Musings from the road less traveled…

After reading my previous post, a friend forwarded the following from John Piper’s blog, Desiring God:

20 Reasons I Don’t Take Potshots at Fundamentalists

1. They are humble and respectful and courteous and even funny (the ones I’ve met).

2. They believe in truth.

3. They believe that truth really matters.

4. They believe that the Bible is true, all of it.

5. They know that the Bible calls for some kind of separation from the world.

6. They have backbone and are not prone to compromise principle.

7. They put obedience to Jesus above the approval of man (even though they fall short, like others).

8. They believe in hell and are loving enough to warn people about it.

9. They believe in heaven and sing about how good it will be to go there.

10. Their “social action” is helping the person next door (like Jesus), which doesn’t usually get written up in the newspaper.

11. They tend to raise law-abiding, chaste children, in spite of the fact that Barna says evangelical kids in general don’t have any better track record than non-Christians.

12. They resist trendiness.

13. They don’t think too much is gained by sounding hip.

14. They may not be hip, but they don’t go so far as to drive buggies or insist on typewriters.

15. They still sing hymns.

16. They are not breathless about being accepted in the scholarly guild.

17. They give some contemporary plausibility to New Testament claim that the church is the “pillar and bulwark of the truth.”

18. They are good for the rest of evangelicals because of all this.

19. My dad was one.

20. Everybody to my left thinks I am one. And there are a lot of people to my left.

——————

It sounds good to me. Amen? (Thanks, “d”!)

In a recent sermon, a local pastor suggested that contemporary American evangelicalism dwells in two camps. One is the so-called “progressive evangelical” camp; it is supposedly open and accepting and places a high value on works of social justice. The other is the “rabid conservative fundamentalist” camp; he described it as primarily concerned with culture war issues (abortion and homosexuality) and judgment. The pastor opined that it didn’t take too much to recognize which of the two camps presented the more attractive option to an unsaved world.

His comments triggered a flood of thoughts in me, but one of the first was, ‘What’s so wrong with being a fundamentalist?’ Now, lest you think I’ve completely lost my mind, I am fully aware of the trip fundamentalism took down the road to provincialism and anti-intellectualism. Finding themselves outmatched by the scholarship and rhetoric of their opposition, fundamentalists withdrew into a subculture characterized by a rejection of all things modern and a suspicion of reason, education and intellect. They met their waterloo at their battle against the natural sciences. Their defeat in that arena was absolute, and they crawled off into ignominy, becoming the objects of ridicule and being rendered irrelevant.

Yet what brought fundamentalism to the fore—a desire to guard the content of the historic Christian faith from liberal revision—was, and continues to be, a worthy calling. Fundamentalism grew in response to the serious attack on the historic Christian faith by liberals in the early 20^th century. Liberal theologians began with the premise that religion was merely a human phenomenon; Christianity was no different, it too was just a human attempt to understand life. As a result, liberals removed the supernatural from Christianity, explaining it as an accretion from a less intelligent, more superstitious time. These liberal theologians presented a new understanding of God, man, sin, Jesus, Calvary and love. Their gospel was no longer about redemption from sin; instead it was an encouragement for humanity to love each other. Sin did not break humanity’s relationship to God; to the contrary, every human being is a child of God, and all humanity brothers or sisters. God loves each and every one tenderly and compassionately.

For the liberal theologian of the early 20^th century, Jesus was not a supernatural wonder-worker, but simply a man in touch with the divine spark resident in every person. His death was neither substitutionary nor sacrificial, but exemplary—not designed to pay the penalty of sin, but to offer humanity an example to imitate. The new life spoken of in the New Testament was not some supernatural impartation as a result of repentance and faith, but a conscious decision to amend one’s behavior. The Bible was not the inspired, authoritative word of God, but a composite of human wisdom and reflection. These liberal theologians held to a view of humanity as essentially good, but in need of some instruction or coaching. With the right kind of environment, humans could create God’s kingdom on earth.

