Episode 33: Is Cultural Christianity Dangerous?

Jacob Phaneuf: Welcome to the truth and love podcast with your hosts Kimberly Faith and John Mack. The truth and love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.

Kimberly Faith: Welcome back to the truth and love podcast. Dad and I, dad

John McLarty: It’s great to be here, Kim. It became podcast time.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. Yes.

John McLarty: Very important subjects, but but enjoy what we can do.

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely. And I appreciate you making your schedule, making yourself available today to talk about, I think what’s a very important topic. We’ve actually talked about this topic kind of around the dinner table from time to time. And when the Lord laid it on my heart, was to write a devotional about it. And then now do a podcast about it was because, I don’t know about you, but I’m seeing the kind of the underpinnings that are starting to be exposed from this idea where we’re talking about called cultural Christianity. And I think that as a whatever culture, whether it’s The United States Of America, or any kind of nation that claims to be a Christian nation, that there’s a real danger to becoming more pervasively a cultural Christian than a biblical Christian? What do you think about that?

John McLarty: Yeah, cultural Christianity, I would describe as someone that’s not been specifically born again. They’re not, you know, a saved person. However, they’ve grown up in a Christian environment and you know they kind of put Christianity in the same category as apple pie and the American flag.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: It’s just something something we do. We might have a a little thank you, Lord, before we eat. Probably in you know, but not in public.

Kimberly Faith: Well, I think when I think of cultural Christianity, I think about enjoying the benefits of what biblical values lend to your life, but not being committed to the Christ who created the values. In other words, you’re enjoying the fruit of the orchard, but you’re not doing the work to plant it or cultivate it or grow it, but you’re enjoying the fruit of it. Does that make sense?

John McLarty: Yes. And I also want to just point out to our listeners here that the discussion we’re going to have has nothing to do with self righteousness. Right. Because we we got gloriously saved. We’re sinners, you and I.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: The crowd we hang with, you know, go to church with, we’re all saved. We’re saved sinners. However, we were fortunate to get involved with I would say a lot of it depends on the group. We joined a church that were committed believers.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: They really believed that Christianity was twenty four seven, not just something you do on Sunday morning.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: So that influenced us, and it’s it’s given us this really rich abundant life that’s full of, you know, digging into the bible and and prayer and, you know, speaking to God and listening to God, but it’s all by grace. Right. So when when we’re talking about somebody that might just have a Christian perspective in in the sense of just America is a Christian nation

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: You know, we we just would like those people that are experiencing cultural Christianity because it can be it can benefit a culture just to be a Christian nation as opposed to you know, I I don’t wanna name different cultures, but I just was thinking about this, Kim. There’s cultures that just treat, for example, women awful.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Awful. I mean, we hear Christianity getting a bad rap here in America about, you know, not acknowledging women and all this stuff. But you go to some other cultures. Well, we don’t need to name them, but women are just property. Yeah. Women are property. You know, there’s a lot of benefits for America being a Christian nation, but to be actually born again, saved, having that relationship with God is is a different thing that we we enjoy, but it’s by his grace.

Kimberly Faith: Well, I appreciate you saying that because we’re when we talk about in this podcast, when we talk about righteousness and biblical righteousness, we’re never talking about our own righteousness. We’re always talking about the righteousness that we have been given by grace through faith in Christ who made us righteous. He became sin for us, who knew no sin so that we might be made the righteousness of God. And and I think this kind of is a good segue into what we’re talking about when we talk about cultural Christianity being the When you say like, I have some articles that I read, For example, Richard Dawkins, you know, who claims that he is a cultural, he identifies as a cultural Christian because he enjoys hymns and cathedrals. Well, those are things that are created the culture of Christianity, the effect of Christianity.

