There are a number of statements about Christianity that are popular in our culture today, that are unfortunately not only mistaken, but also dangerous to people’s spiritual well-being. Some of these ideas may sound true, but though they may use religious words and concepts, they are actually contrary to the true faith, and lead people astray to their eternal destruction.
So, what are some of these erroneous ideas and statements? Consider the following:
A. “Jesus was a moral teacher or prophet, but he never said he was God.” Many people hear this claim and repeat it without seeking the truth themselves. But, if they actually studied the Scriptures, they would find the following words of Jesus (besides the many passages where biblical writers called him God):
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- Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). The next verse said the Jews picked up stones to stone him, because they said he was claiming to be God.
- Jesus said to Philip, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
- When Jesus told the religious leaders that Abraham looked forward to his day, they argued that Jesus was too young to have known Abraham. Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am“ (John 8:58). By saying, “I am” Jesus was using the name for God from the Book of Exodus. As soon as he said that, the Jews recognized what he was saying,”So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple” (John 8:59).
- Jesus prayed to the Father, “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,” (John 17:21-22)
- Jesus claimed to be “the Lord of the Sabbath,” a title that would be proper only for God himself to say (Matthew 12:8).
- Jesus forgave a paralytic his sins: “And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:5-7).
- After Jesus calmed the stormy sea by command, the disciples marveled and asked, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?” (Matthew 8:27).
These are in addition to the many miraculous things that Jesus did which were signs of his divinity. One of my favorite defense of Jesus’ godhood is this:
C.S. Lewis in his book, Mere Christianity, wrote, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
B. “A loving God could never send people to hell.” This false statement is due to wishful thinking based on the apparent contradiction between a God who loves the “whole world” (John 3:16) and yet sends any one (or many people) to eternal punishment. There are really two responses to that. First, How could a loving God NOT send some people to hell? Should a mass murderer, a rapist, a thief, people who disobey and disbelieve in God, who reject his offer of forgiveness in Christ, be welcomed into heaven along with faithful and obedient people who repent of their sins? What about Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or others be treated the same as believers who were martyred for their faith? How could a loving God allow injustice to rule without punishment as its consequences? Such a God is unable to save or mete out true justice.
The second answer to this question is based on Scripture. The Bible teaches there is a place of punishment called, variously; Sheol, Tartarus, Hades, Hell, Gehenna, the Lake of Fire, and the “outer darkness.” These are used as warnings and as places of divine punishment. Of these, the final eternal punishment punishment is called the lake of fire for both fallen angels (including the devil) and everyone not found in the Book of Life (Revelation 20:10-15). Specific warnings are given to unrepentant sinners: “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). Another example of judgment is told by Jesus who tells of a rich man who is judged for ignoring the suffering of a poor man named Lazarus. When Lazarus dies, he goes to the bosom of Abraham (heaven) but the rich man goes to Hades, where he suffers burning heat (Luke 16:19-25).
Jesus warned of judgment for many people, saying “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14). Even the love promised in John 3:16, is followed immediately by the warning of John 3:18 – “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” Then, there is the warning in Revelation 21:8, which says: “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
Those who deny the judgment are, literally, “playing with fire.” They are betting their eternal future that if there’s a God, they will be fine, because God loves them too much to condemn them. But the Apostle warns us in Galatians 6:7, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” The day will come when the reality of hell will be undeniable, and all self-deception will vanish in the lake of fire.
Unfortunately, there are other things commonly believed that are also false – and dangerous – that we need to address. Stay tuned to the next blog when we refute “Two More Deadly Mistakes.”
Now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.
Read: Luke 16; Revelation 20.
The Pope would be wise to use your advice.
February 18, 2025
Christian Morality, Migration, And The Good Samaritan
By Benjamin Sanders
Articles: Benjamin Sanders Archives – American Thinker
Much has been made about Pope Francis’s recent comments criticizing the Trump Administration for opposing illegal immigration. He was not the only one, as UK commentator Rory Stewart also dueled with Vice-President JD Vance on X. The differing views on this issue can be explained as hierarchy versus universalism, a Christian debate that has its roots in St. Augustine. Understanding the doctrines reveals that Pope Francis, whether deliberately or accidentally, erred, while Vance got it right.
The hierarchical approach favors a more instinct-driven interpretation of the faith, whilst the latter relies on the tale of the Good Samaritan, emphasizing neighborly conduct. Yet what’s interesting is that these two versions of morality have not always been incompatible; it’s just that a recent misinterpretation of the universalist view has led to this being the case.
Some on the political right, especially nationalists, have strongly criticized Christianity for being too universalist and ignoring the necessity of tribal loyalties for a functioning society. That is too simplistic a view of both Christianity’s universality and the importance of a hierarchy.
