N20-7: How The Theology Of The American Church Is DIFFERENT Than Any Other Church Anywhere On The Planet

Yesterday I talked about how the phrase “gathered to his kin” was simply a reflection of the pagan ancestor worship belief system the Israelites had absorbed from their stay in Egypt.

The point I wanted to make is that the Israelites simply took the laws and commands they received from God and filtered them through their current belief system, culture and living situation.

It would take time for God’s commandments to completely remold the Israelites to the point where they became a people distinct from all others.

At this stage in the Scriptures, the belief and value system of the Israelites were still much more Egyptian than a Torah-based way of thinking.

Now here’s the thing you’ve got to understand.

We also suffer from the same bias.

We filter God’s commandments and interpret the stories in the Bible through the lens of our life experiences, our culture, and the belief system we held before we came to faith.

Let me give you a perfect example.

If you’re an American, I’ve got news for you.

The way the American church interprets Scripture is different from practically every other church in every other nation on the planet.  

American believers (and I say this as an American myself) have a tendency to arrogantly think their doctrinal views and traditions are correct and everybody else in the world is in error or “primitive“.

Big mistake.

Through this Messianic Revolution blog of mine, I have fellowshipped with believers all around the world and I can tell you with confidence that NOT everybody carries the same slant on Scripture that Americans do.

For example, I sometimes communicate with believers in both Malaysia and Nigeria and I can tell you they do NOT accept the nonsensical God-man trinitarian doctrine which is promoted in most American churches as one of those foundational teachings that are non-negotiable.

And in Canada for instance, there is a Messianic Congregation called “Congregation Melech Israel“.

They have their roots as Canada’s oldest Messianic synagogue and according to their website are  “affiliated with the International Alliance of Messianic Congregations and Synagogues (IAMCS), and we have been a cornerstone of Messianic Jewish Toronto for the past 40 years“. 

Well, this congregation also STRONGLY DENIES the “God-in-human-flesh” or “Trinitarian God-man” doctrine as promoted in most American evangelical churches.

You can check out their homepage by clicking here. 

Another area where American theology is completely at odds with the rest of the world is their overemphasis on prosperity and material blessings.

The American church is very prosperity-oriented.

For the American believer, prosperity is an expected blessing and is considered to be a reward from the Lord for believing and trusting in Him.

And on the other side of the coin, if one isn’t blessed with much material wealth, that is a sign of one who is lacking in faith.

In America, blessings from God are all about nice cars, big houses, designer clothes, and most important of all, making a ton of money.

And whether one obtains all of these “blessings” or not is connected to how strong one’s faith is.

Now let’s compare the American church with the Eastern churches and their European counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Here we encounter a totally different life philosophy.

In the European and Eastern churches, lusting after material prosperity is seen as not only vulgar and pagan but against the teachings of Yeshua.

A believer who becomes quite financially well-off is looked down on and to pray to God for material prosperity would to them be the height of apostasy.

However, in the United States, it is the prosperous person who is lauded and given the honors and those who are not well off are seen as underprivileged and to be pitied.

It is the American way to always be striving for more material wealth and we seek to have God partner with us in obtaining the prosperity we lust after.

Europe, on the other hand, is much more socialist in their thinking.

They believe that the less one has, the more Godly one is.

They believe that a manual laborer should have the same sized living quarters as a company president.

Or that a lawyer should be paid the same as a janitor.

Again, my main objective in sharing all this is not to necessarily preach the superiority of the Eastern and European belief system over the American belief system or vice versa.

My objective is to point out how different life contexts shape and mold our view of Scripture.

So understand that the teachings the ancient Israelites received from HASHEM through Moses at Sinai was filtered through their current understanding of reality as molded by their experiences, belief system, and culture they had absorbed while staying in Egypt.

They didn’t just overnight remove centuries of pagan conditioning from their psyche.

A lot of the time, they just added what they were given at Sinai to their current belief system.

We’ll see evidence of this throughout all of the TANACH.

And understand, we also do the very same thing.