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 False Gospels that Challenge Our Discernment 

Below is a lively opportunity to conduct a thought experiment about some “alternative gospels”. You may have heard rumors. But you may be uncertain or confused about their credibility, plausibility, or practical impact. As you assess and test them against Scripture and wise teaching, here are a few useful questions: 

• Are they indeed true? 
• Can they cause harm to you and your community? 
• What is the antidote or correction to these views of the Gospel? 

What is a credible basis for calling any alleged gospel false? 

Let’s Begin with Some Key Contenders 

The concept of false gospels comes primarily from the New Testament, especially Galatians 1:6–9, where Paul warns against any message that distorts or adds to the true gospel of Jesus Christ—centered on salvation by grace through faith in Christ’s death for sins and resurrection, based on something other than human works or personal merit (Ephesians 2:8–9). But I must offer a rejoinder: it is one which leads us into good deeds and redemptive attitudes as we follow in the way of Jesus’s life and teaching—into holy living. This has been the subject of much debate down through the centuries since the historical time of Christ. 

A false gospel is any teaching that subtly or overtly replaces, supplements, or redefines the core message of Christianity, often with the intent of making the religion more appealing to human desires, cultural trends, personal laziness, or self-reliance (autonomy). 

In the world of 2026, Christian thinkers, theologians, and ministries from various evangelical perspectives frequently identify several prevalent distortions. They can cause self-sabotage as well. These are in no way exhaustive, but they do represent the most commonly discussed ones across conservative, Reformed, and broader evangelical sources. Let’s briefly examine eight of these alternative gospels that the Bible and Christian theologians call into question. 

False Gospel Alert 

Here are some of the most widely recognized ones circulating in churches, media, and the culture at large: 

1. Prosperity Gospel (Health & Wealth Gospel) 

This teaches that faith in Jesus guarantees physical health, financial wealth, success, and material blessings in this life. Sickness or poverty supposedly result from a lack of faith, negative confession, or insufficient “seed giving.” It portrays God primarily as a means to personal prosperity rather than the sovereign Lord who may call believers to redemptive suffering or sacrifice, as seen in the apostles’ lives and teaching (especially Paul). 

Widely promoted by certain televangelists and megachurch figures, the Health and Wealth gospel remains one of the most exported and critiqued distortions globally. It has run rampant in Latin America and Africa. Many leaders of these movements own private jets and support lavish lifestyles, claiming God’s material blessing as a sign of their successful ministry and faithfulness. Some have private security teams to keep them safe. 

2. Therapeutic or Self-Esteem Gospel 

This approach views sin as a problem because it damages our self-worth or prevents personal fulfillment or happiness. Jesus gets articulated as a life coach or therapist who boosts our sense of value, helps us reach our full potential, and gives us our “best life now.” This includes the Self-Improvement Gospel: Jesus helps you and me to become our best self through effort, training, and a carefully manicured public image. Social media is one of the key tools. Notre Dame Sociologist Christian Smith documents the “moral therapeutic deism” in young people ages 18-34. 

The therapeutic model shifts the focus from repentance and reconciliation with a holy and good God and with other people (even enemies), to emotional healing, self-actualization, and the goal of feeling good about ourselves. Self-love or self-care is at the forefront. Michel Foucault, godfather of the gender identity movement, made this aesthetics of existence quite popular in France and beyond. 

3. Social Justice Gospel (The Social Gospel) 

This message proposes that the primary mission of Christianity is systemic societal change—fighting inequality, racism, poverty, protecting the rights of the marginalized, or working on climate change—as the main expression of thegospel. Personal salvation from sin and the cross can be downplayed or treated as secondary or even irrelevant. While biblical justice matters much to God, as we see in the prophets of the Old Testament and the Sermon on the Mount where we see Jesus’s moral teaching writ large, this version often elevates cultural or political activism to the level of the gospel itself. Sometimes it redefines sin primarily in corporate terms rather than individual rebellion against God and personal corruption. The problem is seen to be found in a corrupt system or institutions. Certain versions of Liberation Theology (interwoven with ideological Marxism) fit within this viewpoint. For example, it appeals to a call for justice for the poor against an alleged corrupt government in Latin America. Then revolutionaries topple the government to right the wrongs using violent means.