John McLarty: well, of

Kimberly Faith: course, know, if you ever go to a big cathedral and hear hymns being played with a 100 person choir are being saying it is beautiful. It’s wonderful experience. But what the reason I wanted to do this podcast is because there are a lot of things about Christianity that have positively affected our culture and made our culture a better place to live. But if you miss the core of Christianity, which is a relationship with Jesus Christ, then the way I kind of see that is you’re living in like you’re living in a marriage without love. You’ve made a you’ve experienced some bits and pieces of what you could have but you’ve missed kind of the big point, which is a deep and abiding relationship with Jesus Christ.

John McLarty: And that’s really great. That’s the heart of true Christianity is we’ve met the Lord, because we weren’t seeking Him so to speak, we were seeking some kind of fulfillment for our anxiety but by His grace we found the Lord. And I’ll just share real quick, Kim, my testimony was all about establishing that one on one relationship with Christ. It wasn’t just, oh, Christianity sounds good. I think I’ll adopt that lifestyle. For sure, that wasn’t what I was thinking. Or, you know, I wanna escape hell. And that that’s a that’s a good that’s an okay motivation to, you know, to to seek salvation.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Motivated to be saved. But for me, it was it was all about Jesus reaching out to establish relationship with him through forgiveness of sin and me asking him and, you know, repentance, turning from sin and turning my life over to Christ. But That’s interesting. Believing in him.

Kimberly Faith: I don’t think that is like, that wasn’t that really wasn’t my experience that motivated me to surrender to Christ. You know, my motivation was I was just tired of fighting him. I was tired of fighting and trying to earn my salvation and never knowing if I was good enough. And so I wanted the gift of salvation that I knew existed because I was tired of being so afraid and inadequate and having that high anxiety. And I knew I needed to surrender. I knew what I was holding on to was my own will, and my own way, you know. And when I finally surrendered to Christ and accepted the gift of salvation, I remember just having this immense relief peace, you know. But I do not think that I really understood that there was a lot more after that, that I could experience as a born again believer in finding a deeper relationship that’s so far surpassed any relationship I’ve ever experienced in my twenty plus years that when I was born again, that it would satisfy me in a way that was deeper than anything I’d ever experienced before. And I think that’s the difference really between cultural Christianity and biblical Christianity, in that it affects biblical Christianity affects the culture from the inside out. Cultural Christianity just picks the fruit from the outside.

John McLarty: Yeah. Yeah. And would you agree with this that there the influence of cultural Christianity could come from, I’m going to say, groups. One would be people that aren’t saved at all.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Even this Christian atheist that you refer to here, the British conservative Douglas Murray. He rejects the key Christian beliefs, but he thinks it’s good to have moral morality in the nation. Right. Honesty, hard work, you know, that kind of stuff. But he he doesn’t even claim to believe in Jesus.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Then you would have another group that perhaps they are saved. You know, maybe they got saved in Sunday school or a church camp in their teens, yet they didn’t have the blessing that of discipleship. So they just grow up and get their career going, and then Christianity is just it’s a good and they you know, it’s kind of on the same level of, you know, saying pledge of allegiance and standing when the star spangled banner is is being sung, but the Christianity didn’t develop into that personal relationship. So but they’re culturally they recognize Christmas and Easter.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And I’m not, you know, putting that group down. I’m just saying they they we had this strong discipleship going on.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Cultural Christians can be actual saved people that just were never discipled, and Christianity is just a side issue to their life. And then you have this kind of it’s just like, you know, they admit it’s culturally good. It’s like, oh, they’re following the golden rule, the Christians. That’s good for business.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Well, that’s exactly right. I mean, we come to the cultural Christianity approaches, you’re in it for what you can get out of it, not in it for what you can give to it. And, and I think it’s the difference between, you know, there’s a lot of differences we could talk about. I mean, you know, at the heart of real biblical Christianity is what Jesus said we’re supposed to do.

And it’s to love him with all of our heart, soul and mind. In other words, he is the center of our life, not our business, not our looks, not our relationships. He is the heart. And he is what we love most. Have made him the Lord of our life.

