So many pulpits today spew forth “moralistic therapeutic deism” such as:
- “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.”
- “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.”
- “The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”
- “God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.”
- “Good people go to heaven when they die.”
My good friend, Jonathan Edwards, has something to say about this concerning the necessity of the work of God in the pastor’s ministry:
Surely physicians are, of themselves, none of them able to raise the dead. You may apply what medicine you please to a dead man, you cannot fetch him to life. You may set what food you will before him, it will not nourish him. You may represent what objects you will, he will not see. If you charm in his ears ever so wisely, he will not hear. You can do no good at all to a dead man. Nothing that you do will have influence upon him. So nothing that ministers can do, if God does nothing, can have any influence at all upon the souls of sinners, their conversion or spiritual good. The Salvation of Souls, pg. 46-47