St. Augustine lamented his selfish secular ways in his early years, which he outlines with great clarity in his masterwork Confessions. His conversion to Christianity then leads to his adopting a universalist morality to some degree, but not completely. Even after praising the tale of the Good Samaritan, he still believed in a hierarchy of priorities that shaped his conduct in daily life. (Indeed, this tale is actually a good allegory for merit-based immigration, which I will explain later.)
Image by Pixlr AI.
St. Augustine acknowledged that worldly desires are secondary to the glory of God, which is known more commonly as the order of love (ordo amoris). But hierarchy also exists within what he describes as “temporal” things on earth, whether they be your spouse, pets, or even possessions.
In other words, love of God comes before earthly matters in order of importance, and those earthly matters also have a hierarchy of their own. This is why JD Vance responded to Rory Stewart on X by stating, “Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?”
Vance’s post is very important because it not only exposes the current unrestrained universalism for what it is—madness—but also because it demonstrates how misinterpreted the concept now is. Whether the Pope actually believes in open borders is hard to tell. A cynic would argue that a man who lives in a walled city-state probably does care about borders quite a lot, at least when it comes to his own.
Yet, what’s intriguing is Pope Francis’s interpretation of the Good Samaritan parable and how it relates to modern politics. As a quick reminder, the passage in the New Testament refers to a Jewish traveler who is beaten and robbed on the road. Neither a fellow Jew nor a Levite assists him, but a Samaritan eventually comes to his aid.
Considering the Jews and Samaritans were at loggerheads at the time, the story is designed to instruct Jesus’s followers to love those who show mercy, no matter what tribe they are from. Here, the outsider is the hero who is praised for helping somebody from another sect, whilst a man from the in-group sinned by ignoring his fellow Jewish brother on the roadside. However, the key point here is that while the outsider is praised for being good, it’s not an argument that all outsiders are good.
Thus, Pope Francis wrongly understood the story. In a recent letter to America’s Bishops, he referred to the Good Samaritan parable and stated that the true ordo amoris comes about by “meditating constantly on the parable of the Good Samaritan, that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
The key phrase “open to all, without exception” betrays the Pope’s political beliefs and scriptural confusion. His version of ordo amoris seems to be that love is simply given in equal measure to everybody, whether they deserve it or not.
The problem with this version of morality is that, eventually, everybody comes into conflict with it, even its strongest adherents. For example, are you really going to continue loving the violent criminal who causes so much harm? In a more pertinent example, Vance’s critique can also be expanded. If your own child and a neighbor’s child both get top grades in their final exams, and they’re both equally good children, but there’s only one place at college left available, are you really going to be happy if the neighbor’s child gets the place? It’s obviously natural for an infinite number of reasons to hope that your child will get the place.
The Pope’s stance also fails to understand the problem of mass immigration. It’s quite obvious that many arriving in the West, whether legally or not, are not culturally compatible and have committed serious crimes. Thus, they do not deserve to remain in the country they have arrived in.
Even from the more universalist version of ordo amoris, this hierarchical limitation is acceptable because only those in the outgroups who deserve love (the merciful, the righteous) should be prioritized. Nevertheless, a significant number of the modern clergy, along with the political class, simply cannot accept the idea of the ‘bad migrant.’ Indeed, even if they recognize that migrants commit crimes, they argue that law enforcement still shouldn’t deport them.
In other words, the universalist spectrum has become so mindlessly expansive that even the story of the Good Samaritan is being misinterpreted—by the Pope!— to support a dangerous policy of mass and illegal immigration.
Again, the moral of the Good Samaritan is not that all outsiders are righteous and unselfish; it simply argues that outsiders can be righteous and unselfish. There is no explicit argument that every single Samaritan who walked down that road would have helped the injured Jew, and in terms of historical accuracy, this would have been highly unlikely.
Modern liberalism’s failure to view any outgroup or individual objectively, based on merit, is a great failure of our times. There are good and bad people in every group. You might be helped by somebody from an outgroup, and indeed, you might help somebody from an outgroup as well. This isn’t hard to understand, all of which makes the misinterpretation of the Good Samaritan parable so baffling.
The reality is that the two Christian beliefs—hierarchal and universal—must each have reasonable limits and, as limited, they are compatible with each other. It’s perfectly okay to prioritize your family over a stranger 3000 miles away, but it’s also perfectly fine to welcome a small number of talented migrants to plug an employment gap and to help a stranger in need if he’s drowning in a lake. Even Christianity has checks and balances. It’s just a shame the Vatican isn’t interested in them at the moment.
It’s a strange world when the Pope’s interpretation of ordo amoris is manifestly wrong while the American Vice President’s is correct. If anything, it proves that the taboo surrounding any criticism of migration is still strong among the clergy and will be difficult to change.
A sound and important message of clarification that Jesus and the Father are one!! I just re-read C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. Certainly a classic.