In a recent survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life; 52% of Christians said that a non-Christian religion can lead to eternal life. Only 29% of Americans felt that their religion was the only way to salvation and only 30% believe that one’s beliefs, rather than actions (29%) or actions plus beliefs (10%), determine salvation. This in a country that professes to be 80% Christian.
Among those Christians who believed other religions could lead to eternal life; 42% believed atheism could lead to salvation and 56% believed that people with no religious affiliation whatsoever could be saved.
What accounts for this? This belief in other paths to salvation is in direct contradiction to what Jesus himself said.
John 14:6:
Jesus said to him, ”I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.”
The disciple Peter said, about Jesus, in Acts 4:12:
There is salvation in none other, for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, by which we must be saved!
In a recent interview, Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of Great Britain, and recent convert to Catholicism, urged religions leaders everywhere to reinterpret their religious texts to see them as metaphorical, not literal. He also suggested that the Pope was out of touch with public opinion.
This whole notion that somehow the will of God should be subject to the popular opinion of sinful man is an extraordinary concept, laced with hubris. Are we in a position to judge God? Do we really want to put ourselves in that position? What would drive us to such a precarious position?
Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, responding to the Pew survey, said, ”We are in an age when we want to tell everyone they are doing just fine. It’s extremely uncomfortable to turn to someone and say, ’You will go to hell unless you come to a saving knowledge of Jesus.’”
Over the past 15 years or so, political correctness has infiltrated nearly every aspect of our society. Certainly in politics but also in education, entertainment, and even in everyday conversation. We now self-censor our speech. Anything we say that is politically incorrect, we say in hushed tones in the company of like-minded people. Certainly, we would not dare utter a politically incorrect statement in the workplace.
Unlike government censorship, the Orwellian kind from the book, 1984 or the totalitarian censorship from Soviet-era Communism; self-censorship is much more insidious, as we become an active, indeed, the primary participant in suppressing our own speech and behavior. As with most good intentions, our desire not to offend has gone so far as to censor the truth in favor of comfortable lies.
We live in a society with few moral absolutes. Black and white have given way to shades of grey and, indeed, we are encouraged from a young age to create our own color pallet of morality.
There are many aspects to political correctness, most are simple annoyances, still other encroach no our rights. However, there is a corner of the political correctness tent that is likely its true purpose: the suppression of God’s truth in order to deceive. Many people may get exorcised over the outrages and excesses of political correctness, but it is this suppression of religion, specifically Christianity, that is the real cause for alarm. For it is this aspect that the Devil uses to blind the minds of unbelievers, and sadly, many professing Christians.
Parts of The Bible are considered hate literature in Canada. A pastor in Sweden was recently sentenced to a month in prison for preaching the politically incorrect truths of The Bible. A pastor in Wichita, Kansas was arrested for sharing The Bibles words about lust on a public sidewalk (a US district judge later dismissed the case and the city of Wichita later admitted that it violated the pastor’s civil rights). At the same time, Buddhism flourishes in the western world as an enlightened alternative to Christianity. Islamic sharia law and Islamic banking in being slowly adopted in parts of the western world. Spiritualism, in general, encourages to embrace a higher power, of our own creation, to better our lives.
It is interesting that the only politically incorrect religion seems to be Christianity based on the fundamental, literal teachings of The Bible. Prosperity gospels, ecumenicalism, so-called Christian churches that redefine everything from marriage to life are all acceptable; but Christianity based on the unchanging, inerrant word of God is considered out of step with the public, irrelevant; politically incorrect.
In Revelation 3:15-20, the apostle John is instructed by Jesus to write letters to the seven churches of Asia. One in particular, the letter to the Laodicean church, seems very applicable to many Christian churches of today:
I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say, ’I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing;’ and don’t know that you are the wretched one, miserable, poor, blind, and naked; I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may become rich; and white garments, that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see. As many as I love, I reprove and chasten. Be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with me.
Jesus is talking about a church that is overflowing with arrogance. Their hubris has blinded them so that they cannot see their own wretchedness and nakedness. He encourages them to repent; to accept the truth; to believe with their whole hearts. He chastens them because he loves them and wants them to accept him.
The Bible warns us repeatedly about the apostate church; false teachings that would turn from the truth. The new dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, recently gave a speech in Birmingham, Alabama encouraging the fight to keep abortion clinics open.
