Friel Judge Not

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9969612-1-9
Verlag: Burning Bush Communications
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

The church has gone to the wolves. •The blasphemously named 'Holy Ghost Bartender' encourages people to get 'drunk in the Spirit' and fall down laughing maniacally. •A megachurch youth pastor puts peanut butter in his armpits and has his youth group lick it out. •A celebrity pastor spends twenty-four hours in a bed, with his wife, on the roof of the church, in an effort to encourage his flock to have sex every day for a month. This is just the tip of the insanity iceberg known as Evangelicalism. A famine of biblical discernment has led to skinny sheep, fat goats, and a compromised Christian witness. While there are great, godly men who boldly and biblically shepherd their flocks, the majority of evangelical churches have become silly centers. The result? America the beautiful has become America the debauched. In Judge Not, Todd Friel dares to violate Evangelicalism's first commandment: thou shall not judge. Friel satirically and painfully exposes some of the rot in the underbelly of the contemporary church, and points to a solution to help rescue the church, save souls, and glorify God. Prepare to potentially be shocked, offended, and inspired to do more than just complain about the state of Evangelicalism. This book will enable you to actually do something to put an end to the chicanery that pervades far too many churches. It is time to act, before all of our children are consuming peanut butter a la armpit.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Friel, Todd

Leseproben

INTRODUCTION Have you noticed the world is going bonkers? •   Legalized marijuana. Apparently police officers in some states successfully eradicated all crime and had an abundance of free time on their hands, so they petitioned their legislators to pass a law that would create some havoc. •   Gay marriage. Bye-bye to two thousand years of cultural norms. Who knew that we had been following the beliefs of morons for two millennia? •   Trans issues. On M*A*S*H Corporal Klinger cross-dressed in order to be deemed section 8 (crazy) and kicked out of the army. Today, cross dressers are heralded as brave. •   Language. Hollywood makes a living talking like wounded pirates. Nice work, Leo; over 600 f-bombs in one movie. Impressive. •   Pornography. What used to be a teenaged boy’s dirty little secret is now a First Amendment-protected right. Since when is porn a form of speech? •   Baby burners. First Great Britain, then Oregon used aborted babies as fuel to produce electricity. Paging the bottom of the barrel. Perhaps it could be worse—Planned Parenthood could be selling aborted baby body parts for cash. Oh, wait. The list could go on and on, but then we would have to fight for ledge space on the tallest building in town in a mad rush to take our own lives. Our nation is not just on a slippery slope, America voluntarily jumped onto a toboggan and progressives shoved us down a steep and icy hill. Virtually every societal indicator points in one direction: south. •   The CDC reports there are over two million divorces per year. That is four million trashed lives. And don’t forget the kids. •   Over 40 percent of children are born to single mothers. Who needs a dad, anyway? •   According to the FBI, almost three hundred thousand girls are at risk of being exploited by the sex trade. Deplorable. •   America is the world’s leader in abortions, slaughtering over four thousand unborn children per day. We’re #1! •   The SAT Report on College and Career Readiness shows that fewer than half of all high-schoolers who take the SAT are ready for college. What happened? How did we get here? The answer is as obvious as the mullet on Joel Osteen’s head. The Root of the Problem Societal ills such as divorce, abortion, racism, violence, ignorance, and sexually transmitted diseases are not the problem; they are the fruits of a much greater crisis. A little bit of math will make that plain: •   There are slightly more than 13,000 Starbucks in America. •   There are slightly fewer than 13,000 McDonald’s in the US. •   Combined, there are 99,000 public elementary and secondary schools in the land of the free. If you tally these ubiquitous institutions, you get a whopping total of 125,000. You can’t drive for more than a few minutes anywhere in this country without seeing a weird green mermaid, golden arches, or government indoctrination center. They are everywhere. As omnipresent as these establishments are, you can’t swing a dead cat (never a bad idea) without hitting one of the 350,000 Protestant churches in the US. What’s the Point? Every culture is a product of the dominant “cult.” The single largest moral influence in America is the Protestant church. If American culture is ailing morally, it is because the Protestant church is ailing. With almost three times as many Protestant churches as Starbucks, McDonald’s, and public schools combined, our country should not be in a moral tailspin in virtually every measurable category: morality, family, national debt, abortion, race relations, out-of-wedlock births, STDs, profanity, crime, drugs, Beyonce. With 350,000 Christian outposts, our national anthem should be “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” Clearly, something is horribly wrong with the Protestant church. Need proof? •   Pastor Rodney Howard Brown gets his audiences “drunk on the Spirit,” resulting in grown men and women falling down on the floor as they laugh demonically. •   A youth pastor in Florida put peanut butter in his armpits and had the kids lick it out in an effort to get them excited about church. Not persuaded that evangelicalism is a wee bit out of control? Here are some of the fine retail products produced by evangelical Christianity: •   “Let My People Go” toilet seats •   Men’s boxer shorts with an embroidered fish symbol •   A pig nativity set •   Christian BBQ sauce (including the “flames of hell” flavor) •   The Jesus Toaster that makes toast with Jesus’ face on it •   “Looking Good for Jesus” Cosmetic Kit •   Testamint breath mints •   Ezekiel 4:9 Bread (originally used in the Bible as a bread of judgment baked over animal manure) How Did We Get Here? In an effort to make Jesus more palatable to our society’s post-modern sensitivities, some clever evangelicals emerged in the 1980s to lead a revolution called the “Church Growth Movement” or “Seeker-Sensitive Movement.” This group of well-intentioned men determined that the best way to grow our churches was to survey unbelievers and ask them, “What would church have to be like in order for you to attend?” That’s right, instead of going to the highways and byways and compelling people to come into the kingdom, we rang the doorbells of unbelievers and asked them what it would take to get them to come into a church building. What a shock—the pagans informed us they don’t want a God of righteousness, judgment, rules, or demands! They spoke, we listened. Voilà! Joel Osteen. •   Out with high church, in with hipster church. •   Out with sanctuaries, in with multipurpose facilities. •   Out with theologically robust hymns, in with mind-numbingly repetitious contemporary praise songs. •   Out with verse-by-verse preaching, in with self-help sermons. •   Out with theology, in with life-enhancement. •   Out with formal clothes, in with casual attire. •   Out with church discipline, in with church growth. •   Out with repentance, in with, “Ask Jesus into your heart.” •   Out with transcendent, in with immanent. •   Out with a God of wrath, in with Jesus the nice guy. Based on the input of heathens, we refashioned our faith to accommodate their anti-God animosity. The church became Burger King, telling the world they can have God their way. Needless to say, God is not a hamburger. Contemporary evangelical Christianity has remade God into an image that would be unrecognizable to the early Christian church. The fruit of this error is self-evident: •   Pure Life Ministries conducted a five-year study and determined that 68 percent of evangelical men view pornography regularly. No wonder we lost the marriage war; how can we proclaim purity when Christian men are busy with their own perversion? •   The same study concluded that 50 percent of evangelical pastors regularly view filth on the computer. No wonder we don’t hear many sermons on the subject. •   A LifeWay study discovered that 55 percent of evangelicals believe we must contribute something to our salvation. Note: these are Protestants, not Catholics. If you listen carefully, you can hear the Reformers spinning in their graves like a lathe. •   34 percent of professing Protestants have been divorced.1 •   Protestant Christian women account for 37 percent of America’s abortions.2 The Greatest Tragedy A toaster that makes bread with the face of “hippy Jesus” is bad enough; the real tragedy is that...