How Evangelicalism Has Watered Down the Gospel

Friday, March 30, 2012 6:37 am
How Evangelicalism Has Watered Down the Gospel

Throngs of people greeted Jesus as he made his way into the holy city. They cried out in ancient hymns of redemption and hope. "Hosanna" and "Praise God." But then he disappointed them, Evans says.
Some 2,000 years ago, a rogue rabbi from Galilee led a ragtag group of dissidents into Jerusalem at the height of a high holy time.

As Jerusalem was celebrating its most celebrated moment of political and religious liberation, Jesus arrived to protest the whole affair.

He held siege in the Temple, claiming religious leaders had turned the holy place into a den of thieves.

He had already condemned Temple lawyers for their willingness to strip widows of their homes and livelihood – an early precursor of foreclosures to come.

He stood toe to toe against those who divided the world into clean and unclean. He refused to accept the common practice of his day of allowing religion to divide the world between those that God accepted and those that God rejected solely on the basis of some humanly derived theology.

He railed courageously against those that were all too willing to use violence, most often in God's name, to achieve some partisan purpose. It's amazing, is it not, how often God is brought in to defend our selfish wants and wishes.

The rest of the story is at http://www.ethicsdaily.com/how-evangelicalism-has-watered-down-the-gospel-cms-19452