The Crises of American Christianity

Over the past twenty to thirty years there has been a phenomenal shift in how the term Christian has come to be defined in American culture. Like it or not, leaders, pastors, professors, teachers, and mature believers are being forced to defend and define the basic teachings of Jesus Christ and His apostles that have been preserved in Sacred Scripture. The lack of rigor that is in our processes around those we bring into the community as members, and those we baptize, and those we send off to seminary and ordain has had grave consequences for the body of Christ at large. We are now left with the hard work or repairing the damage that is has been done and of instituting processes and practices that ensure we do not repeat this mistake again.

There is a very large movement in American Christianity to dispense with any hint of internal holiness within the Christian community. As far as American Christianity is concerned, there are no rules, no lists, and no laws by which Christians are to conduct their lives. In theological terms, we call this view antinomianism. While it has been around a very long time, it has never been the dominant view and has always been soundly rejected by the Church. However, in recent times there has been an astonishing explosion of antinomianism in American Christianity. There is a prevailing idea that one can be a genuine Christian possessing genuine faith without any reference at all to their ethical behavior. Young professing American Christians have entered the Church and the pulpit and the seminaries with a preconceived idea of what they want Christianity to be and they are on a mission to reshape it top to bottom at all costs. Indeed, their efforts heretofore have been relentless. And because their doctrines are so attractive to the naturally rebellious mind and to immoral vice, they have been received with vigor by the world. Their churches are exploding everywhere. Indeed, there is an antinomian revival of mammoth proportions sweeping across America today unlike anything we have ever witnessed in modern times.

The God of Scripture, who is sovereign over all the affairs of men is now referred to by these young Christians as a moral monster simply because they detest the idea of His sovereignty. He has been replaced with a fluffy, permissive, weak American daddy or grandpa projection of their own making. The God of historic, biblical Christianity is summarily rejected. The Church has had it wrong.

In American Christianity, Jesus Christ was not the Prophet, Priest, and King proclaimed by the Church but the friend of the perverse kind of sinners, having come to party with them and accept them just as they are without any demand for repentance or change in their lifestyles. In this version of Christianity, Jesus never told the woman taken in adultery NOT to sin again. He merely did not condemn her and that is where the story ends. American Christianity has a very bad habit of not telling the whole story. It picks and chooses only those components that are convenient in order to support its utopian idea of what Christianity simply has to be in their opinion.

American Christianity has a range of views it finds tolerable concerning the Bible. It is a good book with some good things to teach us. However, the doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy and infallibility are mocked in nearly every camp. Scripture itself is not our final authority for faith and practice. And where inspiration is not mocked, a hermeneutic is adopted that basically nullifies that sacred doctrine reducing it to meaningless nonsense. Authors of Scripture are brazenly viewed as biased, ignorant, and primitive men that were not as sophisticated as we are and therefore not qualified to write about some of the issues they wrote about, at least not where modern man is concerned. Science and reason is the bar by which their writings must be judged. A six-day creation is incredibly naïve. A woman’s right to abortion is a matter of modern freedom and medical science. Marriage is an outdated idea whose day has come and gone. Sex outside of marriage is perfectly moral so long as you love the other person or feel love toward the other person. Gay sex and gay marriage are perfectly natural, healthy, and acceptable. Illicit divorce is not even a term that makes sense in American Christianity. The very concept of Church discipline is repugnant to these groups. And if there were any that believe in discipline, the only person likely to be subjected to it would be a person of genuine faith. The supernatural components of Scripture are up for grabs; believe them if you want or reject them if you want. It has no bearing on your faith.

The soteriology of American Christianity is purely rationalistic and natural. There simply is no supernatural component to salvation in that system. The idea of regeneration and the concept of being reborn are mere conventions in American Christianity. According to this new version of Christianity, you can be a Christian simply by saying you are a Christian. Nothing else has to change. There is no “proving your faith” within American Christianity. Such a notion is critical and judgmental and unloving. Love just accepts everyone the way they are without any conditions.

