Like the Burger King Whopper, many people customize Jesus so that they can have Him their way. Nowadays the Jesus portrayed in the Bible is out! Passe! People who customize Jesus for whatever reason have no problem admitting that they do not hold to the Infallibility of Holy Writ. Out with the Bible! The customizers have sculpted a modern-day culturally relevant man of the people Jesus who is fully onboard with their social justice agenda. Their Jesus would have no problem participating in a yoga class. In fact, he’d most likely lead the class. These customizers can imagine their Jesus beginning his class with the Hindu greeting: “Namaste (the divine in me bows to the divine in you).”

The person I described is “Have Him Your Way Jesus.” There is nothing biblical about him. Progressives believe that culturally relevant Jesus would march in an LGBTQIA+++ parade. He would also participate in a Pro-abortion rally.

Even though progressive Christians are the most guilty when it comes to customizing Jesus, theological cults do it too. How is this accomplished? Principally by cleverly distorting and twisting the meaning of words. They have no qualms about changing the intended meaning of Scripture to “prove” their liberal ideology. Sadly, it’s Christians who lack spiritual maturity and discernment who are the most likely to be enticed into their trap.

For those of you who haven’t come to the realization that professing Christians who identify as progressive are actually liberals in disguise who fall in lock step behind people who lean politically left, let me help you rise above the fog. For the most part, progressive Christians reject the Bible’s teaching on pretty much everything it says. But what is most astonishing is that PC’s are not on board with what the Lord Jesus and His appointed Apostles taught in the Holy Spirit inspired scriptures. When you examine their beliefs, what you’ll discover is that the category they most closely resemble are religious pluralists. Take a look at Got Questions definition:

Religious pluralism generally refers to the belief in two or more religious worldviews as being equally valid or acceptable. More than mere tolerance, religious pluralism accepts multiple paths to God or gods as a possibility and is usually contrasted with “exclusivism,” the idea that there is only one true religion or way to know God….the idea of religious ecumenism (religions working together as one) and the recently popularized interfaith movement have led to the increased acceptance of religious pluralism in popular culture.

You can identify as a duck but if your home is a tree, it’s more than likely you’re not a duck at all, you’re a chimpanzee.

Let that sink in.

Religions Working Together As One

For the pluralist all religions are equally valid. And if all religions are equally valid, then all religions lead to God. Professing Christians who believe this falsehood, stubbornly embrace this concept despite the fact that for over 2,000 years Christianity has made it abundantly clear that the only way to God is through His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ (John 3:16). How do PC’s not know that their beliefs were spawned behind the gates of hell, that what they cling to are lies, half-truths and in some cases undiluted heresy? If they’d take the time to compare the views they hold with what Scripture says (Acts 17:11) they’d understand that what they insist is true is in fact false.

Not only do PC’s reject God’s Word they reject historic Christianity’s long-held traditions, doctrines and creeds. Out with the old, in with the new! The trouble with that way of thinking is that the new way of doing Christianity kowtows to our morally corrupt contemporary culture.

What theological liberals, which is what they are, are bound and determined to accomplish is reimagining orthodox historic biblical Christianity. Their aim is to create a New Kind of Christianity and an unscriptural Jesus that fits in with their progressive ideology. The problem is, the Jesus they’ve reimagined is a counterfeit!

The worst part of what PC’s are doing is that the supposed good news they share with the lost isn’t good at all! The false gospel they bring saves no one. Theirs is a different gospel (Gal 1:8) that doesn’t include urging sinners to repent of their sins and place their trust in Christ alone for salvation.

Continuing my thought above, when it comes to salvation, the Bible gives us no room for argument when it tells us that Jesus alone is the way, the truth, and the life. “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 16:6). Acts 4:12 declares “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

So there you have it! The biblical Gospel of Jesus Christ!

Be warned and make no mistake: In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus warns that not everyone who calls Him ‘Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of the Father. He concludes with these frightening words: “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” Jesus could not have made it clearer that mere lip service, or some abstract notion of ‘knowing Christ,’ is wholly insufficient for salvation.

Tolerance Is The Main Thing

PC’s celebrate unscriptural practices and behavior all in the name of tolerance and unity. Listen to how Don Closson sums it up:

Although disturbing, we shouldn’t be surprised. Our culture has been moving away from a biblical view of truth and toward the acknowledgment of just one moral duty or virtue, that is — tolerance. This new absolute requires that we be tolerant of every possible faith assumption and moral system except, it seems, the traditional Christian view of God and salvation. It’s not that we have new information about the life of Jesus or the reason for His death. As a society we no longer want to hear about a God who is holy and requires satisfaction when His moral order is violated. This view applies the notion ‘I’m OK, you’re OK to God.’ Maybe if we tolerate Him, even with His outdated notions of holiness, He will tolerate us in our fallenness.

