In this episode, Ethan Hoover & Matthew Maher talk about the Psychology gospel: what it is, where it came from, and why it's dangerous. But more than that, they discuss Biblical self esteem, how this "gospel" spreads, and the contrast between this false gospel and the True Gospel.
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In this episode, Ethan Hoover & Matthew Maher talk about the Psychology gospel: what it is, where it came from, and why it's dangerous. But more than that, they discuss Biblical self esteem, how this "gospel" spreads, and the contrast between this false gospel and the True Gospel.
What’s Covered in This Episode:
Resources:
Got questions?
Learn More:
To learn more about the podcast and your hosts, visit our website.
Looking to sponsor Rechurched? Apply to be a sponsor!
Follow us on Instagram!
Learn More:
To learn more about the podcast and your hosts, visit our website.
Looking to sponsor Rechurched? Apply to be a sponsor!
You are listening to research, a podcast aimed at instigating Christians to be Christian. Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to the recharge podcast where we inspire conscience and instigate conviction. So people in today's church may truly know God in His Word and show God to those around them. My name is Ethan Hoover. I'm your host, joined by my co host, Matthew Mayer. What is up, y'all? What's up, man? This is going to be about the psychology gospel. If you didn't listen to last episode, we highly encourage you and recommend you to do that. In fact, the past two episodes actually listen to them all the welcome the overview of the false gospel, and then the episode about the prosperity gospel then get to this one if you haven't listened to those. So before we get into the podcast, let's start with a little icebreaker question. Oh, man, Matt loves these icebreakers. I never stumped you. You're really good on the fly. But last episode, you weren't sure what to say? I wasn't. Yeah, I wasn't expecting that question. So I found I found the way on how to stump Matthew Mayer and it's icebreaker questions. So here it is. You ready? Yep. All right. What is one of your biggest pet peeves? And why? Huh? Boom. Goodness, this can get me into a lot of trouble with my wife. I could probably guess it. Go ahead, guess see, not cleaning up? Well, I'm very often my OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder requires me to have things in a certain order a certain way. And I just can't get past them. So I guess that would be a pet peeve. And but it's usually just my stuff like my things I have control over because people have said, Well, how'd you? How did you get through jail? Like you couldn't control anything? I'm like, No, I can control my area. Yeah, so my bunk bed was always made. My locker was always clean. That stuff was under my control. And there's a price sin issue here. But I'm, I'm working on it. If you've ever seen Matthew Mater's car, which you probably have none of you probably really have but the inside of it, and the outside of it. immaculate, usually, almost. Let's say he's driving. We love I love you, Sarah. I think my biggest pet peeve is could also get me into trouble with my future wife, sage. But it's when I'm when I'm talking to said person. They're on their phone. And not looking at me, right? i It's a it's a big one. It's a big one for me. I'm like, I'm big on looking at somebody in the eyes when you know, they're talking to me, or I'm talking to them. And so when I don't have that I'm like, I didn't realize that I had that big of a pet peeve with that. Until that's just straight disrespect. You hear that? I love you sage. I want to be very clear when I say my pet peeve and OCD. And and, and confession does not mean that my wife is disorganized and unclean. On I want to make sure I qualify that statement before we go any further. And I'll qualify my statement, which is sage is not disrespectful. It's very respectful. There's we're in this room, right? Yeah. But man, that really shook up the ice with that when we wrote that one. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about the psychology gospel, which is one of the veins of the false gospel we talked about last episode about the prosperity gospel. And so all these gospels are stepping stones of each other. And we are now at the psychology gospel, which is a gospel all about you. Right, right. And so what we've been doing, or what we've done in the past episode is starting from the baseline question, and I think we'll continue this format. What is the psychology gospel? What is it? Right, so like you said, all of these false gospels are separate as you dissect them, and you gain the spiritual insight to identify them, but they're inseparable from each other. Right? the prosperity gospel is somewhat interrelated with the psychology gospel, it rolls over, in essence to a focus on self. You can also call the psychology gospel, the self esteem gospel. So those two ways of identity Finding it are interchangeable. I kind of thought about the psychology of man and how we're always focused on self, we're always focused on the work that we should do towards our happiness, right self esteem. And again, here's the danger, Ethan, a lot of these things are good. But the good of them, that replaces God is when it becomes a false narrative or a false message. So we looked at the origin of the prosperity gospel in the previous episode, the origin of the psychology gospel, I believe, takes us all the way back to the book of Genesis, and it's when the serpent he creeps his way into the Garden of Eden. And you see his interaction with Eve. And he tells Eve in so many terms that God was withholding something from her and Adam, right in