Red Letter Christians - Denial In The New Age

So a Red Letter Christian walks into a newspaper that he doesn't have the courage to name and suddenly has a desire to explain to their account rep who and what they are. The following conversation ensues:

"We’re the opposite of  The Christian Right,”

“Oh so it’s just the Gospel,” he said, “none of this Leviticus and Revelation stuff.” 

"Pretty much," we said. "We like the red words. Haha!”

Yes, the Red Letter Christians love the words in the bible that are printed in red, the rest of the bible not so much. If you pay attention to a Red Letter Christian you'll get the idea that the rest of the bible needs to be ignored. When confronted with Timothy 3:16-17 the response of the Red Letter Christian is: 

That's all great and everything. Paul said that. Jesus said, "The sum of the law and all the prophets is to love God and love your neighbor as you do yourself." Not only that, he said it several times.

and my favorite, rejecting historical fact and getting their theology from Wikipedia:

2 Timothy is one of the pseudepigraphical epistles. Paul didn't actually write that one; one could call it a forgery

The Red Letter Christians are saying 'we ignore Timothy because we think it's a forgery, Wikipedia says so. We will ignore the fact that Clement, the Bishop of Rome (100 A.D.), Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch (67-110 A.D.), and Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna (69-156 A.D.) were contemporary with the apostles or contemporary with Timothy and were familiar with the letters. They accepted 1 and 2 Timothy as genuine letters from the apostle Paul. As further evidence that their authorship was never in doubt, the Pastoral Epistles were found in the early Latin and Syriac versions of the New Testament. We trust Wikipedia over people who were there and know better and we certainly trust Wikipedia over the Holy Spirit.'

So why am I writing this post about the Red Letter Christians? As any Christian blogger will tell you, sometimes you just have to write something on a particular subject. While not wanting to wax Pentecostal, I believe that the Holy Spirit occasionally wants a subject to be broadcast and I've noticed that when I feel His push to write about a subject I often see that several other Bloggers will write about the same subject too. I had never heard about Red Letter Christians until this weekend but after seeing a post at Eternity Matters (an awesome blog) I started feeling that push. Then yesterday I found out why the Holy Spirit wanted a broadcast message sent out. More on that later. What I found out about Red Letter Christians made me weep for Christianity.

Red Letter Christians are defined as this by Got Questions? (an awesome tool):

The name “Red Letter Christians” refers to the words of Jesus, which are printed in red in many editions of the New Testament. Red Letter Christians are a group of liberal Christians whose desire is to counter the political influence of conservative Christians... Red Letter Christians resent what they see as the religious right’s fixation on abortion and homosexual rights. Since Jesus did not deal with those two issues, they say, we should not make them more urgent than other issues...

[a] problem involves the group’s piecemeal approach to Scripture. To concentrate on certain parts of the Bible to the exclusion of others is unbalanced and dangerous... [another] problem relates to their interpretation of Jesus’ words. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was not trying to write national government policy. He was presenting Himself as the fulfillment of the Old Testament Law (Matthew 5:17) and the Savior from sin for all who would believe in Him. He clearly separated Himself from all political movements and paradigms when He said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

The Red Letter Christians are a growing part of the huge circus tent of the Emerging Church. They define themselves thusly:

Red Letter Christianity is not an approach to Scripture that seats the ‘red letters’ of the Bible above any other letters from the Bible. There is no hierarchy of ‘red letters’ down to ‘black letters.’ Instead, Red Letter Christianity places an emphasis on Christ’s words as found throughout the New Testament. Much in the same way that certain churches identify with Micah 6:8 or John 3:16 our movement identifies with the specific words of Christ with regards to action and deed... Red Letter Christians emphasize the words of Christ, especially Christ’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, as a call to action and justice. (source)

Sounds good to me... what - what? Does "Thou shalt not kill" apply to straw men? Christian churches do not identify with one verse over another. We don't get that option, we identify with God. we are called out of the world to assemble to worship God in Christ. We are to preach the only Gospel there is; the repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ Name because salvation is by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in the finished work on the Cross of Christ alone. 

And what is with this "there is no hierarchy of red letters down to black letters" nonsense? It's nonsense because it's followed immediately by "Instead, Red Letter Christianity places an emphasis on Christ’s words as found throughout the New Testament." Dude! That's a hierarchy! You just created a hierarchy immediately after you said there is no hierarchy!