And the problem is that when a person has not been born again, in other words, has not surrendered themselves to Jesus as Lord and accepted his gift of salvation freely given, believing that it’s all him and not us, then we don’t have that, you don’t have, you’re not spiritually alive. And therefore, there’s really all you’re really doing is trying to satisfy your anxiety, by doing things to make yourself feel better, giving yourself a respite from the anxiety. And a lot of that comes from, you know, maybe you’re going to give money to the poor, as you know, because Jesus said to feed the poor, right? He said to take care of the poor. Or maybe you’re going to, you know, get a cross tattoo, or you’re gonna wear a cross necklace, or you’re going to go to church once a year, or you’re going to live by the golden rule. I mean, the biblical rules make for a much better culture. You know, when people aren’t stealing and murdering each other, it’s a lot better place to live. And so, I think it’s easy for us to temporarily satisfy our anxiety living in a cultural Christianity kind of mentality. And it gives us those respites from really the hell that is created by living without those rules. So it’s easy to kind of get into And that’s where I spent a lot of my Christian life, living by some outward rules and trying to satisfy myself periodically by following rules and by living a good life. But all the while as a born again Christian ignoring the relationship that was so rich and wonderful. And I did not connect or compute with me. And that’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast because I wanted to say, hey, if you’re a Christian, if you’re a born again Christian and you haven’t experienced the richness of a relationship with Christ, but you’re just kind of living in the culture, then you don’t have you’re missing out. You’re missing out. And I don’t want anybody to miss out.

John McLarty: Right. And that’s you kind of made, you know, double distinction that you experienced that that side you were an actual Christian. You you were saved, genuinely saved. Right. But you just kind of adopted the outward appearances of Christian living.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Then you have those that would bear you know, that even deny Christian they wouldn’t even call themselves a Christian, but Right. We think cultural Christianity is good.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And then the the I think something that we’ve noticed and the reason we’re prompted to do this podcast is that cultural Christianity is growing Mhmm. As, you know, kind of and not saying popularity. Right. Cultural Christianity. Just have a a shirt with a cross on it or, you know, a tattoo that’s a cross or, you know, but it’s not really it’s really a substitute. It’s a deception of true Christianity.

Kimberly Faith: It is. It’s and I and I always use the example of marriage because it’s it’s such a great example that, if you just were involved with in a marriage with somebody and you just showed up maybe once every month and said, hey, and maybe wore, had a tattoo with person’s name on it, but never talked to the person, never your spouse, never ate lunch with your spouse, never were even home, never got to know your spouse, just kind of pretty casual about the relationship. It wouldn’t last. That’s not sustainable in marriage as we understand that it’s supposed to be in kind of the whole purpose of marriage and committing your life to somebody else. And intimacy with God is at the heart of biblical Christianity.

And when you think about it, I think for me, not understanding this was when I didn’t understand, and it actually scared me because I didn’t understand who God was. And I’m not claiming that today I have a full grasp, I don’t think we can ever fully grasp God. But we talk about who God is. The Bible teaches us He is a spirit and the spiritual part of us, our soul and our spirit were designed to have a relationship with Him. It’s like a fish in water. It’s like, you know, we were designed like we were designed for oxygen. We were designed to have that spiritual relationship with God. And of course, we know that the only way that happens is when our soul and spirit are made alive by accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior. But we have to come to God on his terms, not our own. And we talked about in last week’s podcast about the salvation being the same in the Old Testament, the New Testament. We talked about this, we talked about how you can only come to reconcile with God on His terms. And because He is righteous, we have to come to Him by grace through faith and not of our own works because our own righteousness is as filthy rags. And so, when we receive that gift of salvation, the exchange is a relationship, we go from being dead spiritually to alive spiritually. And the exchange that we have this amazing ability to have a relationship with Christ that will exceed every expectation of any relationship that we’ve ever had.

John McLarty: Well, that’s really interesting because looking at a verse here, Jesus said, and this is this is a radical verse. He said, I’m the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. That’s John fourteen:six. And that’s pretty radical.

