The pain of betrayal has few equals. I can still feel the sting from the time when I helped two friends patch up their broken relationship only to have them both turn against me. I’ve long since forgiven both guys but I have to admit that that one hurt for a long time.

Just a couple of years ago, while walking through the cereal aisle in a large grocery store I began to realize that very few of the colorfully designed boxes neatly stacked to my left and right actually contained food—at least not anything that was genuinely nourishing. At that moment I felt entirely betrayed by the food industry as I began to see that the goal had little to do with helping people and everything to do with making money.

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More recently, I have been reading about modern wheat and the extreme amount of genetic engineering that has corrupted the grain that sustained generations of our ancestors. For many years, we have been taught that a healthy, balanced diet is filled with whole grains. Don’t we all remember the USDA Food Pyramid we learned about in elementary school? Having fully bought in, I filled our cupboards with whole grain cereals and breads. Little did I realize that these “healthy” foods were a primary cause of the fatigue that I was trying so hard to eliminate!

A person’s world can be seriously rocked with the discovery that things considered to be good are actually harmful. This is especially true when longstanding beliefs have been promoted by authorities in whom we once placed unquestioning trust. Oh, the pain of betrayal!

In relation to Christianity, much of the Western church continues to decline at a frightening rate and much of the downward slide is due to mindsets that seem good and reasonable but are actually destructive. Worse still, many of these mentalities have come from church leaders—the very people we have trusted to guide our spiritual journeys.

The list of mindsets that have betrayed the Western church could be a long one, but I will focus on the three listed below, devoting an entire post to each issue.

1. Grace demands nothing of me.

Our contemporary definition of grace encompasses only a fraction of the New Testament concept. This poisonous mentality has led to a generation of professing Christians with passive lifestyles.

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2. Ministry is the pastor’s job.

How deadly it is to assume that all ministry in and through the church should be done by trained professionals! The end result is the loss of our true purpose for living.

3. The Holy Spirit no longer works in miraculous ways through average people.

This is perhaps the biggest lie that has undermined the advance of the gospel through much of the history of the Christian church. We have exalted Christ’s disciples to superstar status, not realizing that the Holy Spirit relishes the thought of accomplishing awesome things through people who have little to offer in the eyes of the world.

You’ll want to stay tuned as we expose the lies inherent to these three mentalities and explore the amazing possibilities for each of our lives!

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