I thank God for my Protestant background. God shielded me from the liberal '60's and 70's that plagued the Catholic Church at that time. I have met some wonderful Protestant Christians who have helped me in my faith. There are many things that we Catholics share with Protestants - especially evangelicals, such as that we are only saved by the grace of God, that we need to pray and be filled with the Holy Spirit, the one-time sacrificial death of Christ on the cross, the Trinity, the full deity and humanity of Christ, the virgin birth, the inerrant Word of God, and many others. But there are areas that Protestants disagreed with us Catholics. And it was in these areas that severely hindered my walk with God when I was Protestant. Satan is often content to just chip away at the truth. If he cannot get us to reject Christ, at least he wants some aspect of Christ or His message to be rejected. That is what heresy is. It is not a complete rejection of the truth, but only a partial rejection. Athough Martin Luther, the father of Protestantism, still retained some important truths of the Catholic faith, in the area where he departed from Catholic dogma I would see those as heretical teachings. This does not mean that I believe Luther is burning in hell. I would not be surprised to see him there (actually, I may be more surprised that I would be there to see him there). I am just looking at the teachings of Luther and how it effected me and his followers,
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
Matthew 7:15-20
Here Jesus gave us a very simple way to test whether what someone is saying is false. He says that we should look at the teachings' fruit. What we believe effects what we are. If what we believe is true, it will bear fruit in our lives that bring us closer to God and make us more like God in His moral attributes, because God is the source of all truth. Now, I do not want to make out to seem to be black and white. No one teaches everything that is false. There can be god and bad in anyone's teachings. There can both truth and falsehood. But a true prophet is ALWAYS true, and the message of a true prophet will only produce good fruit. So I want to examine the fruit of Luther's teachings in his times, later on in Protestantism, and in my life.
If Luther's message has more truth than the teachings of the Catholic Church, then this should show in his life and his character. Would you hire an obese man to be your personal trainer? Would you listen to one who has filed bankrupcy how to take care of your finances? Would you go to a marriage counselor who has beem divorced three times? If Luther's message is superior to the Church's message, then this should show in Luther's character and lifestyle being much superior to that of the Catholic saints - such as St Teresa de Avila, St Therese of Liseaux, St John of the Cross,l St Maximilian Kolbe, and St Thomas Aquinas.
And then there is the fruit of his message on the people who accepted the message. People who accept Luther's message should be more loving, more humble, and more obedient to God than the people were before they heard the message. And we should see this fruit in the world for these last 500 years.
There was some good fruit that sprang from Luther. There was in some corners a deep respect for the Bible as the Word of God; this is shared by fundamentalists and evangelicals. There was a stress in a personal relationship with God over mere external rituals. There was also a stress in a personal faith in God.
But there was bad fruit as well. Liberal Protestantism is also a fruit of Luther's reformation. Their textual criticism of the Bible can be traced back to Luther's cutting certain parts of the Bible out if it did not agree with his ideas (he called the letter of James "an epistle of straw". The anti-Semitism among the German people, which can be traced back to Luther, brought about the Jewish Holcaust under Hitler. Justification by faith alone has often been reduced to an easy believism where one can do whatever he wants as long as he just believes or has become born again. Christian unity is no longer important.
So that is what I want to to. I want to do some fruit inspection. I want us to see the fruit that Luther's message has brought, in order to determine the truthfulness of his message. It seems to me that it is a mixed basket - some good fruit and some bad. Luther's fruit can be found in Liberalism, Evangelicalism, and Fundamentalism. Each of these three groups look up to Luther as the father of their movement. And to some extent all three groups are right.