Kimberly Faith: It is.

John McLarty: So cultural Christianity would almost say, well yeah, Jesus is a way or it’s good to be have good works and follow the golden rule. I even saw something on Facebook and it was claiming that every major religion they had some tenant out of from Islam to Judaism to, you know, Confucius and, you know, Chinese religion to the Hindus. They had some version of treat others as you’d be treated. But then they threw in the golden rule. So they were basically, it was a circle saying

Kimberly Faith: that to

John McLarty: be the same and Jesus isn’t the only way. Right. But being a nice person is will get you where you wanna be. And the problem is that’s so untrue.

Kimberly Faith: It’s so untrue.

John McLarty: That’s an that’s an incredible deception because Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.

Kimberly Faith: Right. And believing in Christ for salvation is more than a mental acknowledgement of the truth that he is the Christ because the Bible is clear that even Satan acknowledges him as the son of God. When we are receiving Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior, we are trusting him. We’re believing that what he says applies to us and we’re taking that. And we are saying, I trust you to save me. I know I can’t do it. And we receive that gift by faith, which is a gift of God. And it’s really interesting because it’s kinda like when you adopted me. When that judge said, you are now the child of John McLarty, then that was decreed. And I am your child. I can’t divorce you as much. I guess I can, but you know what I’m saying? That adoption can’t be undone because when Jesus gets something,

John McLarty: was a creator.

Kimberly Faith: He does it. We’re part of the family of God. I’m now part of a different family. I don’t belong in another family. And that didn’t have anything to do with me or my good works. It had everything to do with you and mom petitioned the court and the court granted your request and I was part of the family.

John McLarty: Yeah. And that’s totally interesting because all those the the just the real the great religions of the world Right. Even even a large portion of Christianity is is part of that thinking that you get you get to that relationship with God through good works. Right. There’s various forms of it. But the true teaching of Christ is you only come not of works, but by grace through faith, coming to him in repentance and believing in him. Just pouring spirit. Giving your life over to him because he’s drawn us by his grace. So it’s very specific.

Kimberly Faith: Well, and it’s when we think about when I think about cultural Christianity too, and it’s almost like you mentioned golden rule and how, you know, all these different religions have versions of it. The problem is that a lot of these religions are using things like the golden rule to control people and keep them tied to a system of works that gives them anxiety because they never know for sure if they’re good enough. Whereas biblical Christianity, we are never good enough until Jesus makes us good enough.

John McLarty: That’s a good point for our listeners to really focus in on is cultural Christianity, even though a nation that’s following the you know, you might say the golden rule is good for that nation. It’s good for honesty to prevail in business, but it masks that truth

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Of how to have eternal life, how to have that relationship with God, how to be transferred from death into life through Jesus, it’s very

Kimberly Faith: dangerous. It is.

John McLarty: People think that’s all they need to do is live a good life.

Kimberly Faith: Well, and even you know, one of the things we talk about in our Bible concept study is the way that non biblical religions sell this good works thing and make it part of the deal it is is there has to be some belief that that’s going by the person that subject subjecting their self to this non biblical religion that is going to do something for them. But the problem is we can never do anything really that’s ever completely unselfish unless we have the fruit. The fruit of the spirit has to be in us and that comes from the spirit, not from us. God is love, which is selflessness. And he’s the only one who is love. Kim is not love unless God puts the love in her. And that’s hard. I think that’s really hard for some people, including us, me and you, to think We wanna think we’re good. We wanna think we’re capable of doing selfless things. But it’s really interesting to study the psychology behind doing good works. And I’m talking about the secular psychology. Most secular counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists will admit this, even a person who does good works for under the guise of doing good things for the people to make, it’s always a motivation to make themselves feel better. As opposed to doing what Christianity, biblical Christianity offers is we can do good works, not to make ourselves feel better, that’s just a byproduct, but for the glory of God and the furtherance of his kingdom. That’s a purpose higher than self. And with cultural Christianity, we’re kind of trapped in that we have to do good works for our own benefit. 

