Part 10 of this book is a trumpet warning concerning the consequences of poor music choices, one of which is the rejection of God’s character. The content of most worship songs, as described by songwriter Keith Getty, is now driven by commercialism rather than by spiritual leaders. There is a natural falling away from a balanced teaching of Scripture, he says. Tough topics, such as judgement, are not touched on. Consequently, we have become used to a different flavoured God and, when we pick up the Bible and read parts of it that are unfamiliar to us, it can taste bland and foreign and even bitter and harsh. We feel we have to make excuses for God’s behaviour, especially in the Old Testament. Instead of associating divine law with beauty, we associate it with legalism. Instead of connecting God’s judgement with justice, we connect it with maleficence. We turn Bible stories into allegories to make them more palatable. Sexual promiscuity transitions from an abomination to tolerated, welcomed and even celebrated in the church. Anything in God’s Word that clashes with our sentiments has to be challenged and adjusted for fear of chasing people out of the church or offending people. Like the little horn of Daniel, we attempt to change God’s law (Dan 7:25) to make it easier for people to accept God.

Andy Stanley, son of evangelist Charles F. Stanley, is an influential speaker, author of more than 20 books and the founder and senior pastor of North Point Ministries, a so-called non-denominational evangelical Christian church. Andy said he would like Christians, including pastors and teachers everywhere, to adopt his method to try to “make it easier and easier and easier” for people to embrace Faith. This includes avoiding things that make the church unnecessarily resistible. They have embraced new styles of worship, teaching, communication, children’s ministry and architecture to make the setting more appealing and easier for people.⁵¹³

This is not a new concept. According to Eusebius, as described by John Henry Newman, the 19^th century Catholic theologian and historian:

“Constantine, in order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred into it the outward ornaments to which they had been accustomed in their own.”

He lists examples of the pagan ornaments brought into the church in the 4^th century, including:

“…branches of trees; incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness; holy water; asylums; holydays and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields; sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison.”

These are all of pagan origin and sanctified by their adoption into the Church, he says.^{514 (p373)} By adopting pagan ornaments and rituals, the Catholic church leaders made it easier and easier for pagans to join the church.

General Booth also embraced new styles of worship, teaching and communication to make it easier for people to be saved. He could not accept that salvation was difficult. When given the opportunity to enter college and become a Congregational minister, he declined over doctrine: “I would sooner starve than preach such doctrine, one special feature of which was that only a select few could be saved.”^{57 (p31)} George Scott Railton, the first Commissioner of The Salvation Army, argued that the compulsion of people to reject God is strong. He reasoned that the methods Christians had been using throughout the ages up to that point had not been strong enough to overcome that compulsion to reject God; hence, many souls were in danger of hell. Therefore, he proposed, Christians should make it easier for people to accept God:

“To check and overcome that very palpable compulsion on the wrong side, the most desperate action of God’s servants in all ages has never been found strong enough. Hence there has come about another sort of compulsion, within the souls of all God’s messengers. It could not but be more agreeable to flesh and blood if the minds of men could more easily be induced to turn from the things that are seen to those which are invisible. But this has never yet been the case. Hence all who really hear God’s voice cannot but become alarmed as to the manifest danger that His warnings may remain entirely unheeded. When once any soul is truly enlightened, it cannot but put forth every devisable effort to compel the attention of others.”^{57 (p37)} 

George Railton goes on to explain how the Army was such an organisation that used extreme methods to achieve this end of more easily inducing people to turn to God, despite the fierce competition. He argued, “Who complains of the compulsion of railway servants, who by bell, flag, and whistle, glaring announcements, or in any other way, urge desiring passengers to get into their train, before it is too late?” The Salvation Army’s sensational methods, including tambourines, drums, shouting in the streets, loud preaching and ecstatic prayer to bring people to repentance, were all justified because it made it easier for people to accept Jesus. And so, he concludes, “The General’s organisation of compulsory plans for the Salvation of souls will not only be approved but regarded as one of the great glories of his life.”^{57 (p37)} In order to reach those who were unmoved by the words of the preacher, the Army borrowed from popular culture to make it easier to get their attention and bring conviction.^{2 (p200)} Pamela Walker said:

