No family, no Gospel - what the what?!

[MamaJunebug]

Scott Brown is not going to disappoint as the focus for some challenges, it looks like. (Yay!)

According to him, if your family isn't in order, your children will not hear "the gospel." Now, to be clear: I'm not sure what "gospel" he refers to, but I'm going to presume he means the Gospel of the good news of Jesus as Savior. As opposed to the "gospel" of having perfect families.

To begin with, while the Christian tradition and doctrine holds that God created male, female and told them to reproduce - done via families - it does NOT hold that a family must be in perfect working order for its members to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There's nothing in Scripture to support that idea. NOTHING.

But Scott is adamant.

"... If the family is in spiritual disarray, then the communication of the gospel is compromised. In fact, the gospel may NEVER be heard until adulthood. This is such a tragedy - a living soul is deprived of the most wonderful and beneficial thing in human experience - the gospel. ..."

Bolding mine. It occurs to me that even in adulthood, folks at Boerne Christian Assembly in Texas didn't hear the Gospel for most of their adult years, since most of the sermonizing from Scott's former comrade Doug Phillips had to do with laws, principles and the carrying out of them.

(I'm posting this in fits and starts to keep from losing everything in a computer crash)

Folks, had you been paying attention, you could've found out how to make the perfect family that will enable your kids to hear the Gospel -- all by attending a family-building conference Scott led in Arizona recently. The questions answered in this conference - in order presented - were:

What's a multi-generational family

How can I parent my children when I was never parented?

What happened to fathers?

How can mothers change the world?

Is their [sic] hope for my children?

How can we find vision and purpose for the family?

How does the church fit into all of this?

Scott -- here's a thought. Tell people this: Take your family to a Roman Catholic, or Lutheran, or Southern Baptist or African Methodist Episcopal church where the pastor will talk about how we can't fulfill God's Law but that Jesus fulfilled it for us: voila, THE GOSPEL.

But no. That would not please Scott. That would not garner "love offerings" at a two-day conference featuring his buddies Swanson et.al., and that would not result in the sale of books and DVDs and CDs.

Decades ago, I felt so sorry for a man whose family was seriously coming apart at the seams. A trusted friend implored him to get his brood into a church where they could hear that their behaviors were wrong but that there was hope, simple as that. The man scoffed, "No, I need to get my family into shape, and THEN we can appear at church."

He didn't realize that church was a place for the humble; to him, it was a Sunday-morning country club where everybody had to appear perfectly fine and well groomed and polite and shiny and perfect.

Scott Brown is misleading scores of people into the same box, the same totally flawed and deadly logic. "Until you and your family look/act/sound/behave like us, you and your family aren't gonna hear the gospel. Booga booga, you're all gonna DIE unless you're perfected to begin with!"

I realize that by venting/snarking here, I'm preaching either to the choir or to those who long ago gave up on religion in general. How can I (we?) get to those who look to Scott for guidance and point out the uselessness of his money-grubbing advice????

[hoipolloi]

Preach it, Mama JB!

What is that saying - the church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.

[Arete]

The snake oil he and his ilk sell is so seductive, even if it is completely contrary to the life and purpose of the church. "Follow me, and you will eliminate heartbreak in the family, your children will do as they are told and have no problems, you will be able to set your family's future for generations to come". Lies and heresy, with the people at the top making money from the gullible at the bottom.

Scot can't make a living out of "Life is hard but I (Jesus) am with you always. Come together and support one another in joy and sorrow, and there will be my church."

[Marian the Librarian]

MJB, You rock.

NCFIC, VF, etc. are the Amways of Christianity - sneaky, deceptive pyramid schemes run by hypocritical hucksters taking advantage of the naive and vulnerable. Their "gospel" is the Gospel of PT Barnum.

[Cleopatra7]

The Bible doesn't seem to have much to say about families since all the ones that are portrayed are deeply dysfunctional. I mean, Adam and Eve got kicked out of the Garden of Eden and one of their sons killed the other one. That's 48 Hours territory right there. If Adam and Eve couldn't get this family thing right, why does Scott Brown think he has the answers?