John McLarty: Biblical Christianity Make us feel good about ourselves.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Biblical Christianity frees us because we are free to do good works for somebody and some for a reason that’s greater than self.

John McLarty: Does that make good works because it’s the the nature of Christ emanating from us.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Right. God gets the glory.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. Because we were created for God’s glory. That’s what the Bible says. I mean, we think we’re created for our own glory, but we’re not. The Bible is very clear, all through the Bible, that we were created for God’s glory. And if

John McLarty: So in other words, if I do something good that someone perceives as good, that’s Jesus.

Kimberly Faith: Right. God. Right. Right. And I always tell this hilarious story about somebody who wanted to This person wanted to go have coffee, but this person said, Well, I don’t want you to talk about God. Don’t want you to Can we just not talk about religion? That was what this person said. And I just kinda I looked and I said, well, I said, you know, we can go have coffee, but I promise you, you don’t wanna have coffee with just Kim. Because Kim, Jesus, you don’t wanna meet that person. Because Jesus is the reason that I have love, that I have joy, that I have peace, that I have compassion and kindness and goodness and gentleness. You just don’t wanna have coffee with just Kim and Yeah. This person was like, well, okay, fine. Jesus can come.

John McLarty: Well, it’s interesting you said the word peace, that Jesus gives us true peace. You know, I was saved when I was 24 years old. So I have to think back a long time, even though there’s turmoil, you know, in a Christian’s life. But that real searching, that anxiety, that emptiness, I’ve got to go back to how I felt as kind of a teenager and early twenties. And people might be experiencing that if they’re not truly saved. But I think about this verse in John four twenty seven. Jesus says, peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. So that that peace that passes understanding and I think even, you know, for you, you’ve you know, we all had our we’re all growing as Christians, but you’ve had that underlying peace Mhmm. Since you were saved. So you have to almost remember back how tumultuous our life was before that.

Kimberly Faith: Alright.

John McLarty: And so, you know, I just I just think to people that have just cultural Christianity and never had the real thing, it’s you know, is your life peaceful? Do you need peace? Right. Jesus says, I’ll give you peace unto your soul.

Kimberly Faith: You know, I was talking to a group of middle schoolers earlier this week, they asked me to come speak on a career day thing. And, you know, one of the one of the I took questions and one of the young girls, probably a seventh or eighth grader asked one of the best questions. She said, was there ever a time during your career or during law school when you felt like you weren’t gonna make it? And I looked at her, I said, man, that is such a good question. I said, yes, yes. There have always been times when I felt very uncertain about the future and whether I was gonna make it, but I can tell you there’s one thing, there’s one thing that sustained me and that is my faith in God. Because He is greater than I am. He gives me, when you have faith in God, you have faith in something that doesn’t change. And you know that’s where your peace comes from. You know that’s where your love comes from.

That’s where your kindness comes from. That’s where your joy comes from. And everything else can fail. My career can fail, but I won’t lose that.

John McLarty: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: And, you know, those kids all got kind of quiet. They’re about 60, it’s public school, 60 kids sitting in there looking at like, who’s this crazy lawyer? But it was really a great question. And you think about back to when you were in middle school and think about how uncertain things were for you, how insecure, you’re at that age where you just, there’s all these hormones and there’s this, you’re just confused about a lot of things. Peer pressure is out the wazoo. And I just thought, we’re all kind of middle schoolers in a way. Without Jesus, we are back in middle school.

John McLarty: We are.

Kimberly Faith: And I think, I don’t know. I think about When we talk about cultural Christianity, I wanna kind of lay down some things and I don’t wanna prolong protract this podcast, but I do want to kind of name off some of the things that I think characterize cultural Christianity. Some of these things are You can go on our website and look at this as well under our If you search our devotionals for Search our website for cultural Christianity. It

John McLarty: These might be markers to look for.