Genesis three, verse four, it says, Then the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die. Now remember, this followed her responding to him saying, we're not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, like God said, and that's that, and the serpent comes in. And this is what the lies of the enemy are constantly accomplishing. Questioning, did God say? Did really? Did God really say that, really, you're gonna die. Now, I want to stop there for a moment only because something struck me. In relation to the psychology gospel, the focus of self, there's always a focus on what is earthly minded over what is eternally minded with the psychology gospel. It's always about the here and now and the self satisfaction now and self being happy now, and self discovery and self destiny, it's always about what is earthly, right, you're not gonna die, you're gonna live forever. The young kids say YOLO, which means you only live once. And he continues For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be ready. Here's the appeal, you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So I believe the enemies appeal to ego and self has been consistent from the fall in the Garden of Eden, all the way through the pages of the Old Testament, you'll see the same strategy and his attempts to alter the message of the gospel. It's the lie ready, that we are inherently good. And we know that is the wrong place to start. That's the opposite of what we are. The Bible says we're not inherently good, we are inherently bad, right? Paul said, None are righteous. No, not one. So what is this message about? It's about appealing to doing good, and feeling good, self being esteemed, as opposed to self being denied? So psychology gospel? And here's what I want them to take away from this? How can they identify the messaging, or the platitudes of the psychology gospel? Here it is. You're always David, who's standing before Goliath with a stone, right? AKA, you're always the hero. It's always about you. Versus you're never David standing before Nathan in his sin. And if you know anything about the biblical accounts of David, of course, he was a type of Christ who destroyed the enemy called Goliath, right? That's, that's pointing to Jesus taking down the Goliath of death on the cross. Now, of course, I can make application like, I want to be an overcomer. I am more than a conqueror in Christ. But notice the focus should never be on self. It should always bring me to a place where I'm a steaming Christ, God, glorifying. Versus when Nathan confronts David, in his sin, psychology, gospel messages never call you out for being a senator. I think the Bible is masterfully masterfully crafted, as like a literary art form to show us important things, important places. And so in the beginning, Satan appeals to our pride. Yep. That's it that I think the psychology gospel is the pride gospel, the proud Gospel were put self on the throne, but self on the throne. And what we see is, when we do that, the simple the simple act of being prideful leads to every other sin. What we're doing in the psychology gospel is, and you said it in the beginning, we're taking basically secondhand blessings of knowing our worth and value in Christ and we're making them the priority. That's right. So it's the same strategy from the enemy. Yeah. And it's gonna bleed through all the pages of the Scripture and And to be candid, and identify, right? So to be candid, the self esteem gospel, or the psychology gospel solves the human condition. By putting self on the throne, try harder, you know, be better. You know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you can succeed in life. And there's all these very cute platitudes you're worthy. Now, again, a lot of these are good. Believe in yourself, you're the hero of your story. Never give up on your dreams, you are enough. And if you listen to them, of course, it's going to appeal to self because they sound right. They sound very right. And they are within their proper context, within their proper lens of that of you viewing them, right, they're not in and of themselves, the most important thing, right, because the Bible tells us that self has to die. So Galatians what? Two 222 20, Paul would say that he himself was crucified with Christ. So there's this identification of his life, dying with Christ's life, so that when Christ life rose from the grave, He is now living Christ's life because his life is dead and gone. I think that verse, literally, that verse is the perfect address address of the psychology gospel in contrast with the true gospel, I am crucified with Christ. It is no longer I live, but Christ who lives within me. That's right me. Christ glorified. And Jesus said something as an invitation. Remember, his disciples wanted to know where they stood, right? So there were so many different teachings that Jesus laid before them about reorienting their idea of what is first, or what is the greatest remember, Hey, first shall be last last shall be first. Alright, so let's get that out of the way. He also said, the greatest amongst us, is the least, or the servant, or the humble. So he's constantly putting itself in the right place. And then he made an invitation, he opened it up to anyone because you have a desire to come after Me, you want to come after me? Nothing come before me, which takes us back to the Old Testament commandment, you know, there shall be no other God before God, the God of the Bible, no other gods. That's not an order, or a checklist, like, as long as God's number one. You can have a second priority in life, or you can have a second hobby in life. It's God's like, No, I want to encompass all of that. So Jesus says, you want to come