Modern-day philosopher Jordan Peterson recently discussed the dangers presented to the church. He spoke about the “woke” ideology that permeates many churches in today’s Christian culture and pointed out the concerning trend of churches drifting from Christian principles. Peterson made the remarks during an interview with Dire Wire host Matt Walsh.
Speaking about churches condoning sexual practices incongruent with the Bible’s teachings, Peterson said, “We should be concerned by the capture of the Protestant churches by the woke rainbow mob.” In any Western city, prominent churches are littered with pride flags and other political symbols. “In Canada and Great Britain, most of the mainstream Protestant churches are covered with rainbow flags. When the Christians start worshiping hedonistic pride, something has gone dreadfully wrong,” he said.
Peterson emphasized that the adoption of contemporary political and social messaging is eroding the core values of Christian churches in the West. He also warned of “bad actors” who can hijack the faith to promoter personal gain. “There’s no shortage of bad actors as well in the Christian community of the sort that the atheists tend to object to,” he said.
He continued, “The fundamental problem with religious enterprise is that it can be captured by the psychopathic narcissists, and that’s what you see in the Gospel story. Christ is persecuted most intensely by the Pharisees, the scribes and the lawyers … the Pharisees are religious hypocrites who use religion for their own self-aggrandizement. That’s a real danger in the religious enterprise, and especially the more Evangelical forms of Christianity have been prone to being overrun by self-serving charlatans. That’s a problem.”
Citing Scripture, Peterson noted how many will profess the name of Christ, but be a false teacher. “You have to pay attention to the fact that not everybody who says ‘Lord, Lord is going to enter the Kingdom of Heaven,’” he said. This requires Christian to carefully evaluate their spiritual leaders.
The Christian Tribune reported on other warnings that came from prominent pastor and author Alistair Begg who urged the modern church to remain steadfast in the word of God and refrain from caving in to a culture of consumerism.
“Traditionally, the pulpit was central and visually dominant, not as an expression of the preacher’s authority, but as a reminder of the authority of Scripture,” he said. “Instead of coming into worship with the express understanding that all of this begins with God in His glory, people come with coffee in hand, saying, ‘Let’s see if he’s got something good for us today,’” he said.
“I’m not sure that America understands just how deep the problem is, in relationship to biblical illiteracy. You cannot continue to make your journey through life without your Bible, not as a talisman, not as something just to be revered in a corner, but without the Bible as our daily source of knowledge and encounter with God,” he added.
He emphasized to Christians, “There is a correlation between a collapse in our understanding of God and the expressions that are represented in the pulpit. You see, the task of the pastor in coming to the scriptures is not simply to provide information about what the Bible says with a few pointers to take home, fill in the blanks kind of stuff. That’s not the primary objective in the unfolding of Scripture. The desire, the longing of the pastor and the preacher and the people is that we might have a divine encounter with the living God through His Word, that we might meet God, that we might hear from God. … We don’t need to hear what Alistair knows about this or that. We need to hear from God.”
Featured image credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jordan_Peterson_(41117583320).jpg