Accepting a Counterfeit
Are we practicing biblical Christianity or a Counterfeit?
There are many doctrinal issues that arise from different interpretations of scripture. Church history shows us what happens when people decide to part ways over differing interpretations. When I use the term “counterfeit” I am talking about a change significant enough that the end result is no longer authentic. It’s my conviction that Cessationism has caused many otherwise genuine believers to unknowingly practice a counterfeit version of Christianity. My conclusion is that the removal of the Holy Spirit from the practice of church (by eliminating certain gifts or even teaching on the Spirit) is removing the essential power necessary to fulfill the commandments of Christ. And without that power, a substitute has filled the void. To illustrate this, I got some help from a friend. Consider the following analogy.
Just another ingredient.
My friend Esther, who was raised in an Amish family and community, is an amazing baker. I asked for her insight as someone who knows Jesus and baking. What resulted is somewhat of a modern parable that helps illustrate this concept.
Yeast is necessary for making bread. To start a loaf of sourdough bread, you need what is called a “starter”, which is basically the leavening for your bread. It is a living and active ingredient that you must tend to, and even feed. But before you have the starter, somewhere there is the “mother”, which is described as the primary stable source of an active leavening agent to be used in any future loaves prepared and baked. It is made with a combination of flour, water, and time. As the naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria are fed and grow, it develops a stable environment for the microbes to exist. That’s the science part.
Long ago, every baker knew how to create their own leavening, or yeast. In fact, a “mother” could be sustained for many years, as long as it was continually fed and cared for. From one mother could come an endless supply of starters. They can be passed along to other bakers, shared, and used to make any number of things, including bread. Making something without leavening would produce something different, like crackers, but it would not make bread. Authentic bread would be fluffy and moist, with a distinct flavor only produced by this time-honored process.
Along came store-bought yeast, readily available, non-perishable, and mass-produced. For bakers, this would allow them to make bread faster, without waiting for the feeding and fermenting of their own starter or mother. Because of this advancement, the next generation may never have even seen a starter, and certainly would not have known how to make one. Even Esther’s Amish mother did not make her own starter, but used packaged yeast. As she explained, the starter and the originating mother were not necessary, nor was the process that created and fed them, and yeast became “just another ingredient”. And if you try to bake something without yeast, it produces a lifeless, flat and flavorless outcome.
By using the shortcut you can produce the fluff, but not the flavor. Once this process becomes your habit, you lose the knowledge of how to make your own. You have traded the knowledge for convenience.
During the pandemic, eventually Esther’s store of packaged yeast ran out, and that led to the recovery of the long-lost process of making it from scratch. In a time of scarcity we can discover lost skills, become self-taught and self-sufficient, or we can continue to rely on others to provide our nourishment.
The Holy Spirit parallel: Without having the true Holy Spirit in our life (or our church) we cannot discern a counterfeit message, just as if we’ve never eaten real sourdough bread, we don’t know what we are eating is a counterfeit. We must rely on packaged, mass-produced product, which is ultimately inferior to the first-hand knowledge and insight that comes from the living Spirit of God. Knowing the Spirit and having a relationship with Him means that we can carry Him with us wherever we go. No famine or shortage can take that from us, just as the knowledge of how to make yeast will always be available to those who have learned it.
As Esther observed, “Commercialization is all about time. If you can make a counterfeit and sell it as real, and if you do it long enough, and sell it to enough people, they will eventually believe that is all there is.” They will eat mass-produced bread that has been made with an inferior, but convenient process, and they may never know that the real thing exists. It would make sense then, that one can unintentionally pass down a counterfeit and never know it. The counterfeit would eventually become disappointing and lose its value. It may be called “bread”, but it is bread in name only.
People are hungry for real spiritual bread, and when the real thing is experienced, the counterfeit loses its appeal. Generations of counterfeit movements, though well-intentioned and packaged for convenience, have left us starving for the real thing – Spirit-led ministry leadership – which is much better, not only for our spiritual health, but for our mandate to build for the Kingdom of God.
There is no substitute for the real thing.
I keep thinking about the phrase Esther used, “just another ingredient”. I’ve never seen an evangelical church state that they don’t believe in the power of the Spirit, and the topic is almost always tucked into the doctrinal statement somewhere, and maybe even pulled out for a sermon or two. But He seems to be relegated to “just another ingredient” rather than the ESSENTIAL living organism necessary for authentic faith.
The bland and weak version of the Christian life that is offered to many will not satisfy. Some will reject it all together as not worth their time, and others will simply lower their expectation and apathetically consume the counterfeit as if that were truly the best there is. The last thing our enemy wants is for people to get a taste of the real Spirit-led life. The good news is that God is moving, and many believers are rejecting these two options. Where some turn apathetic, and others reject Christianity altogether, there are yet others who refuse to accept that weak and irrelevant faith is all there is, and dig deeper to find the living Spirit of God, which will not only satisfy, it will spread, and multiply like so many loaves of bread that satisfy and delight those who “taste and see that the Lord is good!”
A final thought: Our God is merciful and sovereign. Many of us would remain lost or confused about spiritual things if the Lord did not break through our ignorance and apathy. So none of what I’ve written is meant to imply that God is limited by our ignorance and rejection of the Truth. The apostle Paul is the best example of this. God can and will pursue us even as we deny and ignore His directions for our life. My point is more that the Church is LEADING with spiritual blindness. God reaching out to an individual who is not seeking Him is His mercy, but the Church is meant to move forward in maturity and power as we grow in deeper knowledge. (See attached note on 2 Timothy 3:16)