It was the incursion of this theology into the protestant church that gave birth to fundamentalism. Fundamentalism was not a reaction to or rejection of modern culture but a reaction to the heterodox theology of liberalism. The name came from a series of articles defending the historic, evangelical faith published in volumes titled The Fundamentals. The articles dealt with the inspiration and authority of Scripture; the deity, virgin birth, and supernatural works of Jesus; and the nature and significance of Christ’s death, resurrection and imminent return. Additional articles addressed the reality of sin; the necessity of salvation by faith; the teaching of the new birth; the power of prayer and the obligation of evangelism. In time, anyone who sought to defend the historic, orthodox Christian faith was called a fundamentalist.

Not surprisingly the term fundamentalist came to be redefined by the culture and turned into an insult. The world and its media despise orthodox Christianity. What is surprising is that pastors would adopt the world’s definition and malign fundamentalism even while standing in a conservative evangelical pulpit. A pastor should stand as a prophetic witness against the lies of the world. They should teach truth, which involves teaching the true meanings of words.

But then again, perhaps it is not surprising. For today we in the protestant church are under another assault by the forces of theological liberalism, although this time their attack is more devious. Theological liberalism now presents itself in the guise of the seeker-sensitive, market-driven church movement. Their ecclesiology strips the church of its supernatural character and encourages its leaders to a practical atheism. Market-driven ministry operates under the assumption that it is its responsibility to build and preserve the Church. Both market-driven and emergent church leaders market Christianity as an experience to be shared and/or a feeling to be caught, rather than a truth to be accepted. They avoid the preaching of sin, holiness, the Law, eternal damnation and salvation. That is ‘churchy’ language that the denizens of the 21^st century have evolved beyond. Instead, they magnify feel good solutions to the life-style problems of their congregants. In far too many of these churches, the essential tenets of the historic Christian faith are being forgotten. Biblical literacy is disappearing. Theology is optional. So why be surprised if these pastors use the language of the world? It is the world’s theology that they’re preaching, the world’s salvation they are offering. They are building churches in the world and of the world. But are they birthing Christians?

It may be time for a new fundamentalism, a new effort launched to reclaim and restore historic protestant orthodoxy to the evangelical church in North America. I for one make no apologies for calling myself a fundamentalist—I hold to and am ready to defend the essentials of the faith. Has there been error associated with the name fundamentalist? Of course there has; no human activity is devoid of imperfection and error. Yet I would rather be on the side of those holding to generations of truth, than to be numbered among those who think they need to reinvent the truth for their generation. Selah.  

Paul charges Timothy, his own “son” in ministry, to focus on the preaching of Scripture:

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.   —2 Tim. 4:1-4

Paul gives us a hint of the alternative to preaching the Word-when ministers do not preach Scripture, they end up telling stories designed to meet individual human needs that are ultimately useless. In a letter to another of his ‘students,’ Paul explains that the minister must be a man of the Word:

He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.   —Titus 1:9

Why is it so critical that ministers preach the Word? We can begin at the beginning-because it is the Word that makes us Christians. We are regenerated by the Word:

[Y]ou have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God….   —1 Pet. 1:23

The Word sanctifies us:

…Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.   -Eph. 5:25-27

The Word is the Agent of our complete transformation:

Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.   —James 1:21

Our very lives as Christians—including our continuing transformation and final destination—are a product of the Word of God. Ministers need to preach the Word because it is the only way we can ever know God. God is hidden to all of our natural senses. We cannot hear Him, see Him, smell Him, touch Him or taste Him. We can know Him only through His Word. This is not surprising, since God and His Word are One:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.   —John 1:1-2

Christianity is not an experience of God apart from the Word. It is a relationship with God through His Word. If we do not abide in the Word, we do not have a relationship with God:

Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.   —2 John 9

The Word of God is our sure guide for knowing God, knowing ourselves, and knowing life. The Word is true, astute and applicable to us even in our time, because God inspired it:

All Scripture is inspired by God, and is beneficial to instruction, to reproof, to correction, to training in righteousness, so that the man and woman of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.   —2 Tim. 3:16-17 (own translation)

