Evangelical Reformation

She liked art museums; he enjoyed hunting and fishing. She preferred French provincial furnishings; he liked early American. She tuned into the classical station; he liked—you guessed it—country. This relationship was a bad mistake from the get-go—a serious mismatch.

But contemporary culture has produced a more devastating mismatch. The philosophy of the hippie movement was expressed in the slogan, “I have a right to do my own thing.” These sentiments capture the central practical implication of the existential orientation that gripped our society in the 60s and has dominated our culture since then. This cliché lays claim to total rights while omitting any attendant responsibilities. That is a mismatch far worse than classical versus country.

Hippies now morphed into yuppies have become the predominant shapers of contemporary American culture, with its hallmark of rights devoid of responsibilities. Students are assigned the right to do their own thing, but if they fail it is a teacher’s fault. Though no doubt some inhabitants of New Orleans were unable to evacuate before the arrival of Katrina, many stayed as an exercise of their right to do so. However, when the situation turned bad the government was responsible for their safety.

A major principle, perhaps the major principle, of management is that rights and responsibilities must match. If a business manager is given the responsibility to balance the budget without the right to control the expenditures, he finds himself in an impossible situation. Or conversely, if he is given the right to spend without the corresponding responsibility to balance the budget, the company will soon be in financial trouble. Organizations can only be healthy and people can only do their jobs effectively if rights and responsibilities correspond.

Therefore, our current existential orientation that asserts rights but rejects responsibilities is untenable. In fact, most of the problems in our society could be fixed if people who were assigned rights were held responsible.

The priesthood of the believer was a significant teaching of the Reformation. This principle assigns to every believer the right to interpret and apply the Scripture for himself. However, along with that right goes the responsibility to develop a working knowledge of Scripture so that this priestly function might be performed effectively.

The previous posting depicted the contemporary evangelical trend toward Bible-lite, the current failure of evangelicals to study Scripture seriously, the tendency toward spiritual fast food. In keeping with the current culture, evangelicals are quick to assert their priestly right to interpret and apply Scripture without assuming the attending responsibility of doing the necessary study to qualify them for the position. The church has also failed in not conveying this responsibility and not providing the necessary programs for its fulfillment.

What a difference it would make if evangelicals would take their priestly responsibilities seriously, if they would engage in systematic Bible study for the purpose of developing a working knowledge of Scripture. Wouldn’t it make a tremendous difference if churches would develop something equivalent to an ordination exam that each leader in any capacity would be required to pass and each believer would be held responsible to strive toward?

Of course, the ultimate objective is not knowing Scripture, but doing Scripture. Nonetheless, knowing Scripture is the first step toward doing Scripture. It is this lack of knowledge that has prevented evangelicals from detecting the errors in many popular psychological concepts, which in turn has resulted in weakened Christians and unbiblical living. Believers asserting priestly rights without meeting priestly responsibilities constitute a marriage not made in heaven, but one that unleashes the forces of hell in the lives of individuals, personal relationships, and churches. An evangelical reformation requires a trained priesthood.

We live in a lite society—one that offers all of the gusto with only a fraction of the calories. Of course, the lite craze is not restricted to beer. Almost everything comes in a lite version these days, from low cal mayonnaise to a cheaper rendition of a computer program. The underlying theory is that you can get the same result in flavor, productivity, or whatever, while paying a lower price in calorie intake, dollars, or some other commodity. For a lower cost you can get just as much benefit.

Though we don’t express it specifically in these terms, this is the contemporary evangelical attitude toward the Bible. Our Christian life can be just as strong without paying the price of all that laborious Bible study. Five minutes with Our Daily Bread and we are good to go. This is not to speak disparagingly of Our Daily Bread. This publication has had a great ministry. The problem is with contemporary evangelicals who have problems distinguishing between a snack and a meal. Nor are Our Daily Bread and similar publications the only popular evangelical snack foods. Christian bookstores are full of low nutrient substitutes for a solid biblical diet.

One Bible substitute frequently used by evangelicals is found in a study of books about the Bible in place of a study of the Bible itself. When people tell me about their Bible study, I find myself asking what book they are going through. Expecting an answer such as Philippians or Romans, I still haven’t gotten used to answers such as, “We are going through Chuck Swindoll’s, Hand Me another Brick.” Somehow it seems that a Bible study should be a study of the Bible, rather than a study of a book that talks about the Bible. Again, I’m not being critical of good Christian books. They can have a great ministry. I just become concerned when we allow them to replace the study of Scripture itself.

