I’ve been thinking a lot lately about false gospels.
A few weeks ago while scrolling through YouTube, I happened upon a sermon by Steve Cuss, author of Managing Leadership Anxiety. Cuss described a gospel as a story with two key components: (a) a promise of some desirable outcome, and (b) a pathway for what will get you there. Cuss suggested that everybody has versions of such a story that they carry around in the back of their heads. We tend to pick up such stories very early in life, largely unconsciously. But they drive much of our behavior and tend to be at the root of our most persistent anxieties.
What makes a gospel false, of course, is that the path cannot deliver on its promise. We wear tracks in the ground, beating that pathway down by walking it over and over again. We tell ourselves that it is sure to pay off soon, that it will work next time, that we just haven’t performed the path properly yet. We grow anxious about whatever failure is keeping us from reaching our goal. We double down and try harder.
But the pathway never delivers. Because it cannot. No matter how great a driver you are or how much gas you buy, driving U.S. Interstate 5 will never get you to Paris. The road is simply not a match for the destination.
I have at least one false gospel that has driven much of my life. I’m not going to tell you what it is, but I will say that in my experience there are two primary promises, two “destinations,” that move most of us: (1) love or belonging, and (2) meaning or purpose. These are fundamental human needs that are wired into us. The real question is what story we’ve absorbed that is telling us how we will get there.
Are you going get there by working the hardest? By winning at everything? By charm? By popularity? By self-reliance? By goodness? By achievement? By power or control? By selflessness? By perfect reliability? If you struggle at first to identify your pathway, you might consider what perceived failure tends to cause you the most angst or fear.
I’ve spent decades perfecting a pathway that hasn’t delivered. I’m realizing that the time has come for me to stop making excuses for it. The time has come to stare the truth in the face: this path cannot give me what was promised. The thousandth time will not be the charm. Persistence does not pay when you are persisting down the wrong road.
Recognizing a false gospel is necessary first step to beginning to embrace a true one. I won’t claim to be all the way there yet. I’m probably just getting started. But the true gospel is beginning to assert itself in my life in the form of a simple question: “What if the thing you’ve been trying to earn God’s been giving for free all along? What if, in fact, the thing you’ve been chasing is already yours? What if Jesus really is what he claimed to be, the Way to every promise that matters?”
What if? If Jesus is the Way, perhaps a new freedom is possible. Perhaps each of us can take some step into new territory not currently covered by our well-trod compulsions.