She said, ”If we were suddenly to find a host of trained providers, insuring access in every city, town, village, and military base throughout the world, that would be a very good thing; but our work would not be done.”
To those who oppose abortion on moral grounds, she states, ”When doctors and pharmacists try to opt out of providing medical care, claiming it’s an act of conscience, our work is not done.”
When referring to abortion and those in the abortion industry, she went on to say, ”These are the two things I want you, please, to remember – abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.”
”I want to thank all of you who protect this blessing – who do this work every day: the health care providers, doctors, nurses, technicians, receptionists, who put your lives on the line to care for others (you are heroes — in my eyes, you are saints); the escorts and the activists; the lobbyists and the clinic defenders; all of you. You’re engaged in holy work.”
This is the dean of the Episcopal Divinity School; the university that teaches theology and trains pastors. Is there any doubt that we are in the time of the apostate church?
The Bible warns of these false teachers in 2 Corinthians 11:13-15:
For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as Christ’s apostles. And no wonder, for even Satan masquerades as an angel of light. It is no great thing therefore if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.
We are willing to accept comfortable lies from church leaders who tell us what we want to hear. We wrongly believe that we can have things both ways. We believe we can follow our own desires, undermine the truth of God’s word and yet, still partake in the salvation that comes only through Jesus. How can we resolve this obvious contradiction? The peer pressure of the world, the political correctness, the leadership of false teachers, give us the re-enforcement we need to turn away from the truth and fool ourselves into believing that we can be followers of God and at the same time be loved by the world.
1 John 2:15-16:
Don’t love the world, neither the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the Father’s love isn’t in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, isn’t the Father’s, but is the world’s.
James 4:4:
You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Mark 7:6-7:
He answered them, ”Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ’This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”
The Bible speaks of this also in 2 Timothy 4:1-5 and instructs us on how we should respond:
I command you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing and his Kingdom: preach the word; be urgent in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with all patience and teaching. For the time will come when they will not listen to the sound doctrine, but, having itching ears, will heap up for themselves teachers after their own lusts; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn aside to fables. But you be sober in all things, suffer hardship, do the work of an evangelist, and fulfill your ministry.
The Bible warns us of people who will surround themselves with teachers after their own lusts; religious leaders who will tell people what they want to hear. But The Bible instructs us to stay firm in the truth of God’s word even if it means suffering hardship.
Jesus said in John 15:17-22:
I command these things to you, that you may love one another. If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, since I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ’A servant is not greater than his lord.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do to you for my name’s sake, because they don’t know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.
We are to share the truth of God’s word specifically because it is uncomfortable for people. The world and the false teachers in our churches are telling people that their sins don’t exist or don’t matter. They are deluding people with a false sense of security. Jesus said that he spoke the things he did so that people would know about their sins; so that they would have no excuse; so that they could not plead ignorance.
The Bible tells of the sad state of those who are perishing in 2 Corinthians 4:4:
in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them.
Today’s political correctness is one of the tools by which the god of this world, Satan, is blinding the minds of unbelievers. It leads us to believe that there is no right or wrong. It drives us to follow religious teachers who are acceptable to a sinful world. It presses us to self-censor our words to others, putting their souls at risk; and self-censor our own thoughts, the truth that God gives us through his word, putting our own souls at risk.
This is why it is so important for Christians to read The Bible every single day. We need the word of God and the truth of his Holy Spirit to counter the false teachings and theology of the sinful world we live in. Everyday we are worn down by lies meant to deceive us into unbelief one small compromise at a time. We are encouraged to build our own god, our own idols to worship. Before we know it, our faith is in a god that may take the name, ”Christianity” but in practice, in actions, in truth, it is apostasy.
It is a road, paved with good intentions, leading straight to damnation…for our society, for the people we know and love, and for ourselves if we care more about being loved by the world than serving God.
The only weapon we have to fight this battle is the truth of God’s word and the power of his Holy Spirit inside of us. We must read God’s word every day. We must ask him every day to fill us with his Spirit so that we are strong in our faith, not relying on our own strength, but on the strength that he gives us. We must never be ashamed of the truth. We must counter the lies of this world, not with anger, but with the truth of God’s word and the love of Jesus. In the end, we are talking about souls who are deceived. The Devil has blinded them to the truth. They have been given over to deceiving spirits and they are walking a comfortable path to destruction.
Matthew 10:32-33:
Everyone therefore who confesses me before men, him I will also confess before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, him I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven.
