Saturday, May 21, 2005

Putting God to the test

(Related: 1, 2)

This was my comment on someone else's post about the upside-down UBF concept of a "decision of faith":

From: chungjoe
Date: May 21st, 2005 - 03:41 am
Subject: UBF and Yong-Gi Cho drink from the same fountain.

I think UBF, Yong-Gi Cho and unfortunately too many Korean Christians drink from the same fountain [not to say that non-Korean Christians are exempt from this form of corruption]. They tend to talk a lot about getting "God's blessing." And the way to get "God's blessing" seems to be to somehow coerce God or force God's hand by doing what we think are good works. And God's blessing often seems to mean material blessing, material blessing beyond what we need, beyond our daily bread. [In their world, "God's blessing" can also mean "success," i.e. an outwardly happy (arranged) marriage, an advanced degree, a decent job, etc. It's an amazingly shallow, even pagan view of God.] They misuse Matthew 6:33. For them, the payoff in Matthew 6:33 is too often not the provision of our daily bread, but it is "God's abundant blessing." They claim to use verses like Matthew 6:33 to merely teach that we should "give first priority to God," but in their twisted world, giving first priority to God means such things as setting aside everything to go to their conferences or Sunday meetings, neglecting one's children, giving "first-fruit" offerings, ...

An example that comes to mind immediately of a UBF person putting God to the test and arriving at a completely immoral conclusion about God as a result is here.