Christians in a Globalized World; Performance Based Christianity

SEE previous installments: (1) Saints in Rome. – (2) The Just Shall Live By Faith. -  (3) God’s Wrath on Rome. – (4) Moral Duplicity in Rome. – (5) Spiritual Disparity in Rome

(6) -Christians in a Globalized World; Performance Based Christianity

By Kato Mivule

Romans 3:1-18
The Roman society was a performance driven society, one in which Roman generals were rewarded for the more territories they conquered. The Roman army was trained to produce results…and at any cost, with any methods…as in the case of Titus and his conquest of Jerusalem.

If it meant burning down Jerusalem to get results, he did it. Performance was a key to the success and ultimately the fall of the Roman civilization, for when they ceased to ‘perform’, they failed.

Our current Western Civilization is driven by the same philosophy of performance and the results that are attained.

The recent Global Economic meltdown was largely based on the same philosophy, to perform and get results regardless of methods used. If it meant loading poor people with house mortgages they could not afford, to gain quick profits, they did it. If it meant dealing in Pyramid schemes on Wall Street as in the case of the Maddof Scandal, they did it – they performed and got their results.

Because we live in a performance driven society, it is very easy for Christians in general to fall prey to the vices of legalism in these days and for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, there is a tendency for humans to show spiritual performance in religious circles all across the globe, and with a demand from those portraying piousness to be rewarded. This is what the Pharisees did and were rebuked sharply by Jesus Christ.

Yet the tendency to show off spiritually has captured many in the church in various ways, let it be from giving, to church attendance every Sunday. These spiritual performances are the standards we use to judge if one is truly a Christian or not.

However, that is how all world religions are…one has to perform some spiritual rituals so as to receive praise and get justified from the religious leaders, that they have attained a certain spiritual level. For example with the Muslim Religion, one has to visit Mecca at a certain point in their life…plus they have to adorn in some special attire.

This might sound as just affecting only the Main Stream Religious movements but what most Evangelical Christians don’t see is that Evangelicalism is fast becoming a Religion and with its own sets of rules by which Christians get justified as true Christians.

This not only has created a spiritual elite class but also a religious economy that is built around such sets of spiritual performance beliefs, that in turn support the spiritual elite class in the new religious Christian entity.

For example, a church pastor and board members will ‘beat’ their congregants with the notion that they MUST attend Sunday service or else they are not Christian. The reason for such a notion is so that the Pastor makes a good Sunday collection of tithes and offerings for his survival and also the bankers who loaned him money to construct the mega church.

The motivation of such a pastor is not to take care of the spiritual needs of his congregants, but (to him) the believers are objects, a resource for income, and a money generating entity.

The Banker and businessmen find profit in such a spiritual state of affairs inside the Church. It is one reason why Jesus Christ drove out the money changers and traders from the Temple. It is one reason why Paul and Silas were persecuted when they drove out a divination spirit from a young girl.

Money was tied to legalism in the Temple and the businessmen and spirituality merged while the spiritual elites got to protect their organization, which in turn played into the business-mens strategy.

For the continuation of such a religious entity means more business.

This might sound far fetched yet when one looks at Evangelical America today, from the Corporate Jets, Mega Church Projects, High Tech Multi Media Equipment, expensive cars, Name Brand Suits, New York Best Sellers, Evangelicalism in Wal-Mart, etc…religion sells.

It has become a multimillion dollar enterprise. Spiritual performance is in the interest of both the Religious Elite and the clever business community…

When the money is taken out of the equation, the whole structure crumbles…

Could we say that the current Global Economic Crisis is being used by God to judge such structures?

I remember speaking to one Pastor in Uganda, Africa who told me that “what the church needs to preach the gospel is money”…he told me that if I continued preaching against the prosperity gospel, there was no way they would preach the gospel to the rich…his main care was how to reach out to the rich in his community…the foundation of his Church and preaching is money… If there is no money, he cannot be a witness of Jesus Christ. Yet Sound Doctrine and a Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ are not imperative.

Such money driven attitudes and perspectives can be found all over the globe among Born Again Christian Leaders and thus a fuel for legalism among churches.