Kimberly Faith: Markers to look for. Yeah. So for example, if you’re in a denomination or a brand of Christianity that denies the divine inspiration of the Bible, that will be something you need to be aware of that if you are denying the divine inspiration of the Bible, meaning that you believe it was written by humans that were imperfect that made mistakes, then if part of it is not true, then why is any of it trustworthy? You know, it’s either true or it’s not true. And there’s some great resources for studying this, studying the not only the divine inspiration of the Bible, but just the history of the Bible. And I would just encourage you the history of the church, the history of the Bible, Jay Sidlow Baxter’s book on the Bible is really good. I forgot the name of it. Kenny Francis is gonna talk about that in a later podcast. Actually, the podcasts coming up after in May are going to be how to study the Bible. There’s three of them. Excellent resources for if you have questions and need to learn how to study the Bible. It’s a great trio of podcasts.

John McLarty: Those will be great.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, with Doctor. Kenny Francis. Another kind of hallmark is when there’s not an emphasis on the need for repentance in salvation. That is critical. We have to be willing to turn from our sin and turn towards God, do a 180. And that repentance of course is the gift from God that he

John McLarty: gives I’ve heard that called easy believe ism. Oh, you don’t need to change your life or just believe.

Kimberly Faith: Come as you are, you don’t need to change. Yes, it’s true. You can come as you are, but you will change. If you’re really born again, you will change because I like to say Jesus doesn’t snuggle up to the sin that crucified Him.

John McLarty: The drawing of God involves that 180, that turn. It’s the gift of God, that desire for repentance, but we still, we have to agree to it, turn our life up to the Lord. Jesus said, repent ye and believe the gospel.

Kimberly Faith: One 20 Exactly. And if you think about it, if what happens at salvation is our soul and spirit are made righteous, then righteousness cannot dwell with sin. I mean, has Matter of fact, Paul talks about that in Romans chapter seven, there’s a great conflict that’s created between our flesh that’s never any better than the day we’re born again, and our born again soul and spirit. So if there’s not conflict in yourself, your inner man and your outer man after you’re born again, you probably need to check your salvation, you know? Because Jesus inside of you is going to want to do what’s righteous and what’s good. So that’s one. And then I don’t know if you’ve heard different kind of religions disproportionately emphasizing Jesus love, and ignoring truth like self sacrifice, hell, obedience, the hard topics nobody wants to talk about.

John McLarty: Yeah, turning your life over to the Lord.

Kimberly Faith: Lord Jesus loves you, doesn’t really matter what you do, He’ll love you anyway. And He wants to accept you. That is true, but it ignores the nature of God, you know, because He is not just loving, He is also righteous and just. And if He’s not those things, all three of those things, then He’s not God.

John McLarty: Right. And the Bible says, be holy even as I’m holy. Not that we can be as holy as God, but it’s kind of like losing weight. You need to want to or you’re just gonna be out of control. So we’ll never be as holy as God, but that new nature gives us that desire to be pleasing unto him.

Kimberly Faith: So

John McLarty: if you find yourself or somebody’s like, oh, you know, I’m a sinner and that’s just okay, but I’m gonna I’m gonna pull this this ticket get out of hell free card. That that’s not it.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: But I’m not gonna change. I’m gonna just keep, you know,

Kimberly Faith: should really scare you if and because it’s if you’re not mourning your sin, if you don’t have a desire to mourn your sin, you know, Jesus mourns our sin, it crucified Him. You know, we just finished the celebration of the crucifixion, the burial and the resurrection of Christ. That was a big deal. I mean, it killed him. Separated him from his And every sin, if we don’t see every sin as something that’s serious, and I’m not preaching a sermon here, I’m talking to myself, you know, because anything that we do that is in violation of God’s word is a sin and we need to take it seriously. And it’s to our benefit. I think this is what we In cultural Christianity, think one of the things that I see that is, that kind of creates a false vision is that somehow we can go and do all these things that are fun, even if they violate God’s word, because God wants us to have fun. He wants us to enjoy our life. Well, while it’s true, God does want us to enjoy our life. We will never enjoy our life to the extent that we can, if we are living contrary to God’s word, we can’t.

