Counterfeits

The scriptures referred to are Mark 12:38-44.

Religion is made up of 3 elements: belief, behavior and belonging. And they tend to be listed in that order because that is how they are supposed to follow one another. You believe that God and the universe work in a certain way, you act on that belief and then you find people who believe and behave in a similar way. That's the logical way they should relate to each other. But, with apologies to Aristotle, the human being is not that rational an animal. We are emotive animals. Scientists have observed that when we make decisions the emotional parts of our brain act before the rational parts do. We make choices based on gut feelings and then recruit the reasoning bits of our brain to bolster our choices with arguments, much as a lawyer takes a case and then tries to figure out how to make his client's actions sound as if they were in fact lawful. We are also social animals. Belonging to a family or tribe or group is immensely important to us. Once we identify with “our people” we follow their direction wherever it leads us and justify whatever they do. We have seen as much in the recent election, when a brothel owner who had been dead for a month was elected, apparently because people will vote for any name their party puts forth. We also see this in sports, where behavior like domestic abuse, rape, attempted murder and doping on the part of team members are routinely excused.

Similarly the primary part of religion for most people seems to be the belonging. There are a lot of people who are vague about Christian beliefs and do not feel obliged to obey the moral precepts of Christ who nevertheless identify themselves as Christians. In fact, while 75% of Americans say they are Christians less than 20% go to church at least once a week. This is like saying you're a Republican or Democrat while rarely bothering to vote or that you're a health enthusiast who hardly ever eats fruits and vegetables. Nevertheless people can and do identify as members of a group despite the fact that little objective evidence can be found to support that assertion. People who don't show any signs of being a Christian might call themselves that because they were raised in a Christian home or because they see it as a desirable identity, the way some people adopt high-sounding titles or say they are related to royalty. However they are paying tribute to Christianity in a way. Forgers counterfeit $100 bills, not $3 bills, because one is valuable and the other is not. To their credit, fake Christians are saying there is something valuable in being a Christian.

Unfortunately they discredit people who are actually trying to follow Jesus. Worse, when they claim to be Christians but contradict core beliefs and disregard his most basic moral commands they discredit Christ. As 1 John astutely observes, “If anyone says, 'I love God' and hates his brother or sister, that person is a liar. For if they don't love the brother or sister, whom they have seen, they cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” (1 John 4:20) Again Jesus said that the commandments to love God and to love our neighbor are linked and that no other commandment could trump them. He further told us to love our enemy, to love one another as he loves us and that what we do or do not do to others we do or do not do to him. The core of Christianity is love: God's love for us manifested in Jesus and our responding in love to him and to all whom he created and for whom Jesus died. So if people call themselves Christian but are not at least trying to love others, if they are hateful or even indifferent to the disadvantaged, they are using God's name in vain. Every time someone says or does something hateful in the name of Christ they are essentially committing blasphemy.

Where do they get this from? Sadly,they get it from Christian leaders who do this stuff and make it look like it's all right. In today's gospel Jesus criticizes the religious leaders of his day. The scribes copied, preserved and interpreted the law of Moses. They carried a little tool kit hanging from their girdle, consisting of an ink horn and a pen case and a small knife for cutting papyrus and making erasures. (Ezekiel 9:2; Jeremiah 8:8, 36:23) By Jesus' time the majority of scribes were also priests. They preserved not just the written law but the oral law, which Jesus said they used to invalidate specific commandments in the Torah. (Mark 7:5-13) They lectured in the Temple, supposedly free of charge. They also served in the Sanhedrin, the Jewish supreme court, as judges of the law, again free of charge. Which means that, unless they had private wealth, they also had to do something to earn a living.

Well, scribes had an important position in the religious sphere of Jewish life and some took advantage of it. They loved the respect they got in public places. They wore ostentatious robes with fringes that touched the ground. They sat in front of the ark, the cabinet that contained the scrolls of the Torah, so they could be seen by everyone in the synagogue. They loved to take center stage and give long prayers as if the sheer amount of verbiage would move God.