Because the eternal, omniscient, omnipotent God stands behind the written word, we can count on its veracity and accuracy. The word is truth, because God Himself is truth. Jesus revealed this in his prayer before his final passion:

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.   —John 17:17

If we want to know the truth, if we want to know God, if we want to know the answers to those questions that plague us throughout our lives—we need to know God’s Word. To learn why we need salvation, to learn how we are saved, to learn how then we should live once we are saved, we need to learn the Word of God. No wonder Paul tells ministers to preach the Word! It is the source of Christian life and direction. How much more should preachers today be preachers of the Word?

The Church should be the place where the Word of God is systematically and faithfully expounded. Sadly this is not necessarily true in our time. We need God’s help. He is the Head of the Church and is listening for a people who will cry out in hunger and thirst for His Word. May we be that kind of people. May God have mercy on us, and give us His Word afresh and anew!

As our world rapidly approaches the multicultural, religious pluralism that characterized the first century world of the apostle Paul, many churches seek for new ways to address their changing environment. I recently heard a pastor confess a fear that his church might go “out of business” if it does not change to meet the needs of the community. That kind of thinking betrays an incredible ignorance of the nature of the church and reveals that, for that pastor at least, the success or failure of the church depends on men and not on God.

Interestingly, for the apostle Paul and other ministers who participated in the unparalleled world-changing expansion of Christianity in the first century, the issue was never one of marketing but of proclaiming the Truth. Unlike many pastors in the 21^st century, preachers in the first century made no apologies for the gospel. Those preachers witnessed the gospel’s power to change culture while today’s preachers are subsumed by culture. Today’s preachers are justly afraid of being rendered irrelevant. But first century preachers made an impact. Those first century evangelists faced a myriad of competing worldviews and their audience faced a significant cost to accepting their message: for those in the Roman Empire, a sentence of death could result for confessing Jesus as Lord. Yet in the face of those obstacles, the preachers in the first century achieved a success that our contemporary pastors will never know.

The strength of first century evangelism was not in the new, novel ways that they enticed the culture. It came not from adapting their message to the felt needs or opinions of their neighbors. Instead, they simply proclaimed the facts of Jesus and the gospel:

 Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day pin accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.   —1 Cor. 15:1–5

They didn’t share their personal experiences or their opinions, they preached the Word. And they didn’t do it “sensitively”:

“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. … Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”   —Acts 2:22–24, 36

 Even to a secular audience with neither an understanding nor a vocabulary of Judeo-Christian religion, first century preachers did not equivocate. They preached the truth:

 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.   — Acts 17:16–18

 Paul did not adapt his message to the pagan world because he knew that the gospel was God’s truth:

 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit….   —Eph. 1:13

 But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.   —2 Th. 2:13

First century preachers understood that preached truth generated obedience in response:

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God….            —1 Pet. 1:22–23

 When these first century preachers surveyed the world around them, they knew better than to think that what people really needed was a place to belong. They did not believe in the inherent goodness of people, and they had no confidence in people coming to God through the process of doing good things. In the first century, preachers understood people on the basis of God’s Word; they recognized that humanity was depraved because it was deprived of the Truth:

If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth….   —1 Tim. 6:3–5

So Paul, Peter, James and John preached the truth—and countless nameless others followed them through the centuries. Their languages changed and words varied, but the content never did. They preached the Word of God, the gospel. And in doing so, what was at its beginning a tiny sect within Judaism became a worldwide religion. Not because any of these men in themselves were great orators, and not because any of them did market surveys or customer satisfaction measurements in their congregations. They succeeded because it is God who builds His Church, and He does it through His Spirit and the foolishness of preaching His Word (1 Cor. 1:17–21). If pastors today are genuinely concerned about the church “going out of business,” perhaps they should return to that which built the church in the first place. Let us all pray and ask that God would ignite a fire in the hearts of men around the world to once again preach the Word.  

