Healthy Church Life and a Description of Cultic Assemblies

Two Posts for Your Weekend Enjoyment:

Christianity is unique. It's Lord is living and it's law is love. Every other religion has dead founders and the law is usually human effort.

This weekend's post puts a comparison between Spirit filled churches and destructive cultic religions.


Post ONE -------------------------------

Excerpt from "Healthy Assembly Life" by
Jon Zens


After being a Christian for fifteen years, around 1980 I began to struggle with a problem that occurs with tragic frequency in Bible-believing circles. I saw church split after church split. I saw brethren biting and devouring one another. I thought in my heart, “How can the New Testament, which puts so much emphasis on love and unity, become the source for so much division and strife?” Somewhere in the midst of my personal turmoil, the Lord brought me to the two-fold perspective of Paul in Romans 15. It does not, of course, bring an immediate resolution to every possible scenario we will face. However, I strongly believe that to the degree that we can practice this two-fold dimension of assembly life, we will go a long way toward avoiding the ugliness that, unfortunately, has come to mark much that bears the name Christian.


In the context Paul has dealt with the sticky reality that the early church had to face early on – Jews and Gentiles were brought together as a new man, and they were meeting together in the same homes. Paul, of course, did not opt for the easy thing to do, namely, have Jewish believers meet in one place, and the Gentile believers meet somewhere else. The only consistent outworking of the Gospel was for the two radically different ethnic groups to meet together because Jesus on the cross brought the two together, thereby making peace (Ep 2:12-18). This was a volatile situation, and Paul faces it head-on in Romans 14-15.


So after dealing with how Jewish and Gentile saints should show love to one another in areas like foods, drinks and days, Paul comes to the conclusion of the matter in Romans 15:7 – “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” Then in verse 14 we discover the flip side of this exhortation to accept each other – “I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another.” In these two verses a tension is revealed that we must all wrestle with: how can we pursue truth together without destroying our fellowship, and how can we pursue fellowship together without avoiding Christ’s truth?


Churches tend to illustrate the pendulum swing – they either pursue truth in an atmosphere without love and caring (which results in witch-hunts), or they emphasize acceptance and love with little interest in Christ’s revealed will (which results in gushy sentimentality). Why do we sever what God has joined together? Why can’t we cultivate and encourage an atmosphere of acceptance in which we will learn to speak the truth to one another in love? Our tendency is to reject other Christians who disagree with our understanding of Scripture in what we regard as crucial issues. Or, there is the tendency to so underscore acceptance that there is no concern for revealed truth. To fully accept one another in the bonds of the Gospel and to instruct one another in an atmosphere of acceptance is a tension we must face and work out.


Growth, according to Paul, can occur only when we speak the truth to one another in love (Ep 4:15 ; Jn 17:17 ). Elliot Johnson rightly observes, “In a sense, Evangelicals have lived with an interpretational truce. While we agree on doctrinal ‘essentials’ we have also agreed to not talk very seriously about issues of disagreement. Yet Paul charted God’s strategy for Christian growth [in Ep 4:12 -13]. In order to reach unity we need some way to talk about our different interpretations and to evaluate these differences” (“Author’s Intention & Biblical Interpretation,” Position Paper given in Chicago at the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, 1982, pp. 1-2).


The problem in most configurations of believers is that the very rationale for the group’s existence rules out the possibility of certain truths being discussed. The truth is already defined in terms of some predetermined boundaries. I suggest that this kind of behavior is childish and makes a mockery of the Holy Spirit and the Gospel. When we face new issues from the Word are we willing to work together, study together, pray together and even fast together in order to seek the Lord’s mind and come to greater agreement? Most of us are ready to separate from other brethren at the drop of a hat. But it takes a commitment to the truth and to our Christian brothers and sisters to be willing to work matters out.


End POST ONE ---------------------------


POST TWO--------------------------------

Extract from Characteristics of a Cult.

Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.

Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.

All The Answers - Provide simple answers to the confusion they, themselves, create.
Support these answers with material produced or “approved” by the group.

Attack Independent Thought - Critical thinking is discouraged as prideful and sinful, blind acceptance encouraged.

Motive Questioning- When sound evidence against the group is presented, members are taught to question the motivation of the presenter. The verifiable (sound documentation) is ignored because of doubts over the unverifiable (presenter’s motives).

Information Control - Group controls what convert may read or hear. They discourage (forbid) contact with ex-members or anything critical of the group. May say it is the same as pornography making it not only sinful and dangerous but shameful as well. Ex-members become feared and avoidance of them becomes a “survival issue.”

Coercion - Disobedience, including even minor disagreement with group doctrine, may result in expulsion and shunning.

Phobias - The idea is planted that anyone who leaves goes into a life of depravity and sin, loses their sanity, dies, or will have children die, etc. Constant rumors of bad things happening to people who leave. No one ever leaves for “legitimate reasons.”

No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.

Whenever the group/leader is criticized or questioned it is characterized as “persecution”.

Anything the group/leader does can be justified no matter how harsh or harmful.


End POST TWO-------------------------


The difference is clear, right? May God keep us from characteristics of a cult and develop in us strong desire to speak the truth in love.