after me? Either do one thing first, deny yourself, I think you were on like a really cool thread with the certain keywords you were saying they're like placement, and priority. They're, they're all other words, to talk about positioning. And I think that is probably an even better word, because it's not. I think, as humans, we think of priority in like you said, like a list, right? And the first is at the top, and then we have the middle ones. And then we have the bottom one. But really, what we're what we want to do in the true gospel sense is position ourselves know our positioning as creation, to the positioning of God Creator. And really the psychology gospel. It doesn't throw priorities out of whack. It does, but it throws positioning out of whack. Right, I think that is the source of it. And since it's the gospel of positioning, and it makes you the hero of the story, originally, it's a gospel that sells. That's right. And so what my thought is, as I continue down that thread, I think of how did the psychology gospel spread so fast? And how was it distributed? And why do we see it so prevalent in today's, you know, society, and we're going to talk about some false gospels in the next episodes that have been built upon this stepping stone of, if you will, but this psychology gospel is still prevalent today. Like it's not hasn't gone anywhere. And so I think the psychology gospel really was distributed, obviously, through sermons and messages from the pulpit. Right? But then, where's the second place that it was mass distributed? Where do you think it's got to be through the vein of technology or social media social media? And so when I was thinking about that, I'm like, Okay, there's I think two sides of it two sides of the coin of distribution of the psychology gospel. One side is the pastor's that might have been preaching a true gospel. Right. But then in their hopes to be popular, be popular and reach more people. They've lost again they lost their positioning of reach more people why right to put them in the right relation and position with Christ right. So they Last that and so their positioning is reach more people so our church can grow bigger followings bigger followings. And so their message changes completely to the psychology gospel because it sells cute platitude, you platitude retweet Yeah. And then that led to influencers or we call them and we call them influencers, but they're really just normal people that kind of I would say, I don't want to say this about all these influencers, but I would say a large portion of these quote unquote, Christian influencers are just normal people that kind of picked up on this few platitudes, right, started making some videos, and then gained a following that thinks that they are a spiritual influence, like a pastor, but where are they leading people? straight to hell, but well back to self, which is eventually going to take people to hell, if it doesn't include repentance, and a return to Christ. So you nailed it, because I think about the phone that's in my pocket right now. And I phone and it produces pictures that are called selfies. And I post them to the World Wide Web. And I have a focus on self, and it's a selfie saturated society. So when you add the Christian component to it, I'm going to, of course appeal to that, as you just said, and I'm going to gain a following, because I'm going to focus on self. Like, there's a lot of buzzwords that are attached to this so you can almost identify. And again, it's hard to accomplish the entire message of the gospel in a tweet, or an Instagram caption. Or in a you know, tick tock video. Is it tick tock or tic tac? Tic tock, tick tock. Just checked tags are what you write. But you can almost identify the message when it always focuses on again, like over you're the you're an overcomer, okay? Overcoming what? overcoming your sin overcoming your addiction, overcoming your last overcoming, like, what are you overcoming? And then, and then is it you? Well, of course, oh, yeah, I am an overcomer. I am on the verge of a breakthrough breaking through what I always say. Like, what is it doing? It's putting the emphasis on self confidence or self effort or self empowerment, what is the most popular book in any given bookstore, Ethan, self help self help books. So we add Christianese to that some of the wild, best selling Christian books are Christian self help books. And remember, if you were to remove Jesus, or Christ from any of the any of the content, and the message doesn't change, it's a false gospel. Sort of a follow up question. We're talking about Instagram and followers. How many followers? Would Jesus actually have you think on Instagram? That's a good question. When you think about it, you're like, 12? Yeah. I saw, you know, a platitude. Long time ago, it really struck me to that thread. You know, Jesus had 12 followers, Hitler had millions. And it was like, wow, that is that is completely paradoxical. That's a word we've used before. And it's just, it's upside down, because you got God in the flesh, who had a very small and intimate following, and was rejected by many because of his message, his message was just that, like, come to me and die, and I'll give you life, and you are a sinner in need of a Savior. And that is a very brutal message that self doesn't want to hear. So all throughout the scriptures, there's a constant reminder, that self needs to be in the right place. In order to be ready. Here's the word, esteemed. There's nothing wrong with self esteem. God has given us the ability to have worth, I think it comes in we know we are created in the image of God. So here's proper steam, I am created in the image of God. And that image was tarnished