Masochistic Christianity at Its Finest

It's bad for you to pursue you own self-interest, happiness or prosperity. It's also wrongheaded to use biblical teaching for self-improvement by applying God's teachings to your life. If you not completely and utterly focusing on God and other people--with no regard to your own well being--then you being practicing "meology". God is the only one who's allowed to be selfish, not you. Your happiness doesn't matter to him when fulfilling His plans on earth. God very likely wants you to suffer and die to expand His kingdom on earth (a fate he's inflicted on millions throughout biblical history), and if you don't want to do so, then you're practicing "meology". Futhermore, the absolute greatest calling for a Christian is . . . to make other Christians. So focus all your time, energy and money on evangelizing the world. If you don't feel called to evangelize the world, and instead choose to live your selfish modern American life trying to improve yourself and your immediate sphere of influence, then you're practicing "meology".

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I hate engaging in doctrinal disputes, especially criticizing ministers who probably have alot more biblical knowledge (and alot fewer vices) than I do. Nor do I doubt that some have grown from this seminar, and interpret it's teachings in a way which is enlightening and beneficial. But I feel especially motivated to say something about the mixed messages these guys are sending to the rest of the Body of Christ.

It also seems somewhat urgent. Over the past month, I visited a church where Bob Sjogren spoke one part of the seminar. I left angrily halfway through it. I don't want to talk much about my personal life, but with what I and my wife had been through in the past few months, the last thing I needed was some preacher glibly telling me sometimes, God intends for you to suffer, fail and die. Two weeks later, I visited another church . . . where I heard Sjogren speak on the next part of the seminar.

The flaws in Cat and Dog Theology are evident to any honest, intelligent Christian with any grounding in philosophy:

The false dilemma presented between serving our own best interests and serving God's best interests. They're the same thing! It's proper to criticize "solipsism", the overt or latent belief that you are the only person who matters in the universe. But it's reckless to package deal this vice with pursuing your enlightened self-interest, that which is best for yourself. What's wrong with reading John 3:16 with a personal focus? Certainly God was focusing on us when he sacrificed his son. How does a human "serve God", the omnipotent being who can do or make everything He wants? Only by making ourselves the best humans possible, and living up to the fullness of the potential he has created in us. To criticize people who pursue their own good, and succeed in obtaining it, smacks of the vice even worse than selfishness--envy.

Kantian altruism which considers a deed to be moral only if others benefit from it, and complete separates morality from the interests of the person who is expected to be moral. Scripture makes very clear that following God's law will make us blessed (Deut: 28-1-14), and that the those blessings are imputed on us through Jesus' sacrifice. Granted, at times Christians are called to make material sacrifice, even the ultimate material sacrifice of their own physical-biological life. But that act is not so much a "sacrifice" as an investment, the profit of which is blessings in heaven, and the satisfaction we derive from seeing God glorified on earth.

A hyper-Calvinism which imputes all suffering to God's malevolence and dismisses the influence of human will, action or immorality. "The Israelites were enslaved in Egypt for nine generations because God willed it", not because of the unrighteousness of the Egyptians or the Israelites. "Stephen, Peter, Paul, etc. were persecuted, tortured and martyred because that the way God wanted it." Never mind the Pharisees, Greeks and Romans who actually stoned, tortured, and persecuted them. The debate between pre-destination and free-will is a complex one, but human will and morality must count, on some level, for our suffering. Why else would God give us moral commands, and impute blessings and cursings on us by whether we follow them or not?

Masochistic Christianity. Regarding this, I did a person study of the New Testament: When is suffering considered a good thing? There are several words in Greek which translate to "suffer" but better translate as "patience and steadfastness", e.g. "suffer the little children". The word which we would recognize in our language as "suffer" is the Greek verb pascho, where we get the word "passion", i.e. "Passion play" or "Passion of the Christ". The only time this word for "suffer" is used in the New Testament is in reference to persecution and martyrdom, i.e. Jesus' Crucifixion or the persecution of the saints, suffering at the hands of unbelievers. Suffering is not something that a righteous God does to believers, but the reaction of an unrighteous world to people witnessing to them. The doctrine that God want us to suffer, purely for suffering's sake, is a throwback to the worse doctrinal errors of Medieval Catholicism.

Over-emphasis on evangelism. Not everyone is called to directly evangelize the world, but some are called to lead quiet, stationary and/or productive lives, and be a witness to God's glory in that manner. Along with The Great Commission is The Cultural Mandate in Gen 1:26-28 to work, to cultivate and develop the earth God has created. Can not the building of a house, or highway, or city upon the earth God gave us--using the physical laws and principles God put in place in the universe--be just as much a witness to the glory of God as singing a hymn or preaching a sermon? Christianity is not just some MLM designed to recruit the entire world to be Jesus salesmen, but a way of life to spread God's glory in all stations of life.

It is in my enlightened self-interest to know God, to be blessed by him in every way possible, and to be the person he wants me to be. For purely selfish reasons, I want to avoid eternal hellfire at all costs. It is also in my self-interest to spread his word and truth in the ways he has gifted me to do so, since I derive satisfaction from seeing God glorified in the world. That's the way God constructed me, and all of us.