Enough To Go Around

 

The instant Christianity morphed into the business of religion, its reason for being was deformed, butchered, and mutilated into some grotesque apparition of what it was intended to be. Once it became a business, Christianity was no longer governed by the higher calling of saving souls but by the laws of supply and demand.

We had a product that most consumers tended to avoid, so we retooled it to make it more palatable. We did away with the requirements such as repentance, holiness, and righteousness and increased the benefits and bonuses. Finally, a new religion where you can have your cake and eat it too. And, for a limited time, if you sign up today, it not only applies to the great beyond but to this present life as well. 

Remember not so long ago when the entire world collectively decided that the three things it couldn’t do without were hand sanitizer, face diapers, and toilet tissue? The demand went through the roof, supply dwindled, and people were selling hand sanitizer on Facebook for the price of a used Hyundai.

Soon everyone got into the act because they saw the demand outpacing the supply. Companies that once made adult beverages now made hand sanitizer by the gallon, and every granny in North America suddenly became a seamstress making face diapers from their old, unused bloomers. As far as toilet tissue is concerned, well, it’s pricy starting up an entire tissue enterprise, but people were offering their services hoping to teach others what they can use around the house in lieu of Charmin’s extra soft. The one I liked most was pulling the two-ply toilet tissue you had apart and making it into one ply. That would make it last twice as long.

The point I’m trying to make this morning is that there’s enough blame to go around as to why modern-day Christianity is in the decrepit state it’s in. The supply would never have materialized if there had been no demand for watered down, lukewarm, libertine doctrine.

If every Christian demanded Biblical exegesis and Scriptural doctrine, you wouldn’t have gotten the rash of Joel Osteen wannabees, the Creflo Dollar pimpologists, and all the other jet-setting mansion dwellers who have at this point foregone fleecing the flock and are just skinning them alive.

It’s not as though we weren’t forewarned; we just chose not to heed the warnings. Paul was very explicit in his second letter to Timothy, warning that men would not endure sound doctrine and heap up teachers according to their desires. However, we turned it into a business model rather than take it as the warning it was intended to be.

Give the people what they want, and they’ll love you as you’re shepherding them toward hell. Give the people what they need, and you will be called every name under the sun, not by the godless or the heathen, but by the very people you were tasked with shepherding.

The situation may look hopeless, but there is one glimmer of hope. The other day I went to my local supermarket and noticed that they were giving away bottles of the selfsame hand sanitizer they had been charging $5 a few weeks earlier. Why? Because the demand had dried up, nobody was buying it anymore, and they were stuck with excess inventory they needed to be rid of.

The same principle can be applied to all the purveyors of humanistic, self-centered, flesh-obsessed doctrine that omits Christ, the cross, and the Bible altogether. The supply is exceeding the demand, and what’s worse, more and more people are waking up to the reality that though they may sound good and empower the flesh, the newfangled doctrines don’t work.

A sea change is on the horizon, and men will begin to search for truth anew. The one unanswered question is, when they begin to search for truth, will there be anyone left to offer it to them? Or, as Jesus put it when the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on the earth?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.