The Western world is rapidly approaching the multicultural, religious pluralism that characterized the first century world of the apostle Paul. Our culture is being thoroughly informed by paganism, pantheism and animism. Not surprisingly, churches are casting about for ways to reinvent themselves. Their efforts would be downright comical if it weren’t for the dire implications their failure holds for people both within and apart from the Church.

Contemporary pastors seem blind to the fact that the loss of Western culture is due in large part to their embrace of that culture. Over the last forty to fifty years, the Western church has relinquished their hold on propositional truth. They have followed secularism’s drive to privatize faith and they have encouraged it to be thought as a matter of personal preference. They have abandoned systematic, expository preaching of the Word of God in favor of delivering pop psychology and book reports. Church services are no longer about the reverent worship of God or the sustained discussion of His Word; today they are motivational seminars designed for personal empowerment and self-esteem enhancement. Pastors have discarded theology as both unnecessary and divisive, and embraced an emotional understanding of faith and love. Feelings have trumped facts and meaning has triumphed over truth.

The American protestant evangelical church has been hijacked by entrepreneurs who have eviscerated the pastorate and remade it into an organ of marketing. Pastors are no longer sought for their knowledge of the Bible or theology; today they are valued for possessing the techniques of church growth, management, and conflict resolution. In fact, many church leaders are even abandoning the title of pastor, preferring to refer to the position as a ‘coach of Christ followers.’ Today’s church developers and managers are quite adept at increasing attendance and activity within their enterprises; the proliferation of megachurches across America based on either the Willow Creek or Saddleback model testify to this fact. Yet for all the growth, for all the participation, it becomes increasingly evident that America’s public culture is growing progressively more polytheistic and pantheistic. One has to conclude that these churches are having no success in either promoting authentic Christian conversion or in fostering genuine, Biblical discipleship in their ‘followers.’

It is no surprise to any right-thinking Christian that as the church abandoned the teaching and preaching of the Word and doctrine, its ability to foster conversion and discipleship disappeared. Yet apparently these megachurch marketers were entirely caught by surprise! How should they respond? By increasing the teaching of the Bible and its doctrines and application? Heavens no! Instead, they will“coach … attendants how to be ‘self-feeding individuals’” and increase their compassion outreach to the world. I suppose if you can’t cooperate with the Holy Spirit in creating Christians, you can increase the opportunities for people to act like Christians! The mere participation in this commitment to social justice will apparently trigger “multiplied impact” around the world. What that impact will entail is yet undefined, but one doubts that it will mean an increase in true disciples. It may very well grow more and larger churches, but whether they are filled with children of God recognizable to Jesus, Paul, John or Peter, well, that may be problematic.

One cannot help but be grieved by the condition of the church in America in our time. What has happened to the pastors? I am staggered by the extent to which our pastors and elders are departing from the biblical model of shepherding. This new generation of “coaches” displays no worthy character traits to emulate; they witness to no supernatural work of the Spirit in their lives or ministry. Rather than humble themselves before the throne of God and pray, they run to one Hybel’s management conference after another. Their intellectual vacuity is displayed by their penchant for assigning Willow Creek books like Reveal to their staff. They don’t even study to prepare their own sermons; they buy ready-made packages with PowerPoint™ slides and everything to offer their congregations each week. Have these men no Bibles to read? Is there not a God in heaven whose ears are open to the cries of His people? Is there no Holy Spirit, who directs the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in its manifold expressions and worship on the earth?

It is time to tell the truth. These men are cowards, afraid to admit that they know nothing about the work or Word of God. They are deceptive developers, interested more in numbers and activity than in the spiritual habits of the heart and soul. Sadly, many in the church welcome them, and God is giving them what they desire. Elders and search committees lust after the chance to become the next big thing on the Christian landscape. These leaders want to acquire seats at the table of the powerful and talk about the direction of the Church in the days ahead. As a result, we have a Christianity devoid of theology and the Bible, and a faith that demands neither inward transformation nor seeking after God. Instead, we have churches in which we can do good to feel good and be thought of as good by our neighbors.

