Spiritual Inoculation Is Not Innocuous

We live in an age in which churches are like restaurants—one can try a different one every week and never run out. If the menu changes at your favorite, you can just hunt for another that is more like the old menu, maybe even a little further in the same direction. The problem is that the vast majority of what's out there either is not Christian at all or has just enough of the gospel for someone to be converted, but the church itself is not saturated with the knowledge of Christ, the love of Christ, the teaching of Christ, the means that Christ has appointed.

This is a spiritual travesty, for multitudes of believers become addicted to Christianity-lite as opposed to the true and biblical religion that our Lord Himself instituted. But the inoculated are not just kept immature; they are made almost immune to maturity. Then, even when leadership discovers that Christ might be more to us than we have ever known, and appointed better for us than what we have been doing, and desire more of us (the whole of us, all of the time) than we had ever imagined, little can be done for the inoculated. 

Then it becomes a question of whether you change the menu, knowing that they will eventually give up and depart for another restaurant who has something more like the old menu. Or, do you keep it lite enough that, whether intended or not, the inoculating continues. 

Well, in an age where retaining regulars... (is there really such a thing as membership anymore, when someone who is on the roll can just depart and "let the leadership know" that's what they're doing?)... retaining regulars is considered to be "following Christ" (as opposed to, you know, actually teaching what Christ teaches, and actually doing what Christ says to do)... when retaining regulars is considered to be following Christ so that we may "keep a hearing" with them or "have a chance to do them good," the conclusion is almost always to just keep the menu as close to the old as possible. 

Hopefully, in mixing metaphors we have not been mincing words. If these thoughts at all reflect present reality, we must answer the question, "When the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?" We trust that He will. He is building His church, and the gates of Hell cannot prevail against it. All His enemies must be made a footstool under His feet. But that certainly won't be happening by menu-preserving inoculations of Christianity-lite. Let those who are confident that Christ will do as He has said that He will do be those who have the confidence to do as Christ has told His church to do.