Many pastors/elders in our tolerant, pragmatic, let’s all get along, live and let live houses of worship have completely dropped the ball when it comes to shepherding the flock, all for the sake of unity. A whole host of Church leaders are too cowardly to teach what the scriptures tell us about heaven and hell. Instead, they teach the myth of universalism: all paths lead to heaven. If it’s true that all paths lead to heaven, does that mean unrepentant tyrants, mass murderers, serial rapists, pedophiles, prostitutes, drug dealers and animal abusers will go to heaven? What about atheists and those who flippantly tell you that they’d rather go to hell where their friends are? Do God-haters go to heaven too?

No. Unrepentant sinners who reject Jesus Christ will not go to heaven. And if there’s one thing the Christian religion is not known for is its all-inclusiveness. The Kingdom of God is exclusive.

What irks people more than anything else about the Christian religion is the claim that the Bible alone has the only source of truth. Thus, it becomes the final authority for the Bible-believing Christian. Another thorn in the side of people who reject Christianity is hearing believers declare that the God of the Bible is the One true God and that all other gods and all other religions are counterfeit. There’s that word again.

The Apostle John said in 1John 5:12, “He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.” In other words, those who reject the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement (Jesus took the full penalty for the sins of mankind when he died on the cross), will remain permanently separated from the Father in heaven. “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:1-2). Sin separates us from a holy God. Believing in Christ reconciles us to God.

Religious Pluralism Defined

At the onset it is important to state that religious pluralism is an oxymoron. For those of you who haven’t realized this yet, diversity is not tolerant; diversity is intolerant. Moreover, pluralism is hypocritical. Consider this. Religious pluralists would have us believe that it’s possible to have a personal God (Christianity) and an impersonal God (Islam) at the same time. Please explain how that works.

Now ask yourself this: can a person “die once and after that face the judgment” (Christianity) and also be reincarnated (Hinduism)? No! These are two incompatible beliefs. Moving along…Does it make sense that Jesus Christ is the Son of God (Christianity) and a mere prophet (Islam)? Again, no! Either Jesus Christ is God incarnate and rules the universe as the Bible says, or He was just a man…who was able to convince a lot of people that He was God!

My point here is to introduce readers to the term “doublethink.” What is doublethink? According to Wikipedia, doublethink is “a process of indoctrination in which subjects are expected to simultaneously accept two conflicting beliefs as truth, often at odds with their own memory or sense of reality.”… People learn doublethink due to peer pressure and a desire to fit in. (emphasis mine)”

Basically, doublethink is self-deception. One example that comes to mind is the professing Christian who claims to believe in the Bible but will argue that Jesus is not the only way to God and believe that there are many paths to God even though Jesus declared that unless a person is born again, he/she will never enter the kingdom of God (John 3:3). Another example is the Christian who firmly denies that there is only one truth and asserts that there is no absolute truth. He/she will claim to being a Bible believing Christian, yet he/she will deny that morality is based on an absolute standard or any moral principles, rather “ethical ‘truths’ depend on variables such as the situation, culture, one’s feelings, etc.” This way of thinking is decidedly unbiblical. Anyone who believes this way is a moral relativist.

In our contemporary culture, everything society once thought of as perverted behavior is now viewed by the masses as normal and acceptable, all in the name of tolerance/diversity. And naturally Christians are expected to go with the flow. Those who refuse are ridiculed, bullied, labeled haters, bigots, homophobes, transphobes, and some who will not bow at the altar of diversity get “cancelled” for standing up for their religious beliefs. However, the Bible, which is the roadmap that shows followers of Jesus how to live their lives, says they are not to embrace the culture’s vile ways. We are called to be Christlike. Simply put holy. Not perfect — no one is perfect.

This is bound to rankle some people; however, God’s elect are not called to be hip, cool, fab or to be a trendsetter, and believers should not strive to be an influencer on social media. Keeping the goal of being Christlike in mind, consider this, if the Apostles were alive today, would they imitate pagan ways and have their faces pierced, their bodies tatted up, and sport multi-colored hair to draw attention to themselves? Would they use vile language, even take the Lord’s Name in vain to “reach the culture”? It goes without saying that the Apostles wouldn’t be striving to mirror the culture, they’d be contending for the faith, which is what they did!

Attempting to be an influencer on social media would be the furthest thing from their minds. The choices they’d make would glorify God! We know this is true of them because the Bible gives us insight into how they lived their lives. (Acts 2:42-46)

Another thing we find in Scripture is that the elect are to be a “light in this dark world.” As I said above, God’s people must strive to be holy. “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers (Romans 8:29).

Are you a light in this dark world, brothers and sisters? Or are you making decisions that will snuff out your light because it’s important to you to be liked by the world? If the latter is true of you, what you’re dealing with is what Prov 29:25 calls the fear of man.

I’ll close with some wise words from Phil Johnson:

In the name of unity what we’ve actually set up is an artificial unity where across the evangelical movement people don’t want to talk about doctrine. They don’t want to come to agreement on what Scripture teaches. They just want to set aside all disagreements and tolerate anything and everybody, and when you do that you cannot guard the flock against wolves.

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Research

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