Spring 2000

The Gospel of Americanism

By Bill Alnor

ã 2000 Eastern Christian Outreach Inc.

This semester, Lord willing, will be my last one of my Ph.D. course work at Temple University in Philadelphia. I may not ever take a graduate school course again for the rest of my life! I am praising the Lord for coming so far since committing myself to obtaining a Master’s and terminal degree four years ago. It has been very difficult – especially with the demands of pastoring Calvary Chapel of the Lehigh Valley and attempting to do other things as well, not to mention being a good husband and father.

But during this last semester, in my particularly interesting International Cinema film class, I am getting a renewed global perspective on things, and I have been observing something very strange I’d like to share with you. We are looking at the films of Cuba, Hungary, Brazil and Iran – and these films with subtitles are strange by themselves. But they each in their own way give us the worldviews of the filmmakers from these nations, and occasionally the worldviews of those countries. Most fascinating of all, they sometimes give the spiritual/religious views of those nations.

In the films from Iran, nothing is allowed to be produced that can offend the government or their particular brand of Shiite Islam. Women are kept out of the films (or at least in the distance), and their worldview is that of a God of judgment and of vengeance. This is clearly seen. This indeed is the god of Islam. Make no mistake about it, Allah is not the true God. Allah is not the God of Love. Allah is not the God of the Bible.

But the other three countries are not Islamic, and there are plenty of pictures of Christianity in their films, and it is not flattering at all. The problem is, the folks in these countries see the Christianity they have developed as being "normal." Yet to this Western observer, these forms of the faith practiced in their countries (that the book of Jude says was "once and for all delivered unto the saints") is a grossly warped version of the real thing.

In Cuba for example, a woman kisses a statue of Mary, and pleads with the statue to allow her to seduce a young man who is a virgin. As he marches her up to the bedroom, she winks at the statue. Clearly God heard her prayer – or so she thinks. Other images from the church (the Roman Catholic church) in Cuba are that of multiple statues of many supposed "saints," of massive Cathedrals – but yet of oppression of the people.

In some films from Brazil, superstition abounds mixed with sexual looseness. Leaders freely mix Yoruba African religion with Roman Catholicism that has produced a toxic mix of occultism mixed with paganism – in the name of Jesus. Cult leaders are creating millennial cities, and Jesus is seen in some films as a revolutionary, ready to take up arms for the latest causes of liberation theology. Have the Brazilian filmmakers not heard Jesus’ own words – "My kingdom is not of this world?"(John 18:36).

In Hungary, which was formerly behind the Iron Curtain, Christianity is there – it is the Roman church, but it was not relevant to the people at all. The church is there at the baptism, marriage and for the burial. That is all it is good for.

"How strange!" I have been thinking this semester. How can they possibly see Christianity – God’s wonderful plan to reconcile humankind to Himself – in such grossly distorted ways? And these people think this is "normal" Christianity? It reminded me of God in the Old Testament who chided the children of Israel repeatedly for misrepresenting His nature. In one place God complained that the people did not want to obey His ways – because of them.

Why can’t people just focus in on Jesus and Him crucified for the sins of the world and drop their cultural baggage? "Come unto ME," Jesus said, "all you who are weary and heavy laded, and I will give you rest." (Matt. 11:28) Jesus calls us to be disciples of Him, not disciples of a church system. For the true Christians in Iran, Hungary, Cuba and Brazil – and there are some (and they are being persecuted, sometimes directly by the Roman Catholic Church), how frustrating must it be to have to fight what both culture and church teaches them as normal in favor of God’s unchanging truth. Yet they faithfully try to do that; the Holy Spirit compels them to win their dying friends to the truth!

And then it hit me between the eyes. Similarly what would the true Christians in these countries think of "normal" Christianity in North America? They would say, just as I would say at film glimpses of their countries, "How strange. How bizarre! How unbiblical." Yet that is the overall state of American Christianity today. And American Christianity to them must look every bit as strange as the warped cultural versions looked to me that have risen in these countries.

In American Catholicism, crowds of people gather along freeways and hilltops and at other locations looking for the latest apparition of the Virgin Mary. But Jesus said "it is a wicked generation that followeth after a sign."

In the Main Line denominations, people followed their church leadership, while not taking God’s Word seriously. They affirm abortion on demand, gay marriages and homosexuals in the pulpit, while affirming false doctrines on a regular basis – all things that God has very clear opinions on.

In the charismatic/Pentecostal world, people fill stadiums for a regular stream of false teachers and phony faith healers. They dispense with their money to these men who teach them another version of the gospel of Americanism: that God wants them healthy, wealthy, and he wants them to take dominion of the nation. He also wants them to get their Rolls Royces and mansions along the way, while neglecting the real needy people.

These are all false versions of the real thing. So-called "Christianity" in America has become a creeping cancer that I believe will culminate in a super church. It is already a false religious system. But God’s true people are followers of Jesus and of Him alone. They have come out of false systems to follow Jesus.

My prayer for you is to follow Jesus and Him alone. For sure you will be hated. For sure your own families might not like you. For sure you may be passed up for promotions. For sure you will be seen as crazy. Yet, that is the cost Jesus asks us to make. We must take up our crosses and follow Him – no matter what the gospel of Americanism tells us to do. It’s getting late.