One of the things that really bugs me about the new “Evangelical” left leaders like Rick Warren is that they act like the Church was doing nothing to help people before they arrived on the scene with all their horns and whistles blowing. They insult the millions of missionaries who quietly worked in mission fields and the Holy Spirit who worked through them.
The big difference between the real missionaries and the postmodern version is that the real missionaries gave and give people more than just physical aid for the symptoms of diseases in this world. They gave the people the cure of spiritual life. The postmodern version thinks that by treating the symptoms of sin in the world that all will be well with the world. There is no truth in that!
What is really happening is that they are defining evangelicalism down by moving it away from its emphasis on the power of the gospel to change human lives to a social gospel of man curing all the ills of the world.
I hope you are getting this because this is where the bulk of the church is heading. It is a different gospel built on a different foundation. It is not built on the Rock of Salvation, it is built on theories of Secular Humanism. This gospel of works may sound good to human ears but you don’t want to be sucked into where this deadly humanistic deception will take this postmodern universalistic dominionist religion of human control.
The Religious Left is successfully redefining what it means to be a conservative evangelical by misrepresenting what it means to be a conservative evangelical. In a recent conference call hosted by Faith in Public Life, one of the emerging voices of the Religious Left, Dr. Joel Hunter, said:
“By convincing America that conservative evangelicals are concerned only with two issues, stopping abortion and preserving traditional marriage, these new voices of evangelicalism are effectively making the case that conservative evangelicals ignore poverty, HIV/AIDS, and the environment. The history of evangelicalism tells a different story.”
“The Religious Left’s appeal for the Religious Right to “broaden its agenda” to include poverty, HIV/AIDS, and the environment ignores the fact that conservative evangelicals have always had a strong commitment to these issues. So if conservative evangelicals are already leading the efforts to relieve poverty and disease, what’s behind the call to “broaden the agenda”? Another agenda altogether.”
“What’s really happening here is an attempt by the Left to define evangelicalism down by moving it away from its emphasis on the power of the gospel to change lives. The church’s ability to affect social and cultural change, bringing relief to the poor and suffering, is rooted first and foremost in its commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and what the gospel says about the condition of man in sin which results in the symptoms of poverty and disease.”
