Preaching that God is the source of all your problems is not preaching the gospel. Preaching that following Jesus will multiply your problems is not preaching the gospel. Preaching that you have to work and suffer for God, but that God will not solve your problems is not preaching the gospel.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is a message of salvation and deliverance. It is the declaration that God will save our souls and solve our problems. The Faithless condemn this message. They claim it is dangerous to acknowledge that God will solve our problems because it is an unspiritual message, and it may produce false hope and attract false converts. Of course, they think it may produce false hope because they do not have faith in God. Once I heard a preacher exclaim, “God is not here to solve your problems!” He seemed strangely happy about it. He was very mainstream, very orthodox, very respected. And he was very demonic. This kind of religion is faithless fanaticism.
If God is not here to solve my problems, then who is? Do I have to help myself, save myself? Is that the gospel? Or do faithless people speak this way because there is actually no God in the religion they preach? Even the message that God will forgive all our sins would bring in a good number of false converts, so should we stop preaching that too?
Faithless fanatics speak as if the true gospel is the message that God condemns you more severely if you follow Jesus, and that the more you devote yourself to Christ, the more you will suffer sickness, poverty, and guilt, as if the true gospel is that God will increase your suffering and make your life more unbearable. And then, if someone still chooses to follow Jesus after hearing such a message, that person must be a true believer! This is insanity. Such people are not demonstrating faith, but a grotesque fetish for suffering. This is not Christianity. It is masochism disguised as holiness.
Jesus Christ did not preach such a gospel. He proclaimed the forgiveness of sins and deliverance from oppression. He emphasized the lightness of his yoke, and presented it as a contrast against false religion. He healed the sick freely, demonstrating that God cares about the well-being of his people. Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you.” The “things” he referred to were the very items that the pagans were seeking, such as food, clothing, and money. Jesus preached that faith leads to prosperity. God would make mammon itself serve us. Can faithless people teach us about Jesus better than Jesus himself?
Indeed, Jesus taught the proper priorities. He said that life does not consist in the abundance of possessions, and that it is foolish for a person to gain the whole world but lose his soul. However, the contrast he made was between seeking blessings from God and seeking them from mammon. If a man worships mammon to gain the things of this world, he will indeed lose his soul. But this is not true of someone who seeks God and trusts him for what he desires in life. Just because life does not consist in possessions does not mean we must have zero possessions. Just because a person could gain the whole world but lose his soul does not mean he would gain his soul by losing the whole world! But this is how stupid faithless people are. They think they are smart and accurate, but they are not. They make the most basic logical errors in their doctrines, yet they remain smug about the things they say.
Jesus said that if you follow him, you will gain more of everything. Along with the blessings you gain, he warned that there would also be persecution. This is the kind of suffering that could increase, not sickness, poverty, depression, and such things. Persecution could increase because many do not follow him. They do not want you to obtain the blessings of God, or they do not want these blessings to be associated with the God that they claim to worship. So when you agree with Jesus, and when you begin to receive these things by faith, they become angry. They become angry just like their spiritual ancestors became angry when Jesus went around preaching the truth and healing the sick. This is why they would persecute you just like their spiritual ancestors persecuted and murdered Jesus.
God is the answer to all our problems. He heals, he prospers, and he blesses. Faithless religious people, however, are perverted and grotesque. They think that if you follow Christ despite believing he will do nothing for you or that he will increase your suffering, then your faith must be pure. But that is not the gospel. True faith believes the best about God, because God is good. Your faith is strong and true when you believe that God is good, and that it means he will rescue you and bless you. The false idea we must avoid is not that God will care for us, but the idea that everyone else will be happy that we follow Jesus. Our problems will not come from God. They will come from other people. They will come from Satan. God is the answer to our problems, not the source of our problems.
Preaching God as the problem instead of the answer will not produce true converts. In fact, it will be the very message that gets us false converts. Jesus said that his sheep will hear his voice, and the voice of another they will not follow. The gospel of masochism is not the voice of Jesus. This is why in mainstream or traditional churches — the most historic and orthodox ones — there are so many faithless, lifeless, powerless church members. They are false converts. Then some of them become preachers, and warn everyone about a gospel that is actually good news! The preachers are also false converts.
Faithless doctrines suggest that our problems are either never solved in this life or that we must solve them ourselves. They claim it is a false gospel to say that God will surely help us, that he will heal us, or that he will prosper us. This line of thinking is anti-Christ, for Jesus devoted his ministry to solving people’s problems. He healed the sick, fed the hungry, and delivered the oppressed. If we are to preach Christ, we must preach the same message of hope and deliverance.
Will this kind of preaching attract the wrong people? Will preaching the truth, that God is the answer to all our problems, attract false converts? Of course it will, but this is a red herring. You can say anything about God, and it will attract false converts. You can say that God will forgive, and this will attract false converts who want forgiveness, but who do not truly believe. You can say that God will judge, and this will attract false converts, since some people will pretend to follow him out of fear. You can say that God will heal your bodies or that God will make you sick, and either message will attract some false converts for different reasons. You can say that God will make you rich or that God will make you poor, and either one will attract some false converts. You can say God will do nothing, and it will attract false converts. Anything that you say, true or false, will attract some followers.
We must decide what to preach based on what God says, based on what is true, and not based on whether we will attract false converts. This should be obvious, but it is unfathomable to people who have no faith and intelligence. If I preach the truth, and people believe it, then they are true converts. If I preach the truth, and people pretend to believe it even though they do not, then they are false converts. But I should not preach a lie just so these people would stay away!
If you preach the true gospel, it is possible to attract fewer false converts, and it would not be your fault even when there are some false converts. It would be their fault. You will weed out some of these false converts by a persistent ministry of teaching the whole truth about God and the Christian faith, by holding out God’s standard, and by challenging people to live according to the truth.
The most pleasant and powerful message, when it is the truth, is not necessarily the one that everybody will like. Faithless people regard good news with cynicism, even anger and resentment. A message of suffering will not necessarily hinder people from coming, because many people want to be religious, and they imagine that suffering is what it means to be religious. The correct approach is to preach the truth regardless, and expect the Holy Spirit to awaken the chosen ones and to harden the reprobates. Indeed, many of those who oppose the message of good news are false converts. They love a message of bad news, a message of suffering and deprivation, because it makes them feel pious. They will suffer in this life as they wish, and after that they will burn in hell.