John McLarty: And sin as unbelievers or even as Christians is harmful. We should warn sin that’s harmful to us and it’s harmful to those around us.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. It’s I mean, don’t want

John McLarty: name off just all the tragedies, you know, you can think of of, you know, sin causing distress, an alcoholic, you know, in a head on collision, kills a family of five or something.

Kimberly Faith: Well, and it didn’t start that way. It started as something small, one dream when you’re 15, you know? And again, I’m not sitting here picking out a particular habit. I’m just saying that it is a big deal. I don’t think anybody that listening to this podcast would disagree with this statement that if you drink poison, it’s eventually going to kill you. If you decide to imbibe in strychnine, it will kill you. And that’s the way we have to view sin as well, just like meth, meth may give you a high for a minute. But when you’re addicted to it, and five years down the road, look like a pencil and your teeth have fallen out. You’re bearing the consequences. So we have to learn that it’s serious.

A religion that teaches us not serious is that is leading down the path of so much pain, so much more suffering. And the worst part of it all is it breaches that relationship that we can have with God, that close abiding relationship we can have with God. For a born again person, you can’t lose your salvation, but man, you’re throwing away the best relationship. That should be the foundation of all the relationships.

John McLarty: The Bible says, Quench not the spirit. So we can have your spirit and we don’t lose our salvation, but we can sure quench the spirit. Right.

Kimberly Faith: And I think another thing I see in some of the religious circles that is very misleading is substituting feelings for, you know, and basically, when we’re talking about our feelings are more important, how we feel about the truth is more important than the truth itself. And going to church to have this experience, feeling of good emotion, while it is 100% true, fellowship and worship with the brothers and sisters in Christ is wonderful. It should never be a substitution for the learning the meat of God’s word. You can only eat so much dessert, you know? I think that, you know, feelings from doing even religious activities are no substitute for the hard work of the relationship that brings the foundation into play. Does that make sense?

John McLarty: I think, yeah, I think about true physical, even physical fitness isn’t just feeding yourself donuts and ice cream. It’s good nutrition, with exercise and exercise is hard work. Yes. It thinks about good results.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Finally, don’t know, you can add some more to this, but I also think that people have downplayed the importance of church And a lot of people, well, I don’t need to go to church, I can have church anywhere. Can, my family is a church just being really casual and non specific. In our concept study, we talk about and the importance of the church and what is the church and how does the church function and why is there a church? And while the church just like any other organization, like any other group of people has plenty of faults, okay?

You cannot substitute what you get from a body of believers that the Lord has joined you to for anything else. I mean, you just can’t. I mean, that’s the way God planned it.

John McLarty: So if so if you hear the phrase, I’m going to go to go do church out on the lake. Mhmm. That’s you you can’t read the New Testament, especially the book of Acts, and come up with a conclusion that you can just go out and have church on the lake.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Right.

John McLarty: So it’s a it says an assembly. It’s a group of believers that are, you know, Christians and worship together and assemble together and encourage one another and love one another, etcetera, etcetera.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And and, you know, I was talking to one of the guys that that teach the concepts to, and we were at church on Sunday and and we’re just talking about how there’s something that when you commit to him, he’s a military guy, he’s in the army. When you commit to a body of believers, there’s that camaraderie, there’s that common bond that’s I’ve got

John McLarty: your

Kimberly Faith: six, that you don’t find anywhere else because it’s different even than the army, because the army you’ve got, you’ve sworn an oath, right? To uphold the constitution of The United States. So you’ve sworn an oath to the president. You sworn an oath to obey the laws of The United States and the constitution and defend our country. But when you join a church because the Holy Spirit has led you to a church, then you have not just the physical element that you committed to a body of believers, but you have a whole spiritual bond that’s unbreakable.