“The Army not only wanted to widen the appeal of Christianity but also strived to convey that God’s love was so immense, so utterly transformative that anyone could be saved in an instant.”^{2 (p191)}

Contemporary Christian worship has attempted to do the same thing. By combining watered down theology with worldly entertainment methods, it is easier for people to come to church. Charles H. Spurgeon, a contemporary of General Booth, said in one of his sermons:

“The new plan is to assimilate the church to the world, and so include a larger area within its bounds. By semi-dramatic performances they make houses of prayer to approximate to the theatre; they turn their services into musical displays, and their sermons into political harangues or philosophical essays – in fact, they exchange the temple for the theatre, and turn the ministers of God into actors, whose business it is to amuse men…

…This, then, is the proposal. In order to win the world, the Lord Jesus must conform himself, his people, and his Word to the world. I will not dwell any longer on so loathsome a proposal.”⁵¹⁵

Jesus never promised that salvation would be easy. As much as we might wish for our fellow human beings to be saved, only a select group will make it, even of the professed Christians. Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven (Matt 7:21).” This is a sobering thought. He also said, “narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it (v14).” Those who avoid the torment of hell are those “who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus (Rev 14:12).” Those who love God and His law have no fear of the law because Jesus has paid the price of transgression of the law. Thankfully, by the grace and mercy of God, many of the select few who will make it to heaven will be Salvation Army converts, Catholics and Seventh-day Adventists. Hopefully, Andy Stanley will be amongst them too. But only God knows the hearts of each individual – He knows His sheep. It is not for us to judge the motive of our fellow Christians.

Despite all of this, people like General Booth and Andy Stanley have felt the need to remove Biblical practices from church that they believed were unnecessary hindrances. For example, General Booth removed the requirement to participate in ordinances and baptism. He said that the sacraments shut out “a multitude of men and women who have been and are today sincere followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.” He also argued that the sacraments create division because of differing opinions as to the proper mode of delivering them – such as baptism by immersion, baptism by sprinkling and infant baptism. He felt that these rituals had become mere forms by which people felt they could gain salvation – they would participate in the sacraments on Sunday but then forget about their saviour the rest of the week.⁴⁹¹

While these are all sensible arguments, it is of a similar mindset to David when he attempted to carry the ark to the new city the first time. He sincerely did what was most convenient and practical, but it was not what God had asked for. To avoid controversy, General Booth got rid of the very institutions that our Lord initiated. Sabbath keepers would argue that it is the same kind of reasoning that Justin Martyr and other church fathers in Rome used when they decided to worship on Sunday in celebration of Jesus’ resurrection in place of worshipping on the seventh-day Sabbath. It is of a similar mindset to the church of the 5^th and 6^th centuries when it was decided to convert the Roman gods into statues of Mary and the apostles.

All of these people – General Booth, the early church fathers, Catholic priests – they were all likely sincere in their motives and had sensible arguments for their actions. They were convenient changes, making it easier and easier for unbelievers to join the church and it helped the church to grow. However, in each situation, they ignored the clear commands and institutions of God. If God lays down an institution, we must be faithful in maintaining it until God clearly and unambiguously changes the institution.

God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But “when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate (Gen 3:6).” God instituted marriage between a man and a woman but, because humans did not glorify God and were not thankful (Rom 1:21) they dishonoured their bodies among themselves (v24). Cain and Abel both brought offerings to God, but only Abel’s was accepted because it was according to God’s command. At the foundation of the world, God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; therefore, the seventh day is holy until God says it is no longer holy. God said, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image – any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them (Ex 20:4).” Unless God says we can now pray to statues, we must not do it. Jesus said “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matt 28:19-20).” Therefore, we must observe all things that Jesus commanded us and teach others to do likewise.

If people are just going through the motions as they follow the rituals given to us by Jesus, the problem is with the worshipper rather than the ritual. Therefore, we should not abandon the ritual but teach people how to have a genuine heartfelt relationship with their saviour as they observe His ritual. When believers dispute over how to observe a ritual, deep prayerful study of Scripture is called for until the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth. If people are keeping the law to win salvation, the problem is with the observer rather than with the law. Instead of doing away with the law, we teach people how to keep the law for the right reason – out of love for God and for each other.

