lives one step above the
fray. A God who has that British stiff upper lip even when disaster is looming.
When I read my Bible, though, I keep running into a different God, and I'm not
pleased. This God says he "hates" sin. Well, he usually yells it.
Read the prophets. It's just one harangue after another, all in loud decibels.
And when the shouting is over, then comes the pouting.
Take his conversation with Hosea....He orders Hosea to take a prostitute for a
wife; she becomes a symbol of Israel's unfaithfulness to God. This is no
down-on-her-luck-but-with-a-heart-of-gold prostitute like those so often
portrayed in movies. This is some sleazy woman who, even when given a chance at
a decent life, keeps "whoring."
God then tells Hosea to have children with this woman. When the children are
born, he tells Hosea to call the first Jezreel, explaining, "I will break
the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel." The second, God calls No
Mercy, because "I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to
forgive them at all." The third he calls Not My People, "for you are
not my people, and I am not your God" (Hosea 1:1-9).
This God is like the volatile Italian woman who, upon discovering her husband's
unfaithfulness, yells and throws dishes, refuses to sleep in the same bed, and
doesn't speak to him for 40 days and 40 nights.
[I refrained from drawing conclusions up to this point on my first reading of
this article because I suspected that Galli would indicate his own
misunderstanding of God. I guessed wrong. This is the kind of blasphemy that
one would expect from militant atheists and humanists, such as Richard
Dawkins, or foul-mouthed, Christ-mocking comedians like Bill Maher. It is total
blasphemy--a mischaracterization of God as well as a denigration of His
perfectly holy character.]
We may think this a crude depiction, except that Jesus--God with us--seems
to suffer the same emotional imbalance. He rants about Pharisees and
Scribes--or "snakes" and "hypocrites," as he calls them. So
upset is he over sacrilege in the Temple, he overturns tables and drives people
out with a whip. And then we find him lamenting, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often
would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under
her wings, and you would not! See, your house is left to you desolate!"(Matthew
23:37-38). This God knows nothing about being a non-anxious presence. This is a
very anxious God, indeed.
[It's difficult to restrain anger here. The Creator of the universe, the
sacrificial Lamb of God, who paid the full penalty for our sins, and His
Father, who sent Him to the Cross for our sake--they suffer from
"emotional imbalance"?! They--whose Word tells us to be anxious for
nothing--they are anxious?]
I'd rather have a God who takes sin in stride. Why can't he relax and
recognize that to err is human. I mean, you don't find us flawed humans
freaking out about one another's sins. You don't see us wrathful, indignant,
and pouting. Why can't God almighty just chill out and realize we're just
human?
[Has the reader been manipulated by Galli into fleshing out his own similar
thoughts about God? Will he now set the record straight?]
It's that little phrase, "we're just human," that may be the rub
with God. Sin seems to be a big deal to God because apparently we're a big deal
to him. That little phrase, "we're just human," signals that we may
not be as big a deal to ourselves....[God] believes that to be human is
to be destined for glory. As Peter put it, he has "called us to his own
glory and excellence," that we "may become partakers of the divine
nature" (2 Peter 1:3-4).
[So much for repenting of the character assassination of God the Father and God
the Son. Instead, Galli panders to mankind's self-image, dangling before us the
"glory" of humanity. He then leads the reader to the next step,
self-deification--the same lie that Satan offered to Eve in the Garden of Eden
(Genesis 3:5).]
That's right: he [God] thinks "just humans" can become
nothing less than gods. Not in the sense of beings who should be worshipped,
but beings who have become, in the fullest sense, bearers of the image and
likeness of their Creator....He created beings with deep awareness of
themselves and their Creator, who could envision the absolute heights they
could scale and the perfect love they could enjoy, and who knew they could have
all this forever and ever....
[Nowhere in Scripture do you find the word "god" (with a lowercase
"g" ) ever used to denote a righteous person or entity.]
...And yet God gambled. He has thrown everything into this grand enterprise. He
made the creation of these beings not a matter of course or compromise, but a
matter of life or death. Everything was on the line with this roll of the dice.
To win meant for these creatures a bliss that only God knows. To lose meant
death and eternal destruction. There was no holding back. God was going to make
human glory a winner-take-all proposition, even if it killed him.
[God gambled? Does he mean that God doesn't know how things will turn out? This
is the heresy of Open Theism, which denies God's omniscience--denies that He is
the God of prophecy as He proclaimed in Isaiah 46:9-10: "Remember the
former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there
is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the
things that are not yet done...."]