Now, before I proceed to close this article by advancing my belief that Christians are actually different and the Bible tells us they are, I need to say a thing or two about the neo-fundamentalist version of Christianity, which is at the other end of the pendulum. The old-fashioned fundamentalists had more lists than you could count that Christians had to follow to the letter in order to be considered “Christian.” You could not go to movies. You could not go to the beach. You can only listen to gospel music. You must tithe. You better have a good reason for not being in Church on Sunday and in case you are not aware of it, there is no good reason. The list of the fundamentalist seems unending. Neo-fundamentalists are different but operate on the same sort of principle. They set up standards that they claim are based on biblical principles and if you do not follow them, you are viewed as sinning, falling short, not committed to serving, selfish, and more. The neo-fundamentalist may not question your salvation or classify you as a less committed Christian, but they sure know how to create an atmosphere of guilt. As far as the neo-fundamentalist is concerned, it does not matter what you do or how busy you are, it is never enough. Thank God for liberty, for freedom, and for the grace of God that is in Christ Jesus.

Now, back to the issue at hand. According to the Bible, genuine faith makes a real difference in the life of the Christian. James asks the question, “what good is it if someone has faith but has no works?” The answer is it is useless. Yet, American Christianity contends that there is no relationship between being a Christian and having a radically changed heart and life. James explicitly disagrees. He goes on to say that faith without works is a dead faith. Someone may boast that they faith but James says they have no way to prove their faith. In other words, faith is not a phantom. Faith makes its presence known. We show our faith or lack of faith in our works. James says that a person who believes that faith existence where works do not is a foolish person. This is how a NT person would say, “you are a stupid man.” Just as Abraham’s faith was a justifying faith seen in his response to God by offering Isaac, so too Christian faith is a justifying faith seen in our response to the gospel of Christ. This involves the turning away from a wicked life to a life defined by righteous thought and good deeds. While these good deeds are not the cause of our justification, it also holds that the kind of faith that does not produce then also does not justify. James says that genuine faith produces works.

John tells us that the sons of righteous and the sons of the devil are obvious, plain for anyone to see. Those who live a life defined by righteousness are sons of God and those who life a life defined by lawlessness are sons of the devil. It is not difficult to see the difference. The point here is that the Bible most certainly teaches that there is a difference, a remarkable difference between how a Christian carries on their life and how the world carries on their life. While we must do all we can to avoid turning Christianity into a dirge of righteous demands and requirements too heavy for anyone to bear, we must also acknowledge that the work of God in the human heart truly produces a real change that is visible for all to see. And for that we should give God the praise and glory for He is the one who works in us to do His good pleasure according to His kind intentions which He has in Christ Jesus.

Meism: A Generation of The Self

On occasion I have railed about the attitude of the younger generation, especially in the areas of submissiveness and outright arrogance. The two, in my opinion, are interrelated. Recently, I ran across an interesting article that talked about the research results related to the younger generation. The article calls them the "Me Me Me Generation." In an article published by Time Magazine on May 20^th, 2013, Joel Stein begins the revelation of statistics with this fact: "The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that's now 65 or older. In fact, 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982.

According to a 2012 study by Clark University, more people ages 18-29 live with their parents than with a spouse. In addition, a 1992 study found that 80% of people under the age of 23 wanted a job with greater responsibility compared to just 60% ten years later. Stein's report targets millennials, people born between 1980 and 2000. Average American family of the 50's may have displayed a wedding photo, a school photo, and maybe a military photo in their homes. Today, the average middle-class American family walks amid 85 photos of themselves and their pets. Millennials have less civic involvement and lower political participation than any previous group.

Scores of creativity and empathy are falling sharply among millennials. It seems apparent that social media like Facebook and Twitter have created a false sense of accomplishment and worth. It's all about friends, likes, and followers. While Stein goes on to express what I would call a blind optimism about the generation's future, I admittedly cannot follow him. My focus is different. The mantra of millennials has been "challenge convention." And they have certainly been busy doing just that. The question is how has the millennial culture impacts the Christian community. Where is the expression of this attitude in the Church?

We can begin with what was known as the "seeker-movement." This movement recognized the trends in the "Me Me Me generation" even before it was in full bloom and adjusted accordingly. Church had to change and remain culturally relevant if it was going to survive. It matters not that Jesus Himself guaranteed that even something as power as the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church, many modern pastors, having all but lost their faith, embraced the new model. The Church had to change its music, its programs, its lighting, and even its message. And everything was geared toward the so-called "seeker." The sinner needed to feel that it was all about them.