Cultural Marxism is currently interwoven with late modern ideology in our Western universities—influenced by major figures in continental philosophy. Cancel culture is used as a weapon to silence anyone who does not agree with such ideology in the humanities or social sciences. The pressure can be intense for both students and faculty. 

While human rights and well-being are very important to God, we must remember that Jesus is all three: prophet, priest, and king. He is the voice crying in the wilderness, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, and the Lord of the universe and of our lives. We need a transforming encounter with him. 

4. Legalistic or Moralistic Gospel 

The focus of this alleged gospel is that salvation (especially assurance of my salvation) depends on following rules, moral performance, church attendance, baptism, and other good works. There is an appeal to behavior modification and activism. 

A constant emphasis on behavior modification can undermine the economy and dynamics of grace. This includes people who claim that a certain “form of baptism saves them.” They might also say, “I’m a good person,” or “I go to church” and as I see it, that is sufficient for my salvation. It displays a tendency to turn faith into a checklist of duties rather than to trust in Christ’s finished work on the cross, and in his righteousness (Ephesians 2:8-9). 

Jesus surely does want us to live a good life (Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7), one that honors God, shows compassion for other people, and builds community. But this is the gracious outflow of the work of the Spirit of Christ in and through us, not the result of rule-keeping or living within a cultural box (negative practical theology). This is an important nuance: grace unleashes giftedness (Ephesians 2:10) and Christian virtues, especially love. 

5. Permissive or Hyper-Grace Gospel 

This is the other extreme of the previous category. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing of the German Church during the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust, critiqued this phenomenon of cheap grace. Here’s what he wrote so profoundly in The Cost of Discipleship: 

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, and absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, Revised and unabridged. New York, NY; Collier Books, 1949, 47). 

 

Grace is presented as a reason for permissiveness for ongoing sin and rebellion against God’s will without the need for repentance or holy living. “Let’s all just get along, have fun, and see what happens.” capture the sentiment. Since we are under grace, behavior barely matters, and conviction of sin is dismissed as constrictive legalism by the narrow-minded killjoys. 

This substitute gospel distorts (abuses) true grace, which teaches and empowers believers to say no to corruption and ungodliness (Titus 2:11–14), and yes to righteousness, right living, integrity, and good actions towards others (wisdom in James 3:13-18). This is affirmed by Jesus’s and the Apostles’ moral teaching on the spiritual virtues and fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22, 23). It is summed up by agape love in 1 Corinthians 13. The Apostle Paul often dedicates the last half of his encouraging letters to young churches to fruitful living or Christian formation. He answers the question: “How should we now live?” Christian lifestyle is often a countercultural sign of a person following the true gospel and this is often challenging. 

6. Universalist or Inclusive Gospel 

By this messaging, everyone (or nearly everyone) will ultimately be saved regardless of whether they show faith in Christ or some other guru or hero. “Good luck to them all.” some say. Salvation is available through various paths, many religions, employing many different spiritual technologies. Jesus is just one of the myriad of options. Within this framework, many evangelical churches are seen as too narrow in their thinking. The exclusivity of Jesus Christ as “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) is softened in order to avoid offence in a pluralistic age of spiritual openness—a pluralistic society. Another popular expression is often heard among the young: “I am spiritual but not religious.” As a result, people no longer hear or understand the full gravitas of Jesus Christ’s claim as “the way” to peace with God, neighbor, and oneself (Colossians 3:3). They go broad but not deep with their spiritual identity. In the end, they are not grounded in Christ, but in another innocuous religion such as ‘moral therapeutic deism’, relativism, or New Age pantheism. 

7. Political or Nationalistic Gospel: Populism 

This ideology attempts to fuse the gospel with a particular political ideology, charismatic leader, party, or national identity. Religion is used to baptize a political stance or posture: Is God with the political right or the left? It can become quite virulent and head into harmful extremes. Patriotism or cultural power replaces the Kingdom of God and humble, servant leadership, and agape love as the central hope. It often destroys critical thinking about social affairs because people are subject to groupthink or end up wrapping themselves in a flag, rather than identifying with Jesus himself and his principles. Only Jesus can offer them critical distance from ideology. Sadly, this gospel often leads to violence, injustice, and deconstruction of democratic values. We should be looking for character in our leaders, but never uncritically worship them or their platforms, which often leads us into evil, racism, and prejudice. 

