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Thought Experiment on False Gospels: 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—centred on salvation by grace through faith in Christ’s death for sins and resurrection, apart from human works or merit (Ephesians 2:8–9). A “false gospel” is any teaching that subtly (or overtly) replaces, supplements, or redefines this core message, often making it more appealing to human desires, culture, laziness, or self-reliance.

In the world today of 2026, Christian thinkers, theologians, and ministries from various evangelical perspectives frequently identify several prevalent distortions of concern. These are not exhaustive, but they represent the most commonly discussed ones across conservative, Reformed, and broader evangelical sources.

Here are some of the most widely recognized false gospels circulating in churches, media, and 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 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 suffering or sacrifice (as seen in the apostles’ lives). Widely promoted by certain televangelists and megachurch figures, it remains one of the most exported and critiqued distortions globally. Leaders of these movements have private jets and support a lavish lifestyle. It runs rampant in Latin America and Africa.
2. Therapeutic / Self-Esteem Gospel
   Sin is mainly a problem because it damages our self-worth or prevents personal fulfillment/happiness. Jesus becomes a life coach or therapist who boosts our sense of value, helps us reach our potential, and gives us our “best life now.” This includes the Self-Improvement Gospel” (Jesus helps you become your best self through effort and a manicured public image). The focus shifts from repentance and reconciliation with a holy God and with other people, even our enemies, to emotional healing, self-actualization, and feeling good about ourselves.
3. Social Justice Gospel (aka The Social Gospel)
   The primary mission of Christianity becomes systemic societal change—fighting inequality, racism, poverty, or climate issues—as the main expression of the gospel. Personal salvation from sin and the cross can be downplayed or treated as secondary. While biblical justice matters as per the prophets of the Old Testament and the Sermon on the Mount, this version often elevates cultural or political activism to the level of the gospel itself, sometimes redefining sin primarily in corporate terms rather than individual rebellion against God. Certain versions of Liberation Theology fall under this category. But we must remember, Jesus is prophet, priest, and king–human rights and wellbeing are important to God.
4. Legalistic / Moralist Gospel
   Salvation (staying saved/assurance of salvation) depends on following rules, moral performance, church attendance, baptism, or good works. Grace is undermined by a constant emphasis on behaviour modification. This includes people who claim certain forms of “baptism save me” or “I’m a good person / I go to church” as sufficient, turning faith into a checklist rather than trust in Christ’s finished work. Rejoinder: Jesus does want us to live a good life that honours God and cares for other people–basic discipleship.
5. Permissive / Hyper-Grace Gospel (Bonhoeffer’s Cheap Grace Critique of the German Church during the Holocaust) 
   Grace is presented as a license for ongoing sin without need for repentance or holiness. Let’s all just get along. Since we are “under grace,” behaviour barely matters, and conviction of sin is dismissed as legalism. This distorts true grace, which teaches and empowers believers to say no to ungodliness (Titus 2:11–12), and yes to righteousness and right living–good deeds (wisdom in of James 3:13-18),  according to Jesus’s and the Apostles’ moral teaching and the fruits of the Spirit. The Apostle Paul often dedicates the last half of each letter to fruitful living or Christian formation.
6. Universalist or Inclusive Gospel
   Everyone (or nearly everyone) will ultimately be saved regardless of faith in Christ. Salvation is available through many paths/many religions/many spiritual techniques. Jesus is just one option among many that one can choose. His exclusivity as the way, truth, and life is softened to avoid offence in a pluralistic age. People become agnostic about the right way to peace with God, neighbour, and self.
7. Political / Nationalistic Gospel/Populism
   The gospel becomes fused with a particular political ideology, charismatic leader, party, or national identity (e.g., “God’s will is right or left”). We are on the side of goodness and truth. Those who disagree with us are a problem (sometimes called evil). Patriotism or cultural/political power replaces the kingdom of God and humble servant leadership as the central hope and Christian trajectory. It destroys critical thinking about social affairs, hurts democracy, because people think as a block or stand behind a flag. It often leads to violence and injustice against the ‘Other’.
8. New Age / Christ Consciousness Gospel
   Jesus is a spiritual guide or example of “Christ consciousness” available to all, blending Christianity with mysticism, New Age philosophy, pantheistic or panentheistic self-divinity, or universal energy teachings. Catholic leader Richard Rohr promotes this false panentheistic doctrine.

Other frequently mentioned variants include the “Cultural Christian Gospel” (Christianity as moral tradition only without personal conversion), or the “Signs & Wonders Gospel” (faith is measured primarily by continuous miracles rather than trust in Christ crucified, the cruciform life of faithfulness, self-denial, and self-sacrifice). This is the tendency in the New Apostolic Movement out of California. Another is the AI Gospel which we will leave for another post.

These distortions often contain partial truths (God does bless, care about justice, and heals people on occasion as we cry out to him), but they go wrong by making secondary things central, adding requirements to grace, or shifting focus from Christ’s atoning work to human achievement, experience, or outcomes. Have you noticed that the word ‘Impact’ is big these days?