John McLarty: So I would say cultural Christianity, a lot of many versions of it do downplay the church. Mhmm. And something that really moves me is is people are missing out because of that.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Because the the church experience is so wonderful. Yeah. And then if cultural Christianity causes you not only to miss the blessings of a church assembly, a group of people, a band of brothers so to speak, but if it causes you to miss out for salvation at all, it’s really damaging. If it’s just this substitute, what they call the prosperity gospel is even one of these forms of cultural Christianity. And if not rooted in that true belief in Jesus through a salvation encounter, then it’s just a substitute.

It’s sugar water.

Kimberly Faith: It is and I think that as you know, for those of us who want to really work and for the purpose of bringing people into God’s kingdom and strengthening what we call the army of the Lord. People are really geared towards, I need to be in church that’s comfortable for me. But I like to challenge people and say, where in the bible does it say that you’re supposed to be comfortable in any I mean, does that even where does God say, oh, go and be comfortable. That’s not that’s not the criteria for joining churches. The holy spirit joins you to a church.

And you’re there not

John McLarty: to me, be fishers of men, die daily.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Yeah, you’re there to make it better. And to say, well, that preacher he does, or this deacon, or they don’t have this program or whatever. Well, maybe you’re there to start that. Maybe you’re there to make it better.

That’s what you should be doing as opposed to looking for what you can get from the church. It’s what can you give? Because that is the spirit. Like you said, Jesus said, take up my cross, take up your cross and follow me. You never see Jesus looking to be served ever.

John McLarty: Serving others. Right.

Kimberly Faith: Appreciate, first of all, appreciate you joining in this podcast.

John McLarty: Yeah, I always enjoy it.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Is there anything else like that you can think of that you would like to kind of leave our listeners with about kind of being aware of this thing called cultural Christianity and understanding that, you know, we need to get the real thing, not the poor imitation basically.

John McLarty: Yes, just repeat. Don’t let that prevent you from having that authentic real relationship with Jesus. It comes through being born again.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

John McLarty: And we have there’s podcasts and a lot of information on being born again, but you must be born again.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, absolutely. And I think I think that that’s super important because really, in the end, you know, we we had the podcast on, the difference between the great white throne judgment and the judgment seat of Christ. And bottom line is every person listening to this podcast, every person that’s ever been born is going to stand before Christ someday. And it’s either going to be as a lost person or a saved person. And the most important decision we ever make is receiving Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior.

But God has so much more for us even now than just that salvation experience, which I’m not downplaying that. But, you know, the Bible is really clear in Matthew, 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. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, done many wonders in your name? And he’ll say, I never knew you, depart from me, you who work iniquity. And, you know, I think that the thing that scares me the most about cultural Christianity is what we’ve kind of talked about, is that it promotes the lies that you can work your way to heaven, that there’s another door that you can enter into heaven by.

When Jesus, like you said earlier, said, I am the only way, I am the only truth, I’m the only life and no one comes to the Father but by me. And so if you haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, that is the most important decision you will ever make in your life. And if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, the most important decision you make every day is to follow Him and to give Him 100% of your life. And that’s a struggle. I’m not gonna lie, are some days I wake up and don’t feel like doing that.

But when I do, the reward is amazing every day.

John McLarty: He just wants to have number one life and then the abundant life.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right, the abundant life, which we have talked about a lot. Well, thank you, dad for joining today and bringing this podcast and

John McLarty: Been great as always.

Kimberly Faith: As always, and everyone pray that you guys will have a wonderful week and looking forward to the next podcast is going to be an interview. A very special man who has written a very an incredible book about his father who was a World War II unsung hero. And I promise you, you are not going to want to miss, the story of, of this unsung World War two hero on next week’s podcast. So have a good week, everyone.

Jacob Phaneuf: You’ve been listening to the truth and love podcast with your hosts, Kimberly Faith and John Mack. To discover more answers to the big questions in life, visit us at GoFaithStrong.com.