The next phase to emerge was of course, the emerging church movement. This movement was one more adaptation or perhaps several, of how Christianity was being defined. The convention and tradition of the older generation, the great conservative movements and scholars were dismissed with amazing unabashed prejudice. Change for the sake of being different seemed to be the cadence of this movement. Scripture was displaced and in its stead, a full-orbed narcissistic post-modern message and philosophy took its place. The God of the OT was viewed as something altogether different from Jesus. Many passages were rejected on the basis that they were not in keeping with modern sensitivities. Gone were the doctrines of wrath, hell, and the idea of a penal-substitutionary atonement. The immediate response when one quotes Calvin or one of the other great theologians is "who needs these old, unsophisticated men" with their primitive ideas and theology. The notion that we are superior because, well we say we are, embraced without critical reflection. What does Calvin or Luther, or Augustine have to say to us? Not only was traditional dogma dismissed, but the methods and techniques for arriving at these truths have also been abandoned. Seminaries spend much more time on psychology, business, and management than they do on languages and exegesis and even systematics.

Finally, enter the young, the restless, and the reformed. First of all, while I know there are exceptions to this rule, I find it a good general rule of thought that the minute someone begins to define themselves as different, new, outside the pale, that it is likely that I am talking to one of these narcissistic types whose ego just needs that sort of feeling. Think about that. Why can't we just be disciples and followers of Christ? We can't just be a Calvinist, or Arminian, or a Baptist or a Presbyterian. Something inside the narcissist insists on not only redefining things, but also on being the one to do so. It does not matter that there is no real impact to anyone or anything in reality. All that matters is that in the mind of the narcissist, they have made their contribution. All that matters is that someone notices them. All that seems to matter is that they count.

The young, the restless, and the reformed are indeed an odd bunch. They range from sound, reformed folks to nearly outright heretics. They have redefined the boundaries for the most part. Unlike their counter-parts in the emerging church, they maintain a high view of Scripture, but like those counter-parts, they mangle it so that in the end, it is unrecognizable. Take the wholesale acceptance of TD Jakes for example, an unrepentant heretic that is embraced by more than a small portion of the YRR.

The seeker movement, the emerging church, and the young, restless, reformed all have close connections with cultural shifts of the "Me Me Me Generation we call millennials. While the emerging church is by far the most extreme expression of the millennial hijacking of Christianity, the other movements have done little to slow the shift. While their statements hold Scripture in high regard, their actions show, at times, an utter contempt for Scripture. The view of God and all things holy seems to be utterly common to some within the seeker and YRR movements. This is a product of the Me focus among millennials. They seem to think they have a right to touch everything, anytime, anywhere they please and that includes the nature of God. One of the reasons I think John Piper is so popular among this crowd is because his views on Christian hedonism fits perfectly with a "Me-focused" generation. This generation is certainly interested in their pleasure and if they can spin Piper's hedonism just a little, well, why not jump on that train?

One of the biggest problems I see within these movements is their understanding of the Church. I do not see anything remotely resembling a biblical ecclesiology. Many of these churches require members to sign confidentiality agreements around Church finances. There is no transparency. One of those Churches just stood by and watched their young pastor build a 16,000 square foot mansion on the south side of Charlotte, NC. I drive by that church every Wednesday on my way to a men's bible study. In addition, the idea of submissiveness, discipline, and coming under others in authority over them seems completely lacking among these young leaders. Well, that believe in submission so long as it is to them and their hand-picked boards.

How is culture affecting and shaping your views and opinions on God, Christ, Man, Sin, and Scripture? How do you see yourself before the throne of a holy God? Is God your daddy who wants you to have a high view of yourself and wants to spoil you with materialism, status and the American dream? Are the songs and sermons that move you only those songs and sermons that talk about you, your dreams, your hopes, and your goals? Do you get excited only when you think God is all about making your life fabulous? Or, is it the cross and the amazing and incredible display of God's justice and mercy that come together there that move you more than anything else moves you? Where is your focus? Is it on God or on you? Is God's own glory enough for you or must there be something else in it for you? Is your greatest desire God's glory? Or, is your greatest desire God's glory when it means your enjoyment in temporal things, be they relationships, careers, money, power, and popularity?

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom. 12:2)