Spiritual Malpractice

Those of us who serve on the Southern Baptist Convention Funding Study Committee finished our recent meeting in Arlington, Texas ahead of schedule. I decided to try to get an earlier flight home via a stand-by status. When they called my name to inform me that I had been awarded a seat I was elated even though it was a middle seat between two other passengers.

When I sat down I warned the ladies on either side of me that I was a Baptist preacher and told them I hoped that wouldn’t make them uncomfortable. I soon discovered that they were both believers and the young woman on my left, Jessica Atteberry Quinn, was a radiant Christian who grew up in First Baptist Church of Milton, Fla.

Jessica has her own public relations firm and she was returning from a meeting at Prestonwood Baptist Church, where she had the joy of listening to one of her clients, David Jeremiah, speak. She is promoting his new book, Captured by Grace.

Jeremiah is the pastor of a Southern Baptist Church, Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, Calif.; he is also an insightful preacher and a prolific writer.

Jessica told me that Jeremiah, a cancer survivor, presented a hypothetical case in one of his messages at Prestonwood, saying, “What if an oncologist examined a patient and said to him, ‘Your blood pressure is perfect and your cholesterol is at an acceptable level. Your skin is healthy and your reflexes are good. Have a good day.’”

Jeremiah continued, “Then suppose the patient left and the nurse turned to the physician and said, ‘but doctor, you didn’t tell him that the tests show that he has cancer.’”

And the doctor replied, “Well, that is true, but I just didn’t want to ruin his day.”

The California pastor indicated that in a similar fashion many preachers today are painting life in the pastel hues of garden walks, spring flowers and lovely rainbows. They are not speaking of the grief, sorrow, heartache and separation caused by sin. Therefore, they are guilty of spiritual malpractice.

Secular humanism has attempted to humanize God, deify man and minimize sin; these views have begun to insidiously infiltrate the church.

First of all, there is the attempt to humanize God. It has been said that in the beginning God made man in His image, and ever since the Fall man has tried to return the favor. Sinful man tries to re-make God into his image rather than being conformed to the image of Christ. This is the underlying problem of Romans chapter one. When they “knew God” they refused to “glorify him as God.” Their downward spiral accelerated as they “changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man” (Romans 1:23). This is the terrible sin of humanizing God.

Furthermore, in much of the preaching today God is humanized by stripping Him of his unappealing attributes. Many sermons today avoid those aspects of God’s perfect character that bring guilt to imperfect people. In doing so, God is reduced to a passive, non-threatening deity.

Secondly, there is the matter of deifying man. Humanizing God naturally paves the way for the second sin of deifying man. After exchanging the glory of God for the image of man, the object of worship is no longer God, but man himself. Romans 1:25 states, “Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.”

Humanism has begun to dominate the cultural values of our society and has virtually turned the Christian world upside down – a reversal of Acts 17:6. This indicates the weakness of Christianity in our world, and that must be changed.

Finally, there is the matter of minimizing sin. When man has a lowered vision of God and a heightened vision of himself, sin does not appear exceedingly sinful. Therefore, men are prone to see their failures as nothing worse than poor judgment at best and a character flaw at worst.

Churches are not meant to be primarily social clubs or entertainment centers, but soul-saving stations where sin is portrayed as creating an impenetrable barrier between God and man. God alone removed the barrier caused by sin, and its removal was costly, requiring the sacrificial death of His Son, Jesus Christ, upon the cross. God takes sin seriously. Therefore, those who preach must not be guilty of spiritual malpractice.