Evangelical Reformation

Our appetite largely determines the extent of our success. If we hunger and thirst after the wrong things, it will destroy us. If we crave wholesome things, we will succeed.

Some appetites are more destructive than others. The desire for alcohol and drugs constitute the freeway to devastation. Other cravings bring slower and less obvious destruction. For example, a thirst for power may bring external success but turn an individual into an ugly human being with only superficial relationships.

The Sermon on the Mount as the Ultimate Success Seminar tells us that to succeed we should hunger and thirst after righteousness.

In our previous post we cited a George Barna’s survey that portrays evangelicals as not having much of an appetite for righteousness, but rather craving the junk food of sensuality. This trend will undermine the prospects of evangelical success, both personally and corporately. Evidence of such failure abounds.

If our appetites determine our success, an all-important question in life is how do we develop wholesome appetites, those that will lead us to success? We can influence our appetites. For example, in the physical realm, I find that when I get into the couch potato mode, I crave potato chips (makes sense) and other junk food. However, when I exercise regularly, I am more inclined toward salads, fruit, and other healthful food.

Why are evangelicals craving spiritual junk food and what whets our appetite for righteousness? I believe that our taste for spiritual junk food is explained by another observation made by George Barna in a recent article. He observed:

In 2005, adults watched an average of 45 movies. The mean was identical for born again Christians and nominal Christians. And that figure doesn’t even include the movie clips that they were shown while the faithful were in church! Currently, two-thirds of all Protestant churches have big-screen projection capabilities. In congregations that use movie clips for teaching purposes, 77% of congregants contend that those visual media are helpful in their spiritual development. Movies have become the benign educator of choice in our media-happy society.

The significant role that movies play in the life of the average evangelical dulls his appetite for righteousness and fosters one for sensuality. Of course, there are a few good movies out there, but most include content that dulls our spiritual sensibilities. Granted, only a small percentage of the footage may contain cursing and other vulgar language and sensual material (both visual and verbal), but how much poison does it take to kill you? In addition, often the worldview and lifestyle depicted are antithetical to a biblical perspective. A steady diet of this stuff will assuage our appetite for righteousness. In addition to movies, there are television and novels that have the same effect.

On the other hand, the input of Scripture elevates our desire for righteousness. However, very few evangelicals do serious Bible study. Most view five minutes in Our Daily Bread as a major achievement.

Therefore, the formula for success is quite simple. We can develop an appetite for righteousness simply by reading our Bibles instead of watching movies and television. To which most evangelicals say, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” To which I say, “That’s why we are not succeeding in areas related to genuine Christianity.”

In contrast to cravings for sensuality, wholesome appetites must be learned, and that requires discipline. It is only when evangelicals are willing to discipline themselves to replace spiritually deadening input with Scripture that real change will occur.

Fernando Ortega sings that old spiritual, “Give me Jesus, give me Jesus, you can have this whole world, but give me Jesus.” If we would follow the formula above, we would develop the appetite reflected in that song and experience an evangelical reformation.

The last post discussed God’s mixed attitude and actions toward the unrepentant sinner. On the one hand, Scripture tells us that He hates all workers of iniquity. Yet, He shows grace toward them in the sense that He does not want them to perish, and therefore gives them time to repent and even shows kindness to them as a means of drawing them to repentance.

However, if they do not repent, God will ultimately judge them. And, as we find frequently in Scripture, God might even deal harshly with them in the present.

Contemporary American evangelicals love to propagate the grace side of this formula but tend to be silent regarding the hostility of God toward the unrepentant sinner. I was told of two Christian leaders who approached President Clinton at the height of the Monica Lewinski scandal with the message: “God loves you at your deepest core.”

The messages of unconditional acceptance and self-esteem (unconditional self-acceptance) both convey grace as an absolute, ignoring the enmity and judgment side of God’s orientation toward the unrepentant sinner. These themes dominate the practical theology of contemporary evangelicals.

This perspective conveys the message that righteousness does not matter to God. In fact, that concept is taught explicitly by some evangelicals. One book asserts that since we are all sinners, with everything that we do being tainted with sin to some degree, God must overlook all of our works and maintain a relationship with us totally on the basis of grace.

