Whenever something is off, or it produces bad fruit, be it chronic illness in our bodies or mind. Or the results in gardening or farming it is necessary to look for the root cause if we really want to resolve it.
Mineral Deficiencies
In gardening often the root cause in bad fruit is at a deeper more fundamental level. Often it is a mineral deficiency in something critical for life function.
An example in human health, chronic headaches are not solved with aspirin, that is just an expensive masking of a symptom. Headaches can result from high blood pressure which may result from a number of things such as low blood sodium. Anxiety can be the bad fruit of a magnesium deficiency.
Warning Signals
Symptoms are warning signals of a fundamental problem or deficiency. Poor soil results in unhealthy plants which results in no or lousy fruit.
Applied to Christianity
Also, the root cause in church fruit problems, ALL OF THEM is the gospel preached and accepted by its members. Shallowness, over-emphasis on certain doctrines. Self-centeredness, coldness to certain people types, is a sign of a deeper problem.
Either false gospel (like toxins) or incomplete (like deficiencies) gospels being preached and accepted. Or sometimes it is even a complete abandonment of the original gospel (see what happened in the book of Galatians).
The foundation for the life of all Christianity is the gospel of the kingdom preached by John the Baptist and then Jesus and then his disciples. And I’m afraid to say it’s almost unheard of in modern Christianity.