8. New Age or Christ Consciousness Gospel 

The New Age message reduces Jesus to a spiritual guide, or example of Christ consciousness available to all. It blends Christianity with mysticism, New Age philosophy, pantheistic or panentheistic self-divinity (Gnosticism), or universal energy, even mixing in occultic teachings at times. Catholic leader Richard Rohr claims to be panentheistic and openly promotes a “Cosmic Christ as the divine presence permeating all creation.” This is popular on the West Coast of Canada and America. 

There are obviously other versions of these alternative gospels in our creative age, including the Cultural Christian Gospel. This reduces Christianity to a moral tradition only without the need for confession of sin and personal conversion or transformation. It is often found in theologically liberal churches. Also, there is the Signs and Wonders Gospel, which measures faith primarily by continuous miracles rather than trust in Christ crucified, the cruciform life of faithfulness, self-denial, and self-sacrifice (redemptive suffering love). This gospel is focused on the dramatic rather than Christian formation or kenosis (self-giving love as per Philippians 2). This is the tendency, for example, in the New Apostolic Movement. Finally, there is the Gospel of Artificial Intelligence where a digital, non-human superintelligence or singularity will save us all (or eliminate humans entirely). This is the gospel of the transhumanism utopia (posthumanism dystopia) of the Silicon Valley Tech Bros (Journalist Karen Hao exposes this gospel in Empire of AI). 

Summary 

These distortions often contain partial truths, along with their serious distortions: 

• God blesses. 
• God cares about injustice. 
• God cares about the moral good, as well as the beautiful and the true. 
• God heals people physically and mentally on occasion as people cry out to him. 
• God encourages us to love our neighbor and our enemies while we take care of ourselves: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5:14) 

And yet, these false gospels go wrong, that is they get off track by making secondary things central, by adding requirements to grace, or shifting the focus from Christ’s atoning work to human achievement, experience, or outcomes (read impact or hyperscaling). This turn in gospel articulation creates no lack of confusion. 

The wise biblical response is to test every message against Scripture (as the Bereans did in Acts 17:11,12; and as Paul reminded his young friend Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:16, 17). It is far superior to cling to the unchanging, whole-Bible, time-tested Gospel that has grounded the faith for centuries (1 Corinthians 15:3–8; John 1:12, 13; 3:16; Romans 10:9-13). This is called orthodoxy and can be found articulated in The Nicaean Creed. 

… Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day … 

Any modern, newly invented gospel that adds to, subtracts from, or replaces this Christ-centered, trinitarian one should be critically examined and held under deep suspicion. That is why we need to promote a strong Bible-reading culture (Kevin Vanhoozer), where we reflect on the entire narrative of Scripture (Old and New Testaments). This is the story of a good, sovereign God who is hopelessly in love with us and our world, but who also holds us accountable for our attitudes and actions. His love is both uncontainable and unstoppable. i

It is often true that when people encounter Jesus Christ, get baptized, and enter a Christian community for the first time, they carry baggage from false gospels in the broader culture or their individual cultural heritage. That is not a new phenomenon because the early church continually dealt with such problems. But there is always hope of getting it right (John 17:17). 

Moral philosopher David Gushée captures the powerful thrust of the Christian Gospel: 

God is all and is in all…. God wants people to give their whole-full-complete-true-pure-hearts, selves, souls, and lives to him. This is way beyond rules and obedience. It’s devotion. It’s submission. It’s love. God wants people who are humble in heart, hungry for justice, merciful and reconciling. God wants people who will secure themselves by trusting in him rather than in foolish human strategies and schemes that are so constantly self-defeating…. God wants a radically reoriented humanity…. We need retraining into new creational, Jesus-like practices and attitudes. Jesus taught peacemaking, forgiveness, economic simplicity, mercy and generosity, turning the other cheek, enemy love, covenant fidelity, truth telling, Good Samaritanism, solidarity with the vulnerable, valuing all people, leading by serving while not seeking human honor or glory for oneself. (D. Gushée, The Moral Teaching of Jesus, Cascade, 2024, 96). 

