1) Eat whatever you like and gain nothing! Spiritually, just take in whatever pleases your palate and, seriously, you won’t see any growth anywhere. Forget about getting nourishment from the Scriptures, and don’t concern yourself at all with the Lord’s Supper. If you find a writer or preacher whose ideas make you feel good, or if you just have some great thoughts of your own, just fill up with those! Whatever tastes good to you has to be good for you, right?

2) Only go to church when you have to. After all, there’s no law that requires you there on any given Sunday, and surely you’ve heard about “Christian freedom”! You know that the pastor’s going to talk about Jesus, and people are going to sing, so it’s not like you don’t know it all already. So just go to church when your mom or dad gets a little too pushy, or on major holidays when things are more fun — and maybe make it just often enough to keep the pastor and elders off your back. You’ll find not going only gets easier the longer you stay away!

3) Never grow up! Peter Pan was a clever guy. If you never make any effort to grow up in your faith or life as a Christian, then you can use ignorance — “I just didn’t know!” — and immaturity — “What did you expect from me? You know what kind of Christian I am.” — as ready excuses throughout your life!

4) Since we are justified by grace, let grace justify anything! Why worry about whether something is a sin or improper or might hurt someone else when you can just act now and ask forgiveness later? It might even turn out that no one cares what you’ve done or said, but even if God is bothered, count on his love to mean he doesn’t really care.

5) Treat your baptism as a “Get Out of Jail Free Card” or good luck charm. Remember just enough of what your baptism means so you can say, “I’ve been baptized, so all my sins are washed away and I’m God’s child,” and then forget everything else. Do, believe, and live however you want, and if anyone ever tries to correct you, just say, “Hey, don’t worry about me — my parents got me baptized.”

6) Claim neutrality. Whenever and wherever being a Christian might mean taking some kind of uncomfortable stand or puts you in an awkward situation, just take a step back. Leave God’s Word completely out of your considerations and just use the fact that there are Christians who take a different view of things as reason enough to remain neutral. After all, who really is to say what’s right and what’s wrong?

7) Run from responsibility. Even if you ignore the other six secrets, this one is so simple anyone can do it, and once you get started, it just gets easier. If something goes wrong, don’t worry about whether you might be at fault — you don’t have to repent of anything you don’t take responsibility for. When something needs to be done, only worry about yourself — let other people take care of everything and everyone else. Take a vacation from any idea of vocation — your spouse, your family, your church, and all of society really only matter in so far as they can serve you. Life is so much simpler this way!

These “secrets” are indeed “life-changing”, but not for the better — and perhaps for the very worst. They aren’t anything you really want to know, but every one of them is a real approach to the Christian life followed by real believers, and every one has the potential to starve or strangle faith and leave souls unsaved and headed to hell.

Your Lutheran pastor would never tell you these things because, as your shepherd, he wants to keep you from harm. He won’t tell you them because he answers not to the latest Gallup Poll or the lowest-common-denomination approach to Christianity but to the Lord, the only one who gets to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. 

And your pastor will keep these “secrets” from you because he is a Confessional Lutheran who has vowed to teach and preach nothing but the truth from the Word of God and about the Christian life: 

1) The only diet for a Christian is one that feasts on the Means of Grace — only on the gospel in the Word and in the Sacraments. 

2) Church is where believers want to be every week, because that is where they are fed, where they worship, and where they encourage others even as they are encouraged.

3) Growth in knowledge and maturity in faith are the goals of every child of God throughout life. Like any living thing, a faith that is not growing is dying.

4) Paul wrote to rebuke the idea that grace gives a Christian license to sin, “You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness” (Romans 6:18). The fact that we have been forgiven makes us all the more eager to please and obey the One who has forgiven us.

5) Far from being an excuse for an unserious (or absent) faith, baptism means, as Martin Luther taught us in the Small Catechism[JS1] , “that the old Adam in us should be drowned by daily contrition and repentance, and that all its evil deeds and desires be put to death. It also means that a new person should daily arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. ”

6) Where God has spoken, there can be no neutrality or compromise. Differences of doctrine or opinion among Christians are not evidence that the truth cannot be known, but proof that some don’t know or have rejected the truth. We who have the Word must stand on it, and neither the ignorance nor intransigence of others offers any excuse for unclarity.

7) The Christian can no more run from responsibility than he can slip from his skin. Each of us has callings that are our joyful privilege to carry out. We serve God by serving our neighbor in our roles as parents and children, sisters and brothers, teachers and students, laborers and bosses, citizens and soldiers, church officers and members, teachers and pastors, ushers and greeters, witnesses and workers. And of course we serve ourselves by repenting of our sins and turning again and again to our gracious God for forgiveness and strength for sanctification.

Even after all these corrections, though, notice that there’s a more fundamental error at the root of all these false “secrets” Christians fall prey to: the idea that following Jesus in faith should or could in any way be easy. Bliss and comfort are what await us in paradise; this side of heaven, we still have to live with the reality of sin — in the world and in ourselves, even in the church. That’s why Jesus didn’t call us to the couch or the coffee shop, he called us to the cross — as his disciples, we each pick up our own and follow him, through pains and struggles and all the hardships of the Christian life, to joy and eternal life.