The Cult of the Mainstream
I read a very disturbing piece today from The Atlantic about the International House of Prayer, a controversial church organization in Kansas City. Don't even remember what it was called, but you can surely find it online pretty easily. Was something about the seven signs of a cult.
The article presumed that the ways this church identifies a cult actually applied to them because they exhibited cult-like behaviors exactly like the ones they censure, and it all involved a young woman who killed herself with the implication that she was just in too deep with all the overly devout religion stuff.
Now please, I'm pretty much with the idea that intense emotionalism in church settings, no matter how expressive the devotion to Christ, often covers for lack of conviction about truthful things. Got that. I also acknowledge the concerns about IHOP, I too have read and heard things that could easily be considered "cultic". Got that too.
But the reason IHOP gets in trouble has nothing to do with it just being too damn religious, which is really the upshot of The Atlantic piece, and it is the upshot of a lot of what the World spews out about how those pesky deluded fundamentalists are just so criminal -- I mean look! A bright young woman committed suicide! That has to be their fault in some way!
One of the main reasons IHOP is off base with whatever considerations there is about what it should be doing to behave more righteously is because it is already connected to the World System in ways that do compromise its true devotion to Christ. It does this by being a 501c3 tax-exempt non-profit organization. But frankly just about every church in the country is, so it is either speaking from both sides of its mouth -- World or Kingdom? Caesar or Christ? Which is it? -- or it is so cowtowed to World System mainstreamism that anyone who actually says and believes that this Jesus fellow is real -- and that sin and Hell and Satan and World System evils are real for that matter -- are to be punished with the most vigorous objections in the loudest possible terms.
My question is this.
What does The Cult of the Mainstream look like? Where does this guy, the author, go when he needs to know the authentic truth and grace of things? In the piece he even said after enduring the extremism of the IHOP environment he'd eventually sauntered off to some mainstreamish type church to just get his head on straight -- that was the idea anyway. I just wonder, what did he find there? Authentic fulfillment from the World System Stepford people who simply parrot the System dogma in the name of rabid rejection of dogma?
Don't get me wrong. He may have surely met very nice people who genuinely have Christ's heart in their devotion to Christ. I'm not that cynical.
All I'm saying is that whenever I read stuff like this, I just feel great sorrow. It is just more of the Jesuit fed slop that smart, wonderful people just keep schlurping up, and I grieve at where that is leading. Check out this from Raiders News Network. I don't think Cris Putnam et al truly see the origins of the massive human sacrifice scale they so deftly identify, or how much people are being played with it all, but they do a great job of elucidating much of what's happening with it.
The Mainstream. Just the holding area until people get dumped right into Hell.
The article presumed that the ways this church identifies a cult actually applied to them because they exhibited cult-like behaviors exactly like the ones they censure, and it all involved a young woman who killed herself with the implication that she was just in too deep with all the overly devout religion stuff.
Now please, I'm pretty much with the idea that intense emotionalism in church settings, no matter how expressive the devotion to Christ, often covers for lack of conviction about truthful things. Got that. I also acknowledge the concerns about IHOP, I too have read and heard things that could easily be considered "cultic". Got that too.
But the reason IHOP gets in trouble has nothing to do with it just being too damn religious, which is really the upshot of The Atlantic piece, and it is the upshot of a lot of what the World spews out about how those pesky deluded fundamentalists are just so criminal -- I mean look! A bright young woman committed suicide! That has to be their fault in some way!
One of the main reasons IHOP is off base with whatever considerations there is about what it should be doing to behave more righteously is because it is already connected to the World System in ways that do compromise its true devotion to Christ. It does this by being a 501c3 tax-exempt non-profit organization. But frankly just about every church in the country is, so it is either speaking from both sides of its mouth -- World or Kingdom? Caesar or Christ? Which is it? -- or it is so cowtowed to World System mainstreamism that anyone who actually says and believes that this Jesus fellow is real -- and that sin and Hell and Satan and World System evils are real for that matter -- are to be punished with the most vigorous objections in the loudest possible terms.
My question is this.
What does The Cult of the Mainstream look like? Where does this guy, the author, go when he needs to know the authentic truth and grace of things? In the piece he even said after enduring the extremism of the IHOP environment he'd eventually sauntered off to some mainstreamish type church to just get his head on straight -- that was the idea anyway. I just wonder, what did he find there? Authentic fulfillment from the World System Stepford people who simply parrot the System dogma in the name of rabid rejection of dogma?
Don't get me wrong. He may have surely met very nice people who genuinely have Christ's heart in their devotion to Christ. I'm not that cynical.
All I'm saying is that whenever I read stuff like this, I just feel great sorrow. It is just more of the Jesuit fed slop that smart, wonderful people just keep schlurping up, and I grieve at where that is leading. Check out this from Raiders News Network. I don't think Cris Putnam et al truly see the origins of the massive human sacrifice scale they so deftly identify, or how much people are being played with it all, but they do a great job of elucidating much of what's happening with it.
The Mainstream. Just the holding area until people get dumped right into Hell.
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