I offer these thoughts for your examination and further reflection. I have also shared a positive, open invitation to explore a relationship with Jesus at this online address: https://ubcgcu.org/relationship-with-jesus/ 

Gordon E. Carkner, PhD, Meta-Educator, Author of Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture: Grounding Our Identity in Christ.  

“The incarnation, at the center of Christian faith, provides a touchstone for understanding the world as God’s good creation and human beings as called to embodied, dialogical relationship with their creator.” ~J. Richard Middleton, theologian.

Loren Wilkinson explains how creation is a work of love and self-giving in his book, Circles and the Cross: Cosmos, Consciousness, Christ, and the Human Place in Creation. On pages 270-73, Wilkinson tags John Polkinghorne’s edited volume, The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis. “God’s self-giving creates space for each creature to be its own self….. Polkinghorne would also agree with Julian of Norwich that without God, creation would become nothing. But he identifies creation as the work of both power and love–and love looks sometimes like powerlessness…. The picture of a controlling Creator is corrected by the incarnation: The Logos of creation became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood. (John 1:14). Creation is “safe” because God never stops loving it”

Grok, operating as my research assistant, replied to my inquiry as follows: In Circles and the Cross: Cosmos, Consciousness, Christ, and the Human Place in Creation (2023), Loren Wilkinson—a professor emeritus of philosophy and interdisciplinary studies at Regent College—presents a lifelong theological and personal reflection on humanity’s relationship to the created world. Drawing on over 50 years of teaching, writing, and hands-on environmental engagement (including life on Galiano Island, British Columbia), he weaves together science, philosophy, poetry, biblical exegesis, and autobiography to argue that Christian faith demands a profound ethic of creation care. Central to this is the Celtic cross as a unifying symbol: the circle evokes the repetitive, interconnected cycles of the natural cosmos (birth, death, renewal), while the cross—intersecting and extending beyond it—represents Christ’s disruptive, redemptive intervention into those cycles through incarnation, suffering, and resurrection. Wilkinson relates the incarnation (God’s self-emptying kenosis in becoming human flesh, as in Philippians 2:5–8) to creation care by emphasizing its cosmic scope and ethical implications. He critiques Enlightenment-era anthropocentrism and linear “progress” narratives, which he sees as fostering human domination over nature and exacerbating ecological crises. Instead, the incarnation reveals God’s intimate solidarity with all creation—not just humanity—as vulnerable, interdependent stardust within the vast cosmos. This “deep incarnation” (echoing theologians like Elizabeth Johnson, though Wilkinson grounds it biblically) means Christ enters not only human history but the entire web of life, sharing in its beauty, pain, and finitude. As Wilkinson writes, the incarnation holds together divine transcendence (God beyond the circle) and immanence (God within it), affirming creation’s intrinsic value as a gift from a loving Creator.

This theological vision motivates creation care as an extension of Christ’s incarnate love. Humans, as image-bearers, are called to “step into the cycles of nature” with empathetic, self-emptying actions—mirroring Jesus’ precarious vulnerability on the cross—that disrupt destructive patterns and foster life-giving renewal. Wilkinson illustrates this through personal stories (e.g., his family’s stewardship of land) and figures like Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose poetry celebrates “pied beauty” in creation’s diversity. The cross’s hope breaks the circle’s potential despair (endless ecological decay), offering resurrection as a promise of cosmic healing, but it demands active participation: reducing consumption, restoring habitats, and pursuing justice amid climate grief. In essence, for Wilkinson, the incarnation isn’t an abstract doctrine but a mandate for embodied hope. It liberates Christians from escapist eschatology (fleeing a doomed earth) toward a “cross-shaped” vocation of healing the planet, as one reviewer notes: a “compelling case for how Creation Care…should be a central concern for Christians.” This relational ethic counters modern alienation, inviting wonder at the “miracle of the cosmos” and our conscious place within it, all illuminated by Christ’s light.

