Ideology & Orthodoxy

Series: Clickbait

Apr 24

Pastor Kevin Canterbury
April 24, 2022
Series: Clickbait

Have you ever been strung along by something on the internet that piqued your curiosity? You kept clicking through pages and pop-ups to get to the end because the title of the article hooked you?

Often, you get to the end and it’s just underwhelming. Some call that a bait-and-switch. But for our more contemporary purposes, it’s known as CLICKBAIT.

“(on the internet) content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page”

This is everywhere, by the way.

EXAMPLES:

10 reasons he’s not responding to your texts!
Earn your first million with this one trick!
5 horrific things to know about Gary, Indiana!
Cop pulls over grandma but you’ll never believe who is in her trunk!
“I saved $100K on $30K salary… here is how!”
(She received a large inheritance…)

“Clickbait” doesn’t only exists on the internet! It’s been around before, and it’ll be around after.

So, today we begin a new sermon series called Clickbait. In this series, we are going to focus on important topics in culture affecting many of us (or a topic within church culture itself). The goal is to find the truth about it and then apply Godly wisdom. There are so many cultural moments and buzz words out there being slung around, misrepresented, and argued over with very little accuracy or care. This matters. I see many Christians wrapped up in philosophical tribalism and ideological discrepancies, sharing half-truths and whole anger while showing little to no spiritual fruit in the process.

More than giving answers to difficult subjects, I care about the spiritual fruit you bear and how you extend it to others. This isn’t an “answers” sort of series where we make principled stances about this or that, but a series we hope is equipping you, the believer.

Personally, my goal as a pastor is to always equip you with the truth- What is this thing really about? How is it truly defined? How does it need to be understood?- AND how to apply biblical wisdom.

We live in a world that is full of opinion and information
but is bankrupt of truth and wisdom.

There are so many opinions about so many things that it is hard to keep up. How should a Christ-follower truly discern what is Clickbait and what is truth?

With those disclaimers now set, heres our text for today…

2 Corinthians 10:1-5

1 I, Paul, myself entreat you, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away! — 2 I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh. 3 For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.
5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

Pastor John Mark Comer, who informed a great deal of my understanding around this topic and the information I have for us today, puts it this way:

We live in the age of ideology. Both on the political right, and the left, and everywhere in between.

1. All ideologies begin with a truth,
but then make the one thing the whole thing.

Part of the truth becomes the whole truth - then it gets so distorted, it turns into a parody of itself.

An easy example from the last century is the Russian Revolution. What started out by Marx and others as a critique of classism and a vision of a society of equality and justice ended up as the greatest genocide in human history. The desire for a human utopia became a complete dystopia.

Or the century before that, in our own country, what began as a revolution of liberty ended in the largest expression of chattel slavery in human history.

See, we are all just a mixed bag – atheist, Christian, whatever – made in the image of God. And in that, we hold a desire for virtue, love, and compassion along with being fallen or broken or sinners. Whatever you want to call us, we are walking contradictions regardless of faith. We all have an ideology that comes with motivation, but without God, we will ruin anything we touch.

2. Ideology is when you take a good thing and make it ultimate.

When you take something good (like freedom, justice, equality, politics, or a number of other things), but you make it ultimate, it becomes a true disaster. Because then, God is not in His rightful place but has taken a backseat to a virtuous cause.

Essentially, the problems seen across all ideologies place humanity, its ways, its moral reasoning, and its autonomy from God at the center- rather than God and His ways, and His judgments of good and evil, and His authority at the center. We were created to live and orbit around God, not to orbit around the self.

I think it was Pastor Ed Stetzer who said that in this decade more people are leaving the Church over ideology… not theology.

When ideology becomes ultimate, it is a disaster. When ideology becomes ultimate, instead of Jesus forming our identity and ideology, we form Jesus to our identity and ideology. Christians on the right and left are guilty of this.

Could ideology be the idolatry of this generation?

