How to be a Spiritual Schizophrenic

In February 1996, I attended the Promise Keepers Clergy Conference in Atlanta Georgia. The 3-day event was held at the Georgia Dome and 42,000 pastors from all over the nation showed up.

Jim Grimes went with me and we stayed at a hotel in downtown Atlanta, not far from the Georgia Dome. Each morning, we would walk over to the conference site, along with thousands of other pastors. We would pass CNN News headquarters. We would pass the frenzied construction that was going on for the Olympics. And when we arrived at the main entry gate to the Georgia Dome, we saw the same sight every day.

There, holding a large placard, was a solitary man. He was decently dressed, must have been about 35 or 40 years old. For whatever reasons of his own—whether personal or theological—this man was a protester. He was against the Promise Keepers movement, and he was particularly concerned about the fact that we pastors were supporting it. And he had stationed himself there at the gate to tell us so.

Written on his placard were all sorts of reasons why he thought Promise Keepers was of the devil and why we pastors should have no part of it.

Can you picture that scene? On the one side, you have thousands of pastors—many of whom had traveled great distances and spent a lot of money just to attend this conference, and on the other side, you have this single, solitary man telling them that they have no business being there!

Well, you could cut the tension with a knife! And if you can visualize that, then you have a pretty good idea of what was happening in Jeremiah 7.

In Jeremiah 7, we have what is known as Jeremiah’s Temple Sermon. It goes all the way from chapter 7 to chapter 10. And we read about the people’s reaction to Jeremiah’s Temple Sermon in chapter 26. Basically, what is happening is that Jeremiah has been instructed by God to go and stand at the gate of the Temple, and be a protester. Look at verse 1…

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Stand at the gate of the Lord’s house and there proclaim this message: “‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place.”

Now these people that Jeremiah was confronting were not high powered theologians on their way to a ministerial conference. They were ordinary people on their way to church. They were the people of Judah who were coming to the Temple to worship the Lord.

Imagine how you’d feel if one Sunday morning, you came to church and were just making your way up to the door when you were met by a protester who got in your face and started preaching to you about how you were going down the tubes spiritually. How would you like that? I dare say that some of you might be tempted to punch that guy in the nose, or at least call the police to come and arrest him.

That’s exactly how the people reacted to Jeremiah as he stood at the gate of the Temple. Look at Jeremiah 26:7…

The priests, the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speak these words in the house of the Lord. But as soon as Jeremiah finished telling all the people everything the Lord had commanded him to say, the priests, the prophets and all the people seized him and said, “You must die!

Now as a preacher, that is not what I would call a positive audience reaction. There was nobody lining up to shake his hand and say “What a lovely sermon, Jeremiah!” They were so angry at what he said that they wanted to kill him. (I’ve preached some pretty bad sermons in my time, but nobody’s actually wanted to kill me!)

What in the world could Jeremiah have said to them to get them this mad?

Well, very simply, he told them that they were spiritual schizophrenics. (Obviously, he didn’t use those words because schizophrenia is a modern term. But it describes the essence of what he was saying.)

Schizophrenia is a mental condition where a person loses the ability to accurately process reality. A schizophrenic begins to interpret the real world around them in strange and bizarre ways, and then begins to act out on the basis of that warped view of reality. Now if you ask a schizophrenic why he does what he does, he will give you reasons. But those reasons have no basis in reality.

The prophet Jeremiah had the audacity to say to those nice, respectable, middle class, religious people “That’s you. That’s what’s happened to you, spiritually.” And it was God who was telling him to say that.

There are four characteristics of spiritual schizophrenia that were true of those people…

1. They were living a double lifestyle. A spiritual schizophrenic lives a double lifestyle. Look at verse 9…

Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things?

Basically, what these people were doing was coming to worship God on the Sabbath, and then living like hell the rest of the week. Their worship life was completely divorced from their secular life. What they did in church had no bearing on what they did out there in the world. Those nice, well-dressed worshipers at the Temple of God were stealing and murdering, committing adultery and perjury, and bowing down to false gods.

You say “Man, those people really had a problem, didn’t they?” You know what? I think that they weren’t the only ones who had a problem. I think we have a problem today with these things.

You say, “Wait a minute. We don’t have any murderers or adulterers in our church. We don’t have any perjurers or idol worshipers here in our midst.”

Don’t we? Ask yourself this question: What have I watched on television this past week? What movies have I seen? What talk shows? What have I been reading lately? How many violent murders have I witnessed, how many acts of adultery have I watched, how many accounts of deviant behavior have I listened to—strictly for their entertainment value.

You know, we shake our heads at the ancient Romans, who would go to the Coliseum to watch the gladiators hack each other to death or to cheer as people were torn apart by wild animals. But are we that much better than they?

What about idol worship? You say “I don’t worship idols.” Oh, don’t you? Remember, an idol is anything that you place at the center of your life where only God belongs. What’s at the center of your life today? What occupies most of your thoughts. What is the object of your daydreams, your hopes, your plans? What do you spend money on? Maybe you are an idol-worshiper after all?

God says “If you come and worship me and then go and do all these things, you are a spiritual schizophrenic. You’re living a double life.”

2. The second characteristic of a spiritual schizophrenic is that they believe a twisted theology. This was true of the people in Jeremiah’s day.

A little OT history is in order here. The year that Jeremiah preached his Temple Sermon was 608 BC. The nation Judah was, by that time, a small, insignificant state in the middle East. Her glory days had passed her by. Now she survived by playing political games with the three super powers of the day: Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon.

In 608 BC, Judah was allied with Egypt and that alliance caused her to lose what little independence she had. The king of Judah who sat on the throne in Jerusalem was a wicked man named Jehoiakim. He sat on that throne because the Pharaoh of Egypt had put him there.

