Consumer Christianity and Telling others about Jesus

Ok, this will be somewhat of a part 2 to my last entry "To the Non-Religious, Fed Up..." In that entry I identified a group of Christians out there who take sides with the non-religious, or those who have different religions, by arguing that we Christians should just live and let live, so to speak. We should believe in God, and that's fine, but let others believe how they want.

I may risk sounding hateful and dogmatic, and judgmental (which is not my aim), but I think this type of thinking demands a clear definition of what a Christian is, what the Christian faith entails.

There is a movement in American Christianity today that defines salvation as, "Accepting Jesus Christ into your heart so that he can save you, so that he can give you heaven, so that he can make your life meaningful and bring you closer to God." If this is in fact salvation and true Christianity, than those who say they are Christian but object to evangelism are perfectly right.

If all Jesus is, is a means that we use to better our lives, then what makes him any different from Buddhism, Islam, or any New Age beliefs? Nothing. This is a gross mutation of Biblical Christianity into a post-modern Consumer Christianity. We in America are so concerned about how WE can be happy, how WE can get this or that, how we can make OUR OWN LIVES better. Consumerism, then has infiltrated Christianity.

Consumerism says, I'll pick this or that or the other, whichever is best for me, but it doesn't mean that someone else has to also. So I will let them do their own thing. ANd this sounds like love, and this sounds like kindness, and it sounds like the peace that the non-believers argue that we Christians should practice.

But what is Biblical Christianity? It is not this man-centered consumerism where we use Jesus to make us happier. Biblical Christianity/Salvation consists of a person coming to a realization that he has sinned, that he has essentially comitted crimes against the Holy God. He sees himself, therefore, as a sinner deserving of punishment because God is Just and must punish wrong.

But, he then sees that Jesus Christ, God as man, died in order to cleanse the person of their sin, to take away the punishment. Why? To make us happy? NO! He died for us, to save us, that we, in submitting to his Lordship, in abandoning our rights, and our leadership over our own lives, would bring glory to Him. Certainly this leads to our happiness, but it is a by-product and not a prime product of salvation.

Christianity in truth, then, recognizes Jesus, not as a means to our happiness, but as the Great End of all existence. He in fact is the Lord of Reality. Therefore, Christians under his rule are obligated to obey his commands, including to "go into all the world and preach the gospel." Granted, this is often done very hatefully and ineptly. Please see my "Fed Up..." blog for a discussion on that (http://www.progressiveu.org/005919-non-religious-fed-christianity).

Furthermore, Christians then, if they are saved Biblically, must necessarily believe that others must hear the news of the Gospel. They must believe that other belief systems will not add up in the end. If one is truly a Christian but believes there are other ways, he comits a logical fallacy. A true Christian recognizes Jesus as the only Lord, not simply one of many products to choose from.

So we must define "Christian." It is one who submits to Jesus as King and Lord over their life. Is this you? Or are you a consumer Christian? Let's get to the truth of the matter.