Christianity in North America

Doubt: The New Faith?

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There’s a new phenomenon sweeping the Church in America, the Gospel of Doubt. Questioning the veracity of the Bible, questioning whether doctrine has any worth today, and questioning the need to live out the traditional bedrock assumptions of the Faith have all become standard fare for today’s Christians.

In what has become almost a fad among the spiritually trendy, Doubt has become the new Faith. The heroes of the faith today are not those who stand firm in the midst of trials, but those who quiver with doubt that anything good can come out of tough times. Job’s cry of faith, “I know that my Redeemer lives,” has been replaced with “There is a chance my Redeemer may actually not live.”

We are watching a revisioning of what is worthy of admiration occur in just a decade. Those who routinely express their doubts are now considered the most spiritually mature, the most worthy of imitation. This trend is so new that the language of doubt is still wet on the page, but look for more nominally Christian books discussing it to show up on the shelves of your local bookstores soon.

Postmodernism is partly to blame for this trend. The rejection of assurance in a relativistic age makes heroes of self-proclaimed seekers and villains of those who advocate any kind of certainty. But did our Lord hold up doubt as something to admire? His words say otherwise:

Then [Jesus] said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
—John 20:27 NIV

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
—Matthew 14:30-31 NIV

Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”
—Matthew 21:21-22 NIV

The New Testament has other admonitions:

For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
—Romans 1:17 NIV

Without weakening in his faith, [Abraham] faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.
—Romans 4:19-21 NIV

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.
—Hebrews 10:39 NIV

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord…
—James 1:5-7 NIV

Clearly, we do understand that people who are unquestionably Christians do doubt from time to time. But we should never make an altar to doubt. Doubt is the shadow of faith and is, therefore, a pale reflection of the truth. We need to resist it, not make it a virtue lest we find ourselves to be a powerless Church. We must remember that it was in Jesus’ own hometown that we see the fruition of doubt:

He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith.
—Mark 6:5-6 NIV

We should not be surprised, though, at this elevation of doubt over faith. It is the sign of the times and will persist till He comes again, for the Lord Himself warns:

However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
—Luke 18:8b NIV

If we Christians make doubt the new faith, the answer to Jesus’ question is sadly obvious.

Whatever Happened to Sin?

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Long time ago, the Garden: the universe was corrupted by two humans who chose sin over the Almighty. God immediately cursed those two, then gave a promise that sin would be dealt with by a perfect sacrifice.

In short, it used to be about sin.

Christians throughout history understood how pervasive sin was. Knew that it was a ball and chain that kept them in bondage. The whole Reformation started because Luther was overcome by his own sinfulness and was begging for release. Sin killed, then killed some more.

It used to be about sin. The freedom we are to proclaim to the captives is freedom from sin. The ancients understood the ugly stain they could not wash out. Seekers wrestled with sin and fell upon God seeking forgiveness from it. The grace that promises to lead us home was offered freely to us when Christ paid our penalty, the penalty of sin. It used to be about sin. Preachers railed against sin. They understood that conversion came only after people understood the depths of their own depravity. Those preachers brought people to the cross, the place where sins were laid down and forgiven. Those converts knew they were saved because that crushing load of sin was removed. They wept over the release from that oppressive taskmaster.

But in churches today, the message has been changed. It is no longer about sin; it is about what we can get from God. Christianity has become the religion of meeting felt needs. Need your car fixed? We Christians can help with that! No one to pal around with? Hey, let’s get a pickup game of basketball going! Can’t walk the walk? No sense feeling guilty about it!

Many seekers, especially in America, don’t want to hear about sin, so our preachers oblige them by not talking about it. “Too scary, too off-putting to people.” “That message doesn’t work anymore.” “You can’t catch flies with vinegar.” So in the place of the message about the depths of sinfulness we all possess, many churches have adopted a message that says, “You are entitled to special treatment, and God is right there to give you anything you think you need.”

Last year, I heard a presentation advertising small groups within a church. This was a multimedia extravaganza that featured numerous real-life stories of people currently attending the church’s small groups. The clip ran almost five minutes, but when it was all said and done, the name of Jesus had never been mentioned. People talked glowingly about what they got from their small groups, but nothing was ever said about triumphing over sin, getting closer to Christ, understanding the Bible, or any of the traditional Christian issues. Instead, we all heard about going to baseball games with others in the group, having someone bring groceries over in a tough time, and the like.

It’s now all about what we can get. Because of this, few people ever talk about sin anymore. I wonder if seekers ever wrestle with their sinfulness. Considering the dearth of time we all claim today, perhaps others simply cannot devote much mental energy to thinking about their own sin since so much time is commanded in getting felt needs met.

The “new” churches that adhere to this self-centered paradigm wrap their evangelistic efforts around conducting felt need analyses or interpreting neighborhood demographic studies rather than working to show people the depths of their depravity and the person who can release that burden, Jesus. We are on the verge of losing the entire sin perspective as we abandon the very core of why Christ came in favor of making everyone happy, lest they find another, more accommodating church to attend.

Jesus said that if He be lifted up, He would draw all men to Him. Are we lifting Him up and showing Him as the Redeemer and the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? Or have we reduced the Savior to little more than being a sanctified version of Santa, doling out whatever we ask for in the absent shadow of a missing cross?

