Kirsten Powers New Love or is it?

Perhaps those who jumped on the Kirsten Powers "conversion" when it came out have learned a valuable lesson. Never, ever celebrate the announced conversion of modern American celebrities prematurely. Give the individual a chance to produce fruit meet for repentance. I was hopeful but patient when it came to the Powers profession of faith. And then I started to see signs that gave me a glimpse into the sort of conversion Kirsten had actually experienced. For instance, I read her article on why Christians have to stop rejecting gay marriage and start accepting homosexuals into their community, repentance or not. The message is that God loves everyone just the way they are and makes no demands on anyone's life to change in any way, well, unless they are really, really bad as we define bad.

As it turns out, Kirsten has found Rome much more to her liking than the Tim Keller, PCA, version of Christianity. Of course Powers details of her visit by Jesus and her subsequence conversion should have been enough for any discerning Christian to recognize that there was a problem with Powers Christian conversion from the very start. Powers said the most profound impact her Christian conversion has had on her life is that she came to "view everyone as God's child and that means that everyone deserves grace and respect." If you can't see anything wrong with that statement, you need to read your Bible. You know, where Paul said, Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. (Ro 3:9) And again, There is none who does good, There is not even one. (Rom. 3:12) No Kirsten, no one deserves grace...thats why it is called grace...because no one deserves it. And oh, not everyone is a child of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. (1 Jn 3:10)

Why do these things happen? It really is quite obvious according to the Scripture. They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us. (1 Jn 2:19)

There is no question that the Roman church is an apostate church. She left the faith centuries ago. Genuine Christians are or shortly after conversion become protestant Christians, protesting the heresy spewed forth from the Vatican. It is not shocking to see people like Kirsten Powers attracted to an organization like Rome because Rome has perverted the image of God and the truth of Christ for centuries.

Millennials and Confessions

In an article that appeared in 1:1 Answers Update, Ken Ham calls our attention to some very disturbing trends among twenty-something-year-olds, or as they are called, Millennials. Over 40% say they are not born again. 35% declare the Bible has errors or they don’t know if it has errors. 45% say that Sunday School did not teach them how to defend their faith. 45% say homosexual behavior is not a sin, or they don’t know if it is a sin. 40% believe “gay couples” should be allowed to marry and have legal rights. 20% say there are books (other than the Bible) that are inspired by God. 65% believe that if you are a good person, you will go to heaven. What is shocking about this demographic group is that they are regular church attenders (at least 3x month). Ham points out that these Millennials are going to fundamentally change the church and the culture if these beliefs hold.

Now we know why so many people are leaving the Church. They were never really part of her to begin with. I suspect it has always been this way whether people are visibly leaving the Church or choosing to remain in the community for other reasons. I am not alarmed by the trends. Actually, in a way, I celebrate what I see as a necessary purging. What alarms me is not the people that leave the church. What alarms me more than anything else are those who remain in the community. If you believe that all it takes to go to heaven is being good, then either your belief must change or I really, really, really want you to leave my church. There are far too many unregenerate, secular thinking members present in the church. Those of us who know Christ ought to have the love and decency as Christians to discipline them out of the body or bring them to repentance in Christ.

The second question Ham wonders about is why there are so many people still in the body of Christ who are so entrenched in secular thinking. We downgrade sin, soften divine justice, cheapen grace, and open the floodgates to worldly thinking from our homes to our business right down to our Sunday school classes. People cannot find basic doctrine with both hands and we are busy convincing them they can discern the hidden will of God if they pray long enough, hard enough, and just in the right way. Why do we think War Room was so incredibly popular? It feeds off poor thinking about issues like prayer and the Christians daily struggle with sin. Millennials have adopted autonomous human reason as their sole authority for how they live and think. They place Scripture in the dock and God along with it and issue their judgments. Genesis 1-3 cannot be accurate because science says so. Women can lead because modern minds understand better than the authors of Scripture God’s true design for the sexes. Homosexual prohibitions in Scripture are the product of cultural bias against the practice. Modern minds are more informed, more enlightened, and yes, more loving. Once Scripture goes, anything goes.