Sociologists are saying the true religiousness of ideology in our modern-day is becoming more narrow and less accepting than ever (again, from all sides). These ideologies have a gospel they preach, a means for evangelism, conversion stories, membership, dogma you must believe and not question, heretics they ex-communicate (or cancel), an entire eschatology dreamed up, and a hope for the future. Ideologies start out with visions of a better society, but then evolve, without God, into a metaphysical lens by which people see and interpret all of life. Truth be told, it’s an attempt to replace religion with ideology as a means of identity.

To pause the seriousness of this for a moment, the “slap” that occurred at the Oscars recently between Will Smith and Chris Rock was really fascinating to me. Usually, when cultural moments happen, you immediately see sides taken. But when this happened, it was so interesting how those sides were unable to process the event. And because the ethics of the situation were so convoluted, the talking heads on the political spectrum struggled to politicize and create an ideology from it.

We all have an ideology by which we interpret and process people, events, stories, religion, social justice, cultural moments, and so on. There is a political religion running rampant.

While the ideologies of today are new, the temptation to mix the way of Jesus and, as the writers of the New Testament said, “the ways of this world” is ancient. The biggest temptation for Christians is not atheism, but ideological idolatry.

In Exodus, Moses goes up Mount Sanai to receive the 10 Commandments, and while he is gone the people of Israel commit apostasy. They turn gold into a statue and then they call that YHWH (Yahweh). They then commemorate the occasion with a festival to “YHWH” where it says the people got up to indulge in revelry, which is the bible’s way of saying - full on Game of Thrones – or extreme sexual license. All under the name of “YHWH”. So then, you can do whatever you want.

What is occurring in our cultural climate today is nothing new – history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Thousands of years later- it’s still happening. Both sides co-opting Jesus for their righteous cause. And so, syncing Jesus with tarot cards still feels like Christian faith but isn’t. It is Christianity with a twist.

Syncing Jesus with your astrological sign is Christianity with a twist.

Syncing Jesus with your political party is Christianity with a twist.

Syncing Jesus with extreme progressive ethics is Christianity with a twist.

There are streaming bundles out there. I want Disney+ with ESPN, and it also comes with Hulu – great! But I don’t want Apple TV, Netflix, or HBO Max. I pick this, but I don’t want that. We are Jesus-bundling.

Give me His sermon on the mount… with a little Buddha… some mindfulness… neuroscience… Stay home from Sunday church and do a TedTalk with worship music…

It reminds me of a quote from Charles Spurgeon “Visit many good books, but live in the Bible.”

- But that’s not what we are doing. We’ve updated Jesus! And He is cool now. He fits my progressive worldview because I overlook or reinterpret troubling passages. Or, He fits my conservative worldview because I overlook or reinterpret difficult passages.

You don’t get to that point unless you live in other good books or good places or good causes, and only visit the bible.

We are just reinventing the golden calf again, and again, and again.
But we do it through culture wars and ideology.

Let me ask again: Could ideology be the idolatry of this generation?

2 Corinthians 10 is a path forward! See, for context, Paul is dealing with a group of false apostles who claim to be Christian leaders, but in reality, are false apostles, deceitful workmen.

2 Corinthians 10

"13 For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. 14 And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. 15 So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness…

This is nothing new! But remember how Paul started this area of the text?

“I, Paul, myself entreat you, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ…”

No contempt, no moral superiority, just gentle. He is wildly at odds with some in the Corinthian church and their vision of moral spirituality, but he comes with a posture of humility and gentleness.

“Entreat” in Greek literally means “polite request”. Paul isn’t attempting to control and embarrass people but calling them to Christ.

“I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away!”

“Humble” there could also mean “timid”, so maybe Paul wasn’t all that impressive with them face-to-face, but is bold when he writes them… sounds a lot like us when we disagree on social media – I have heard some of the craziest things directed at me online that would never be said to me face-to-face… We call it keyboard courage. Paul, thousands of years ago, is saying nearly the same thing. Even THAT is nothing new! Courageous away, timid in-person…

“I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh.”