Personal Spiritual Performance…

However, even far more dangerous than the money related religious legalism is the personal spiritual performance in which we tend to judge others based on our spirituality, that the religious leaders of our day cement as justified.

This is something that we all have to watch out for. It is easy to slip into personal legalism and then project that to others as a standard of gauging their spiritual state.

If The Lord has gifted you in fasting, prayer, giving, caring for the poor, evangelism, bible study, Bible prophecy, etc, it is easy to turn such spiritual activities into a routine and then self inflict ourselves with legalism and condemn our selves when we perform less: worse is to project that to others and see them as ‘less Christian’ because they did not meet our set standards.

When such attitudes and perspectives go unchecked, we then feed into the larger legalistic structure set up by the religious leaders who then turn around and use it for various profits such as fame, money, control, and even some times ‘sold’ to politicians as political capital, as in the case of Western Political Evangelical Christianity.

I am not in anyway suggesting that we should not fellowship, attend church gatherings, pray, fast, give or do other spiritual deeds. However, our motivation should be that we do these things out of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and out of Love for Jesus Christ rather than trying to please ourselves and fellow man.

This is what the whole 1Corinthians chapter 13 is about…that The Love of Jesus Christ in our hearts is the driving force behind all that we do for Him and not anything less. Paul even mentions in the same chapter (1 Corinthians 13) that it would do no good to give all goods to the poor yet have no love…

How in the world could someone give all their goods to the poor and have no love? This is what I have been talking about for sometime on this website…the secular world, that secular humanists can also do good and yes many of them are doing good like giving the poor in Africa, helping out in Darfur, helping the Tsunami victims, etc…yet we Christians think that our ‘good deeds’ are what qualify us to be justified before God.

Paul made his point quite clear that without love, we would just be a sounding gong…and I must stress that we must not depend on our human conditional love but we should seek to do good deeds for Christ Jesus with the unconditional love of Jesus Christ. The Love of Jesus Christ and our personal relationship with Him is what should motivate us.

The Jews in Rome and Circumcision…

Romans 3:1-3
(1)  What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision?
(2)  Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.
(3)  For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?

Paul the apostle had numerous occasions in which he confronted Jews who placed impediments to the faith of many gentile Christians, teaching that they could not be truly saved unless they got circumcised. It is very clear that Paul addresses the hypocrisy of the Jews in Romans Chapter 2, who claimed to have the mark of circumcision yet the very same Jews never kept to the whole Law, and lived a life contrary to the God of Israel.

However, Paul acknowledges the historical status of the Jews with God of Heaven. Paul does not at any time try to claim how the Church replaced the Jews as some try to teach today. However, he points to the fact that there is no salvation for the Jews except through the Messiah – Jesus Christ.

But the fear-provoking point and lesson that Paul is teaching us here is that even though God had committed His Oracles to the Jewish peoples, and they even practiced circumcision, it was no way going to save them.

We take pride in being evangelical Christians today and take pride in our good works; we boast of preaching the gospel on the global airwaves, we take pride in being the most wealthiest Church on Earth in the West; we take pride in our care for the poor, the mega churches we have built, the corporate jets we accord our beloved pastors; we take pride in our political evangelicalism, “Christian Senators” and “Christian Presidents”.

Yet all these things cannot justify us before God.

Yes, we might be the people right now who handle God’s Word, yet that does not mean justification before God for us – quite a terrifying thought… Our Evangelical spiritual performance has become more like circumcision to the Jews… We simply have turned our spirituality into a ritual rather than having it grow from our love and personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

We measure one’s spirituality by how much they tithe, give offerings, attend Sunday service, sing in the church choir, witness on the street, style of clothing, style of worship in church, political party affiliations, how long one prays, fasting, bible study, missionary work, caring for the pastor, etc.

Yet all such things have become an outside symbol just like circumcision.

On the other hand, is yet a dangerous attitude and trend among Christians who throw off all restraint and any sense of decency and become lawless, wild, weird, and out of control.

An example can be seen in such movements like the Toronto Airport Revival and the recent Florida Todd Bentley Revival debacle in which Christians acted like animals, crawled like snakes, made sounds like lions, jested, and acted like zombies, all in the name of Revival. The result was fornication, adultery, and the main preacher divorcing his wife, forsaking his family, and fleeing with another woman.