The time for silence has passed. It is time for the people who know God to rise up in these churches and resist this harlotry. Let us consecrate a fast, let us call a solemn assembly, let us humble ourselves and cry out to the Lord in prayer. Let us remember that these people are still people for whom Christ died; they are not our enemy. It is the Deceiver who is behind this apostasy that we must resist. Let us ask God for light and for vision, that this cancer may be removed from the church. Let us ask the God of the sheep for shepherds after His own heart. Let us take a stand, knowing full well all that it may entail. But if and when that persecution comes, may it witness to the glory of Christ. 

As I indicated in a previous post, when encountering the purpose-driven, seeker-sensitive methodology in churches, I wrestle with the temptation to think that something is wrong with me. I confess to allowing fear and doubt access to my mind, wondering if there is something so deficient in my Christianity that I experience such revulsion with this new ecclesiology. So, discovering others who regard this movement with similar misgivings is comforting. Especially when they capture the issue with such eloquent simplicity. Well-known pastor-teacher John MacArthur put it this way in his book Ashamed of the Gospel:

“Many in the church today believe that the only way to reach the world is to give the unchurched multitudes what they want…. Subtly the overriding goal is church attendance and worldly acceptability rather than a transformed life. Preaching the Word and boldly confronting sin are seen as archaic, ineffectual means of winning the world. After all, those things actually drive most people away. Why not entice people into the fold by offering what they want, creating a friendly, comfortable environment, and catering to the very desires that constitute their strongest urges? As if we might get them to accept Jesus by somehow making Him more likable or making His message less offensive. That kind of thinking badly skews the mission of the church.

The Great Commission is not a marketing manifesto. Evangelism does not require salesmen, but prophets. It is the Word of God, not any earthly enticement, that plants the seed for the new birth (1 Peter 1:23). We gain nothing but God’s displeasure if we seek to remove the offense of the cross.

Something is wrong with a philosophy that relegates God and His Word to a subordinate role in the church. It is clearly unbiblical to elevate entertainment over biblical preaching and worship in the church service. Sadly, some actually believe that their salesmanship can bring people into the kingdom more effectively than a sovereign God—a philosophy that has opened the door to worldliness in the church.”

I am cheered to learn that the entire protestant landscape has not been deceived into imbibing the Hybels/Warren kool-aid. That doesn’t make it any easier for those of us who are bereft of alternatives in our own communities, yet it gives us reason for hope. God has not abandoned His sheep; He will respond to their cries for proper shepherds. May we depend on Him and seek His guidance to discern them when they come.

—From John MacArthur, Ashamed of The Gospel: When the Church Becomes Like the World (Wheaton, ILL: Crossway Books, 2001).

Hat-tip, OldTruth.com

Yesterday I had a chance to meet and talk with friends who are mature Christians struggling with the direction their local church is taking. Apparently this church is yet another in a growing population that has left behind classical evangelical commitments to pursue the seeker-sensitive, marketing model of church growth. While I understood and affirmed their hurts, I encouraged them to stay the course and stay in faith. After all, we believe that the church is a supernatural institution; men may try to hijack it, but Christ is its head. Since the Church is God’s plan, we should remain in it and cry out to God for direction and help.

I doubt my arguments were persuasive; I couldn’t help but feel that they thought me to be at best naïvely blind or, at worse, co-opted by money or position. Yet, neither of us could resolve the matter. At the end of the conversation, we agreed that we were limited in our options. After all, where else could we go?

I remained troubled by the conversation, and later, after returning home, I thought I would do some more investigating. I knew they attended a church that made much of its reformed theology and conservative evangelical roots, so how bad could it be? I looked the church up on-line, and when website opened, I felt as though I was kicked in the stomach. The admittedly beautiful site resembles more a retail store than a church. The graphics remind one of the opening scenes of the Extreme Home Makeover television program.