Unless we are continually and firmly committed to God’s character as revealed in Scripture, we can come adrift. That’s what happened to Andy Stanley. When we put human wisdom above God’s wisdom, it leads to apostasy. Human wisdom finds faults in God’s Word and His character and attempts to modify it to make it more appealing to the masses. The most significant change Andy made in his church was to deny the foundation of our faith which, he said, for most Christians ‘unfortunately is the Bible’. He said that the Achilles heel of Christianity is our faith in the Bible. He believes the Scriptures have been successfully dismantled by the new atheists, particularly Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. He describes these men as extraordinarily intelligent – not evil or bad, just having a different worldview.⁵¹³

Richard Dawkins is infamous for his statement that, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser…”^{516 (p51)} Sam Harris said, “It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.”^{517 (p67)} Though Richard Dawkins admits that much of the Bible is not systematically evil, he argues that it is “just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and ‘improved’ by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries.”^{516 (p268)} What he is saying is that the Bible is an incoherent mess – and Andy Stanley is willing to concur. 

Instead of defending our faith in Scripture against the onslaught, which now permeates our culture thanks to the internet, Andy abandons the Bible. He retreats solely to the resurrection story, saying that this is the only solid ground for our faith. Scripture is not the foundation of our belief but the resurrected Christ, he argues.⁵¹³ Stanley is willing to give up his faith in the Bible because, like the new atheists, he also does not like the God of the Old Testament. He believes that God, as revealed in the Bible, is too hard to accept and is an obstacle to embracing Christianity. He says:

“If Genesis isn’t true, well then, the Bible isn’t true. If all of it isn’t true, then you can’t say the Bible is true and if the Bible isn’t true then why would I depend on it? Why would I look to it as a source of Faith or, really, as a source of anything.”⁵¹³

In order to ‘keep the doors wide open’, we have to make it easy for people, Andy says. We have to throw off the Achilles heel (the Bible). That way, we no longer have to wrestle with the creation story and the wrathful and jealous God of the Bible. Instead, he says “Christianity can stand on its own two nail scarred resurrection feet, the foundation of your faith and mine is not a book, it is an event that the Bible did not create.”⁵¹³ Andy Stanley believes that Jesus died and rose again, but he does not believe that the Bible is divinely inspired. He rejects the truth of the Bible because he does not like the God of the Bible. Therefore, the saviour in his mind that he believes in, is very different to the saviour that is found in Scripture, because Jesus is the ‘I Am’ (Jn 8:58) of the Old Testament.

Sadly, Andy Stanley is not alone with these heretical sentiments. A growing number of Christians, though not always as extreme as Andy, are conceding to this line of thinking. Some liberal Christian scholars believe the first century theistic understanding of God is archaic. They have described the creator God of the Old Testament using similar terms as Richard Dawkins, such as ‘insane’ and ‘pathologically violent.’⁴⁷⁶ New Zealand theologian, Sir Lloyd Geering, said, “The time for glorifying the Almighty (male) God who supposedly rules is now over.”⁵¹⁸ He admits that he was looking for a concept of God that he and others could be comfortable with.⁵¹⁹

If we grow up with only hearing and singing about the love and mercy of God, the Old Testament God becomes foreign to us and has to be disbanded and rejected. Stanley accepts the risen Christ, but denies Him by his disregard for the Scriptures which reveals Christ and His character. Modern-day Christian leaders and evangelists are deviating from a literal reading of the Bible because, by human reckoning, they believe there is a greater good to be served. Increasingly, though professing belief in the Bible, Christianity as a whole is retreating solely to the resurrected Jesus. This is considered the ‘gospel message’ and everything else is peripheral. Anything other than the resurrection story is too hard, too controversial and too exclusive – so we had better not sing about that part of God’s kingdom or His character. When church leaders elevate human wisdom above the Word of God, in vain they worship Jesus, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men (Matt 15:9; Is 29:13).