We find the same lite approach to Scripture from most pulpits these days. It is very difficult to find a church that offers expository preaching. There is substantial indication that churches that do offer expository preaching reflect serious decline in attendance. Therefore, this trend may be driven by the appetite of the person in the pew. What does seem to draw a crowd these days is needs-based sermons, which inform congregations about what God can do for them today. Such sermons usually include some Scripture, but this constitutes a lite treatment that does not help the congregation to develop an in-depth understanding of the Bible.

Sunday schools also have developed inclinations away from Scripture and more toward topics such as how to have a better marriage or how to be a better parent. This can represent a worthwhile endeavor as long as we are getting substantive biblical input elsewhere. Unfortunately, it seems that for most evangelicals this is not the case.

We find, then, a lack of serious study of Scripture in individual Bible study, group Bible study, and Bible study within the church. That pretty much covers the gamut. The problem with this trend is that Bible-lite produces evangelical-lite. As suggested earlier, one reason for this outcome is that in God’s design we require a diet of substantial spiritual nutrients. Deprived of those, malnutrition sets in producing weakness and other negative symptoms.

One of the most significant negative byproducts of a lack of in-depth study of Scripture is a diminished capacity for discernment. Scripture is challenging to understand, and applying Scripture to practical issues of life can be very difficult. Consequently, doing so effectively requires a well-developed working knowledge of Scripture.

Perhaps the area where this lack of in-depth knowledge of Scripture and the consequent lack of discernment is most visible and damaging is related to the readiness of evangelicals to embrace patently unscriptural psychological concepts, often without serious scrutiny. In future postings we will mention some of these and demonstrate just how obviously unscriptural they are. The unscriptural nature of these psychological concepts would be evident to believers well-nurtured in Scripture. The ready and uncritical adoption of these ideas reveals the depletion of the immune system of those nourished by a diet of Bible-lite, which allows the invasion, undetected, of harmful viruses. Consequently, an evangelical reformation requires a trend toward an in-depth intake of scriptural nutrients that will produce strong and discerning believers.

You’re not going to like the answer to this, even though it’s true. You really don’t know.

How about those “nutritional facts” on the side of a cereal box, for example? How do you know that they are right? Not just the raw numbers, e.g., the number of calories, which are iffy enough, but what about the percent of daily potassium requirement? Does the person writing the information for the side of the box really know how much potassium your body requires daily? I have some serious doubts.

This brings us to the ultimate source for many, probably most, of the things you know. You know because you were told by the smartest person in the universe. That would be they. How often do you hear, “They say that ….” Therefore, I have come to realize that they knows everything. That is why we trust they so much. Much of what we know, we know because they says so.

They says, for example, that positive reinforcement works much better than negative reinforcement. It is too bad that they wasn’t around when God was writing the law. The Bible might be a much more positive book, and humanity might have done a lot better.

I can remember the teacher in a class at University of Oklahoma stating, “There is actually no research substantiating that positive reinforcement is more effective than negative reinforcement.” Such a statement makes you wonder how much else they got wrong.

Which brings us to the more significant question, who is they? The truth is that you don’t know. Who is it that is telling you how much potassium your body requires today? Or who is the they that had us believing for decades that positive reinforcement is more effective than negative reinforcement, even though no evidence exists to support this conclusion?

More significant yet, on what is they basing his opinion? The positive reinforcement assertion suggests that they is any academic authority. He is an authority because of his position, not necessarily because he is right or even because he has research to support his assertions. Beyond that, they is the combined prejudices of the academic community. Pronouncements compatible with those prejudices, regardless of how unsupported by research and how counterintuitive, are adopted and repeated as gospel truth. Such pronouncements constitute the wisdom of they. And pronouncements differing from the prejudices of the academic community, regardless of whether they are well-supported and intuitive, are banished from the wisdom of they.

The view that positive reinforcement is more effective fits comfortably into a humanistic worldview and, even better, demonstrates yet another way in which the harsh, judgmental biblical worldview is erroneous. Those negative Christians are such a blight to our society. It is good that they has proven yet again just how unscientific, how Neanderthal, their worldview is.

In the previous several posts we have been dealing with the influence psychology wields because it deals with practical and profound issues of life. As a result of this influence, we have been cautioning how important it is that the evangelical community be certain of the validity of the assertions of psychology. How do we know that the concepts of psychology are correct? In most cases, we can have absolute certainty because they told us.