The ‘bad news’ of the Gospel

Life is hard. You probably figured that out a long time ago, but a large portion of millennials are only now discovering just how hard the Christian life can be; and many of them are “deconstructing” their faith as a result — which is just a fancy way of saying they’re choosing to believe heresy. This trend has left faithful believers scratching their heads and asking why this is happening and if it can be stopped.

Are we willing to take a second look at our messaging to make sure we’re not unintentionally contributing to the problem? Are we preparing people for, or even telling people about, the trials that God promised would come to those who truly follow Him?

“You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar” is a common phrase used to explain how it’s easier to influence people with pleasantries than by being negative. Positivity attracts; negativity repels. It makes sense to try and attract people to Christ by telling them about the benefits of following Him and leave out the challenges that come with it. The word “Gospel” does mean “good news” after all; and nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news. 

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The problem with this approach is it doesn’t prepare people for the war they’re unknowingly enlisting in, or the attacks they’ll face because we live in a world system that’s ruled by the devil, who hates us.

Imagine thinking you signed up for a free vacation where all you have to do is listen to an hour long timeshare presentation, only to arrive on a battlefield filled with wounded people and bullets flying over your head. Most people would turn around and go back to where they came from, not necessarily because they’re weak or even afraid, but because they feel tricked. It would feel like a bait and switch; they were promised a vacation, but they got a warzone.

Are we promising them a free trip to paradise if they just endure an inconvenient message for about an hour every week, but leaving out the fact that they’re enlisting in the biggest and deadliest spiritual war in the history of the universe? 

In many cases, the Gospel that people heard when they first got saved was something like, “You’re lost, hurting and broken, and God wants to heal you, give you a sense of purpose and fill the emptiness that you feel inside with His love.” Of course, all of those things are true, and when people can relate to that kind of pain, oftentimes they want a way out and will turn to Christ for help. But what happens when years later they walk through hardship and they no longer experience the positive feelings they did at first but instead they feel alone, empty, without purpose and broken?

Can a Gospel that only tells people about the benefits they will get if they follow God sustain them when they experience the opposite? 

I’m not saying we shouldn’t tell people about the blessings of following the Lord, but I do want us to ask some really hard questions about our approach, such as: is the Gospel we preach ultimately appealing to human selfishness? 

How is “come to Jesus, He’ll give you ___” any different than “make this investment and you’ll double what you put in!”? And just like making an investment, when people start to feel like their decision for Christ is actually resulting in loss, they’ll pull their investment out. Is this “feel better than you do right now” style of evangelism even preaching the Gospel at all? Are new converts even aware of the depravity of their sin and their inability to be good enough to earn their salvation by trying to do good things to make up for the fact that they’ve done wrong? 

If people are choosing Christ because they’re being promised He’ll make them feel good, then they’ll just as easily “un-choose” Him when they start feeling bad and something else comes along that promises to make them feel better. 

A feelings-based gospel simply doesn’t have the power to carry us through hard times, persecution and delayed promises. 

Hebrews chapter 11 gives us a list of men and women who comprise what some call “the hall of faith” because of their capacity to believe God in the midst of contradiction. However, after listing all the miraculous intervention their faith in God released in their lives, in verse 13 it says, “All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen and welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.”

All of our heroes of the faith went to the grave still believing in promises that God didn’t fulfill in their lives! There’s nothing more terrifying to the devil than a believer with unyielding faith. 

Eighteen years ago I was serving the Lord as a leader in Youth With A Mission (YWAM) and we spent about 3 weeks in Taiwan. While I was there, I went onto a rooftop alone to spend time with the Lord. Now mind you, this was the roof of a 20-story apartment complex, and there weren’t any walls or barriers around the edges to keep you from falling if you stepped too close. 

During that time I was wrestling with God over some things I was believing Him for and I came to a moment that to me felt like profound submission where I bowed low and said out loud, “God, I’ll believe all your promises even when outwardly it looks like none of them will come true!”

Just then I heard a sound and looked up. About 15 feet away from me on the roof was a pile of corrugated sheet metal stacked about 2 feet tall that had levitated up into the air, and the first piece then proceeded to fly straight towards my face! Contrary to what you might think of me right now, I’m not crazy so I wasn’t going to stay there to see what happened. I got up and ran left towards the edge of the roof and watched as these pieces of sheet metal were thrown at me like the top piece of a deck of cards, following me across the roof. When I got to the edge, I decided I would rather try my luck with the sheet metal than a 20-story drop, so I lifted my head up toward Heaven and cried out, “Jesus, help!” (Or something like that). Then the last piece hit me around my right kidney, but it felt as light as a feather and I sensed the presence of an angel standing next to me. Bewildered, I went back to inspect the spot that the first piece of sheet metal hit, and found a broken pipe of some kind that was leaking a bunch of water on the roof. Who knows what it would have done to my face, but it probably wouldn’t feel good. Knowing that nobody would believe me (likely you don’t either, and that’s OK, I would probably be skeptical too) I knew I needed a witness so I went and got a friend to come up and see it too, and he looked more bewildered than I was! 

I share this story to say this: the devil’s most overt and supernatural attack against me came after I chose faith in God’s promises regardless of what outward circumstances looked like. That kind of faith accesses the power of God and terrifies the devil because it reminds him of his defeat when that kind of faith is present. Enduring faith unleashes the powers of the age to come that will wreak havoc on the kingdom of darkness. It’s the only kind of faith that accesses eternal rewards. 

The Christian life is a call to walk in the tension of hope towards God’s promises and the pain of their delay. It’s the tension of living from inward confirmation and outward contradiction. Faith that overcomes this tension overpowers the devil’s resistance and unleashes the powers of tomorrow into the darkness right now. 

This is the life we’re called to live. This is the message we need to preach. 

We can’t leave out the “bad news of the Gospel.” If people aren’t told about trials and tribulations, they’ll blame God when bad things happen instead of the devil. That’s the best trick in the devil’s playbook; to bring harm and then make us believe it’s God’s fault. 

The Gospel is good news when it comes to our relationship with God, but it’s bad news to the devil, which makes us a target.

It’s time to tell the full story again.