As I browsed each page I became increasingly depressed. This wasn’t Christian evangelism and preaching, this was life-style marketing. And yet I forced myself to ask, what’s so wrong? What’s my problem? Am I jealous? Or am I just an old curmudgeon, out of touch with reality? After all, they repeatedly claim to be about the work of Christ. They seem to be reaching people. Isn’t that what church and ministry is about? What is wrong with me?

Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling, and when I clicked on the screen titled ‘Beliefs,’ it hits me. The page is devoid of any enumerated beliefs. In their place are paragraphs of values. Beliefs require a stand, a committed submission to an objective, external Truth. Values are modified emotions, an expression of what we feel. While in some ways synonymous, at their root they are dramatically different. And this is enormously significant in a church context. Beliefs have their source in Scripture; values have their source in people. Scripture is eternal, certain and fixed, because it was authored by God. Values are temporary, vague and changeable, since people who are corrupted by sin write them. When a church replaces beliefs with values, know this—that church has abandoned theology for the sake of culture. I cannot help but remember what an old minister once said to me long ago, “whatever we compromise to keep, we lose.” When theology is compromised to win the culture, it is only a matter of time before the church will be that culture. And that will be anything but Christian.

Yet now, what now do I tell my friends? Or for that matter, what do I tell any of the numerous individuals I interact with who are wounded, hurt and frightened by this change in the church landscape? The evangelical protestant church in the United States has been thoroughly infected by this cancer of entrepreneurial ministry. Marketers and experience have replaced pastors and the Word. These churches offer lifestyle improvements like Advil offers pain medication: All this can be yours if you come to our place—find purpose and meaning for your life, make new friends, and do good things! They avoid discussions of sin, hell, and rebellion and just welcome you into the “family.” Forget teaching the Bible and theology; that’s for those “churchy” places that wear “religious masks.” Instead, these churches are “relevant;” they understand. Just tell them your needs, and they’ll help you fulfill them!

How did we get here? Didn’t anyone see this coming? Does anyone care? And what do we do? Where do we go? I wish I had an easy answer. All I have is a strange, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, with a frightened foreboding that the problem might just be me. Which means it demands prayer. And study. And a word from the Lord. Would you join me in waiting on Him and petitioning Him in prayer? May a revelation of His truth come forth to all of us—church marketers and old curmudgeons! May God have mercy on us all.

In a recent morning’s read, I came across a scripture that arrested my attention. It is in Luke’s gospel:

 Now it happened on one of those days, as He taught the people in the temple and preached the gospel, that the chief priests and the scribes, together with the elders, confronted Him….              —Luke 20:1, NKJV

 Luke wrote that Jesus preached the gospel. Now stop and think about that for a moment. What exactly did He preach?

 We tend to think that the gospel is the message that Christ died for our sins and was raised for our justification. Was Jesus preaching that? Certainly not, for no one would have listened to that message. Even His own disciples struggled with its implications:

 From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”   —Matt. 16:21–23

 If Jesus wasn’t declaring the necessity of and meaning of His own future death and resurrection, what was He preaching? The scripture tells us:

And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.   —Matt. 4:23

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”   —Mark 1:14–15

Now it came to pass, afterward, that He went through every city and village, preaching and bringing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God.   —Luke 8:1

Elsewhere, Jesus tells us explicitly the content of His preaching:

“The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it.”   —Luke 16:16

For Jesus, the good news was that the Kingdom of God had entered the world. But what does that mean? Dallas Willard defines God’s kingdom as “the range of his effective rule, where what he wants done is done” (Willard, Divine Conspiracy, 25). In other words, through Jesus, the power of God is present—in this earth—to meet all manner of human need! Now that is good news, isn’t it!

 Jesus witnessed to the extent of God’s actions and power available to humanity when gave proof of his ministry to the imprisoned John the Baptist:

And [Jesus] answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.”   —Luke 7:22

God has come in Jesus to reinstall His rule in this earth. The power of God is available to all who are within the breadth of His rule. God is available—right now, in Jesus—to meet your every need. Is that real to you? It should be, for it was this teaching that made the gospel initially the good news.

