Zombies in the Pulpits – Zombies in the Pews

Two years prior to becoming a Christian I spent as much time as I could reading about human nature.  I found it to be a fascinating experience and I absorbed as many books as I could get my hands on about the subject, both from the library and from second-hand book shops.  Old cloth-bound and hard cover books held a greater appeal for me than the newer, one of the reasons being my discovery that human nature was no different back a few hundred years ago than what it is today.  That was a revelation for me … intentionally or not my schooling left me with a different impression altogether.

It was in those old books that I first learned about the herd mentality – which describes how people are influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors and speech, follow trends and/or purchase items.  It didn’t take long to work out how little thinking I’d ever done for myself.  Neither did it take long to work out how powerful the influences either for good or bad that others had on me in my first thirty-nine years.  Peer influence in behavior and speech continues to fascinate me, but even more so now as a Christian.

In numerous testimonies on this blog I use the term “Christian-speak.”  I didn’t create the term but it speaks perfectly to me of lots of Christian people who appear to have a herd mentality with regards their learning, behavior and speech in the church.  Whether they be Episcopalians/Anglicans, Protestants, Baptists, Pentecostals or the increasingly countless Such & Such Christian Fellowships, too many of the people within appear to have super-strong peer influences, based on the way they behave and speak when in their respective groups.

In other words, I am saying that many Christians have not, are not and will not think for themselves nor act for themselves according to what it is they are hearing and learning from their leaders.  The result of this is that God has too many ignorant and gullible people in His church … not to speak of lazy people … believing the lie that everything that comes out of the pastor/leader’s mouth is from God.  Same goes for the pastor/leader.  He fits the same category because he all too readily has accepted the same stuff without question from his source, whether that be the theological leaders he sat under as a student, or whatever.

Example:  Let’s take this piece of Christian-speak – “Christians are not under the Law but under grace, amen?”  “Amen!”  Why do I call such a beautiful truth as this, “Christian-speak”?  Because in my experience with churches “the Law” has simply been replaced by another law or laws – man-made laws or doctrines or rules or obligations or expectations or traditions … call it what you may but it cannot be called grace.  Worse.  That word grace has too often come from the most graceless of lips – legalistic people, angry people, bitter people, fearful (of God) people, willfully sinning people and lying people.

It is my strong conviction that multitudes of Christians have little to no understanding of what it truly means to be delivered from the Law.  My wife and I had to leave the church system before God could teach us in earnest what deliverance from the Law really means.  Astounding!  As new Christians years ago, we received some wonderful cassette-tape teaching on it from overseas ministry, but each time we stepped back into a church we came under that (more than one) particular church or fellowship’s doctrines, laws, rules and obligations and this truth was ever-so-subtly eroded from us.  See my post: I failed to study that word “free.”  … plus the posts linked from it.

We have discovered the reality that as long as Christians continue to yield themselves to legalistic religious doctrines, or over-emphasized doctrines, or any non-biblical laws, rules, expectations, obligations and traditions of religious people … and yet at the same time mouth off about grace … they are like people living in a half-way house, the only difference being that they never fully recover from laws to fully enjoy the benefits of grace.  All the talk in the world about grace shows up to be fraudulent … phony.

Apart from those tapes and one or two books which have greatly helped me in my personal studies to understand what God tells us about our deliverance from the Law to live under grace, I have never really heard the truth of it preached or taught from a church setting. The leaders haven’t handled it well. Is that because their understanding of it is more intellectual than spiritual?  Could be.  We sat in one church and for years they labored their doctrines with Christian-speak, such as the need for “putting yourself on the altar” and “come to the cross and lay down your life” etc.

This same group spoke a lot about coming under grace too.  But it wasn’t grace.  It was nothing remotely like the divine exchange that takes place under true grace.  The “grace” they spoke of was little more than coming out from one Law to become gradually and subtly placed under another law.  I did not experience the divine, eternal, abundant life of God as ministered by the Holy Spirit, I experienced spiritual and mental death as ministered by religious men.  It’s one thing to be executed by God, but it’s something else altogether to be executed by religious men.  I’ll take God’s method anytime.

