Fear Based Theology | Theocast Clips

Fear-Based Tactics in Preaching and Christian Life

But when you only preach the law and then the gospel is only the part of which you must now do, which is the cleanup part, it creates what we call a manipulative side of preaching or life of Christianity on a fear-based tactics, where even in times theology becomes so prevalent in the preaching and teaching where you're always using it as a means to govern one's life.

I remember growing up in a youth group where we would watch the original like 1980s, 70s, I can't remember what it was, but the left-behind movies where the fear was you don't want to be caught, you don't want to be caught not living for Christ when he comes back because you could be one of those people who were left behind.

You walk into the church and all the clothes are there. I mean, we always did that.

We had a judgment household situation at Halloween and all that.

And it still plays out today. There are people who are extremely afraid of the return of Christ and being caught as if they aren't ready and God's going to leave them here because they're not taking it seriously.

I mean, I did a whole video on is the vaccine the mark of the beast and it's insane the conversation that goes on in that the comment section where people truly do live by fear thinking that if Christ comes back and I've either taken the vaccine or I'm not living for whatever reason, they don't walk by faith.

They walk by fear and that's what governs them. I mean, and I'll throw it back over to you, Justin, but when you think about what this has to do with it, they don't just say, you know, live for Jesus.

They then give you rules and regulations. And from this fundamentalist movement that started and really was a lot of dispensationalism that pushed this along, it became more about not drinking, not going to movie houses, not you listen to certain kind of music.

It became that what you didn't do and those who were living this particular lifestyle were the ones that could have confirmation that when Christ came back, when the trumpet sound, then you were to meet with him.

And so preaching became more about warning people about morality than it did proclaiming the sufficiency of Christ. And there's nothing wrong with warning people about their moral life. We'll get into that later.

But if that's all the diet is, then it's completely lopsided from what we've been handed to us in the New Testament. And I would even say the Old Testament.

The Limits of Fear-Based Motivation

Yeah. The fear-based tactics are effective in ways, though I would argue that they are very short-sighted. They're manipulative, as you even alluded to. I think they work because if you get a room full of people who have tender consciences at all and are familiar at all with the scriptures and the law of God and what God requires and how holy and righteous he is and the reality of final judgment and all these things, you can work people up into a pretty good frenzy without a lot of difficulty by just reminding people of these simple truths from the Bible, again, devoid of really any kind of gospel.

Because in my mind, John, I didn't come from that context, but I'm not altogether unacquainted with it, right? To me, the gospel simply is—there's all this hell, fire, brimstone judgment stuff, right?

Righteousness of God, holiness of God, he's a consuming fire, all these things. And it's just taken out of context at points and overemphasized. And the really all that's preached is that Jesus did die for sinners, yes, but what's demanded of you is you better repent.

And it's almost like we're saved by how well we repent or the question is whether you've repented and then you're going to prove your repentance through a life of abstinence,.

Repentance, Assurance, and the Sufficiency of Christ

Basically. That's right. Repentance really is from your past life. Correct. You're turning.

From your former sins and you're not living like that anymore. And you're going to continue to prove that you're legit day after day after day by abstaining from the things that you used to do, that used to characterize your life before you, you know, saw the light and decided to follow Christ or whatever it is.

And I think it's easy for me to see how that's effective. And at the same time, there's no gospel really in that.