We magnify the truth that Christ died on Calvary to pay the penalty of our sin, and was raised again so that we might live with Him and God forever more. It is right and good that we do so. But in doing that, let us not forget what it means for our life here and now in the earth. God has equipped us to live in His kingdom. As Paul wrote: 

May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.                         —Col. 1:11–14 

The fullness of our redemption still lies ahead, when Christ returns and the dead are raised. But even now we can partake of the first fruits of redemption. Our God is not dead or distant; He is alive, and He cares for His people. And His power is still present and available to you in Christ. 

Accept and believe what Jesus preached. Live in the Kingdom of God!  

—Ref: Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering our Hidden Life in God (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997).

None of us likes to offend people. Of all people, it may be Christians who like being offensive the least, since we are under command from the Lord to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us and to suffer wrong contentedly. Nevertheless, we also have been commanded to go into the world and preach the gospel. To do that faithfully, we must tell people the truth—the truth about their condition as fallen humanity and the truth about their need of salvation.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…. —Rom. 3:23

 However, we are so intellectually and emotionally immature, so hypersensitive, and so deceived in our understanding of love that we shy away from telling people the truth. Especially sinners. We don’t even want to call them sinners! We invent new euphemisms instead: seekers and those distant from God are currently popular. The New Testament is less polite:

 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. —Eph. 2:1–3

 There is a reason we preach the gospel. Yet it looks as though we have forgotten it. Perhaps because somewhere we decided to minister out of our feelings rather than speak from God’s Word. The Word tells us that there is a standard from which humanity has fallen and all of our best efforts cannot help us:

 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. —James 2:10

 When we break God’s law, we sin. We don’t like that word, so we try to call it other things—problems, challenges, even personal issues. But sin is sin, and it produces death:

 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. —Rom. 6:23

 There is judgment coming to the sinner. God’s wrath will be poured out on the last day:

 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. —Rom. 2:5

 God’s wrath has been levied against fallen humanity. Unless sinners repent and turn to Jesus in faith, God’s wrath towards them is unavoidable:

 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. —John 3:36

 Sadly, in today’s church evangelism has been made about increasing church attendance—not convicting sinners of their sin and their need of Christ. When will we recover a proper understanding of our need to proclaim the gospel to the lost?

 And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. —Rev. 20:15

 I shudder to think of the final destiny of sinners. But I also shudder when I think of the displeasure we might face if we persist in rejecting God’s Word and magnifying our thoughts and feelings over that Word. No matter how we might want to sanitize it, the gospel is an offense to fallen humanity. It contains uncomfortable truths. We must get over ourselves, trust God and preach the Truth.

When is it appropriate to lie? More pointedly, when is it right to lie in and as a church? Just yesterday I learned that deception is okay when it is in service of outreach to the modern world.

I was at the meeting of a new para-church ministry established to promote a return to biblical-based thinking. The committee is securing spiritual support from local churches and their pastors. One particularly generous church tied their support to the committee’s mirroring of that church’s own ministry directives. The pastor was particularly concerned about the language we would use outside the church. He wanted to insure that our presentation of the Gospel and the Faith would be in “contemporary American vernacular.” Now on the face of it, that seems an unnecessary injunction. I don’t know where he travels, but I never hear anything other than contemporary American in the churches in which I move! Even in those pesky King-James-only churches, folk still speak American!

But all facetiousness aside, something else lay behind his directive, and sure enough it was immediately revealed. To illustrate speaking “in the vernacular,” he drew a parallel between our efforts and those of missionaries on foreign fields. Missionaries, we were told, learn to preach in the “native [sic] language.” In my missionary experience, where there were so many different languages that English was the default lingua franca, one still had to be on guard against using foreign idioms. In our early days in Botswana, I came to recognize that many of my sermon illustrations and stories consisted of things relevant to American culture. So I had to ‘purify’ my English by finding local illustrations and adopting local nomenclatures (lift rather than elevator; cool drink instead of pop, etc.)