I agree with this analysis, having read the entire book recently, and with great enthusiasm, for our lecture with Martin de Wit from South Africa. The book is a real statement of hope in an age heavily influenced by nihilism. I do, however, disagree with Wilkinson’s use of Richard Rohr, who is actually a panentheist, and not a trinitarian theist. He should at least have made a footnote in this regard. One final quote from Loren Wilkinson: “The whole cosmos could never have arisen if the self-giving love of God–which resulted in the incarnation, crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Christ–had not been at the centre of the universe” (Loren Wilkinson, Circles and the Cross, 309).

~Dr. Gordon E. Carkner, Graduate & Faculty Christian Forum at University of British Columbia, author of Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture. Find upcoming lectures at https://ubcgfcf.com.

Feel free to write gord.carkner@gmail.com if you want to be added to the Graduate Christian Union information list

We live in a world marked by crises of various kinds, but perhaps most deeply and fundamentally by a crisis as to the nature of our humanity. What does it mean to be human? 

For example, are human beings essentially minds, trapped temporarily and regrettably in physical bodies? Certainly many artificial intelligence enthusiasts see the world in precisely this way. Marvin Minsky, for example, believes that the mind is all that is really important about life, over against that bloody mess of organic matter that is the body. Out of this conviction arises another: that mind machines represent the next step in human evolution. We ourselves, in our godlike state, ought to create this new species—Machina sapiens instead of Homo sapiens—passing the torch of life and intelligence on to the computer (Rudy Rucker). Our ultimate goal is the conversion of “the entire universe into an extended thinking entity . . . an eternity of pure cerebration” (Hans Moravec). 

From this single example we gather what should already be obvious to us in any case: that our governing ideas about human nature inevitably have significant consequences. They matter individually, affecting how I look at myself, what I agree to do to myself or have done to me, and the goals I set for myself. They also matter communally, affecting how I look at and treat other people, and what kind of society I am trying to help build. In fact, the answer to this question about humanness affects everything else that matters in life. And this means that arriving at good rather than bad answers to the question is a high-stakes game. It means that arriving at the truth of the matter is crucially important. Is it really true, for example, that we are essentially minds that happen to possess bodies that we may or may not consider satisfactory? If we can manage it, should the physical body be discarded like a piece of clothing in pursuit of something more glorious, with the help of technology?  

Read: AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan for deeper insights into the world of AI, the good and not-so-good implications, the true and false claims of what it can offer.

It is into the very centre of this kind of contemporary discourse that Gordon Carkner has inserted this new book Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture, with a view to encouraging readers to ground their identity in Christ, rather than somewhere else. He invites us to consider the great difference between incarnational spiritual culture, on the one hand, and both ancient and modern anti-material Gnosticisms, on the other—rejecting the latter in favor of the former. He explores the incarnation of Christ as the center point of history, giving dignity to embodied persons everywhere, and enabling us to rethink human wisdom and knowledge. He pursues the implications of this incarnation for human community and communion, contrasting the contemporary will-to-uniqueness that tears us apart to the will-to-community that reintegrates us. And he discusses, finally, the transformative nature of divine goodness, and its necessity for healthy human freedom. 

We need all the help we can get in remaining human in these markedly inhumane times. This volume draws on deep and varied resources in offering such help, and I know that many people will benefit from reading it. 

~Dr. Iain Provan Founder of the Cuckoos Consultancy; Author of Cuckoos in Our Nest: Truth and Lies about Being Human.

See also: Miraslov Volf et al, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, Open Field, 2023.

Plus Radically Rethinking Identity on YouTube by Gordon E. Carkner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u74STiS7Yfc

Dr. Thomas Fuchs, a psychiatric expert from Germany, gave an excellent lecture on September 25 at Green College, UBC on the contrast between a disembodied, narcissistic, post-humanist AI Utopian Self of the Singularity, and the concept of Humanistic Embodiment of Merleau-Ponty (conviviality, inter-corporeality, ecological and personal connectedness). It was entitled: “What is to Become of the Human Being?: A Plea for the Embodied Personhood.” ~sponsored by the Houston Centre for Humanity and the Common Good.