Who Needs Roots When We’ve Got ”Feel-Good”?

JI Packer

“The honest way to commend God’s revealed truth to an unbelieving generation is not to disguise it as a word of man, and to act as if we could never be sure of it, but had to keep censoring and amending it at the behest of the latest scholarship, and dared not believe it further than historical agnosticism gives us leave; but to preach it in a way which shows the world that we believe it wholeheartedly, and to cry to God to accompany our witness with His Spirit, so that we too may preach ‘in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.’

“The apologetic strategy that would attract converts by the flattery of accommodating the gospel to the ‘wisdom’ of sinful man was condemned by Paul nineteen centuries ago, and that past hundred years have provided a fresh demonstration of its bankruptcy.

“The world may call its compromises ‘progressive’ and ‘enlightened’ (those are its names for all forms of thought that pander to its conceit); those who produce them will doubtless, by a natural piece of wishful thinking, call them ‘bold’ and ‘courageous,’ and perhaps ‘realistic’ and ‘wholesome,’ but the Bible condemns them as sterile aberrations. And the Church cannot hope to recover its power till it resolves to turn its back on them.”
—J.I. Packer

Who Needs Roots When We’ve Got ”Feel-Good”?

Ahhh…those Sterile Abberations!...
How they come and how they go!
Who needs roots when we’ve got “feel-good”?
Wishful Thinking helps us grow!

Who needs Special Revelation?
And who needs a Risen Lord?
Butter knives are now “the fashion”…
So, who needs the Gospel Sword?

Who needs all that awful “sin-talk”?
Who needs “Justice”?.... Who needs “Truth”?
Who needs Jesus on the Cross, sir?
Man, who needs a substitute!?

Who needs Bread when we’ve got candy?
Who needs Doctrine, anyway?
Who needs Light when dark’s so comfy
In sweet gooey shades of gray?

Who needs all those “Ten Commandments”…?
(We’ll just fix ‘em up a bit!)
We need something that will suit us…
A more soft and cuddly fit!

Who needs Grace and God’s forgiveness?
When today it’s understood
That we really aren’t that bad, sir,
Heck! We really are quite good!

Who needs “Holy”…(I mean REALLY!)
“Holy’s” just for hayseed squares!
Plus, it’s wholly inconvenient
In these pews for happy tares.

Who needs salt when we’ve got sugar?
Who needs light when darkness soothes?
Who needs guidelines one should follow,
When we love just what we choose?

Who needs all that mumbo-jumbo?…
All that talk about “The Fall”?
Who needs basic fundamentals?
Preacher, please!…Of all the gall!!

All we want’s the ooey-gooeys
No more meat, sir, if you please!
We want sweet accommodation,
Gnostic feel-good syrup-eze.

"In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry."
— 2Timothy 4: 1-5