A Critical Easter

As I write this post, it is the evening of Easter Sunday, 2010. I've been reflecting today on the state of Christianity, at least,within the circles I am familiar with, and am truly amazed at how far off the mark we seem to have gotten on so many issues! I take no pleasure in being critical, but it's impossible not to be when the errors against Biblical truth are so blatant. And yet, I don't think most people even consider that their understanding of the faith is, in fact, unbiblical in many respects.

I wrote a post back in December regarding the fallacy of the incarnation and the reality of the resurrection. You can read it all here. But to revisit briefly, it is my assertion that the Church has gotten it's priorities "out of whack" with regard to holiday celebrations. We place entirely too much emphasis on Christmas, and not nearly enough on Easter! The fact is, even a brief survey of the New Testament reveals that little is said regarding Jesus' birth, but his death and resurrection are key themes throughout. In fact, if you remove the birth of Christ from the New Testament, you remove only a couple of chapters from Matthew and Luke's gospel. If you remove the resurrection from the New Testament, you will have nothing left to speak of! So, why is it that no one seems to recognize this, or call it into question?

What's worse, we say we base our faith on the the Bible, the Word of God, and yet so little of what we have come to accept as Bible truth, actually comes from the pages of the Bible itself. 

The choir at my church sang a song today which elicited a very emotional response from the congregation. It was beautiful, musically speaking, but left a lot to be desired in terms of sound doctrinal content. The chorus went something like this:

More than the crown, more than the throne,

More than the heavens, that He called home

Jesus left it all, because He loved us more.

The verses went on to proclaim, in wonderment, how Jesus left the safety of heaven to navigate the dangers of the earth; though He was already a king, He left it all behind to become a pauper,  because he loved us more. A very moving premise, leaving one with a sense of "mystery" but not one shred of Scriptural evidence to back it up! The song merely borrows from the doctrine of "incarnation" and never once mentions resurrection. How sad. How misguided. How totally off the mark of the message of Easter.

But that isn't the end of it. I wish it were the only part of the service for which I was critical. Throughout the entire sermon the pastor made reference upon reference to Jesus being God, of God coming to die, of God not wanting us to fear Him so He sent Jesus who said "If you've seen me you've seen the Father." As if Jesus literally meant that they were physically looking upon the Father when they saw him.

When one becomes aware of error it stands out like a big red zit on the end of ones nose. You just can't miss it! I don't claim to know it all; I certainly have much to learn. But what I have come to realize, beyond a shadow of doubt, is this: The Scriptures nowhere speak of Jesus leaving heaven to come to earth, they do not refer to Jesus as God with a capital "G", Jesus nowhere calls himself God, and Jesus did not raise himself from the dead! Jesus affirmed that there is only One God (John 5:44; 17:3), and that He was his God (John 20:17), and the Scriptures clearly teach that God raised Jesus from the dead (Acts 3:15; Romans 10:9).

The best part of the service was the reading of the Scriptures regarding resurrection. How disappointing that almost everything that followed seemed to disregard and/or contradict what the Scriptures said! It's time for the Church to wake up.