Excessive Confidence.

"...a disease shared by the Christian religion.. ..excessive confidence." - Brian McLaren 'Everything Must Change'

At first read I gave a slight 'hm..' and kept on. But then I came back and read it again. Lightbulb moment. And as my mind went through the process of taking the words on the page and applying them to tangible events in history, it was like playing connect the dots. Accept every time I connected a dot I just shook my head in disgust.

Throughout history kings, dictators, presidents, white supremists, and those who have held power and privilege have wrongly used faith as justification to push their own personal agendas. They’ve perverting scripture and Jesus to defend their own rationale or to protect the status quo. And what's scary is what they practiced and preached was not only tolerated by those that followed, but accepted and adopted as truth. And what’s even scarier is the level of certainty in which they carried it out.

Hitler viewed Jesus as a 'fighter' and that his greatest moment was when he was a fighter and not a sufferer. He also viewed the eradication of the Jews as 'fighting for the work of the Lord'. Scary..

White supremists held the stance that Africans were descendants from Cain, and that the mark that God left on Cain (Genesis 4:15) was ‘black skin’. In Genesis 9:25-27 Noah curses his son Ham (father of Canaan) and states that he will be a slave to his brothers. Thus giving them Biblical justification for their racism and enslavement of Africans. Real Scary..

Some broad instances include the crusades, the holocaust, witch trials, slavery, and abortion clinic bombings to name a few.

Philippians 3 talks about how our confidence should be in Christ and not in our own flesh, and it preludes with a stern warning to ‘watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh.’ The same ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ that Jesus warns us about (Matthew 7:15).

My point is to not be a downer or a pessimist but I think the confidence that we are supposed to have in Christ needs to be revisited. The message and teachings of Jesus need to be revisited. We need to look at God’s word with a fresh perspective. We need to look to Christ alone for direction and strength.

We need the pray for wisdom and the ability to discern what we hear and read from others, and not just agree with it. We need to approach podcasts we listen to, books we read, opinions of others, politicians we like, etc with skepticism. Not to be postmodern, or to be an elitist, or to be one that cannot trust anyone or anything, but rather someone who can guard themselves against those wolves in sheep’s clothing that Jesus warns us about. And take what we hear and read and hold it up to scripture and prayer to determine its validity.

Our confidence should come from Christ alone, and not in our, or anybody else's, opinions/interpretations.