Christianity Will Not Save You

God told Hosea to marry a whore, so right out of the gate, you know you’re not dealing with an ordinary God.

Jehovah is no God we’d create. We don’t have it in us to fashion One so complex and yet nuanced; so dramatic, yet subtle; so just, yet merciful; so holy, yet love; so endlessly creative, beautiful, inventive, and strong.

The gods humanity makes are one-dimensional, ham-handed and either distant or faulted. They’re crudely drawn and given bumbling monikers like Sun God, God of Thunder, Zeus, Gaia, or more modern versions named after dead men. We scaffold them, so they will not fall, with religious systems of rituals and rules that followers must carefully observe to avoid disfavor.

They demand tributes. They accept bribes. They are mute or dead or conjured through spells. The individual lives of humans are meaningless to the gods of our creation. They bless peoples, nations, and sects. They like large numbers, mobs, and armies. They are impressed by grand gestures like suicide bombs and slain enemies.

God, the true God, knows your name.

He knew Hosea. He knew the whore the prophet married. Gomer. He named their children. He knew the story He planned their lives to tell and it was like no other. The thread of their plotline was different than Gideon’s that varied from Rebekah and Isaac’s that was unlike Hannah’s.

But we’re foolish, we Jesus followers. Sometimes we covet other gods who are no gods. We like the checklists in their systems. We envy the promise of their rituals. We fear the numbers in their armies. So, we create a phantom faith that has the appearance of following Jesus but really it’s a system that goes by a name like any other false god called the Christian religion.

It looks like holiness, appropriates Jesus’ name, and brilliantly counterfeits the reality of God but it cannot save us.

It’s become a cliche but it’s a worthwhile truth that those who follow Jesus do not participate in a religion, we engage in a relationship with the living God. If you’re practicing a religion, return to God’s Word and seek Jesus.

God, the true God, gave us the rules of holiness to school us in our unrighteousness. That was their purpose. He knew they wouldn’t save us but He knew we wouldn’t seek salvation if we thought we were fine so He created a perfect mirror called, “The Law.” His intent was not to spiral us into endless self-reflection but to make us hungry for a beauty and perfection we can only attain in Jesus.

For too long, I fell prey to the phantom faith. I succumbed to an evangelical angst that left me skittish, like a soldier hiking miles through unmapped minefields. As soon as I nailed the big rules, someone showed me the finer points on which I failed. And then, when I made progress on those, I came to see that my inner being can devise sins not specifically listed. I was always blowing up.

This became an endless cycle of pursuit and despair until Jesus pried my fingers loose from the phantom faith, the false following, the Christianity that isn’t about Christ, and He set me free.

All the religions we create are prisons, pathways that lead in endless labyrinths until we drown in our own reflections. They do not lead to glory.

If Hosea and Gomer showed up at some churches today and told the story of how God brought them together and how Hosea always goes after Gomer because God has a story to tell with their lives, they’d be handed a brochure for a marriage workshop weekend and told to sit quietly until they work out their issues.

I’m not saying I’d grab Hosea’s hand and show him to the pulpit to preach but I’d like to think I’d listen to his story, pray, ask for discernment, and open God’s Word together to seek direction on how best to make his message known.

We like our gods to fit into neat boxes but the message, God’s message as told in His Word isn’t a tidy thing. It has an order, yes, but there is a wildness to it, like the wooly prophets crying out in the wilderness, shunned by Pharisees, screaming into the wind.

God’s story is so vast, so great, that He winds a plotline into each of our single lives and weaves us like thread into His great story – those who follow Jesus, that is. He’s not like any God we’d create. He’s not all that enthralled with numbers. He commands us to love our enemies. He poured His system, His law, His prophets, His Word into His Son, Jesus and said that we should follow Him.

Yes, we do this from inside communities called churches. Yes, we are called Christians. Yes, we are called to obey His Word as revealed in Scripture. But we must beware the phantom faith of thinking we are saved through attendance, checklists, or prescribed pathways. There is only One Way, Jesus.

A time is coming when the counterfeit will look remarkably like the real. We must train ourselves now, by studying God’s Word and by knowing His Son, in truth. Feasting on His Word, now, while it may be found will train our soul’s palate to distinguish between Christ and the phantom faith.

Our God is not like any we would create. He tells His story through prophets and whores. He rides on the clouds and cooks fish on the seashore. He weeps. He dies for sinners. He rises from death and lives forevermore.

Reject all created gods. There is One who revealed Himself to those He Created, more magnificent than our imaginations could devise. Serve Him alone, Jesus, and taste life, truth, freedom, and light.

Christianity Will Not Save You http://t.co/x1tEtMFQC6 #falseteaching #Phariseeism #OnlyJesus #amwriting #Hosea

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) July 23, 2015