But worse than that, the scribes often took advantage of widows, soliciting support from women who had little economic clout in that society, and sometimes taking so much that the women lost their houses! In that they resemble today's televangelists who often attract audiences that are female, graying and poor, and they exhort them to send more money than they can afford, often with promises that they will be blessed with even more wealth. In fact, Jesus' portrait of the scribes seems to resemble that of many high-profile “Christian” leaders. I'm not saying they don't do some good with their ministries but they do love money and they love to buy themselves mansions and other luxuries. Everyone probably remembers Jim and the late Tammy Faye Bakker, who had gold bathroom fixtures and a Christian theme park. (Something Jesus evidently forgot to include in the Great Commission). Jim Bakker is now selling large buckets of instant rice, cheese and broccoli to tide his TV audience through the coming Tribulation. Then there is Creflo Dollar who dances on piles of money to bless it and who had his audience give him $300 a piece to buy him a $65 million plane. (Another oversight on Jesus' part. He meant to say, “Take no sandals or purse but don't forget your Gulfstream G360.”) Ernest Angley is being sued for actually getting a widow with dementia to sign over her life savings of $340 thousand to his megachurch. I notice his website offers 12 books on prophesy. Which is interesting because Jesus saw his kind coming a couple of millennia ago: false prophets, aka wolves in sheep's clothing. (Matthew 7:15)

There is a reason why such people get into the church. It's the same reason that some pedophiles decide to become teachers and boy scout leaders, why sadists become cops, and why serial killers become nurses: to gain easy access to their prey. And they make it harder for those who become teachers and scoutmasters and cops and nurses and clergy because they want to help people. And since people seem to confuse those who say they represent God with God himself, conmen who take the collar destroy people's faith. If someone claiming to be working on behalf of someone else betrays you, as irrational as it is, you will have trouble trusting the person they pretended to represent.

Which is why Jesus said that we need to pay attention to the other 2 parts of Christianity: beliefs and behavior. Let's take them in reverse order.

Right after warning his disciples about false prophets, he said, “By their fruit you will recognize them.” (Matthew 7:16) Conmen do not lead otherwise blameless lives. There is a reason they have learned to lie so convincingly—to cover up their bad behavior. Like, for some reason, every cult leader seems to get the revelation that they can sleep with whomever they want. Former FBI profiler Joe Navarro lists this among the top ten characteristics of dangerous cult leaders. And sure enough, David Koresh and Jim Jones and David Berg all preached, behind closed doors, a sexual ethic that benefited them and went against everything the Bible teaches. And prominent evangelists Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard and Tony Alamo all fell from grace due to sex scandals.

False prophets also are inordinately concerned with money. Jesus said you cannot serve both God and money; these guys don't see any contradiction between the two. True, churches need to raise money to pay the bills and carry out ministry. Clergy, like everyone else, are entitled to a salary they can live on. But any preacher who feels he needs the best of everything and lives like a king is hardly modeling a certain working class itinerant rabbi of Galilee. Wikipedia has a whole page of religious leaders convicted of crimes, some of which were sexual and some of which were financial fraud.

Taking advantage of people financially or sexually is not an expression of the selfless love of God in Christ we should be exemplify. A genuine Christian leader should not be manipulating or exploiting people for personal gain. In his first letter to Timothy Paul gives his protege a list of qualities he should look for in anyone being considered for the post of overseer or bishop: the person should be "above reproach, faithful to their spouse, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money." (1 Timothy 3:2-3) Paul is hardly setting the bar impossibly high. But my point is we are not left to our own devices when it comes to judging our leadership. If you are paying attention, you can tell if a leader is going off the rails. I am always amazed when people who say they are Bible believers somehow fall for leaders who outrageously violate Biblical standards that are not at all obscure. We should be like the Jews of Berea. The book of Acts says, “they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said is true.” (Acts 17:11) As 1 John says, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” (1 John 4:1) And Paul said that, at a service, “Two or three prophets should speak and the others should evaluate what is said.” (1 Corinthians 14:29) Just because someone claims he is speaking for God doesn't mean we should take him at his word. Check his word against God's Word.

