Thinking-Christianly

Decay is something that makes good things worthless.

Last summer the ground fault outlet to our freezer tripped and we did not discover this for several days. We had to toss out baskets of once-frozen food that was now unsafe to eat.

Life does that to all of us. It unplugs our hearts from the truth and power of God and leaves us in a condition where our natural tendencies take over. The rot of pride, selfishness, and secular immorality begins to eat away at the promise of what we could become.

The apostle Peter makes an amazing statement about the promise of God and their power to lead us from this decay.  In 2 Peter 1:4 he writes: “He has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”

The word for “given” is best understood as “bestowed.” It’s a royal gift granted by a sovereign. And what is the purpose behind God’s promises? First, it’s the opportunity to be partners or shareholders in the divine life that belongs to God. This is not an assertion that we become God, as the Mormons teach. It’s sharing in his character, growing beyond our worldly frame of mind. The second purpose is that we would escape the corruption in the world that evil (or natural) desires promulgate.

One of the big lies of our age is that our hope is conditioned on the things around us—our money, our problems, the difficult people who populate our world. If they were different, we’re told, then we would be different.

But this teaching looks at life from a completely different perspective. Our future is not contingent on the transitory things of this life, but on the promises that God has made. The battleground is not circumstances, but truth.

All too often the evangelical church teaches that salvation and spiritual growth lies down the path of fixing the “stuff” of life. Once the circumstances are brought into submission, then we’ll become the kind of noble and godly people God calls us to be. But Peter’s words remind us that the key to righteousness is not found in redeeming our circumstances, but in changing the way we think. It’s tied to building our future around the eternal promises of God. It’s his words and his values that are key to the course of our lives.

When I dig down to what I really believe, what I value, and what truths I treasure, then I discover what my future will be like. For it is upon those hidden realities that I move either toward corruption or toward divine life in Christ.

One of the challenges for those who claim that all religious truth is essentially the same is the use of exclusive language in the major world religions. World religions have the nasty habit of embracing ideas that cannot be true and false at the same time.

For example, Hinduism asserts the existence of many gods. Christianity and Islam, on the other hand, claim that there is but one being who can rightly be called God. The materialist contends that because nothing exists outside the natural order all claims about supernatural beings or activities are fraudulent.  Pantheists believe that God is part of the created order. Orthodox Christianity contends that God is distinct from the universe he created.

The claim that Jesus’ teaching can be reflected in major world religions and contemporary philosophies sounds generous. It feeds the movement toward universalism and the flattening of doctrine to the lowest common denominator. The problem with this approach is that Jesus made too many statements that are exclusive in nature.

Consider John 8:24, for example. Jesus says, “I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.” Here Jesus charges his audience (comprised mostly of Pharisees) of being sinners who are morally guilty before God. That condition earns them both physical and spiritual death. They will die unreconciled to God unless they accept Jesus’ claims. Jesus insists that their moral status before God is conditioned on their willingness to acknowledge his claim.

This kind of assertion is one of many times where Jesus places himself in a unique category. His radical language does not permit us to place in with a group of vague moralists who can own any faith system as their own. His words simply will not permit it.

Everyone seems to find an excuse to create a plastic wristband to promote an idea, a cause, or a change in behavior. One person at Bethel Church left one on my desk in order to alert me to a cause they considered to be questionable.

Pastor Will Bowen, of Christ Church Unity in Kansas City launched a campaign against complaining and produced a purple wristband to remind those who took his 21 day challenge to evict complaining from their lives. Oprah Winfrey got wind of the initiative and invited Pastor Bowen to her show. Others have caught on, and the campaign is moving forward worldwide.

The goal is a noble one, but it’s built on faulty assumptions. Pastor Bowen’s church is part of the Association of Unity Churches. He and the other leaders of the association believe that man is morally perfectible. If we challenge the evils with knowledge and willpower, we can become what we desire to be without divine intervention. It’s the kind of New Age spirituality that Oprah and others enthusiastically embrace.