Finally, why is the Church not reaching the culture with biblical truths the way the Church once did? While I am not convinced the slippage here is as great as some think it is, it would be silly to deny any slippage at all. The gospel includes repentance from dead works and rebellion. The modern message rarely includes this. The law and the justice of God have been stripped out of the gospel. The gospel used to be good news for the undeserving and the helpless. Now, the gospel is good news for those who want a better life, a happy marriage, a healthy family, and a solid career. In modern western culture, it seems the Christian life is little more than a shallow embrace of what appears to be Christian morality coupled with some religious activities on the weekend and perhaps some social causes sprinkled in here and there. That is to say that western Christianity is not unlike its religious counterparts. The decision to become a “Christian” is either the result of a rationalistic exercise based on an examination of logical arguments and scientific evidence or it is simply the holding to family tradition in many, many cases. The Millennials appear to believe that being a Christian means being a good person, exercising your own opinions about the most basic of Christian doctrine, and not hurting anyone. Essentially, the final authority in the Millennial Christians’ mind is the Millennial himself. Traditional worship has been set by a huge majority of Millennials, not for exegetical reasons, but simply because it’s old, outdated, or because it belongs to someone else.

Millennials want their own cake and eat it to. This is why they insist on a new version of Christianity, a Christianity not inherited by 2,000 years of Church history, but one that they can put their fingerprints on. This is why Millennials reject Genesis in the name of science and the enlightened mind. It is why they challenge the Church’s teachings on Scripture. It is also the reason that Millennials are more likely to question or accept homosexuality as an acceptable sexual expression even in the Church. They want their Christianity, their music, their sermons, their theology, their way! Nothing less will do.

The Millennial phenomenon points us in the direction of the ancient biblical practice of confessional Christianity. Modern Millennials tend to look down on old music, old worship, old creeds and confessions. But they have very shallow reasons for doing so. Most of them simply have not bothered to educate themselves to form an opinion either way. There are exceptions of course, but for the most part, the thought of engaging in such a dry, emotionless project is painful to say the least. If you can’t give it to the Millennial in a short Facebook post or a Tweet, then forget it.

Paul wrote to Timothy that he had made “the good confession” in the presence of many witnesses. What is “the good confession?” The Greek word homolegeo, contrary to what modern culture thinks, does not simply mean to say something out loud. Far too many people understand that confessing Christ is merely saying they want to follow Christ. “I am a Christian” has truly become a claim that carries very little meaning. For the Koine audience of Paul’s day, the word carried a sense of agreement. It meant to agree with someone. It meant to agree to do something. “The legal connotation is common and poss. dominant. A person agrees with another’s statement, concedes or confesses something (such as guilt before a judge), agrees to something (e.g., someone else’s wish). This agreement expresses itself in an act of commitment, promise, or confession in a court or legal contract. The noun ὁμολογία plays a role in philosophical discourse: it does not merely indicate “theoretical agreement” but “implies consent to some thing felt to be valid, and in such a way that it is followed by definite resolve and action, by ready attachment to a cause. The religious use of the words may have derived primarily from the language of treaties and law courts. A legal agreement that involved binding oneself by an oath implied an obligation to the deity. A solemn admission of wrongdoing before a court of law could naturally have been transferred to the confession of sin in a religious setting. These concepts were found esp. in the oriental cults, as may be seen from Lydian and Phrygian expiatory inscriptions.” (NIDNTTE)

The Christian Confession is far more rich and more meaningful in ancient Christianity that it is today. Today, lip-service is given by many false Christians as they sit in Church week after week, hearing the sermon but rejecting the authority from which it comes. They meet with the pastor, who is all too eager to bring them into the fold because it makes him feel and look good, go through the motions of signing a card and agreeing to a covenant, all the while having no clue what it means to follow Christ.

