Equip: Progressivism

Chuck Musselwhite

Equip Dinner • Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago

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Intro: Equipping

Verse for 2022 is Matt 24:13

Matthew 24:13 ESV

But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

Our job as a church is to equip the Saints

Ephesians 4:12 ESV

to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,

The culture has changed dramatically in the last 5 years

While the answer remains the same the questions have changed

Issues like progressivism, Critical race theory, Gender Ideology, and others have taken over the landscape

Christians are getting bombarded with claims and questions that didn’t exist 5 years ago

We want to equip you with an understanding of the topic and give you ways to address it

Same kind of different

Imagine having a conversation with a coworker or classmate and you both discover you are Christians

This makes your heart leap because of having likeminded people

You start to have conversations during breaks

You ask where each goes to church, how long they have attended

As the days pass by you start to notice some differences

At first you don’t pay attention because everyone is different

Then as you talk about what your churches are doing you realize there is something wrong

When they talk about their church they talk about inclusivity, righting the social wrongs, and blessing services on things that shouldn’t be blessed

There is never talk about reaching people for Jesus or discipleship

You bridge the subject by bringing up a scripture in the Bible and they say “The Bible isn’t all true, it’s God’s ideas through man’s mistakes.”

They go on saying that the god they believe in would never send their son to die for others because that would be divine child abuse

They believe Jesus was a rebellion leader against oppression from Rome and he died a martyrs death and wasn’t resurrected

It’s at that moment you realize you aren’t anything alike

How do you talk with these people?

What do you say when they bring up these claims?

I want to address some of the major issues with progressive Christianity and give you evidence to back up your beliefs

What is Progressivism?

Progressive Christianity is making inroads to the evangelical church

It started taking over Mainline churches in the early 1900’s and completed the takeover in the 1990’s

Now we are starting to see it infiltrate typical conservative churches

What is progressive christianity?

They Don’t Want to Be Defined

What you need to understand is that they don’t want to be defined because that’s what they rail against the traditionalist churches and they want to evolve with the culture

Comes from the idea “To make progress”

Its a thinking of building and moving on from old ways

Ascend to a Higher Learning

Most progressives hold to the idea that they have ascended to a Higher learning and thinking and only the enlightened have realized it

Christian Infancy

You wouldn’t expect a brand-new baby to know everything when he is full-grown.

Why would we expect people of a newborn religion to have the same understanding they would have two thousand years later?

Know more than first century Christians because of better understanding of God's Word and lived experience

They don’t take into account eye-witness accounts and the move of the Holy Spirit

3 Progressive terms

Lived Experience:

Personal knowledge about the world gained through direct, first-hand involvement in everyday events rather than through representations constructed by other people.

I was abused in a church

I don’t agree with all of the Bible because I have a loved one who is gay and they are a good person and no god I believe in would send them to hell

The church needs to do more for the poor, destitute, and homeless

Deconstruction

Tearing down of one’s faith and beliefs

Immanuel Kant

The problem with deconstruction is that it gives you the satisfaction of tearing down all things you don’t like but leaves you with the feeling of hopelessness because nothing is left standing

Example: Demo day on HGTV

Social Justice:

Justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.

Starts with building wells for tribes in Africa and feeding the homeless in major cities

Turns to activism on issues like gender, race, and

History (Nothing New Under the Sun)

Agnostics

Gnosis means knowledge

Jesus didn’t come to die for our sins but to impart special knowledge

The only real sin is ignorance

Progressives believe the same thing

This is why they treat you like you are stupid when you disagree with them, because they have a higher knowledge

Anti-Supernaturalism

The Enlightenment dominated the 17th & 18th Century

Science and Reason ruled thought

This affected the field of theology because some prominent German theologians began to deny the supernatural acts by Jesus

This was mainly directed at the resurrection but applied to his miracles

Their reasoning was that Science proved and denied the possibility of miracles

These “myths” helped early believers to keep the faith

They started to emphasize Jesus’ moral teachings

Liberalism

In 1920 these theologians came to America and caused a split in churches

Liberalism was born because they wanted to focus on doing good deeds and taking care of the oppressed

Note: This was the same time that socialism and marxism of places like Germany and Russia were taking hold

Those are atheistic beliefs and Christians tried to mold the two together

They denied the inerrancy of Scripture

Social Justice vs. Fundamentalism

In the 1940’s & 1950’s there was a major pushback and it created the fundamentalist churches

These churches held to infallibility of the Bible

Emergent Church

Liberal and fundamental churches stayed apart until the early 2000’s

The Emergent church appeared

Wanting to be relevant with the culture it started to deconstruct everything about the church

It became more about community than congregations, feelings over truth

The emergent church was enveloped into the liberal church and became the progressive church

Three Areas of Difference:

Bible

Christians believe that the Bible is the inspired, infallible, inerrant word of God

2 Timothy 3:16–17 ESV

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

We believe that the Bible was given to men by God and that it is the same today as was back then. There are no errors

Progressives believe that the Bible is an ancient document of what Jews and Christians believed about God

You have to look real hard to find the word of God in it

It’s up to you to decide what parts work for you

They also claim that there thousands of errors and we don’t have the original documents

Textual Criticism

This is the discipline that helps us verify and determine ancient documents like the Odyssey, Plato, and the Bible

Copying the early letters

Earliest is a fragment of John

Size of a credit card and dates 50-100 from original

The NT has more copies and earlier copies than any ancient classical literature

The NT has been copied with an astounding degree of accuracy

Cross

The progressives view of the cross is that Jesus was killed by an angry mob for speaking truth to power

God didn’t need his sacrifice, but submitted to it to set an example of forgiveness for us to follow

God didn’t require blood, humans did

Progressive Christians will refer to Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross as horrific or unnecessary.

The idea that God the Father would require the blood sacrifice of his Son is perceived to be an indictment on God’s character, turning him into a divine abuser.

This is sometimes referred to as “Cosmic Child Abuse.”

1 Corinthians 15:3–4 ESV

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,

Isaiah 53:10 ESV

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

Gospel

They don’t think that we need someone to come and save us because we are all born good.

The doctrine of Original Sin is roundly rejected in progressive Christianity, with the idea of Original Blessing put in its place.

Progressive Christians don’t typically deny that sin exists or that it is a bad thing.

But they often deny the idea that we have some sort of a sin nature that was passed down to us from Adam and Eve.

Instead, progressive Christians often teach that sin isn’t what separates us from God, but our own self-imposed shame.

In the progressive view, it’s often taught that we simply need to realize that we were never separated in the first place…that we are beloved and accepted by God just as we are.

You probably won’t find many progressive Christians who outright declare that Jesus was a sinner.

However, Jesus’ humanity tends to be emphasized.

Important Points

Feelings over Truth

They emphasize feelings over truth

Feelings are safer because they can change

Truth is painful, thus full of hurt and hate because it means we have to conform to the truth

Jeremiah 17:9 ESV

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Pluralism

Religious pluralism is the idea that all roads lead to God, and no one religion holds ultimate truth when it comes to who God is and how he reveals himself to the world.

John 14:6 ESV

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Often, progressive Christians will tout the mantra, “Everyone has a seat at the table,” meaning all creeds and religions are true in their own way and the people who embrace them are equally accepted by God.