I am not advocating such state of spiritual lawlessness, but that our obedience and walk with Jesus Christ is not a bench mark for our justification but rather we obey, serve, minister to The Lord out of our personal relationship with Him and His Love for us.

Let God be True and Every Man a Liar…

Romans 3:4-8
(4)  God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.
(5)  But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? I (speak as a man)
(6)  God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world?
(7)  For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?
(8)  And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just.

Our self justification, by our own spiritual performance, proves that we are liars. This is what Paul the apostle was pointing out to the self righteous Jews back then. To put it in simple terms, we lie and deceive ourselves and others if we think that we can use our righteousness to measure up to God’s righteousness.

We are human and God is NOT human…this is the point…

Humans are bound to fail but God does not fail. Humans are bound to make mistakes and error, God does not error and neither does God make mistakes. Therefore our works cannot measure up to the righteousness of God regardless of how spotless and blameless we think we are before men. Regardless of how far we perfect our spirituality, we fall short of the mark.

We stay as human and God remains God.

Our spiritual performance becomes a lie and makes us liars when we use spiritual performance as a yardstick to measure who is justified before God and who is not.

This is a very important issue and one that requires that we examine our motivations and hearts before The Lord. Self righteousness is an issue of the heart and one that The Lord, who sees our hearts, can observe; for we cannot lie to The Lord.

It is like the adage that when some saint told another saint that he was not a proud saint, only to later realize how prideful he had been in boasting to the other saint that he was not proud!

This might sound like we have nothing to boast about before The Lord and that our works are all in vain when it comes to attaining justification…and yes, that is what Paul was pointing out here. We cannot buy our justification before God. We are all sinners and have fallen short of the glory of God. Only Jesus Christ can justify us freely by Grace and Mercy before a Holy God.

Jews and Gentiles are all under sin…

Romans 3:9-18
(9)  What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;
(10)  As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
(11)  There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
(12)  They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
(13)  Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
(14)  Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
(15)  Their feet are swift to shed blood:
(16)  Destruction and misery are in their ways:
(17)  And the way of peace have they not known:
(18)  There is no fear of God before their eyes.

We have all sinned and are sinners… No one can stand and claim that because of the spiritual works they perform, they are justified before God.

Paul uses a characteristic here of ‘Jews’ and ‘Gentiles’. The Jews in their performance towards righteousness failed to attain justification before God and were placed in the same category as Gentiles…that both were sinners.

Today we have Christians who think that our Christian works is what justifies us before God yet we are all sinners just like the world. When we boast of good works, the secular world can boast of the same.

Today Oprah helps out the poor in Africa just like Rick Warren and the purpose driven movement does. Secular Humanists raise millions of dollars to help global catastrophe victims such as the Tsunami and Darfur projects and also Christian churches do the same. So, how can we use such ‘good works’ to claim justification before God?

Secular humanists will do their good, which in most cases can surpass that of Evangelical Christians, but they do it without the fear of God, many hate Jesus Christ…for them, one can be good and do good works without Jesus Christ.

Today, Christians are falling for the same secular humanist lie…that we can do good without the need of Jesus Christ…we have cast aside His Word, Truth, Sound Doctrine and instead made a set of rules of ‘do an don’ts’.

We have incorporated into our Christian teachings philosophies of the world on how to succeed in life, and we now measure our success based on the self help positive thinking philosophies and marketing ideologies from MBA graduates and business schools in the Western world.

This is why the Westernized Church has become a ‘den of thieves and robbers’, as clever worldly businessmen and politicians see the church as a source for financial and political gain. Some Christian leaders play along just because they love to be renowned and get into the limelight.

This is why my African Pastor friend made a statement that without money, he could not preach the gospel…he claimed that the Church NEEDS money in order to preach the gospel, a philosophy he borrowed from Western Prosperity teachers, who also borrowed it from MBA Business Schools. In such cases our measure of success is the world and we work to please the Businessmen, the rich, and elite in the world inadvertently.

Brethren, this ought not to be so, our justification can only come from Jesus Christ who shed His Blood for us, died and rose again and will come back again to save us from the wrath to come. We cannot boast, for salvation is by grace and a free gift from God.

Kato Mivule – Yesu Mulungi Ministry