However, when it came to preaching—speaking of God, the Bible, and the actual condition of humanity as dead in sin—there was no need of any linguistic transformation. And that realization revealed the agenda behind the injunction to speak in the “American vernacular.” It is not that we needed to learn a new language; after all, we are in the midst of our own people. Rather, we must abandon our old language—the language of theology, God and the Bible. That language is out of step with contemporary culture. Rather than teach the language of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, we must abandon it and seek new approximations for it in contemporary culture.

The reason for doing this was conveyed by another illustration. A story was told of a church in New York that purportedly exploited “liberal language” to mask their “conservative philosophy.” They consciously used language to paint pictures of themselves, their purposes and agendas that did not correspond to reality. They designed their language to ingratiate themselves to the surrounding culture, knowing that if they professed their true beliefs, they would likely alienate their neighbors rather than seduce them into attending. In short, they pretended to be something they weren’t in order to achieve their goal. It was a little deception made palatable by a greater good.

Apparently the strategy succeeded: the church grew in the midst of a community not known for conservative religious values. Therefore we were encouraged to adopt the same plan: drop the language of God and faith, and speak the language of contemporary culture. I suppose that means that instead of sin, we might talk about problems; instead of death and separation from God, we could speak about postmodernity and its loneliness; instead of righteousness, we might talk about compassion. Instead of God and His Word, we could speak of each other and our feelings.

So here we were, a group of Christians impanelled to expose other Christians to a biblical world-view, being encouraged by a pastor to drop biblical language and even fudge our public motives lest we offend those “far from God.” To his credit, I’m sure that this pastor did not derive that strategy independently; he probably read it in a book distributed by some megachurch ministry that he finds inspiring. But whatever its origin, I find it to be both loathsome and cynical.

Christianity is not a content-free spirituality; it is about Truth—transcendent, eternal, personal and objective Truth. How can any deception ever serve the Truth? That such deception might even be considered reveals that some in the church are less in pursuit of a people of the Truth than a large number of people. When one is after a crowd, then truth be damned. One need only reflect on the ministry of Jesus as recorded in John’s gospel: great crowds followed Him until he began teaching the Truth (Jn. 6:1–69). And as it was for Jesus, so too will it be for His disciples.

I have been told that my objection is foolish, even over the top; that this is just a matter of marketing, or of encouraging the church to appropriate the mode of political persuasion. “When one controls the language,” I’m told, “one controls the debate.” That adage conjures up visions of 1984 in my head and it echoes the inauthenticity and cynicism of today’s political discourse. What I hear is that language and words are elastic; their meaning can be shaped and moulded to fit the purpose of the moment. Truth then is no longer an objective reality external to all speakers; meaning and truth lie within the purpose of each speaker. As a result, nothing is a lie when everyone speaks his or her own truth.

Yet what does this mean for those who claim to be people of the Word? What does it mean for those of us who hold to the sovereignty of an eternal, omniscient God? Is the Bible the Word of God. Is it inerrant, infallible and perspicacious? Or must it be re-envisioned by each succeeding generation? Do we believe that culture must submit to God—or must we redefine God by culture? I for one believe that culture should be conformed to the Judeo-Christian revelation and not the other way around. However, I do not pine for a theocracy imposing that revelation on all humanity; but neither will I abide the subjection of the Christian faith to the definitions of pagan secularism. Men do not need to change God’s word to make it acceptable to the lost. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to call men and women to Christ, and it is our job to preach the Truth. We do not need to abandon His Truth as articulated in His scripture in order to reach the people of our time. God is not so addled and inept to have left us in a world where His Word is no longer relevant. If the culture no longer recognizes it, it is not the failure of the Word, but of the church which stopped preaching and teaching it.

I am a man of many faults, a sinner saved by the grace and mercy of God. My sins are numerous; I need no pastoral encouragement to abet them. I will not abandon the language of faith to win this world nor deceive the world to achieve a larger congregation. No lie ever served the Truth. May God have mercy on us all.