So when things start going south, we find him throwing dishes and slamming
doors....God rants at us as an Olympian curses himself for losing concentration
during a crucial part of the race. Or as a novelist chastises herself for lazy
writing. For the righteous perfectionist (versus the neurotic perfectionist),
every detail matters. God wants nothing less than perfection, because he knows
that perfection is the only way for us to become what he created us to become: godlike.
[Galli must be having flashbacks to his college Greek mythology classes. At
least I hope that's his excuse. Of course, he could plead insanity. How much
more irrational could one be than to posit a "righteous
perfectionist" who throws dishes, slams doors, rants, and curses himself.
Again, this is unashamed blasphemy. It is anti-Christianity from Christianity
Today.]
When the stakes are so high, of course, the consequence of failure, even in
the smallest detail, spells disaster. It's like a space shuttle--one of the
most sophisticated and marvelous of machines--crashing to earth because of a
faulty oil ring. When God sees the space shuttle hurtling toward its
destruction, he weeps, he rants, he pulls his hair out. And something inside
him dies. Our God cares about us frail, fickle, weak human beings because he
knows something we often forget: we're not "just human." He'll go to
any length to get us to grasp and live into our glory, even if it kills him.
[Our glory? What about the glory of God that Galli has dragged through the
gutter of his paganized imagination?]
This is why the Bible traffics in such dramatic language. There is nothing
cautious, careful, or reasonable about the human enterprise. It's about being lost
or saved. Living in darkness or in light. Knowing despair or being filled with
hope. Death or life. The Bible is not interested in a religion that merely
improves the human condition, or makes life manageable. It's not about success
or happiness or helping us all get along. These are paltry aspirations. No,
what God wants is to raise the dead and make gods out of sinners.
[No! Once again, that was Satan's goal.]
So what we have, for better or worse, is a melodramatic God. He yells and
throws dishes, and walks off in a huff, slamming the door behind him-and then
he turns around and gives his life for us. In a foreshadowing of Jesus, he says
to Israel through Hosea: "How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand
you over, O Israel?...for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath" (Hosea 11:8-9). He's anything but calm and
collected, reassuring and reasonable. He's as mercurial as gods go.
[God is] like the crazy uncle in the family. At some point, you have
to let your friends know about him, but you'd just as soon avoid having to
introduce him.
I much prefer reasonable religion with reasonable expectations, and a God who
doesn't get bent out of shape every time his people trip up. But then again, I
don't love as God loves. Not God. Not others. Not myself.
[So, are we to suppose that Galli was just trying to get our attention with his
blasphemies for effect? Did we misunderstand his "literary
cleverness"? No. What he paraded before us was a mockery of God akin to what
Jesus suffered from those who gathered to watch Him being crucified and to what
every God-hating humanist has since voiced.]
The road to hell is paved with reasonable religion with a non-anxious god.
Most days, I'm pretty happy driving down that road. But I keep running into
this Crazy Fellow along the way. At every stop light, he jumps up and down to
get my attention. He pounds on my window asking me where the heck I think I'm
going. He stands on the front bumper, shouting at me to turn around. When all
else fails, he throws himself in front of the car. He's such a drama queen.
[Galli is "pretty happy" driving down the road to hell? God is a
Crazy Fellow? God is a Drama Queen? I have two suggestions: 1) Send your
reaction to Galli's article to the founder and honorary chairman of CT,
Billy Graham, noting what seems to be the ultimate degeneration of what he
started, and 2) Pray for Mark Galli, that he will repent. "[Regarding the
wicked] there is no fear of God before his eyes" (Ps 36:1). TBC
Billy Graham's address:
BGEA
1 Billy Graham Parkway
Charlotte, NC 28201
Quotable
One day at a time, with its failures and fears,
With its hurts and mistakes, with its weakness and tears,
With its portion of pain and its burden of care;
One day at a time we must meet and must bear.
One day at a time to be patient and strong;
To be calm under trial and sweet under wrong;
Then its toiling shall pass and its sorrow shall cease;
It shall darken and die, and the night shall bring peace.
One day at a time--but the day is so long,
And the heart is not brave, and the soul is not strong,
O Thou pitying Christ, be Thou near all the way;
Give courage and patience and strength for the day.
Swift cometh His answer, so clear and so sweet;
"Yea, I will be with thee, thy troubles to meet;
I will not forget thee, nor fail thee, nor grieve;
I will not forsake thee; I never will leave."
Not yesterday's load we are called on to bear,
Nor the morrow's uncertain and shadowy care,
Why should we look forward or back with dismay?
Our needs, as our mercies, are but for the day.
One day at a time, and the day is His day;
He hath numbered its hours, though they haste or delay.
His grace is sufficient; we walk not alone;
As the day, so the strength that He giveth His own.
Annie Johnson Flint
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Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.
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