Tony Miano: Misconceptions About Christianity

Tony-Miano-Preaching

but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect – 1 Peter 3:15

Tony Miano returns for another episode of Echo Zoe Radio. Tony is a retired Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff, now spending his time sharing the Gospel with people through one-on-one evangelism, open-air preaching, and equipping other Christians to effectively and Biblically share their faith in a dying world. Tony was the perfect guest for this topic because he often encounters all of the misconceptions that we talk about for this episode in his day-to-day evangelism work and is well equipped to answer the challenges that people bring with these misconceptions.

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Outline of the Discussion

The misconceptions that we discuss are not only held by unbelievers, but also by people who profess faith in Christ.
- There is an important distinction between the visible church and the invisible church. The visible is made up of those who profess to be Christians. Outwardly they are Christian. The invisible church is made up of those who actually have a saving faith in Jesus Christ. This is a small subset of the visible church.
- American Evengelicalism (made up primarily of those in the visible church, but NOT the invisible church) is a Christ-less, Gospel-less, demonic religious system.
Good people can earn their way into Heaven (There are good people)
- There are no good people in Heaven. We know this because there are no good people. God's standard is moral perfection.
- Anything that is done apart from Christ is sin.
Jesus is a way to Heaven (there are other ways)
- Not only is Jesus the only way to God/Heaven (as He says in John 14:6), but it is the real, Biblical, historical Jesus, not the Jesus of Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, The Watchtower, or Islam.
- Following from the misconception that being good is all that is needed to get to Heaven, people think that all religious systems, including Christianity, are just means by which people pursue becoming a good enough person to enter Heaven.
Jesus is dead (after his resurrection, he died again)
- At least 500 people saw the risen Lord Jesus, not an apparition, or a spiritual representation. They saw Him alive and in the flesh.
- Jesus is, today, fully God and fully Man, sitting at the right hand of God the Father in Heaven in the living body he arose from the dead with nearly 2000 years ago.
God and Satan battle, and are on (more-or-less) equal footing
- Satan is under submission to the sovereign will of God. He can do nothing outside of the sovereign rule of God.
- Those in Hell will not be under the rule of Satan, they will be under the sovereign rule of God.
- Another misconception that follows closely with this one is that Jesus had to go to Hell and suffer before being raised in order to win the battle against Satan.
Faith is necessarily blind
- This misconception is a favorite of professing atheists. However, their own belief in Darwinian evolution is every bit as blind as they believe our faith to be. Evolution being unobservable, unrepeatable, and untestable. They must set aside their own scientific method in order to assert that Darwinian Evolution is true.
- God has given us the ability to know and comprehend Him for certain, and to know right from wrong.
The Bible instructs people not to judge others
- Telling a person not to judge others is itself a judgment of others.
- We are not to judge by appearances, but by righteous judgment (John 7:24)
- Everyone judges others in some way. If a restaurant is rated “C” by the board of health, we judge them as less worthy of our business than the “A” rated restaurant.
- We are not to judge others for engaging in sin that we engage in ourselves. We first must repent of that sin ourselves, then we may exhort others to repent as well.
The Bible condones slavery and demeans women
- The scoffer who asserts that the Bible says slavery is good is making a moral assertion that can't be defended within his own worldview.
- Allowances were made for slavery in the Bible, but within strict rules that did not resemble the slavery of American history.
- Slavery was a judicial punishment, for those who incurred debts they could not repay.
- Greco-Roman slaves often lived better than free people.
Christian Fundamentalism (adhering to the fundamentals of Christianity) inevitably leads to violent Christians
- All fundamentalism is not equal. Just because Islamic fundamentalism is violent, that doesn't mean that Christian fundamentalism is violent.
- The Christian who obeys what he reads in the Bible will love his neighbor. The Muslim who obeys what he reads in the Koran will kill his neighbor.
- What about the Crusades? That was Roman Catholic, not Biblical Christianity.
Christians are expected (by God and by each other) to be perfect in every way.
- This side of death, we war against our sin, but we are not free from it.
- Sinless perfection is a dangerous false teaching.
- We've been given a new nature that hates sin. When we do sin, we don't enjoy it, we seek to flee from it.
Only people who have their lives straightened out already can become Christians.
- There is nothing a person can do to be right, ready, or worth of God.