Adding to the Gospel heresy : Post 3

3. “You believe in Jesus …. Now you need to give up smoking / lose weight / join XYZ social action cause … etc.”

I have lumped a few disparate things together just to illustrate the sort of thing you may be exhorted to do as part of your new found faith. Don’t fall for it for a moment! Remember what Paul said to the Christians in Galatia!

Any one of them may be harmless in themselves, they may even be good things BUT the moment they become added as something necessary to complete your faith in Jesus they become spiritual poison.

Take smoking. Giving it up is sound medical advice, but it is not a matter of salvation. It may seem harmless to people to just add it in as an article of faith, but the spiritual effect of that is like putting carbon monoxide into the air we breathe.

A number of people I know found that not long after they came to faith the Holy Spirit laid it on them to give up their cigarette habit and the Holy Spirit gave them the strength and encouragement to do it. That is the sort of thing the Holy Spirit does in a believer’s life as much as we will allow. But it is the Holy Spirit who decides what aspects of our life need changing and in what order. The Holy Spirit brings us around to agree to each change in turn and gives us the power to do it. For other humans to try to set the agenda for us is really not helpful.

With things like losing weight it is again a problem of “doing the right thing for the wrong reason. On the personal level you might decide to do it for health reasons: that’s fine. You may decide to do it for aesthetics: that’s fine too (within reason of course). But being overweight is not a sin. (of course gluttony where a person turns food into something they effectively worship IS a sin (Philippians 3.19 “¹⁸ For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. ¹⁹ Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.”) but I am not talking now about the sin of making an idol of our appetites. What I am talking about is the danger of Christians who try to mix in belief in “healthy living” – which is one of the false religions of our age – to faith in Jesus. 

On the subject of telling other people what to do let me illustrate it by “wrong way / right way” examples:

Right way: Suppose you are involved in some way in public health. Through this you have a concern that obesity is a widespread health problem. As a Christian you are even more interested in looking after people so aided by the Holy Spirit you devise (let us say) a really effective anti-obesity program.

Wrong way: Same scenario down to being a Christian – you may or may not be. You are looking for ways of promoting your anti-obesity campaign (which we agree is a good thing) you come to see that bringing in religious sanctions will help motivate people. So your campaign says that not being overweight is necessary in order to be a good Christian.

Why is this wrong? Because you have (perhaps inadvertently) reduced saving faith in Jesus to being just the means to a something you consider a “greater good” (public health in this case): this inevitably results in the greater “good” becoming the greater “god”.

This last example: that of using Christianity as a means to promote XYZ cause; is again a lie that is mostly true (as the most effective lies are).

As you let God have a bigger and bigger say in your life, you find that he has PLANS. But his plans are tailor made for you, and something you will have great fun discovering and following in partnership with God. So you may be an activist changing the world – as William Wilberforce was. Or you may diligently and cheerfully do what people think is “just” an ordinary job: in the process greatly please God, and perhaps spread a little happiness to a lot of people. Or you may stay home and raise children who turn out to love God and be well adjusted adults and in the process please God inordinately. And so I could go on but you get to idea.

To let someone firstly make you think that joining their cause is part of believing in Jesus and secondly possibly de-rail you from following the plans God has for you is a double disaster.

The tragedy is that churches are well populated with people whose devotion to this cause or that cause has eclipsed their devotion to Christ. It is sad because they are now dysfunctional Christians, and may even cease being Christians at all. It is sad because they are turning whole churches aside from serving Christ to serving their merely human political platforms. It is also sad because while they are being driven by their own (or the world’s) agenda rather than God’s plan they will go off-track in trying to fix up this broken world and often end up being part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

They will try to recruit you. Resist! There is nothing more important than Jesus and nothing pleases him as much as walking humbly with him on the path he has chosen for you.