Ken Ham’s article should serve as a bit of a wake-up call to us. What are we to do with these young Millennials who want to claim our Christianity all the while rejecting our Christ. They claim to love God but reject God’s commandments in many areas. They claim the Bible but only those parts that do not contain errors. They say that music should not be an issue but insist on changing it. The irony is embarrassing. What are we to do with these individuals. First, keep an eye out for them. They are not our friends. They are not friends of Christ. Those who call Scripture into question have to be confronted, rebuked, and if they prove obstinate, they must be removed from the congregation. A little leaven leavens the entire lump. They who question such basics as the Christian sexual ethic must be dealt with harshly. This is not a game. Intolerance is the order of the day for those young biblically inept Millennials who are so arrogant that they think they don’t have to study Scripture to formulate their opinions. They can come with their pre-made opinions and then make Scripture support them one way or another. There is no room in the body for people who have not truly made “the good confession.” What do we say about these Millennials who dare question Scripture at such basic areas like sexuality, creation, and the authority of Scripture itself? We remind one another of Jude’s ominous words:

But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, “In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.” These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.

The Constantinian Christian

For a very long time now, American Christians have conflated biblical Christianity with a sort of American Nationalism integrated thoroughly with a Christianity that filters nearly every Christian doctrine through a distinctly American mindset. The American Christian begins, not with ancient biblical Christianity. Instead, it begins with American nationalism, American ideas, American principles and it proceeds to impose those ideas onto Christianity. The modern Christian in America is completely immersed in the constantinian shift. We do not see our nation as something distinct from our Christianity. We see the two as inseparable. That is how we view both our religious commitments and our commitments to this country. I wonder what Paul would have done if he had been told that he had to swear allegiance to Rome? The situation is so misunderstood in American culture that it has led to Christians confusing social and political activism with things like loving their neighbor. In some cases, Christians will accuse you of sin if you don’t vote along a particular party line. I used to be there myself. I know not only from reading what others are writing but from being one of the wrong-headed thinkers myself. The more I read Scripture outside the context that is American culture, the more I have realized that Christianity and America have really nothing to do with one another. That is to say that being a Christian says nothing about your being an American and being an American says nothing about you’re being a Christian.

I want to point out several myths that you must recognize if you are to ever break from the grip the constantinian shift has upon your worldview, and specifically, upon your Christian outlook.

American Christians suffer from the delusion that America either is or once was a Christian nation. America has never been a Christian nation. It is true that America was founded upon principles that appear similar to those in Christianity. But lets make sure we understand why that is. First of all, there is no country on earth that does not share at least some morality with Christian morality. The reason for this is because Christian morality is anchored in the nature of God. Humans are created in the image of God. We are born with certain innate attitudes about morality that are attributed to being created in the image of God. However, as do all unbelievers, Americans distort and pervert that morality to one degree or another. Perhaps, like the Jews, American Christians have sought to attain righteousness through legalistic rule-keeping as it relates to these moral principles. We have rules against movies, music, alcohol, etc. American Christianity has lots of rules. And those rules have often been used in the more legalistic areas of Christianity to beat and intimidate people into submission. But that sort of Christianity has always been an external wink and nod to Christ. It has nothing to say about the power of the gospel to change a sinner’s heart of stone.

This is why we ought to land somewhere between laughter and anger when someone quotes II Chronicles 7:14 as if God is speaking directly to America. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard this text quoted and applied to America by well-intentioned American Christians. The ignorance in these areas is pronounced and depressing. The text was addressed to ancient Israel. It is not a general promise to all the nations on the earth. It is address to “My people who are called by my name.” Only one nation was called by God’s name and that was ancient Israel. America is not and has never been a Christian nation.

The second myth is that America is the greatest country on earth. We really are proud Americans, aren’t we! We embrace our country and proudly talk about how we will defend it to the death and stand up for her as proudly as we possibly can. From a Christian perspective, America is not the greatest country of earth. America is a country that has probably had more exposure to Jesus Christ and the good news that any other single nation on earth. And what has she done with Christ? She has used Him to exploit His followers. Should Christians think of their pagan nation as the greatest nation on earth? America may be a good country relatively speaking to other countries in the world, but make no mistake about it, she is made up of mostly totally depraved God-haters. Her leaders in Washington are almost to a person, if not to a person, totally depraved God haters. The Supreme court is constituted by mostly if not entirely totally depraved God haters. She murders innocent unborn children and cloaks it in women’s health issues. She talks about marriage equality when what she really means is the celebration of some of the most unnatural and perverse sexual behavior invented by fallen sinful God haters. America is not the greatest country on earth.

