Churches are complicit in excusing sin

One reason so many people think it is ok to sin is that this is what they hear at church.

What church do you know of that does not teach that you can sin a little and still be saved? When a church teaches an idea that is antichrist, they make it so that anyone who will actually believe Jesus must first disavow the church’s dogma. If that church makes it so that those who disavow that idea are disavowed by the church (by excommunication, shunning, silencing, or even a polite invitation to not come back), that church is itself antichrist.

One need not search widely for an answer to the question “why are modern Christians so different from ancient ones in their experiences in life and with God?” The answer is very simple: their religion is extremely different. If you want to experience what ancient Saints did, you need to live the same way they did. You need to understand that total submission to what is right, all the time, is the price of entry to God’s kingdom and that his voice inside of you via your conscience is the source of that instruction.

One reason organized religion is so fruitless and dead is because it is filled with lay people and leaders alike who are liars. They have not entered into “the gate” by deciding to only do what is right. In fact, they all teach that this is impossible.

Too many Christians think that obedience to their denomination’s list of rules causes God to ignore their choice to disobey their conscience on everything else. This is as false as it is pernicious. As Isaiah described:

Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men: (Isaiah 29:13)

The opposite of the precept of men is the conscience. The conscience supersedes fixed rules, especially when these rules are made by men.

God does not want us to worship him only through prescribed and rote rituals. The Lord condemned the religious leaders of his time for focusing on the least important things while neglecting the more important things:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. (Matthew 23:23)

You must absolutely promote your conscience to the highest authority and motivator in your life.

The Lord said:

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. (Matthew 6:33)

He was not making a polite suggestion.

Adjusting to the fact that God has instructions for you on all things, and that you are responsible for keeping them, is quite a jump.

Most professed belief in God does not come through the believer’s conscience, but rather in the form of ideas blindly accepted from another who likewise lacks any evidence for what they believe. This kind of belief not only harms the holder—doubly harming them by keeping them from the truth while convincing them they already have it—but also does great damage to those who would come to believe in Jesus if they were not surrounded by so many obviously fake Christians.¹

Recall that your conscience is informed by the sum total of your experiences: by your reflections on your observations. God works through your understanding. If you are blindly obeying some instruction from some person, you have not undertaken the effort necessary to “ask” God about what it is he wants you to do about it. It is in your understanding of what is said or done, and not in what is said and done itself, that he will lead and guide you personally.

While it is true that God works through his servants (and everyone and everything else in creation, for that matter), he does not do so independent of himself. He retains all dominion in all truth, and nothing is valuable outside of what comes from him:

`Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. (John 5:24)`

One of many outcomes that follow from this is that everything he expects of you will flow through your conscience.

As an example of how God’s personal instructions work, consider what the Lord said after asking Peter who he thought he was:

13 When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?
14 And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.
15 He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
16 And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar‑jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16)

While everyone had an opinion of who Jesus was, the Lord asked Peter what he thought. While Peter had witnessed the same actions and words of Jesus as others had, his interpretation was his own. The Lord knew that Peter’s belief was the result of Peter’s choice to submit to his honest understanding of what he had experienced with Jesus. The Lord said that God’s work through an individual's understanding was the rock on which he would build his church—it was the very means he would use to build and administer his kingdom.

Jesus did not impose his own knowledge onto Peter, but rather worked persuasively through Peter’s own understanding. If the teachings of Jesus Christ himself were not worthy of bypassing the individual’s understanding, quickened by the Father, does any preacher or pastor or prophet have any right to dictate to you what you should or shouldn’t do without first giving you reasons sufficiently persuasive to make the choice yourself?

It is possible to obey an alleged commandment from God without reflecting on whether it truly is from God. As long as you operate according to anything but your conscience, you are contrary to God:

6 He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
8 For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.
9 And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. (Mark 7)

Traditions and commandments of men are not an alternate path to God. They will keep you from him, because there is no other way to him except through what he tells you in your mind and in your heart.