Below are several assertions from the Association of Unity Churches doctrinal statement. They illustrate that the leaders of this movement embrace a definition of Jesus and of mankind that have little to do with the Christ of the gospels and the doctrine of man as presented in the New Testament.

Of Jesus they state, “We believe that Jesus expressed his divine potential and sought to show humankind how to express ours as well. We see Jesus as a master teacher of universal truths and as our Way-Shower. In Unity, we use the term ‘Christ’ to mean the divinity in humankind.”

Notice the differences from historic Christianity. Jesus has divine potential, like the rest of us. He is unique in that he is a better example, not in his essence. And the statement goes on to redefine ‘Christ’ as a generic term that speaks of the divine nature in all of us.

Of man, the Association of Unity Churches states: “We are each individual, eternal expressions of God. Our essential nature is divine and therefore inherently good. Our purpose is to express our divine potential as realized and demonstrated by Jesus and other master teachers.”

This pantheism does away with any objective God and makes us gods ourselves. It also rejects the idea of sin and the fall. Despite the misery, vice, and corruption that plague all of human history, the statement claims that mankind is inherently good. There is no brokenness in the human heart, only a remnant of the divine that has the potential to burst forth into some kind of pure divine reality.

As with many other religious expressions today, the language of Christianity is preserved, but the meanings are stripped from the language, creating an alternate reality that is antithetical to the history and teaching of the New Testament. Utopian mysticism replaces the acknowledgement of true human evil and our inability to heal our brokenness without the mercy of God in Christ. It’s a sad substitute for only effective remedy for evil.

Modern marketing insists that the customer is king.  He is to be treated royally. By leveraging  the buyer’s real and perceived needs, the marketing trains a seller to craft a message that produces an effective sale.

Some assert that this methodology should shape the presentation of the gospel.

The declaration of God’s revelation in the New Testament reflects an opposite approach. Consider John’s words in Matthew 3:7-8: “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.’”

This abrasive, confrontational message shares little in common with the placebo that asserts, “Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Admittedly, it was addressed to the self-righteous who were proud of their legalism. But I sometimes wonder if they are more representative of modern man than the tax collector in the gospels who grieved over the condition of his soul. My guess is that our psychoanalyzed, ego focused, self-esteem culture produces more people who listen to the gospel with the self-centered ears of a Pharisee than the brokenness of a tax collector.

We speak much of our brokenness and wounded condition, but it’s not because we have failed God. It’s because life has failed us. Marketing the gospel to this mindset keeps our egos intact. It doesn’t force us to abandon the spotlight for one greater than ourselves. It reduces God to one who must meet us on our terms, or suffer the consequences. We assume God is as concerned about approval ratings as we are, and therefore expect him to package his truth in a way that meets our expectations.

Hungry souls, aware of the damning result of sin and eager for redemption don’t require a market approach. They require the truth. It is sometimes brutal, but always liberating.

Marketing has become such a part of the American mindset that it has become a driving force in the Christian community.

Walk into a Christian bookstore and you’ll discover tie-ins to the “Prince Caspian” film as well as links to media icons like Bob the tomato and Larry the cucumber (Veggie Tales). And don’t forget the Thomas Kinkade produced artwork and related products.

Such marketing may be somewhat justified by the fact that a Christian bookstore exists to make profits by selling goods to religious and non-religious customers alike. ( I once worked in the industry, and in those days the profit margin on books alone was insufficient to cover costs.) Many mom-and-pop vendors of Christian material are short-lived because they don’t know how to capture the attention of the consumer. (But that’s for another blog entry.)

A more disconcerting change is the movement toward marketing as a strategic mechanism for church ministry. In order to be effective, churches are persuaded that they must market themselves.

Back in 1988 George Barna wrote a book entitled Marketing the Church. It was one of many that sought to bring the insights of marketing strategy to the church in order to help it connect with the unchurched and draw them to its services and its message.

Should  the church study the culture? Certainly. Paul did when presenting the message of Christ on Mars Hill. Should the church be flexible in its methodology so as to create bridges rather than barriers between itself and those to whom its message goes? Absolutely. Paul writes of being all things to all men wherever  possible.