Now look what they did, they made me use exclamation points 

The Sermon On the Mount a call to action? The Sermon on the Mount was addressed to the disciples, not to the multitudes. It isn't intended to be a social gospel or to bring an end to suffering and wars. The Sermon on the Mount declares to us what we are through the grace of God working in our lives; and because of what we are what our relationship to the law is. For this reason. the Sermon on the Mount needs to be taken in context. (Chuck Smith) But if the Red Letter Christians want it to be a call to action, I dare them to spring into action. This too is part of the Sermon On The Mount:

15 “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? 17 So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 So then, you will know them by their fruits. (Matthew 7:15-20)

There you have it, in Red Letters -look out for those false prophets, those teachers of lies, the agents of Satan that will lead you to a hell that Red Letter Christians only think is reserved for rich people and bankers. Seriously, they believe To be very rich, and not help the poor, is the greatest sin of all. I am still looking for the greatest sin of all in the bible but instead I find Proverbs 6:16-19. 

How do you determine a false prophet? First, read the bible,,, the whole bible. Several times if you have to. When you do so, allowing the Holy Spirit to guide you, you'll eventually realize that they're ALL red letters. The bible is the inspired word of God. Jesus is God. Therefore the bible is the inspired word of Jesus. Therefore you can pretty much be sure that the false prophet is the one telling you to emphasize one verse over another, the one teaching you that actions are more important to your salvation than your faith. 

Studying the Red Letter Christians and their philosophy leads to one glaring fact - they're not about theology, they're about politics. They're for evolution, social justice, environmentalism, gun control, mysticism, marxism, and ecumenicalism.  

If they're a religion of anything they're a religion of hate, their blogs are a nonstop vomitorium of hatred focused on the Christian Right and anything to do with conservative values. Going through their comment sections is like reading the comments posted in the Democratic Underground with (thankfully) fewer obscenities. Their targets are as distinguished as they are wide ranging: NRA, Bankers, "Rich People", Conservatives, creationism, Israel, the Second Amendment, Christians, Biblical inerrancy, and "haters" (Haters, I've discovered, are anyone that disagrees with Red Letter Christians) 

They're a group of  New Age liberal socialists whose primary focus is preaching a gospel of "social justice". Since they reject Paul, they miss one of Jesus' most direct commands - that we are to preach only the gospel of repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ Name because salvation is by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in the finished work on the Cross of Christ alone:

6 I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; 7 which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel other than what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! 9 As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel more than what you received, he is to be accursed! (Galatians 1:6-9)

Reading the Red Letter Christian's blog I found by their own words they are a muddled, self contradicting group of hate filled socialists who are demanding that the people they hate the most, love more than they do. So I asked myself who could possibly be running this organization.

It's Tony Campolo.

That actually answers a lot of questions. Tony is one of those folks who pops up over and over and over and each time his name pops up, there's falsehood involved. And as I read and pondered these people the news broke: 

Citing his concern for "social justice" as a primary motivation in announcing his decision to "call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church," speaker and author Tony Campolo said in an open statement on his website today he is compelled to emphasize Matthew 25 and the doctrines of the Apostles Creed in responding to "the least of these."

At least now I know why the Holy Spirit wanted this group highlighted and broadcast. Tony was taking his easily swayed one step further from God with his social popularity contest. The world is going gay, so let's jump in with both feet and make it sound Christian while we idolize sin. Again with the apostles creed - what's with Tony and the Apostles Creed? and again with the emphasizing one portion of the bible over another. Are we now to reject the rest of what Jesus said because now Tony is emphasizing one set of Red Letter verses? 

The Red Letter Christians will argue that Jesus didn't speak about homosexuality, which is true, He didn't. He spoke of HETEROsexuality and the divinity of the God created Heterosexual relationship

4 And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

But as we have seen not only does Tony Campolo and his acolytes "emphasize" Red Letters over Black letters, they "emphasize" Convenient Red Letters over Inconvenient Red Letters.

Brothers and Sisters we need to pray for those trapped in this circle of political deceit, in the hopes that one day the Holy Spirit will open their minds to let them see that all letters in the bible are God's holy words and all letters are not just red or black but letters of love, and justice, and power, and glory. Lord teach them that the Gospel is not of social envy and hatred of those that disagree with you but one of repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ Name of salvation by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in the finished work on the Cross through Christ alone.