Christianity is Incendiary!

“In the splendid palace chapel a stately court preacher – the cultivated public’s elite – advances before an elite circle of fashionable and cultivated people and preaches emotionally on the text of the Apostle, ‘God chose the lowly and despised’ .... and nobody laughs!  

    This is the falsification of which official Christianity is guilty: it does not make known the Christian requirement – perhaps because it is afraid people would shudder to see at what a distance from it we are living.

     Strictly speaking, it is not I who am ringing the alarm bell; I am starting the fire in order to smoke out illusions and knavish tricks; it is a police raid, and a Christian police raid, for – according to the New Testament – Christianity is incendiarism.

      It is incendiarism. This is how Christ himself describes his commission, setting fire to individuals by introducing a passion that makes them at odds with what is naturally understood, an incendiarism that must necessarily cause discord between father and son, daughter and mother, an incendiarism that tears apart "the generations" in order to reach "the individual".

      It is not always water that is used to put out a fire. To keep the metaphor, sometimes one uses, for example, featherbeds, blankets, mattresses, and the like to smother a fire. In this sense, if you want Christianity again -- fire again -- then do all you can to get rid of the featherbeds, blankets, and mattresses, the grossly bulky stuff ... and there will be fire.”

       – Soren Kierkgaard

Friends,

I can't say it enough, and I'll continue to speak this truth in charity as long as Messiah calls me to, and it is this: We are -- as a People of the King -- weighed down by "grossly bulky stuff".  We are carrying around worldly traditions which were first called "useful, then they become necessary.  At last they are too often made into idols, and all must must bow down to them or be punished." (J.C. Ryle).

Let's ask ourselves:  What are these Fire suppressors?  What worldliness is weighing us down like anchors? 

I do think the identifying principle for idolatry is quite simple. The doing, of course, is the difficult project.  

Here's the principle: 

Anything that subverts the clear obedience to the full counsel of ALL the Scriptures, the Word of Messiah.