narrow that leads to life

I'm not yet ready to say that every believer needs to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "The Cost of Discipleship" -- but that's only because I just started the book. But I do believe every believer needs to at least read the beginning of the book, a meditation on "Costly Grace." Bonhoeffer wrote this sixty years ago, and yet it speaks to one of the most fundamental issues facing American churches today -- the prevalence of "cheap grace."

Bonhoeffer writes:

In [bad churches] the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin . . . Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.

Everyone who reads this chapter on the difference between costly grace and cheap grace, between the real meaning of grace and the fake meaning of grace peddled by so many modern churches, will realize that much more how evil, how completely and utterly evil the positive thinking message being sown by the antichrist Osteen really is. Of course Americans want to attend the church that doesn't require them to focus on their inner darkness. They want as much of that cheap grace as they can swallow.

Note to self: Bethel will be built on costly grace.