What It's All About...Not the Hokey Pokey

Unless Jesus is the central message of the Scriptures, many errors abound. The most common is moralizing. Moralizing is reading the Bible not to learn about Jesus but to only learn principles for how to live life as a good person by following the good examples of some people and avoiding the bad examples of others. That kind of approach to the Scriptures is not Christian, because it treats the Bible like any other book with moral lessons that are utterly disconnected from faith in and salvation from Jesus.

-Mark Driscoll
from "Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe"



Does this make anyone else think back to youth group bible studies with an afterthought of discernment?



Now, I hope I am not misunderstood in this. I am 100% for teaching the moral lessons within the Bible, especially to impressionable young minds. But what I'm saying is that I am able to recall back to when I was growing up, and how the Gospel often got lost in the morals of the stories. I also remember visiting my grandparents' church and wondering why they didn't teach about Jesus more. It seemed like it was all to feel good about ourselves and to get along with others. And how at age 8 I could beat my grandparents (who both were life-long church goers) at Bible trivia, as if their church didn't teach anything to the congregation. Church (their church in particular) was about everybody getting along, playing the right music, having the right mood lighting, and being involved in "activities". I don't want to bash churches, but I do want to say that just as "Gospel + Something" is heresy, so is "Something - Gospel". That's all.