The Fill'er Up Gospel

I'm reading Counterfeit Gospels by Trevin Wax and the chapter on The Therapeutic Gospel has been a good one.  Trevin writes about about what he calls the "fill'er up gospel" that minimizes the biblical understanding that sin is rebellion against God and instead focuses on how to avoid feelings of guilt over sin and the low self-esteem as a result.  This passage on page 48 stood out to me:

"Scripture is clear that our biggest problem is not that we feel guilty; it's that we are guilty.  It's not that we have a low view of ourselves; it's that we have too low a view of God.  Our hearts are not empty  They are already filled with all sorts of cancerous sinful desires that needed to be rooted out.  We don't have depleted hearts in need of a fill-up; we have deceitful hearts in need of replacement.

In the end, if low self-esteem is the problem, then therapy is the solution.  The questions for Christians then become: Why do we need Jesus?  Why is a bloody cross at the center of our faith?  If our biggest need is to feel good about ourselves, God could have sent Oprah.  If our big need is to get along with our famiy, God could have sent Dr. Phil.  But if God sent his Son to die a brutal, horrifying death as a payment for human sin, then surely our sin must be much more heinous than "feeling empty inside."

The Fill'er Up gospel twists the meaning of Jesus' death into something unrecognizable.  It makes Christ's death all about magnifying our worth before God, proving to us how valuable and precious we are, when the biblical understanding of Christ's death should instead magnify God and His mercy."