The Problem with Today’s Churches!

This article is culmination of massive period of soul-searching I have been performing recently. It comes not as an insult to the “bible-believing fundamentalists” – on the contrary, I clearly am doing it from the very depths of my heart with good intentions. This article is an article about sin. What kind of sin is it, one may ask? Those who are familiar with the fundamentalist branches of Evangelical faith would have probably selected one. For them, sins are simple; drinking, dancing, whoring, etc. etc. Yet this article is an attempt to touch upon a sin far less visible, but premanating a massive amount of “biblical” churches today. I am talking about idolatry – idolatry in form of man worship.

Today, we have reached a situation where position of pastor had evolved into a position of a ruler; not just the leader of a church, but ruler of the church. Pastor’s authority had been increased beyond any kind of scriptural permission or justification, enlarged to justify endless counts of abuse, racketeering and lust for power over members of the church. Congregation is ordered to submit itself to pastor and obey his wishes without any kind of question or disagreement, which is instantly silenced even if it concerns matters which ought to be Biblically discussed.

Even worse, outside – church preachers are elevated to position akin to Roman Catholic saints, often serving as a justification for pastor’s claim to power. Their names are used as attempts to justify existence of certain doctrines. Ironically, both liberal and conservative Christians will perpetuate this practice; a conservative Chrisitian will support the unbiblical ban on alcohol because his forefathers believed so; while a liberal Christian will say that there is no issue with magic in stories because C.S. Lewis did it in Narnia. Both of those examples demonstrate that regardless of theological stance, we are today betraying the reformation’s original idea – sola sciruptura.

This does not mean that there are no “great men of God”. On the contrary, the pages of Bible are filled with them. We know acts of the apostles, who managed to convert entire cities to Jesus’s amazing gospel. Those men were all, however, deeply flawed. If only few kings of Judah could use absolute power for the Lord’s glory – then the same danger applies to our pastors.

Without recognition of Biblical knowledge of man’s nature, we risk finding ourselves under a yoke of modern day pharisees, who are just waiting for that so they could exploit religion for power. The best evidence for this claim is recent rise of feudal church networks, with New IFB headed by Steven Anderson being the best example. And if people complain about outright blasphemy that New IFB is preaching, one has to remember that it had been a product of long term issues within IFB churches themselves.

Judgment begins at the house of God. There is no chance that anything can be done with modern society’s wickedness if churches will look like that.