Joy unspeakable comes from knowing that we will not have to pay the price for sin because Christ already has. In the midst of our endless desire to have our felt needs met, do we still remember this?

Whatever happened to sin?

Raising Up the Broken-down Things of God

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We need a new vision.

If God is going to shake up his people, it has to happen inside the Church.

Recently, God has shown me that whenever a righteous king took over the thrones of Israel and Judah, two things happened:

1. The heathen idols and temples were torn down.
2. The broken-down things of God were raised up again.

I’ve already talked about tearing down idols. Now we need to think about raising up God’s standards again.

1. God’s Word – We have got to start preaching the inerrancy of Scripture and start getting back to the idea that the Bible interprets the Bible. We need to get preaching and teaching back into the pulpit, and I don’t mean this emphasis on topical preaching that we have so easily fallen into.

Correctly handling the word of God is critical, but in most churches anymore the primary teaching is being performed by people who have little or no biblical training, and certainly cannot put together a systematic theology. Poor discipleship is part of this (see below), but the biggest issue is that the very people who are best trained to teach and preach, pastors, have abandoned expository preaching from a set Bible passage and have moved to topical preaching, leaving the less educated small group leaders to handle teaching passages out of the Bible. This is completely backwards. It is far easier for a “layman” to lead a topical Bible study than an inductive, passage-based one.

The result of this is that few people in the seats have a good overview of how Scripture fits together. It is seen as nothing more than a series of sentences in several books that can be pieced together to say something.

Ironically, pastors believe that their teaching is becoming better and better (90%, according to George Barna), but then look at these positive responses from adults who identified themselves as born-again Christians in a poll by George Barna:

– 68% agreed that the Bible says that God helps those who help themselves.
– 53% said that the Holy Spirit does not exist.
– 47% said that Satan does not exist.
– 31% agreed that good people can earn their way into heaven.
– 30% claim that Jesus died, but was never resurrected physically.
– 24% believe that Jesus committed sins.

Does that sound like people are getting Bible-based teaching and preaching? I don’t think that pastors/preachers should be so high on their own opinions of the quality of their teaching and preaching, if these responses are typical.

2. The Holy Spirit – Without the Holy Spirit, NOTHING we do will work. We will wind up with a sad, man-made “attempt” at church, but will lack all the qualities of the New Testament Church. Having given short shrift to the Spirit, we have substituted clever programs, marketing gimmicks, and a million other tricks to hide the fact that the Spirit isn’t here. So much of the preaching we are getting possesses little or no unction of the Holy Spirit. I don’t know about you, but I can’t believe that the Holy Spirit today is only speaking via three points and a conclusion.

When was the last time you saw someone raised from the dead? Has your shadow fallen on the lame and they are healed? Are you operating in the power of the Spirit? I’ve written elsewhere why the Spirit still works today, but what are we doing to cultivate a Spirit-filled life? Do we believe the Bible when it talks about being filled with the Spirit?

3. Holiness/Counterculture – Christians are called to be the “peculiar people,” but increasingly – due largely to churches’ obsession with cultural relevancy – we look exactly like the world. How then are we to model Christ to a dying, sin-obsessed world if we look more like the world than like Christ? People wonder why we don’t see the miracles of the Book of Acts today, and my simple answer is that we are not willing to live lives unadulterated by the world.

4. Community – People talk about community, but most of us still live like islands. With society showing signs of strain (e.g. – three million American white collar jobs will go overseas by 2005, health care costs are punishing families, and culture is becoming increasingly perverse), we Christians have got to find new ways of pursuing community or else we will find our families being taken down one by one. This is increasingly the case, but the churches are doing little to stop it. In my own church it was noted that the number one request by people seeking prayer was for jobs, yet no program was in place within the church to make that happen. If churches are unable to address these issues with cutting edge community approaches, then people are going to lose heart. The lost can spot hypocrisy a mile away, so if the churches can’t model a community that buffers that community from harm, then we’ll be seen as just another option that doesn’t work in reality.

5. Prayer – Prayer makes things happen. A prayerless church is a powerless church. Increasingly, times of focused prayer are falling prey to harried lives, or have been converted into “practicing the presence of God” – an admirable spiritual discipline, but one that was never supposed to supplant focused prayer time.

6. Discipleship/Commitment – When we ask nothing of people, we get nothing. That many churches are asking little or nothing of the people that attend in order to keep from driving them away, we are creating an underclass of quasi-disciples. Rather than diluting the message of the Gospel, I suggest we ratchet up what it means to be a disciple of Christ. Let the Spirit of God convict, rather dilute the qualities of a disciple in order not to lose people. The road is narrow. Are we preaching that?

7. Revelation of Jesus – Can’t we let Jesus be Jesus? Do we not trust Him to draw people to Himself? The truth is that people want Jesus, we need to reveal Him to people and let the Spirit work. Deep inside people I think they know that all this talk about getting our felt needs met pales in comparison with knowing Jesus. Do we really KNOW Jesus? Not merely ABOUT Him, but Him in all His glory? Pastors, preachers, teachers – show us Jesus. He said Himself that eternal life was knowing Him. Why are we so afraid to present Him undiluted to people? Let’s get back to that.

There’s more, but I’ll leave that for another day.

Church, are we willing to go God’s way or are we going to continue to play “church?”