Another myth is the notion that Christian love equals political or social activism. Some Christians think that the way we love our culture is to influence it morally and ethically. They wrongly think that if we can just get the culture to return to some of those external and apparent Christian principles that this is how we love our culture. I have news for you. Even if you were able to get America to adopt every commandment and conduct itself in a manner identical to how the Christian community conducts itself, it is still a dressed up, eternal, legalistic embrace of morality for all the wrong reasons. The only thing you would accomplish is the creation of another 300 million self-righteous hypocrites who think that God looks down on their country with favor because they don’t watch porn, kill babies, cheat on their wives or their taxes, and they are in church and contributing to the needs of the institution each and every week. What a wonderfully moral culture.

Putting the family first and maintaining the structure of the family is not the gospel and it is not the highest calling of the Christian. Eliminating the murder of innocent people to include children is not the calling at the Christian, not even a little. Eliminating slavery was never something that Christians were called to do. Stopping the sex trade is not something the Church is called to. Crushing the porn industry and making porn illegal is not the high calling of the Church. We do eliminate abortion in our midst. In the Christian community. We eradicate sexual promiscuity in the Christian community. We put an end murder, perverse sex, illicit divorce, the sex trade, and all such things within our Christian community. How do we do that? We preach the gospel, the good news, God regenerates those whom He has called to Himself, and through the power of the Holy Spirit as He applies the Word of God to the mind, we are slowly transformed into those having the mind of Christ. We start to look and sound like Jesus more and more each day!

Christians in America are not called to change the culture from a godless culture with more and more godless principles into a culture that is respectful and receptive to more and more Christian principles. We are called to live and preach the gospel to this culture. We are called to pray for this culture. We have been chosen by God to call American culture to repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is our high calling of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Christian American Patriotism and The Constantinian Shift

American Evangelicalism has been for a long time now conflated with patriotism. In fact, if you listen carefully to many American evangelicals you would think that to be a Christian is to be a patriot and to reject being a patriot is to reject Christianity. I know this all too well for I have come out of that mold myself. Christians that find themselves in American culture have to begin grappling with their loyalties sooner than later. No, you cannot be loyal to a God-hating government and to God at the same time and in the same sense. Before you sound the alarms, this is not a call to rebel against the government. Instead, it is precisely the opposite. This is merely a call to Christians in America to stop conflating their Christianity with being an American or a patriotic American. The delusion that many Christians suffer is finally beginning to fade. This is not your country! What I mean by that is that the Christian that thinks we have to take America back or that we are losing America is suffering from the “Christian nation” delusion and the time for Christians to stop believing that nonsense is long past. Why are we calling for a “return” to Christian values? Why do some pray for a revival? A revival of and to what exactly? I am afraid that we have all been duped by the fallacious Constantinian doctrine that has infected the church to one degree or another from the fourth century right up to the present moment. It is time we put a stop to it. And we can only begin to put a stop to it by exposing the doctrine for its unbiblical nature. That will be the goal of my next few posts.

If Christians in America are serious about their Christianity, their relationship with Christ, then it behooves them to go back in time and study the historical events around the Edict of Milan. Serious Christians are interested in ensuring that their communities, their attitude, and their ethic mirror those found in the NT record. If that does not describe you, then I would describe you as one who is not serious about his or her Christianity. I am convinced that unless you get in back of Constantine, whatever model of the church you come up with will be unavoidably tainted to one degree or another, with an idolatrous Roman influence that will continually impede the Christian's desire to adopt the mind of Christ on all matters ethical, doctrinal, and yes, political.