by sin, and that sin needs to be dealt with. And the only way to deal with that sin is if Christ comes into my life, and gives me his life. And the true gospel is built on Jesus, he's the foundation. So we have to be mindful of all the messages and messaging that we are exposed to as Christians, because it's always coming back to what is a biblical worldview, right, seeing the world through a biblical lens, seeing self through a biblical lens. Remember, I said earlier, Jesus called the disciples to come after him by denying self and the way we deny self as we pick up our cross to what he said, right? What is the cross well not his cross his cross was the deal with sin. Ultimately, my cross is something I do individually. It's not a burden on bearing. It's not a circumstances I'm navigating, it's more or less the disposition or the attitude by which I stand up under those pressures, right. So something I do willfully, that I know is gonna give God glory, and the cross pins my flesh down, pin self down, so that the Spirit can rise. That's what the cross is for you and I. And later on in the teaching, Jesus said, Hey, if you want to save your life, you lose it. And the quickest way to lose your life, is to try to save it. If you make it always about you, and you're always the focus, then of course, you're going to come on done, you're going to be more anxious, you're going to try to hold life together. And literally, you become more skittish and godlike, take your hands off, it's not about you, the whole entire story is about me, it's for my glory. Yeah. And I think you see that with people that don't know the Lord. They, their whole world revolves around obviously themselves, and just gaining wealth, or amassing wealth, amassing, you know, property and all these earthly things. And we're not called to that. And you'll see in those people's lives, it's just like you said, it's riddled with anxiety, it's riddled with a sense of, they don't know their purpose. They've strived to give themselves worth, give themselves, pleasure, give her cells everything, instead of what the Christian is called to. And so this is, again, along the lines of being recharged, we are believers, if you're listening to this, you're most likely a believer. And so we're called to not view the world in that way. Remember, the apostle Paul would write to the church at Philippi, the Philippians. Again, we don't have enough time to talk about the context of who they were, what they were up against. But he does introduce us to what I think is valuable for the psychology gospel. And he begins in chapter two. And he says, if there's any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy fulfill my joy, by being like minded, having the same love being of one accord of one mind, so He's appealing to a church, a group of believers, to all have unity of thought around what around the gospel, what is the gospel going to accomplish in your life as a Christian, a part of the greater organism called the church, okay, so there's an independent responsibility as a Christian, and then there's this spiritual DNA of what we call the church. I've been thinking wrong, Ethan, I need to be recharged. Okay, what does Paul say? He says, Let nothing be done through selfish ambition. It's not about you, or conceit, but in what lowliness of mind, that's humility. Let's let each ready, esteem others better than himself. I'd rather esteem you better than I would esteem me, because now I'm other centered. It's hard to be other centered if you're not Christ centered. And then he continues, let each of you look out not only for cause, alright, before I get into that, because you will say we will. So I should only focus on others. Paul's like, let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interest of others. So he's like, I'm not saying, forget about your own interests, look out for your interests. But also make sure that you're looking out for the interests of those around you. And then he introduces us to our case study. He says, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, the mind of Christ, Who, being in the form of God did not consider it robbery, to be equal with God. Translation, being God, because you can't steal what's yours when Jesus said He was God. He wasn't taking something that was not rightfully his, but made himself of no reputation. The Greek is the doctrine of Gnosis. Gnosis means He emptied Himself. What did he empty Himself and often say, Here, you have Jesus, who is fully God, empty Himself. And then you have me who is a sinner, the fool of myself. Yeah. Does that not bring conviction men, like who do we often think we are? Jesus empties himself, and he deserved All glory, all praise, all honor. We deserve no glory, no honor, no praise and we're full of ourselves. Yeah. It tells us he took the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men, being in an appearance be and found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. And it tells us this is why God is highly exalted Him and given the name above every name at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father, that's Philippians chapter two, all the way through verse 11. And in that you find the mind of Christ is selfless, who came to give of himself to others? To the point of dying, and I go, how do I apply this? I don't want to suffer. I don't want to be uncomfortable, I often look out for myself. And that's like the opposite of what Jesus Christ came to do. Yeah. Again, how do you know how you're receiving and processing the Word of God, all of this is the opposite of what my flesh wants. Yeah. My flesh wants to be priority. And first self wants to be a steamed and massaged. And yes, there are places in