Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
I don’t know if you have heard of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, but it has quietly become the religion of much of America. The core beliefs are something like this:
1. A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.
Most of the people who believe this would say they are Christ followers, but there is a gap between biblical Christianity and MTD. Good is really defined by popular culture rather than the moral imperatives of the Bible. And this is where the problem is. So, tolerating behaviors the Bible calls sin might be seen as “good” while calling those behaviors “sin” might be seen as intolerant or hateful.
Sound familiar? That is why we must look to God’s word for truth. Not our culture, not our feelings, not our opinions and not our own experiences. And this is a challenge we face as followers of Christ today, to not make following Christ in our own image.
We need to be immersed in the Word of God and in prayer so that we can see where we have been deceived by the world’s belief system.
Still love you
Randy