Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Bridging the Gap between Good and Evil

The serpent's temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden, that we can be like God, remains with mankind to this very day. It is important to understand that Satan is not simply trying to draw people to the dark side of a good versus evil conflict. Actually, he is trying to eradicate the gap between himself and God, between good and evil, altogether.
When those in the emerging church try to persuade people that we need to bridge the gap between Christians (or Christ-followers as they put it) and non-Christians, they aren't really talking about reaching out to the unsaved in order to share the Gospel with them. They are talking about coming to a consensus, a common ground. Leonard Sweet explains:
“ The key to navigating postmodernity's choppy,
crazy waters is not to seek some balance or ‘safe
middle ground,’ but to ride the waves and bridge the
opposites, especially where they converge in
reconciliation and illumination.”
It takes a little thinking to figure out what Sweet is saying by this statement, but when he talks about bridging the opposites, he's referring to a chasm that exists between good and evil. This tension between the two is called dualism, and at the heart of occultism is the effort to eradicate it. If that gap could truly be closed, then Satan and God would be equal. The Bible clearly states this will never happen.
This misguided effort to unite all things, to give people the option of maintaining their own religious practices, suggesting they do not have to call themselves Christians is a spiritually slippery slope and an undoing of the Christian faith.
Chris Carmichael speaks the truth in his Mission Statement at Christian Unplugged when he says:
It is our belief, therefore, that professing Christians must “unplug” themselves from these postmodern influences of relativism, pluralism and ecumenism, and return to the biblical model of faith. We advocate a return to spiritual discernment that only comes by God's grace through a thorough interaction with the Truth of God's Word. We must study, reflect upon, and understand the theology it represents and the doctrines it teaches; and we should ground this noble pursuit on the confession that God, through His divine power, 'has granted to us EVERYTHING pertaining to LIFE and GODLINESS, through the true knowledge' of Christ” (2 Peter 1:3).
(http://www.christianunplugged.com/mission.htm, caps in original)
Roger Oakland, Understand the Times
(http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/spirituality/lighthousetrails/08/8-bridging.htm )

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