How Fake Grace preys on Innocence

Early in life, we learn quickly how to align ourselves with those we admire most. I remember hearing parents trying to convince children on doing homework in a certain way that were different from what the children remembered their primary school teachers had taught them. The kids just rejected
any attempt by the parents to do the homework in any other way. Why? Because the teachers said so.

Look at the teenagers who changes their wardrobes to the dismay of their parents, why? 'cause they have found new admiration toward a celebrity clothing style.

Authority figures come in all shape and form: teachers, celebrities, an alpha friend in the pack, religious personalities and more. Authority figures usually work on impressionable mind, when individuals have yet to master factual information. This makes perfect sense. Since they can't arrive to a conclusion by following a string of factual information by themselves, they have no other choice but to rely on another form of authority beside facts for their belief. This is standard normal practices for humans. We have learned as much since early childhood. When we don't know much about any given topic or subject, we rely on people whom we believe know more or better. Example of subjects that requires learning mostly from authority until people masters the facts, Chemistry, Biology, Economics, Astrophysics, etc.

How do people end up embracing dangerous ideas or bad habits? Same short answer, the influence of authority figures. These later figures usually hold and/or encourage dangerous ideas or bad habits. For an untrained mind, these dangerous people becomes like drugs.

Just as it has been difficult to change a child's mind about a certain way of doing calculus because of the way the kid learned it from his teacher, so I have encounter difficulty helping young folks when it comes to understanding the scriptures because of their fanatical embrace of a certain religious leader or religious figure. You can easily tell if their embrace of a certain view is a result of personal thinking or a mindless adherence of what they heard.

A case in point.

Not long ago, I was in a dialogue with some youth discussing some biblical concepts. But it became clear that I was not discussing with them, but with the ghost of their teachers. I couldn't reason them, they mindlessly abode to their position. One of the best evidence of that came during the rather elongated dialogue, when one of them made an appeal to history, unfortunately for him it was fake history.

In our effort to establish the right context for the epistle of John which discusses the problem of sins in many of its chapters, the gentleman I was debating openly claimed that John the writer of the first epistle of John was writing against Gnosticism. I easily pointed out that this could not be possible since Gnosticism didn't even exist in the first century. It was a second century philosophy by all account. I pursued with the correction by pointing at him that John in his epistle was fighting Docetism which was a first century heresy that denied the humanity of the person of Jesus Christ. The young man refused to admit this simple kernel of historical truth despite internal evidences to the texts that I raised to his attention. Later on, I found out in my reading research about the counterfeit grace movement that this belief of gnosticism as being a first century phenomenon was not peculiar to my then interlocutor. It seems that this misinformation has been moving from one person to another without any of them actually stopping and thinking for themselves by asking if this statement could be true or not. Frankly, with the advent of internet and google search engine, this would have taken them less than 5 minutes to find out. But as I came to realize, it is not truth that they searched for but it was a form of theological comfort. A theology that didn't call them into repentance as part of the good news of the gospel. They collectively didn't care about truthful statement, or contradictions in their argumentation or incoherence in their thinking, I finally came to realize. All that interested them was to repeat what their authority figure had told them. If it feels good then it must be good they seemed to be thinking.

This is quite a difficult situation to be in for a parent and a family member and friends, when they see their children or brothers, or close friends taking the dishonest path of 'fake grace and/or hyper-grace'. I have been lucky enough that not many people close to me, either family or friends have ever gone the deep end and get totally lost in this fake grace dishonest teachings. But I also know that this is not always the case for some people that I meet who have lost their whole team and club of friends into this intellectually dishonest and spiritual predatory and bankrupt movement.

For this reason, I would like to start a series of posts that will deal with some of the most popular themes that are staple food to the fake grace movement of Rwanda. I hope that by providing these resources, some of you will be equipped to dialogue and exchange with those you have lost to the destructive lies of the 'fake grace' message. And who knows, maybe the Lord will be gracious to them and restore many of your loved ones to reason, truth, light and love of God and of God's Word.

The purpose of my series of posts is not to close or shut the conversation with those of the fake grace movement. The intention is to first equip the untrained Christians who meet these type of fake grace proponents at schools, workplace, choirs, charity club, youth clubs with a sound biblical background so that they may be immune of the the lies of the fake grace movement and so that if they ever get engaged by one, they may know how to respond to them with full conviction and clear responses. I will encourage all my readers in this series to adopt the Berean's attitude. I will quote and link as much as I can to all my sources for your information with the hope that you can go read them and verify. Let us not be like those of the fake grace movement who do not verify what they are taught or what they hear! The first antidote for what is fake is to display what is true, and secondly it is to teach people on how to distinguish between the two.

"The people in Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica. They were so glad to hear the message Paul told them. They studied the Scriptures every day to make sure that what they heard was really true." - Act 17:11 - ERV