“I don’t want to fight with you or those who believe we should live by the standards of this world!” There were people in that church and people in churches today that truly believe the world sets the standard for the ways we live. Paul is gently saying that this is not the way of Jesus, but something else.

“The world is Satan’s domain, where his authority and values reign – though his deception makes that hard to realize. If you are of the world then it all seems right.” Dr. Gerry Breshears

No matter where you gravitate in the constant culture war happening, we all feel that pull. But we have to resist, as the New Testiment puts it. Resist the pull to idolatrous ideology and shrinking Jesus into a cause you believe is good today but ultimate tomorrow.

“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh.”

Though we live in the world, wherever you are now feels like the edge of the world sometimes, right? But we do not wage war like the world. We do not resort to violence, we do not fall to contempt, we do not troll on social media.

2 Corinthians 10

4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

We don’t just have intellectualism, or moral appeal like the world offers, or a touching story. We have Heavenly power that acts on our behalf to destroy strongholds. Strongholds that are in every church. strongholds that are in every heart. strongholds that are in every ideology.

Often a foot-hold of the enemy, a lie we’ve come to believe or an opinion we now hold that we didn’t before, or a habit we give into or a compromise we make grows into a stronghold – real evil in your heart.

2 Corinthians 10

5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God,

Strongholds are arguments, thought-patterns, or ideas.

And “lofty opinion” can mean pretension or warped ideologies.

Strongholds, as it turns out, are not out there, and are not people. They are ideas and ideologies that take us away from Christ and enslave us to a standard of the world.

2 Corinthians 10

5 …and take every thought captive to obey Christ

There is a war out there on the Internet and on our streets, but the war for our souls is fought and won in our mind, and it is between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness.

Here is your end-goal as a Christian, “To make all of your life obedient to Christ.”

- The word for this is “orthodoxy”

- “ortho” meaning “right” in Greek and “doxa” meaning “belief”

Orthodoxy:

Body of ideas, ethics, and practices that have been passed down from the life and teachings of Jesus Himself and the New Testament writers for at least 2,000 years. Yes, followers of Jesus disagree with all sorts of secondary issues, and yes, the library of scripture is very clear about some things and unclear about other things, but there is a body of truth that we can safely say (not you, not I, we!) this is what followers of Jesus believe and how followers of Jesus live.

It’s not just a creed, or church creeds, those just answer heresy. Orthodoxy is broader than that. But if you don’t like that word, another way to understand orthodoxy is “the Way of Jesus”. The Way is simply obedience to Christ in mind and body, allegiance to Christ as Lord.

Here is why that matters: Here at Rock Vineyard, we are an orthodox church. There is no hiding that. It’s something we discuss and pray about as leaders in the church.

- That means we are not a progressive church, we are not interested in being a left-leaning church.

- That means we are not a conservative church, we are not interested in being a right-wing church.

- We are a Jesus church. And as such, it puts us at odds with both sides sometimes. But that’s what the radical middle does! It refuses allegiance to anything but Christ and His great love for you.

And we say that- Knowing there are plenty of us that are struggling with belief, with faith, or have been shaped by bad church experiences. We understand. Our sincere hope is that you would see we are not a perfect church, but we want to teach the bible in a way that is nuanced, thoughtful, humble, impactful, and true. That you would experience the Holy Spirit in a profound way that forever transforms your life. But if you aren’t there yet, this is a safe place to ask tough questions, to press the truth, and seek the truth- because the truth will set you free.

There are lots of things in the world to trust and love. We exist because we trust and love Jesus and invite you to join us in that journey. Jesus, who is not just some smart teacher or Rabbi, or a cool symbol of social-activism before His time, no. Jesus is King and Lord over all creation, raised from the dead by God.

I don’t want to be a clickbait pastor leading a clickbait, lukewarm church. We are called to preach Jesus, to show Jesus, to embody the love of Jesus to one another, and see the Kingdom of God here on earth.