The other thing false prophets do is make everything about themselves. Again former FBI profiler Joe Navarro says that what stands out about cult leaders is that they are “all pathologically narcissistic. They all have or had an over-abundant belief they were special, that they and they alone had the answers to problems, and that they had to be revered. They demanded perfect loyalty from followers, they overvalued themselves and devalued those around them, they were intolerant of criticism, and above all they did not like being questioned or challenged. And yet, in spite of these less than charming traits, they had no trouble attracting those who were willing to overlook these features.” (Read his whole article here.) Instead of being mostly concerned about himself a Christian leader should be concerned for the needs of others. As Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” (Mark 10:43-44)

A good Christian leader doesn't make himself the focus of the ministry. The focus should always be on Jesus, on who he is and what he has done and is doing for us. Which brings us to beliefs. There are tomes on the beliefs of Christianity. Some ideas resonate with various people and they tend to gravitate towards certain doctrines. And sometimes they can shift our attention from Jesus. People get mesmerized by things like the mechanics of justification or the details of the Last Days and get lost in the weeds. Even getting too obsessed with the Bible can distract us from the central person of the Bible. Some folks worship the Bible rather than God. How is that possible? Again it is a matter of not seeing the forest for the trees. They get into the minutia and the details and miss the main message entirely. If you look them up, you will notice that when Jesus and Paul and the other apostles quote the Old Testament, the words aren't exactly the same. They are quoting not the Hebrew Bible but the Septuagint, the Greek translation by Jewish scholars for the diaspora of Jews born and/or living throughout the Roman empire. That says to me the exact wording of the Bible is not as important as getting the gist right. Yes, the exact wording gives insights but if you concentrate exclusively on that you're like the person examining a note that says, “Your dead!” and being more perturbed that they misspelled “You're” than the fact that it's a threat. People who get hung up on the creation account of Genesis or the dating of the Exodus or how many times Jesus cleansed the Temple but don't realize that the whole purpose of the Bible is to convey the good news of God's love and forgiveness and grace embodied in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, are displaying the worst kind of near-sightedness. As Luther said, the Bible is like the manger that contained the Christ child. If you are more fascinated by counting the straws or critiquing the construction of the creche than the precious living person it holds, you are focusing on the wrong things.

It's all about Jesus. It is about what he reveals about God and what he is really like. It is about what he reveals about us and what is wrong with us and how we can get better. It is about what Jesus has done for us and is doing for those who let him into their lives. It is about how we should respond to this information.

Oddly enough, human beings can know the truth about something important and yet not let it change the relevant parts of their lives. You can know that eating too much and eating junk food are bad for you and yet make no changes in your diet. You can know that not getting enough sleep or enough exercise are bad for you but continue your sedentary, sleep-deprived life. And there are people who know that there is something wrong with them spiritually and morally but they don't make any effective changes in the direction they are going.

Which means they don't really believe it. If your doctor says you're going to die if you don't stop smoking and you don't make an effort to stop, it means you really don't believe him. If Jesus says that he is the way, the truth and the life and you don't disown yourself, take up your cross and follow him, it means you don't really believe him, either. If he says you need, above all else, to love God and love your neighbor as yourself, and you don't at least begin to act more loving towards others, it means you really don't believe him. If you say you are a Christian, but don't believe Jesus enough to behave as he says you should, it means Jesus is not your God but your mascot. The cross around your neck is not a symbol of God's love but only bling. And belonging to a church doesn't make you a Christian any more than taking up residence in a cookie jar makes a mouse a cookie.

If you really believe that God loves you enough to give his life for you, you should give your life to him. And you should seek out others who believe and behave the same. And you should have a burning desire to share this with others. Disciple simply means student. We are to be constantly studying Jesus and putting what we learn into practice. It isn't an academic subject; a lot of it you can only learn by doing. And it isn't a hobby that you do one hour one day a week. Following Jesus is a way of life.