#salvationmessage

There’s something I’ve been carrying in my heart, and I finally shared it in my latest podcast episode titled “Let’s Refocus: What Really Matters In The Church Today.” We’ve become so caught up in discussions—about tithing, gospel artists, how worship should look—that we’ve lost sight of the heart of the Gospel. I believe God is calling us back to focus on what truly matters: salvation,…

Stockholm syndrome is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when someone, after having their life threatened by another but then being spared, actually ends up with positive feelings toward the person who did the threatening. They see not being fatally harmed as an act of compassion.  

  It’s a term most often used in hostage situations in which the victims, upon realizing that their captors will let them live, in an extreme state of relief, become emotionally attached to the people holding them hostage.

  It gets its name from a situation that happened in Stockholm, Sweden in 1973 where four bank employees were held hostage for six days by two ex-convicts who were trying to rob the bank. The ex-convicts threatened the lives of the bankers, but ultimately decided not to harm them, so the bankers developed warm feelings toward them, resisted rescue and even defended them in court.

  Stockholm syndrome can be summed up like this: because someone could have hurt you but decided not to, you develop an irrational form of love for them.

  So what does any of this have to do with a blog about thoughts on god?

  Because I think that sometimes the message of Jesus is communicated like that.

  Have you ever been given you the idea that we’re so depraved, so hopelessly sinful, so utterly terrible that we all deserve to suffer eternal torment in hell, but fortunately God decided to send Jesus and if we just confess how horrible we and believe in him, he’ll save us?   

  Or maybe you’ve been told that to understand how great God is, you have to first understand how bad you are.

  Maybe you’ve seen what I saw on the bulletin of a church I visited once:

  Interested in being saved?

  ADMIT YOU ARE A SINNER AND DESERVING OF GOD’S WRATH!

  And this type of message is supposed to make us fall in love with Jesus?

  Doesn’t that just make us all have a bit of Stockholm syndrome?

  It was summed up well in a cartoon that Brian Zahnd posted on twitter recently:

 His tweet that accompanied it read, “We need a better gospel than this. We have a better gospel than this!”