Paul the apostle tells us in Galatians 2:19-20 that through the Law he died to the Law that he might live to God.  He said that he had been crucified with Christ, he no longer lives, it is Christ who lives in Him.  Then he tells us that the life he now lives is by faith in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  That is the position of all Christians who have been born again by the Spirit of God – our position exactly and precisely.  We are dead to the Law.  Dead.  There’s nothing deader than dead!  Surely this is not difficult to grasp.  Everyone knows that in the natural, someone who is dead is no longer subject to laws.

So I ask myself, why is it that dead Christians try to live as though they are not dead.  From what I have seen/am seeing it is the most neglected truth of all New Testament Scripture.  The dictionary describes a ‘Zombie’ as ‘the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less, by a supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose.’  My God, have mercy!  Based on my experiences … plus observations … this, sadly, describes law-based, rules-based, grace-less Christians. Zombies in the pulpits – zombies in the pews.  I was once one of them. 

How sad it is to observe Christian brothers and sisters in their churches (through ignorance or otherwise) living under illegitimate laws of illegitimate religious men.  They are mute and will-less.  The supernatural evil forces controlling their leaders will make sure that the mouths of their hearers are stopped … making doubly sure that their wills become subject to them.  Shut down the mouth and you shut down the mind.  Or – shut down the mind and you shut down the mouth.  Either way, Satan couldn’t care less and neither could his servants.

A Christian whose mind and mouth has been shut down doesn’t develop a herd mentality, he simply adjusts the one he already had when he lived in the world.  He no longer follows the worldly crowd; they have little attraction for him now that he’s in the church.  But he’s still a follower of men.  In Old Testament Deuteronomy 28: 1-14 we read of the tremendous blessings from God upon all who choose to live in obedience to Him.  Deuteronomy 28:13 reveals a glorious promise upon obedience, that of being made “the head and not the tail” and “you shall be above only, and not be beneath….”

I recently read a beautiful description on this, “the head makes the decisions and the tail gets dragged around.”  It seems to me that this is certainly true in the negative of Christians who allow themselves to become tools in the hands of religious men and their doctrines and church rules … tails being dragged around by religious heads, never above, always beneath … not slaves (servants) of righteousness Romans 6:18-20 but slaves of self-righteousness – their own and everybody else’s.  To allow anyone other than the Holy Spirit to control your thinking is spiritual death … and spiritual death is a curse.

New Testament Romans 6:6 makes it clear that our old self or being was crucified with the Lord Jesus.  This is a historical fact.  It will always be true whether we know it or not or whether we believe it or not.  The problem is, from an experiential aspect too many Christians don’t know that they were crucified with Him.  They hear lots about how we must crucify the lusts of the flesh etc, but because of all the silly little rules and laws that are brought into play to carry it out, true grace goes out the door and works comes rushing in.  And the people appear to love it that way.

So instead of the “new creation” 2 Corinthians 5:17 turning up for Sunday church and midweek Bible study, the carnal, fleshly (old man) turns up. He tries to make himself respectable and religious for the occasion but he fails.  He fails miserably always, because God will make sure of it.  But does that stop him?  No.  Deep down he doesn’t believe God’s truth about this, that’s why he constantly confesses his sin for whatever and constantly asks for forgiveness for whatever and constantly takes on the rules as they constantly come from the mouth of the one standing in the pulpit.

What to do then?  Get away from rulers … get away from rules.  You cannot die to self under either of those, you can only be tortured … constantly tortured.  The Bible loudly declares that Jesus died our death that we may live His life.  This is not a religious life; it is a resurrection life … eternal life, God’s life.  God does not say that we may know Him and the power of His religion … but rather, “that we may know Him and the power of His resurrection ….. ” Philippians 3:10.  Living under the resurrection power of God is what enables us to accomplish the will of God.  If we choose that, we’ll also find ourselves being delivered from the power of the herd mentality. “This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” Galatians 3:2.