“Lord, save us from your followers” — UHD 14:6

“Lord, save us from your followers” is a culturally popular video title that confuses me. “They like Jesus but not the Church” is a popular Christian book title that disturbs me. Pray for me. I’m confused and disturbed by Christians who find these attractive. I thought that the Bible teaches that a true follower of the Jesus of the Bible tells us how to be saved from sin, not saved from God’s people. I thought a Jesus follower was a lover of Jesus and other true followers. I thought that if someone loves Jesus they love brothers and sisters in the Church. I thought the Church is Jesus’ body. If the second title refers to the unsaved world, I thought Jesus said, “Don’t be surprised if the world hate you. It hated Me before it hated you.”

Why would lies be popular among young Christians? These titles open the door to do some word-play:

Lord save us from your followers who……
….like Jesus, the Head but not the Church, His Body.
….like the Jesus they like, but reject the Christians they don’t like.
….Like the earth and the things they see but not the spiritual and the things they don’t see.
….Like the conversation about the Truth, but not the Truth.
….Like group community with other people but not individual accountability before God.
….like the Jesus of the first advent but not the second advent.
….like to bow down to tolerance but not the tolerance of conservative fundamentalists
….like to get a hold of the Bible for their earthly purposes but not for spiritual purposes
….like to reject the wisdom of their elders but accept the wisdom of their peers
….like to question propositional truth in God’s Word, but welcome the question, “Has God said?”
…like a favorable presentation of homosexuality, but not the Bible’s condemnation of it as sin.
…like no references to what God says, but celebrate human opinion.

Lord, save us from these followers!