When I talk about American Christianity, I am referring
specifically to a brand of Christianity that has wholly adopted the postmodern,
hedonistic, individualistic, relativistic, pluralistic mindset that comprises a
very magnanimous portion of American philosophy. In other words, American
Christianity is not Christianity in any sense of the word. American
Christianity is a godless philosophical system immersed in idolatry. It is
postmodern in the sense that truth is what the individual decides it is
regardless of the facts. It is hedonistic in the sense that it aims to engender
as much pleasure as the individual determines is satisfactory. It is
individualistic in the sense that believers do not submit to their church
leaders or the Christian group in any true sense whatever. The individual
decides who their leader will be and as long as that leader operates within the
individual’s own self-determined parameters, they are extended the privilege to
remain in the position of “leader.” If a church should offend them by its
position on any subject, they simply move on to the next one without so much as
a flinch. It is relativistic in the sense that absolute truth for everyone does
not exist. Anyone who pretends to know something to be absolutely true or
false, right or wrong, is charged with “playing God.” It is pluralistic in the
sense that no practice or view should result in anyone being excluded from the
group. In other words, any and all who want to play, regardless of their
beliefs and morals, should be allowed to be part of the group without fear of
being excluded. Finally, American Christianity is immersed in idolatry because
the god it contends exists does not exist at all. American Christianity has
created a god that is like “a modern American daddy,” or how modern Americans
think daddies “ought” to be. This god is a soft, gentle, tolerant,
non-demanding, non-threatening, entirely understanding being who puts up with
just about any behavior and belief Americans expect him to. He does not judge
anyone for anything, except maybe judging itself, and, oh yeah, pedophilia. Oh,
I almost forgot, he does not like CEOs very much either or the rich. Well, the
conservative rich. He is okay with the Hollywood rich types. The American god
lets almost everyone into heaven with very few exceptions. He is, after all, at
the mercy of the free will of human beings. Every American knows that
individual freedom and sovereignty as well as choice are the highest of all
virtues. God would never predestine anyone or anything. He certainly would
never predestine anything bad to happen, not the American god. He is awesome. He
is pure love, but only as Americans define love.
The overwhelming majority of the American Church does not
exist for the kingdom, for truth, or even for the gospel. It exists for the
sole pleasure and self-interest of the individual. If you don’t believe me,
just ask most Americans why they decided upon the church they attend. “The pastor
is so dynamic and engaging!” “The Youth group really does a lot with the kids.”
“There are so many activities the kids can get involved in.” “The music is awesome.”
“This is where all our friends are.” “The people are so friendly.” The reasons
are numerous. Notice that every one of these reasons centers on the individual.
The Church was not made for the individual but the individual for the church.
Not so in America! In American a church is like every other activity we engage is, such as the gym, dining out, buying a home, etc. Meeting God's definition for "Church" does not even enter the decision process. In fact, the overwhelming majority of American Christians, so called, couldn't even provide a biblically accurate definition for church. I would not expect new Christians to be able to do this, but those who have been around for years, one would expect they would be able to do so. The sad fact is that most cannot even articulate the gospel, let alone help someone with what a true or false church is. Sad indeed! This is because most American Christians, so called, are really just detached moralists wearing the Christian label. Nothing more, but maybe something even less. It is a serious issue that the Christian group can no longer afford to ignore.
Biblical Ineptness
Rather than use the Bible as their guide for how they should
select a church, they display a very high degree of arrogance when they select
one based on their own criteria. Postmodern thinking leads many Christians to
believe that even Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation. The Bible,
in their mind, was given to us to serve us and show us how to get the most out
of life as we determine life’s meaning of course. In other words, God speaks to
me this way in that verse while he may speak something entirely different to
you in the same verse. The crazy thing is that many people actually point to
such a practice and testify to how wondrous and mysterious the Scriptures are
because they can have so many different meanings! Yes, we are sometimes that purblind.
