Preaching the Gospel of False Love

Paul wrote this note to Joan Uda:

Hi Joan,

I red your article in the Saturday, August 18, 2007 Independent Record, How Powerful is Love? and your article on the net about the recent passing of Kurt Vonnegut and your reflections on having met him and studied under him. I have something to relate to you, drawing on both articles.

In the first you write about the love Pete and Clara had for each other during their many years of marriage, which ended with Clara’s death. Soon afterwards Pete began to exhibit the symptoms of Alzheimer’s induced dementia, thinking Clara was still around and looking in vain to find her. You liken this situation to the transcendental love of the Lord Jesus Christ, Whose words you record as follows:

“Seek and you will find, Jesus tells us. Matt. 6:33. Knock and the door will open. Rev. 3:20.”

You tie these together with what you saw in Pete and Clara:

“Love is the search, the door, and the means to open the door.

Pete and Clara are together now, I believe, forever united in God’s eternal circle of love.

The circle is for all of us. Peter and Clara’s love shows the way.”

Wow, can delusion get any greater than that? You take the symptoms of a disease, one which an unjust man would hardly wish on his enemies, and compare it to the love of God demonstrated by the laying down of the life of His Son for His enemies! There is no comparison between the love of God and earthly love of any kind, even one of the highest order, wherein one would sacrifice his or her life for a loved one. But God demonstrates His love in Christ by having lived a life without sin and being in debt to no man, yet dying on behalf of all, the whole world which has hated and has been at enmity with Him. Making this the equivalent of a man who is not in his right mind, apparently still dependent on his dead wife, is blasphemous. Stop and think about it, if you can.

Jesus put no special stock into the kind of love you equate to God’s. He said:

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them” (Luke 6:32 HNV).

The love of this world and the things of this world, according to the Bible, which you presume to use to teach others, are not of God:

“Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15 EMTV).

There is nothing wrong with a man loving his wife or a mother her children, but when it comes to the Kingdom of God, there is only one Way, about which you know nothing. Jesus said:

“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Matthew 10:37 EMTV).

You hold Pete up as an example of Christ’s love, but Jesus said that the sign of His love was not one of natural loves, but one of forsaking those for the love of God:

“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26 MKJV).

Those who choose the love of this world do not find the Way, they forsake it:

“For Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world...” (2 Timothy 4:10 MKJV).

You have never known or experienced the positive and illuminated side of these things because you are one with this world in its darkness. You love it and it loves you. You have never been identified with the Lord or His people, who are hated by the world:

“If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19 MKJV).

The world teaches a husband and wife will be together forever in Heaven, but the Lord said otherwise:

“And answering, Jesus said to them, ‘The sons of this world marry and are given in marriage, but they who shall be counted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage. Nor can they die any more, for they are equal to the angels, and are the sons of God, being the sons of the resurrection’” (Luke 20:34-36 MKJV).

You cite the Scriptures, but misquote them, betraying not only your lack of spiritual understanding and Essence, but carelessness and disregard for the holy things of God. You paraphrased Matthew 6:33 as “Seek and you will find,” though it actually says this:

“But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33 EMTV).

In other words, the Lord is saying, “Put Me first, and then you will have all that you need; everything will be rightly ordered.” Your quote suggests that any love and devotion demonstrated by humans is equivalent to godly seeking, whether for a dead wife or one’s pets; it all leads to God. You mention nothing about seeking after, and putting, His righteousness first. You assume that human love and affection automatically elevates one to this level. The apostle Paul has something altogether different to say about what that is all about:

“Because, having the knowledge of God, they did not give glory to God as God, and did not give praise, but their minds were full of foolish things, and their hearts, being without sense, were made dark. Seeming to be wise, they were in fact foolish, And by them the glory of the eternal God was changed and made into the image of man who is not eternal, and of birds and beasts and things which go on the earth. For this reason God gave them up to the evil desires of their hearts, working shame in their bodies with one another: Because by them the true Word of God was changed into that which is false, and they gave worship and honor to the thing which is made, and not to Him Who made it, to Whom be blessing for ever. So be it” (Romans 1:21-25 BBE).

The other Scripture you incorrectly quoted (“Knock and the door will open”) also leaves out God’s qualifications, suggesting that whoever is knocking, and on whatever door, will find God. Here is the actual quote:

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20 MKJV).

In this instance the Lord is the One Who is knocking. The point being made that He is the Initiator, and we are His respondents. Your way, the way of man’s religion, bypasses the Lord altogether and leaves the initiation and execution up to you. But you are knocking on the wrong door. There are many doors. Just because you knock on one and it opens does not mean anything. You might have gained entrance into a morgue, or a whorehouse, or a crackhouse. Because you knocked and it opened, can you automatically assume Christ is there?

He is not, and instead of Heaven you find yourself in the Methodist church, which is all three of the things I just listed. You appear righteous to men, but dead men’s bones are there. You prostitute the things of God for gain in this world. And you dispense the greatest narcotic of all, man’s religion, dulling the senses of all those who partake to the realities of the King and His Kingdom, causing others to blaspheme God on account of your hypocritical ways and diabolical doctrines. For these things you are held more accountable than those who do not take the Name of God in vain.

How does Vonnegut fit in? You say he influenced you with these words:

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”

You write:

“I spent years thinking about that, and concluded that it is, in Kurt’s quirky way, true. It convinced me that I could become who I wanted to be by pretending to be that person.

It loosely parallels an experience of John Wesley, founder of Methodism. When he was a young Anglican priest, Wesley confided in a friend that his faith was weak, that he was not ‘a convicted believer.’

The friend said Wesley should keep practicing his spiritual disciplines until his faith caught up with him. That’s always worked for me too.”

Man-made religion is all about what men do to become like God, as they conceive Him to be, unlike His work that He initiates, where He transforms people into His image through the obedience of faith in Christ. Your conception of Christ (and the works born of it) is utterly antithetical to Him. It is all sham and pretense. Jesus Christ is not represented by your thoughts and ways, or made flesh by your play acting. Nevertheless, Wesley’s Moravian friend never counseled him to pretend, God forbid, but to keep at doing his best until he would realize the substance. The Law is a tutor to bring us to Christ.

You have been religious, but not real. You have not taken Vonnegut’s advice to heart and been careful about what you have pretended, and have become that very thing, a religious charlatan. You should have forgotten about pretending in the first place and should have confessed your sins, turning to the Lord in truth. You have chosen what you willed rather than coming to Christ and confessing what you are, forsaking this wicked world and its ways in order to be what He wills. So you have what you were after, this world, but you do not have the next:

“To save your life is to lose it, and to lose your life for My sake is to save it” (Matthew 10:39 WNT).

Making matters worse, you teach others to follow your way in the Name of Christ, making you responsible for much loss of life.

Paul Cohen