This means that our lifestyle is not a factor in our relationship with God. Consequently, righteousness is not an issue with Him.

Even a casual reading of the Scripture, including the New Testament makes it clear that this teaching is erroneous. God cares very much that His people live righteously.

The assertion that righteousness is not a factor in our relationship with God has produced dreadful results in the evangelical community. The surveys of George Barna expose the profligacy of the evangelical community. For example, evangelicals are very comfortable watching movies containing nudity, and profanity is no longer even an issue.

I have personally talked with a number of couples claiming to be evangelical Christians who were living together. When I approached the issue of their lifestyle, they tended to either become indignant or perplexed, wondering why I thought that might be a problem with God.

Even more devastating is the lack of concern over this trend. In a recent article, Barna reports: “The fact that the lifestyle of most churched adults is essentially indistinguishable from that of unchurched people is not a concern for most churches; whether or not people have accepted Jesus Christ as their savior is the sole or primary indicator of “life transformation,” regardless of whether their life after such a decision produces spiritual fruit.”

Contemporary evangelicals need to stop indulging themselves with the junk food of sensuality and have their appetites whet for righteousness. A hunger and thirsting for righteousness would produce an evangelical reformation.

Our next post will discuss spiritual appetite suppressors.

What is the quality of God’s character that He always manifests?

It is not grace. The existence of hell demonstrates that. Nor is it love. In our previous post we cited Psalm 5:5 and 11:5 which assert that God hates not only the works of iniquity but also the workers.

As a result, in our previous post we made the assertion that when people confess their sins and repent, they disassociate themselves from their sins. Consequently, God can feel hostility toward and condemn their sins without being feeling hostility toward them and condemning them. On the other hand, the person who does not confess and repent of his sin is identifying with his sins, which means that God must be hostile toward him along with his sin in order to maintain His righteousness.

But if Scripture states that God hates those living in wickedness, what about the verses in the New Testament that seem to teach that God loves sinners. For example, John 3:16 seems to say that God loves the sinful world and Rom. 5:8 states: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

As we examine such verses, and there are several of them, we find that in every case they are in the Greek aorist tense. This tense describes an act rather than a state of being. In addition, in every case these verses are discussing God sending His Son to die for us and the resulting provision of salvation. Therefore, these verses are saying that God loved the world in providing the opportunity of salvation through Jesus Christ. However, the aorist tense indicates that these verses are not teaching an ongoing state in which God is smiling down on the wicked or showering His blessing on them.

In fact, various passages in Scripture indicate that the unrighteous are the objects of God’s wrath. This is one of the themes of virtually every major writer of the Old and New Testaments.

All this said, we must be careful not to simplify the issue too much. It is wrong to reduce God to a single emotion. Throughout Scripture we find God experiencing the kind of conflicting emotions within Himself that we often experience, with a similar resulting tension. Just as we can be angry with our children when they do that which hurts God or others and yet experience sorrow when we inflict punishment on them, so we see the same struggle within the heart of God.

God loves the person who persists in identifying with his sin in that God wants him to be saved. He is gracious to him in that He gives him time to repent and during that time He sends His sunshine and rain on him. Ultimately, these conflicting emotions are resolved either in the person being saved or in the expiration of the time of grace and final judgment.

The over simplistic theology that only speaks of God’s love for sinners without speaking of His wrath toward them misrepresents God. Our evangelical culture, dripping with unconditional acceptance, has so misrepresented God. We are willing to tell the easy truth but not the hard truth—speak of God’s love but not His wrath.

This failure to address God wrath toward sin reflects our loss of appetite for righteousness. If we hungered and thirsted for it as Christ taught in the Beatitudes, we would be more motivated to promote righteousness both in ourselves and in those around us. We would be more inclined to tell the rest of the story.

The message of unconditional acceptance requires that we be comfortable with unrighteousness. We tend to view this easy coexistence with sin as grace—as a commendable quality. In reality it reflects the dulling of our sensitivity to sin resulting from our emersion in it through media and other sources.

In the next post, I plan do discuss the result of this half-truth that characterizes the evangelical worldview.