The single largest problem for the actual Church is that we simply have far too
many unbelievers sitting around in the Christian group who are clearly not born
again, and we do nothing to purge them from the group. Unbelievers have no say
in the life, theology, and praxis of the Christian group. They are blind,
without understanding, hostile to the things of God and are uniquely
unqualified to participate in Church life. Paul tells the Corinthian Christians
to remove the sinning man from their midst because a little leaven will leaven
the entire lump. In other words, tolerance for ungodly behavior will result in
the spread of ungodly behavior among the Christian group. This seems rather
obvious, and the American version of Christianity has borne it out. There are
Christians in America who never read the Bible, but they consider themselves to
be just as knowledgeable about God, truth, and Christianity as a pastor that
has invested thousands of hours studying everything from the languages of
Scripture, the systematics of theology, and the history of the church. This is
due to postmodern arrogance. For most Americans, interpreting the Bible is a
matter of preference, not the recovery of absolute meaning in the text.
Kevin Vanhoozer writes, “Hermeneutics
is both disenchanted and disenfranchised by the suggestion that there are no
principles for right and wrong interpretation, only preferences.”[1]
I realize that many in the Christian community, and especially in the academy
wish to permit those with a low view of Scripture to remain acknowledged viable
members of the group, but this practice has a damning and devastating effect on
the community. John Webster says, “What
Scripture is as sanctified and inspired is a function of divine revelatory
activity, and divine revelatory activity is God’s triune being in its external
orientation, its gracious and self-bestowing turn to the creation.”[2]
The unbeliever is not privy to divine revelation in Scripture. The American
Christian demands the right to hold whatever view of Scripture he or she
desires. And they demand the right to remain in the Christian group on the
basis that this is their desire. What Americans desire, they seem to think they
have an inherent right to have. The American dream used to be owning a home and
having a secure job by which to care for one’s family. It has morphed into the
most extreme and radical forms of hedonism to exist in any culture in any other
part of the world. It really comes to this: Americans want to think whatever
they want about the Bible to include it’s meaning and significance in the
church on the basis that they should be allowed to do so just because that is
what they want to do.
Meredith Kline says, “The
canonical authority of the Bible is in a class by itself because its covenantal
words are the words of God.”[3]
The Christian group must insist that everyone in the Christian community share
the view of Jesus and the apostles on the nature of Scripture. Any denial or
disagreement on this subject must be grounds for discipline and excommunication.
For Christians, the ends of reading,
interpreting, and embodying Scripture are determined decisively by the ends of
God’s self-revelation, which are directed towards drawing humans into
ever-deeper communion with the triune God and each other.”[4] The believer cannot enter into deeper
communion with the Divine Trinity without God’s self-revelation in Scripture.
While it is true that this revelation came at a point in time in the person of
Christ, it is equally true that the very Scriptures that capture the record of
that event are themselves also divine self-disclosure.
Essential to transformation into the image of God’s Son is
the event of biblical revelation in the holy Scripture. Without this event,
without the Bible itself, transformation is impossible. Jens Zimmermann writes, “In other words, the goal of theological
hermeneutics was from the beginning practical and existential guidance to a
meaningful life. Jesus’s [sic] invitation to his disciples of fulfilling the
Torah was not, “as a Hellenized reader might expect, to some pacific state of
enlightened self-consciousness, but rather to self-denial, self-sacrificing
imitation of his own to starkly mortal praxis: ‘take up your cross and follow
me.’”[5]
The goal of Scripture is a transformed life. It is not to provide the academy
with debate material. Scripture is God’s self-disclosure to the end the bride
of Christ, the Church would be transformed into the image of His Son. Hence, it
should come as no surprise that counterfeit Christians, while they liter the
pews all over this country, reject not only the nature of Scripture itself, but
exhibit little regard for its content on such issues as abortion, sexual
behavior, gay marriage, and whatever other pet sins they wish to retain in
their worldview. The Christian group must come to terms with how she will
relate to those who clearly want to wear the title “Christian” without
submitting to the values of Christ, the values that make a Christian what they
are to begin with. These values demonstrate that regeneration and conversion
have been wrought in the heart of the believer. One of those values is a hatred
for sin. No true Christian remains in love with sin. When confronted with their
sin, genuine believers will repent. It may take a little time, but repentance
is inevitable. Unbelievers make excuses, defend their actions, and refuse to
surrender to the values of Christianity. They retort the old American idea: we
will just have to agree to disagree. That may hold for some views, but it does
not hold for core Christian values and it absolutely does not hold for sinful
practice.
