I can tell as I get ready to write this blog post that it will come out much harsher than I want it to. But perhaps it’s needed from time to time. This weekend, I attended my first Promise Keepers event. It pretty much matched my expectations for it (i.e. an extra-long “non-denominational” church service). But when the guest band was playing and I saw all the crowd jumping up and down, it just hit me.
It’s all fake.
They want you to think it’s “worship.” They want you to think the Spirit is moving.
But there was absolutely nothing there in the crowd that was not present at the Queensryche/Judas Priest concert I attended last year. About the only difference, besides style of music, was there was no one smoking pot at Promise Keepers.
The videos that they showed just screamed “marketing ploy.” The teaching almost got dangerously close to ankle-depth (but only on rare occasions–wouldn’t want to spook anyone in attendance, ya know).
And the song lyrics. The crowd really seemed to like the line about how in heaven “religion finally dies” seeing as how they screamed it out really loud each of the thirty-seven times it was repeated in the song. This immediately preceded the chorus about how they’d be “dancing with my Father God in fields of grace.” And I couldn’t help but think, “Who’s the Father? Oh wait–that’s defined by religion. What’s grace? Oh wait–that’s defined by religion. Hmmm, by self-acknowledgement, these are just labels with no meaning.”
This is nothing more than postmodernism dressed up to appear as a “move of the Spirit.” Is this what Evangelicalism has come to now? 99.4% content free?
Apparently so.
There were 400 people who came up the first night and “gave their lives to Christ.” Of course, one of my friends I attended the conference with reminded me that he had gone up to altar calls about 10 times in his life. That’s because the speakers were quite good at making you feel guilty for not going up and performing your dog and pony show. And naturally, if someone showed up we have to accept that it was genuine. No need to demonstrate the fruits of faith, no sir. That would be divisive.
If you go up then you’re automatically saved. You don’t have to change your life or anything because: “God loves you just as you are!” So why think that He’ll want to change you? (In point of fact, God does NOT love you just as you are. If anything, He loves you in spite of what you are, and He most certainly does not want you to remain where you are.)
Saying that could offend some people, and that is the only real sin left in this world. After all, everyone has basically good hearts. We have all these wonderful good intentions that tickle our toes with tingling excitement. God loves us as we are because, darn it, we deserve to be loved just as we are.
After all, it’s not our faith in Christ that matters…it’s His faith in us. God’s just sitting up there in heaven waiting for us to allow Him to be God. He’s just wishing someone would give Him permission to rule His creation. He’s just longing for acceptance and a sense of belonging. If we don’t give it to Him, why God might shed a tear or something.
Oh yeah–if you’re looking for that in the Bible, well you gotta adjust a couple of passages of Scripture. It helps if you read “The Message” instead of an actual translation, for starters. And it also helps a lot if you jump from version to version, always using the one that is closest to what you want it to say in any particular passage. Quote the NIV on one verse, KJV on another, Amplified Version on a third and suddenly you can make the Bible say pretty much anything you want it to say. You know, like how you’ll be dancing with the Father God in fields of grace. I’m pretty sure that’s in Ezekiel or something.
So don’t worry about it. Religion will finally die, ya know. It’ll finally catch up to the faith of the modern American Evangelical!
Yeah, yeah. I know. This is an “outreach” ministry. It’s not supposed to be “deep” because it’s “reaching out.” But that doesn’t explain the hundreds and thousands of people who’ve been to more than one Promise Keepers event. It doesn’t explain the fact that people don’t want to make their brain hurt so they avoid anything that might challenge their comfort zone.
I wonder how much God is really glorified by this. I have to say, as far as I can see, the answer is: “not much.”
