Divide and Conquer

I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to agree together, to end your divisions, and to be united by the same mind and purpose. For members of Chloe’s household have made it clear to me, my brothers and sisters, that there are quarrels among you. Now I mean this, that each of you is saying, “I am with Paul,” or “I am with Apollos,” or “I am with Cephas,” or “I am with Christ.” Is Christ divided? Paul wasn’t crucified for you, was he? Or were you in fact baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name! (I also baptized the household of Stephanus. Otherwise, I do not remember whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel and not with clever speech, so that the cross of Christ would not become useless.
1 Corinthians 1:10-17

In studying for an upcoming lesson in the college group I studied this passage. As I read it I couldn't help but be reminded of our current religious landscape. It seems that it has become popular to claim allegiance with a man, a certain man's blog or a certain man's ministry, not that this was ever really non-existent. What has made this more out in the open though is the Internet. With the advent of the Internet we now have chat rooms and blogging. In these places we start to see religious lines drawn based solely on the person or people they follow theologically.

As some of you may know from reading this blog I attended John MacArthur's church, Grace Community, here in Los Angeles. As I attended that church I appreciated the constant reading of God's Word from the pulpit. It was a challenge every week to search the scriptures and to prove out what Pastor John had said. The more I got into leadership there I started to notice that people were just at Grace Community for John and when John didn't preach....well that's a vacation day from church. Now that's not just there at Grace Community. Many church's all over have people in there congregations like that. Also it is not John MacArthur's fault that people are more interested in his celebrity instead of his exposition.

These days with the many blogs out there people are followers of various bloggers. These people accept their personal beliefs of theology and instead of searching scripture they say "I am blogger "A", I am of blogger "B"" instead of focusing on Christ and in rejoicing in salvation in Him and through Him. I have read several blogs over the years where the blogger came down on another blogger or came down on another preacher and the followers of that blog just blindly accept the criticism and the harshness it's done in.

Just this past week I saw a question posed by a commenter on a certain blog about Mark Driscoll and his confession about having failed his congregation. The blogger responded by saying that it is usually a lack of humility that poses a preacher to confess such things before his congregation. Really? Does this blogger see the hearts of men now? What kills me the most though is not the bloggers comments, but how his followers just blindly accept this.

I firmly believe that Satan is at work in all of this. He gets us to divide against each other on non-salvific issues and to develop allegiances based on those opinions. Once that happens then we all end up battling against each other instead of battling sin in our culture. Remember Christian blogger "A" did not die for your sins. Remember Christian Blogger "B" was not crucified for your sins. Also even the best of Pastors, MacArthur, Piper, Dever and Mohler they did not die for you so that you can have eternal life.

Believer I hope and pray that you would live your Christian life on your own foundation and not on other's. Believer turn to scripture and use it as a filter before blindly believing.