“Progressive” Uncertainty

Today’s  “progressive” emerging churches have little love for the old facts and certainties that have grounded genuine Christianity in God’s revealed truth for almost 2000 years. Those precious guidelines don’t fit the new dialectic or collective ways of thinking. Nor do they seem as exciting to today's sensuality-seeking, entertainment-driven generation as the “fresh, new truths” of our times.

It's not surprising that the old emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord is being replaced with a more unified emphasis on one’s relationship to the "collective" -- "the greater whole" -- such as the "emerging" or "post-modern church" which reaches far beyond the boundaries of the old biblical “box.”

Many of today’s churches simply ignore the reality of a sovereign, all-powerful Savior and King. Such power and authority simply doesn't fit our times. Today, most so-called "Christians" are happy to trade His eternal Word for ever-changing truths that match the permissive god of the subjective imagination. “We’re on a journey,” they say, “So nothing can be set in stone.” Always changing, always transforming!

In other words, the old eternal "absolutes" are fading away. Consequently, the "group consensus" is now based on feelings and experience! The mind and imagination determines what is true! Popular consensus will either discard God’s Word or adapt it to fit man-made values. But when people discard absolute Truth (the essential guidelines in God's Word), they majority will simply flow with the currents of our ever-changing culture.

Without God's guidelines, few are able to filter the flood of conflicting suggestions nor resist popular deceptions. Any new information that captures the public imagination becomes acceptable, normal and real—no matter how dubious its source. As a result, Bible-based discernment fades, and the result is likely to a spiritual compromise -- a rising  interspiritual, universalist “religion” where the need for a personal Savior is forgotten. Left standing in the wake of this deception will be our children. If they are not prepared and equipped to follow God and take a stand, they may yield their hearts to this process with little or no resistance.

Many pastors, teachers, and popular "Christian" leaders have written books that promote such rebellion against God and His Word. For example, popular author and pastor Brian McLaren has openly rejected, even mocked, the major tenets of the Christian faith. In a 2006 radio interview, he told listeners that the doctrine of Hell is “false advertising for God.”⁴⁰ To him, the Cross is virtually irrelevant.