But the people of Judah didn’t see things that way. They felt that it was because of their diplomatic skill in negotiating with Egypt and Assyria and Babylon that they were still independent. And, what’s more, they thought they would always be safe, always be free, always be independent.

Why did they believe that? Because 350 years earlier, King Solomon had built the Temple in Jerusalem. Now when that Temple was dedicated, God blessed it, and said that he would make His name dwell in that place forever.

But over the years, the people of Judah came to believe that it was the Temple that was keeping them safe, not God. They came to view the Temple as a good luck charm. As long as they had the Temple in Jerusalem, they would be o.k.

In 722 BC, the Assyrians invaded and conquered the northern kingdom of Israel. But the reason they didn’t capture the southern kingdom of Judah and the city of Jerusalem, the people thought, was because of the Temple.

In 701, the Assyrians came back again for another try. And their army was camped right outside Jerusalem, ready to take it. But God struck them down with a plague - a hundred and eighty five thousand Assyrian soldiers died in one night. Jerusalem was saved. But the people thought it was because of the Temple.

So by the time of Jeremiah, the people really believed in this “Temple theology”. They believed that that special building in Jerusalem made them invulnerable. They thought it was their ticket to the special favor and blessing of God. And of course, they were dead wrong. They were trusting in a twisted theology.

And the Lord pointed that out to them in verse 12…

Go now to the place in Shiloh where I first made a dwelling for my Name, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel.

After the Israelites had conquered the land of Canaan, Shiloh was the place where they put the Tabernacle. During the time of the judges, the people started worshiping idols. So the Lord allowed the Philistines to capture the Ark of the Covenant. You can read about that in 1 Samuel 4. And at the same time, the city of Shiloh was destroyed.

So the idea that God automatically protects a place just because there’s some holy hardware there is obviously false. It’s bad theology. God is concerned with an ongoing relationship with the people, and with how that relationship makes a difference in the way that they live. That’s what he’s interested in.

Now how does all this apply to us?

Well, I fear that many Christians have the idea that just because they belong to a certain kind of church, or have had a certain religious experience, or can point to a certain religious ritual that they went through at some point in their life, then they are automatically “in good” with God.

They may have absolutely no evidence in their life of having an ongoing relationship with the Lord, and yet they claim to members of His family on the basis of this false assumption.

Now you may not think that this can be true of a Baptist, but it can. I’m sure that there are people sitting in this church who assume that they are “in” with God just because they are Baptists. Or just because they “walked the aisle” or “prayed the sinner’s prayer” 5, or 10, or 15 years ago.

Listen to me. I’m not suggesting that you can lose your salvation. And I’m not suggesting that Christians don’t sometimes fall into sin. But I am telling you that what’s going on in your life today demonstrates whether or not you are really saved.

Jesus said “He who has my commandments and keeps them—he’s the one who loves me.” By our fruits we are known, and if there is no fruit, then it’s because there is no root. If you don’t have any evidence in your life of the fruit of the Spirit, then I don’t care what church you claim to belong to, or what prayer you claim to have prayed. You’re trusting in twisted theology.

3. The third characteristic of a spiritual schizophrenic is that he has a false sense of security. Look again at verse 9…

These people had incredible hubris, didn’t they? They thought that they could literally get away with murder, and yet stand in God’s presence and say we are safe; we are secure. God is going to bless us.

The hill country of Judah has lots of limestone caves. In the old days, bandits used these caves as hide-outs. They would sally forth to rob and mug travelers on the roads, and then they would retreat to their caves until the heat was off. Jeremiah said that this is how the people were treating God’s Temple. Like a hide-out—like a den of robbers—where they would be safe.

I once knew a man in Denver, Colorado who was a marriage counsellor. He told me one day that it was easier to work with non-Christian couples who had marriage problems than it was to work with Christian couples who had marriage problems.

I was pretty surprised by his statement. He went on to explain that he found that the Christian couples tended not to be willing to work as hard to solve their problems as did the non-Christian couples. The Christians tended to be lazy and make excuses. They’d say “Well, if our marriage breaks up, at least I still have my relationship with God. I’m still saved. God will forgive me for being a lousy marriage partner.”

So they didn’t work as hard at becoming a better marriage partner. They were using their relationship with God as something to hide behind to keep from having to repent and change their lifestyle.

God said to the people “Don’t use your relationship with Me as an excuse. Don’t use the Temple as a place to come and hide.”

Jesus said exactly the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount. He said “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”

Don’t you dare try to cover up your sin with a veneer of spiritual activity.

4. The fourth mark of a spiritual schizophrenic is that he rejects God’s rebuke.

How did the people respond to Jeremiah’s scathing sermon? They wanted to silence him forever. Rather than being pricked in their hearts, they wanted to kill him—Kill the messenger. And Jeremiah was not the first prophet they had treated this way.

Look at verse 13…While you were doing all these things, declares the Lord, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen; I called you, but you did not answer.

One of the surest signs of spiritual schizophrenia is that you can’t stand to be criticized; you can’t bear the thought that there might be something radically wrong with your life. Repentance and change become foreign concepts—something that other people need to do, but not you. You will find that the words “I’m sorry, I was wrong. Please forgive me” will come harder and harder to your lips. And ultimately, they won’t come at all.

And the longer you stay in this state, the harder and harder it gets to change. Your heart begins to turn to stone—cold, unfeeling, resistant to God and resistant to other people.

The Temple in Jeremiah’s day was full of people like this. Is our church full of people like this, too? If Jeremiah were alive today, would God tell him to go and stand at the gate of FBC and preach this sermon?

You say “How can I make sure that I am not a spiritual schizophrenic?” Come back next week, and we’ll talk about the remedy.