the Christian life where we are to be encouragers. And were to come along those whose souls need an infusion of hope and joy and, and we weep with those who weep. I'm not talking about all that we're talking about faith that puts self on the throne, where Jesus belongs. So even Peter would touch on the same thread. And he would write in First Peter, chapter four verses one and two, again, dealing with the flesh, Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind. So Paul said, In Philippians, two, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lust of men, but for the will of God. For we have spent enough of our past lifetime and doing the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. In regard to these, they think it's strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you like this is completely counter to what the world would say, is the way to live. So I think a good way to kind of land or begin to land the plane, if you will, start getting the landing gear out is we talked about what the psychology gospel is, the origin of it, how it's been distributed. A lot of the little cute platitudes you might hear from, you know, a pulpit or on social media. And so we know a lot now about about the psychology gospel. But I think it's important to come back to this purpose of this podcast, which is being recharged not just to know about those things, it's also how do they relate to what we believe, right? And so how should we properly view ourselves like, what is the true gospel say? And what's the contrast of the psychology gospel to the true gospel? Right? It's a great question. All these platitudes, all these messaging things, they all are about feeling good, with no chief aim of feeling God. And I'm not talking about leaving any given sermon, or message or podcast and feel beat up. Like that's not what this is about. We need to understand our placement in relation to where God is God is holy, God is perfect, God is loving we are not. So when I say look into the scriptures, I see the first reflection, which is a reminder of who I really am, I'm a sinner. And without Jesus, becoming my savior, then no matter how much fluff and how much substance and how much self help I get, I am eternally lost. So for the Christian, we come back to Biblical thinking, a biblical worldview, which tells us, the opposite of the psychology gospel, is not hating ourselves. It's having a proper view of who God is. It's not being self abusive. It's not being, you know, self denial, it's about denying self entirely, denying the loss of self and the pride that you spoke about earlier, putting God on the throne, put him in the rightful place. And when I see him where he is high and lifted up, I find the proper perception to view myself. I am not always the hero in the story, Jesus is he's the victor, when it says I'm more than a conqueror, guess what the next phrase is, through Christ, more than a conqueror through Christ, right? He hears love. The Bible says, not that you love God, but that God loves you. So it's the love of God, in spite of me, that really gives me a worth and a value and you become a child of God and that alone is status. So you see an intermingling with the prosperity gospel, that first ah, happy. That's basically what we're talking about as the psychology gospel. It's always about you being happy. And as I said earlier, it's not about how you feel it's about you feeling God's love. about feeling good. It's about feeling God. And when you feel God, you then will have the proper understanding of who you are in Christ. That's what the Bible invites us into a relationship, where our esteem and our value and our worth are built upon Jesus Christ alone. And guess what? Nothing in this world can steal that. You know what that's important, Ethan because I'm a convicted felon. So according to the label that I wear and the status that I have in society, man, that's not too good for self esteem. But if I believe what they say I am, then I completely miss who God says I am. What did that require me to do? Come back return. Ask for forgiveness, repentance, repentance, rolls over to obedience, obedience to God's word to God's commands, obedience rolls over to resemblance, I begin to look more like Jesus. That's what re churched is all about coming back to the right way to view the world through the Bible. We will probably touch on the prosperity gospel, the psychology gospel as we make our way into what is called the progressive gospel, because I think the progressive gospel is to date, the greatest threat to the Church of Jesus Christ, because of how close we are to what we call a one world order or a progressive spirituality that is non threatening, and everybody is just supposed to get along love your neighbor, and they use Bible in order to accomplish this. So we'll talk about that we'll tease it out. Again. Thank you guys so much for listening for subscribing to read church podcast. This is a podcast from coastal Christian Church and Ocean City New Jersey, so if you ever come our way, we'd love to see it come through our doors CC ocean city.com For more information or research podcast.com We absolutely love you guys for tuning in and following us this far. My co host, Ethan is the man seriously you've been you've been you've been helpful man. We've only done X amount of podcasts and episodes but having you here, tease questions out, talk things through. It makes it easier for me to share my heart with was portrayed more in the welcome episode. Praise God. That's well, I think that's it for today, guys. We'll see you next episode for the progressive gospel as we dive in deeper to that. Yeah, that's about it. Thanks, guys. See you next time. God bless. God bless