Luke 1: 26-56

Epiphanies are suggestive of transcendence–something other worldly and yet present at hand in our experience. Michael Morgan (1994, 56f)) points out that Charles Taylor sees a parallel between the epiphanies of art and poetry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the I-Thou epiphany of religious encounter with the divine. Taylor elaborates the idea of epiphanies (1989, 419f, especially 490-93). He sees Post-Romantic and modernist art as oriented to epiphanies, episodes of realization, revelation, or disclosure. Epiphanies and epiphanic art are about a kind of transcendence, about the self coming in touch with that which lies beyond it, a ground or qualitative pre-eminence. One might call it a gift of the imagination, or even a re-enchantment of reality.

Taylor reviews various ways of articulating epiphany in Sources of the Self (1989, 419-93). He articulates how God, inserted into this idea of epiphany, fits as a moral source (Sources of the Self, 449-52). Epiphanies can be a way of connecting with spiritual and moral sources through the exercise of the creative imagination: sources may be divine (Taylor), or in the world or nature (Romantics like Thoreau), or in the powers of the imaginative, expressive self (Michel Foucault).

These epiphanies are a paradigm case of what Taylor calls recovering our contact with moral sources in an amoral society. A special case of this renewal of relationship between the self and the moral source is religion and the relation to God, which he sees articulated well in the work of Fyodor Dostoyevski. The relationship to art parallels the relationship to religion. The self is oriented in the presence of the inaccessible or sublime, that which captures one’s awe, for example, when one’s eyes are riveted to a certain painting like Monet’s Lillies, or our inner emotions are deeply moved by a poem. One is taken beyond oneself, in an experience of transcendence; the experience involves elements of both encounter and revelation.

When Mary hears from an angel that she is to become the vessel of a most profound turn of events in history, she is in awe, overwhelmed. She cannot understand what is happening; she can only magnify the Lord.

It is truly an epiphany, an I-Thou encounter with radical alterity. Heaven and earth reach out to each other at this juncture and something dramatic happens. This news changes her life. Time stands still in this kairos moment. She allows transcendence and immanence to intermingle within her body, and then her life narrative. Mary’s story is punctuated by the incursion of the eternal into the temporal, informed by the descent of transcendence within the immanent time-space world. We know it as the incarnation, the most profound identification of the divine with humanity. D. Steven Long writes in Speaking of God (309): “The purpose of the church is to recognize and acknowledge those conditions by which we can, like Mary, say yes to God and in so doing make Jesus present to the world. Those conditions are the way of holiness and that assumes the transcendentals—truth, goodness and beauty.”

Beautiful Advent Guides

Isabelle Hamley, Embracing Humanity: A Journey Towards Becoming Flesh.

Darrell Johnson, Awaken Wonder: Devotional Readings for Advent.

Malcolm Guite, Waiting on the Word: A Poem a Day for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.

Refugee by Malcolm Guite

We think of him as safe beneath the steeple,

Or cosy in a crib beside the font,

But he is with a million displaced people

On the long road of weariness and want.

For even as we sing our final carol

His family is up and on that road,

Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel,

Glancing behind and shouldering their load.

Whilst Herod rages still from his dark tower

Christ clings to Mary, fingers tightly curled,

The lambs are slaughtered by the men of power,

And death squads spread their curse across the world.

But every Herod dies, and comes alone

To stand before the Lamb upon the throne.

 

Gord’s Christmas Reads 2025 

Quentin Genuis, Recovering People: Addiction, Personhood, and the Life of the Church. Cascade, 2025. (March GFCF speaker) 

The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Bible Commentary, IVP Academic (eds. Esau McCaulley, Janette H. Ok, Osvaldo Padilla, and Amy Peeler) 

Miraslov Volf et al, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most (perfect Gen Z resource). 

Chris Watkin, The State of Nature and the Shaping of Modernity: Tracing the Roots of Colonialism, Secularity, and Ecology (one of the great minds of our time). 

Alex Sosler, A Short Guide to Spiritual Formation: Finding Life in Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Community. Baker Academic. 

Nilay Salya, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, Nanyang Tech University, The Global Politics of Jesus (Harvard Divinity School Lectures). 

David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from its Christian Enemies. 

Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity. 

Sejong Chun, Paul’s New Creation: Vision for a New World and Community. 

Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2nd edition (on the Gospel accounts of Jesus). 

Michael McEwan, The Devil Reads Nietzsche: A Public Theology for the Post-Christian Age.. 

Tim Keller, Go Forward in Love: A Year of Daily Readings from Tim Keller. 

David S. Dockery & Trevin K. Wax (eds.), Christian Worldview Handbook. 

Graham Tomlin, Blaise Pascal: The Man Who Made the Modern World. 

Lucy Ash, The Baton and the Cross: Russia’s Church from Pagans to Putin. 

Thomas Albert Howard, Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History. 

Jonathan Linebaugh, The Well That Washes What it Shows (an accessible introduction to the Bible). 

Robert Bowman, et al., The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense 

“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.