But the movement toward a marketing mentality is worthy of challenge.

Paul wrote, “For we are not like many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.”  (2 Corinthians 2:17) He was contrasting the sale of holy and secret truths for a price, with the free and unrestrained presentation of the gospel. Christianity was not a “religion for hire” entity like many in the religion business of his day. Though Paul was not responding to a Madison Avenue approach to the gospel, he was reacting to a commercialized approach that changed the gospel and put it in a different category. To some extent, that’s what the marketing approach does. It tends to pin the effectiveness of the church on its ability to embrace the marketing ideas of the culture. Something disappears when that happens. More in the next blog.

The arts typically reflect the values of a culture. Popular movies, television programs, and books offer a snapshot of the intellectual and moral appetites of Americans.

In the literary past, biographies reflected the accomplishments and triumphs of people of character who overcame great odds to make significant contributions to society. Consider figures like George Washington, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, Jonathan Edwards, Amelia Earhart, and Winston Churchill.

News reports of Barbara Walters’ memoir entitled Audition reflect the downward movement of the modern mind. From printed reports, the book seems to be a psychological striptease, a show and tell that describes the pain and sorrow of a miscarriage, an adulterous relationship, and other personal heartaches.

This kind of writing is indicative of a culture that has abandoned nobility for the sensational, substance for emotional voyeurism. While we ought to show sympathy for the pain others feel about their past, the commercialization of narcissistic living in such literary works reflects our moral poverty. I’ll take the story of an immigrant serving in Afghanistan who sends combat pay back to support his struggling family over the brooding thoughts of a well-known journalist any day.

One might argue that the accounts of people in the Bible include much failure and pain as well. That is true. But the failures are instructive. They are not accounts of willful defiance of God set against the backdrop of relativism. They teach us about our failures and our desperate need for God.

The hype over this book makes me want to pick up a biography of someone who shows me how to live life well. There are too few of those being written these days.

One contemporary argument for the Bible is the reality of fulfilled prophecy. If someone gives a detailed account of a future event before it takes place, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that something supernatural is at work. One of the classic texts is Isaiah 44:28, where the prophet speaks of a yet unborn king who will arise in Persia. He will be named Cyrus and he will issue a decree for the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem.

Critics who doubt the possibility of supernatural revelation in the Bible commonly rely on two arguments to dismiss prophetic statements in scripture that are realized. The first is to contend that the prophetic element was written after the event. It’s history, not prophecy. There were two Isaiah texts, some argue, and the second one pretended to be written earlier, but it was not. It’s a pious forgery so that it looks like it contains prophecy that was fulfilled.

The “documentary hypothesis” (used mostly in studying the Pentateuch) and other theories seek to discover clues in the text that prove that the so-called prophetic writings are inauthentic. The difficulty with this approach is that it is built on speculative hypotheses without any manuscript support. We don’t find texts with the “disputed” verses or chapters missing. No one has located separate Isaiah scrolls that were later merged.

The writers were unscrupulous and manipulative. They pieced together ancient texts and inserted bits of real history to make it appear as though prophecy did occur. So the writings are not really prophetic after all. It’s an elaborate form of circular reasoning.

Another approach is to claim that the prophecies or scripture are vague and indefinite, much like an economist predicting that the economy will rebound next year. If the prophecy is turned into general probabilities, then it is no different than the intelligent guessing each of us engage in today. So the miraculous disappears.

The difficulty with this response is that many of the prophecies in scripture are amazingly specific. Consider the following statement Samuel made to Saul in 1 Samuel 10:3-4: “Then you will go on from there until you reach the great tree of Tabor. Three men going up to God at Bethel will meet you there. One will be carrying three young goats, another three loaves of bread, and another a skin of wine. They will greet you and offer you two loaves of bread, which you will accept from them.” The detail is amazing.

Once again, a critic can argue that such an event did not happen, or that it happened and the words were then written into a fake prophetic oracle. But that’s just begging the question.  Nevertheless, this biblical text as it stands is an amazing example of the kind of specificity God can reveal to men when he wants to give them a glimpse of the future.