The Constantinian shift occurred when the Roman Emperor Constantine not only became a Christian but later declared Christianity to be the official religion of the empire. This meant that the empire became involved in the church, appointing leaders to positions of authority within the church. Everyone born into the empire was regarded as Christian (sound familiar?). Christianity saw this as the great victory of subduing the world for Christ. She even began to persecute competing religions. Indeed, it did not take long for the church to begin to disgrace herself. No longer was the church the object of brutal persecution. No longer was the Christian movement a minority movement of outcasts, the down-trodden, and the unimpressive. Christians began to occupy offices of authority, positions of influence, and gain significant credibility.

The consequences of the Constantinian shift are felt to this day, and they are especially felt in American Evangelicalism. Because everyone born into the empire was regarded as Christian, the church disappeared in terms of being able to distinguish it from the present world order. The same has happened in American culture. Because the church has promulgated the delusion that America was founded as, and has been for most of her history, a Christian nation, the distinction between the church and the country is murky at best and impossible to discern in most cases.

Eventually, there was a shift away from the authority of Scripture to the authority of the church, mirroring as it were, the Roman system. Eventually, this shift took place once more at the enlightenment where reason replaced revelation as the final authority. Scripture became subject to the interpretation of the Church which is guided primarily by the new doctrines emerging in human reason and in science. We see this in American Christianity, a version of Christianity that is mostly built upon an empiricist and/or rationalist theology as opposed to the supernatural revelation of an authoritative text. This explains why the “born-again” experience is no longer supernatural in most Christians minds but more like a decision to join the country club. It is a weak, flimsy, unrecognizable version of the ancient movement that Paul was so instrumental in building.

The merger of the church and the state gives the church a vested interest in the affairs, laws, civil codes, and ethics of the state. And the church feels that she is responsible for guiding the civil magistrates to oversee the affairs of the state only as the church sees fit. Hence, laws that are contrary to the church’s beliefs cannot be tolerated under any circumstances. This is not hard to miss in the thinking of most Christians residing in America. Additionally, the church is convinced that a state that comes under her instructions is also a state that comes under God’s blessing. I cannot help but think of the song, “God bless America.” What is amazing is how these facts are clear for us to see but somehow, most of us, myself included for so long, fail to see them. Christians have even bought into the view that America is the greatest country on earth, bar none. Really? What exactly is the criteria used to measure "country greatness?" They certainly are not biblical criteria.

The consequences (not inevitable I should say) of the reformation are that the church was broken up into numerous segments. These segments of the church increasingly have identified with the culture in which they exist. This has led the church to become more and more pagan in its thinking. As a consequence, each area of these church segments have tended to see God as favoring their nation over others. This is something all too common in American culture. It is so common that it is rises to the level of nauseating at times. America is not God’s country, not God’s favorite, and is not “special” to God over and above any other nation on this earth. To think so is the product of a blind nationalism. Such an attitude is simply ridiculous. And yes, I owned that attitude myself for most of my life.

For many American Christians, our present state of affairs looks like defeat. The outlook for Christianity looks bleak. The influence the Church has seemingly enjoyed is evaporating at an alarming pace. Many Christians are upset, anxious, and fear even the loss of their religious freedom. They are not used to the first century model of Christianity, where Christians were marginalized, scandalized, brutally persecuted and certain not entirely free to worship as they please without occasional interference from the state. But the church has not benefited from the affairs of the last 1700 years or so as many of these people think. Instead, the church has lost her identity, failed to distinguish herself with any degree of meaningful distinction, and she has very little credibility now in terms of the sort of credibility she ought to have. But things are changing for the better. It will become obvious who among us truly holds to the gospel and who does not. The church will soon be able to look starkly different from American culture. The community of Christ will be evident for the world to see.

The next question we must ask is how has this history infected our thinking? Have we built theological grids in defense of the constantinian model? Have we invented things like theonomy, hyper-preterism, dominionism, two-kindgom theology, etc. in a effort to protect our dearly held theological beliefs within our respective culture? How does the constantinian shift impact our personal approach to Scripture? What impact does it have on our hermeneutic? I think the answers are easy to see.