I am hopeful that the current state of affairs that has
obtained in American culture will result in the Christian group having to take
action. For so long now, the group has been somewhat docile in how it
interacted with those who held to fundamentally different values than the group
has historically. Issues like homosexuality and gay marriage may be just what
the group needs to tighten her reigns and repent of her tolerance for things
she had not right to tolerate from the start.
Jesus spoke to the Church at Ephesus in Rev. 2:2 concerning behaviors
that pleased Him and those that did not please Him. What is interesting is one
behavior that pleased Christ was the Ephesians intolerant behavior toward men
who claimed to be ambassadors and messengers of the gospel but they were not.
These men made claims to be apostles. America’s version of Christianity would
teach us to love them, accept them, and by all means that we should not judge
them. However, when we examine Scripture, we find the complete opposite. Jesus
was pleased that the Ephesian Church refused to tolerate these false
Christians. The Ephesian church had ἐπείρασας τοὺς λέγοντας ἑαυτοὺς ἀποστόλους and discovered them to be liars. The
Greek word ἐπείρασας literally
means to try to learn the nature or character of something or someone by submitting
such to thorough and extensive testing. It means to examine the character of
the person. The American church would be appalled if we made such judgments
about people. Yet, according to Christ, this kind of behavior is honorable in
His sight and one that garners praise and recognition from our Master.
On the flip side of this, just a few verses later, Christ had a
stern rebuke for a church that actually did just the opposite of the Ephesian
Church. The church at Thyatira was a very tolerant church. She did not want to
rock the boat, upset folks, or be accused of judging and being critical and
mean-spirited. Rather than testing the character of her group and taking action
as the Ephesians did, she just let everyone do as they pleased. She was very
much like the American version of Christianity. Jesus said to the Church at
Thyatira, ἀλλὰ ἔχω κατὰ σοῦ ὅτι ἀφεῖς τὴν γυναῖκα
Ἰεζάβελ. I have
this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel. In other words, you put
up with and forgive what you should not! The sin of Jezebel concerned immoral
sexual behavior and idolatry. Whether or not this refers to polytheistic cult
fornication is a matter of debate. The mention of idols within the same context
could indicate it does. The point is that the church at Thyatira had closed
lips and no action when they should have been outspoken and taking action
toward those in her group who were being deceived by this teaching.
The American version of Christianity is hedonistic, pluralistic,
and radically individualistic. It does not come close to even resembling
biblical Christianity. It is a detached moralism that wears the name of Christ
mostly because it was Christians who founded the nation and most of these
moralists have grown up in some form of what we call “church.” They have added
Christian terms to their worldview and at first glance may give the appearance
of Christianity, but after a short examination they reveal their true nature.
They hate the God revealed in Scripture. They despise His holy commands and
consider His narrow ways to be hateful, judgmental, intolerant, and bigoted.
The Christian group must come to terms with the state of American
culture and recognize it is as godless as any other culture in the world. We
can no longer afford to kid ourselves by thinking that there is something
fundamentally good and virtuous in America’s version of Christianity and the
gospel. Moreover, we must call those who deny God’s word and who clearly
despise God’s nature what they rightfully are: wicked men. We must do as the
Ephesian Church did and refuse to tolerate fundamentally wicked ideas and
strategic thinking that is antithetical to Christian praxis and doctrine. We
must do so with love and respect. We cannot continue to treat these God-haters
as if they are just misguided believers. They are not. If they were, they would
pass the examination the Ephesian Church put them through. If we have not or
are not examining them, then we must start that process today. If they are
genuine, the truth will be revealed. If they are unregenerate, they do not
belong in the group. Remove the leaven. God has not issued the Church the
authority to overturn His pronouncement on the unbeliever. Whatever the church
binds upon men or loosens must already have been bound or loosened in heaven.
In other words, the choice of action is not ours. As slaves of Christ, we are
duty-bound to act.
[3] Meredith G. Kline,
The Structure of Biblical Authority (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Pub.,
1997), 75.
[4] Stephen E. Fowl,
Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,
2009), 6-7.
[5] Jens Zimmermann,
Recovering Theological Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,
2004), 28.
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