Evangelical Reformation

Change! That’s life’s greatest challenge.

All of us want to change something about ourselves. Most of us want to change a lot of things. A whole bunch of us would like to lose a few pounds and keep it off. Some people wish they weren’t so fearful, so anxious. Some wish they had a better work ethic. Others wish they had the capacity to relax. Patience is a tough one for me. Just ask my wife and kids. Being too impulsive seems to go hand-in-hand with a lack of patience and can cause a lot of problems. So the list goes on.

But change is hard. If it weren’t hard, we would’ve changed these things already. It is true—we haven’t tried all that hard with some of the items on our list. But others we have, and without success. Thankfully, change is possible, and we can look back on some successes. But there are also those stubborn albatrosses that we just can’t seem to shake. When we really work at it, we may have a few encouraging days or weeks, but then there’s the relapse.

It’s sort of like trying to hold a beach ball underwater. We may be able to succeed for a minute or two, but it requires all of our energy and attention. And sooner or later we have something else to think about, something else to do, and it pops back up. Regardless of how long we hold it underwater, that environment never becomes its natural habitat. It always fights to resurface, and sooner or later it wins. That seems to be the way it is with certain unwanted qualities of our lives.

In one sense it is good that change is hard. If change were easy, we would be a different person everyday. You would constantly find yourself living with a different husband, a different wife, working for a different employer, raising kids without having any idea of who they are. Our resistance to change is a God-given quality that provides stability for our lives. So, at one level it is a good thing that change is hard.

But that human quality of resistance to change becomes a barrier when we try to deal with characteristics that should change. How do we deal with those issues?

How DO we deal with those issues? Well, the first step is to establish a relationship with our Creator by receiving Jesus Christ. When we enter into that relationship, God places His Spirit in our lives. The Holy Spirit provides the power to change—to become the person God designed us to be.

However, even though the Holy Spirit provides that enablement, change doesn’t come automatically. This is not a quick and easy fix. Those of us who are believers are all too aware of that. We have received Christ, but we still struggle with some of those nagging issues, and at times we find ourselves losing the struggle. Believers fail at diets, struggle with anger, and find themselves plagued by the same array of besetting sins that defeat unbelievers.

Therefore, becoming a believer puts change within our reach, but it still leaves work to be done, a battle to be fought. And we’re still left with the question of how to accomplish that work, win that battle. Therefore, though being a Christian constitutes a step toward the goal of change, there is more to the process.

If we’re not seeking to change some areas of our lives, we probably should be. All of us can use some change. So how to change remains one of life’s most important issues. In the postings ahead we will talk more about the “how-to” of this great challenge of life.

This topic is relevant to this blog because contemporary evangelicals are faltering in this area of change. This is evidenced by the emotional, behavioral, and relational problems to which they have fallen prey. Evangelical reformation must include a fresh look at the biblical nature of change.

Joseph Duncan has been arrested for kidnapping two children, eight-year-old Dylan and his nine-year-old sister, Shasta. He is also charged with the murder of Dylan, Dylan’s mother, and her boyfriend. Fox News has flashed the same haunted picture of Joseph Duncan on the screen multiple times across the last number of weeks. As I have looked into those eyes I have wondered what goes on in Joseph Duncan’s mind.

Interestingly, he has at least somewhat exposed his psyche to public view by maintaining a blog, which he posted to right up to the time of the kidnappings. One of his last messages gives us some insight into what went wrong. In part, he said this:

“I am scared, alone, and confused, and my reaction is to strike out toward the perceived source of my misery, society. My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die. As for “Happy Joe” [his name for a temporary persona that he adopted when he believed that he might go straight], well he was just a dream. The bogeyman [his name for the devil] was alive and happy long before Happy Joe.

“I was in prison for over 18 years, since the age of 17. As an adult all I knew was the oppression of incarceration. All those years I dreamed of getting out…And getting even. Instead, I got out and I got even, but did not get caught. So, I got even again, and again did not get caught….

“Well that was when the “Happy Joe” dream started. I met a bunch of really great people, the kind of people I didn’t even know existed, but here they were, bunches of them, my neighbors, my landlords, my professors, my coworkers, and they were all good people, who were willing to give me a chance despite my past.

“So, I tried to make it work. But the problem was those demons. The ones who ‘got even’ for me.”

The last phrase conveys that Joseph Duncan lost hope of changing. He was convinced that the demons have ultimate control. He alludes to this in another of his postings where he asks, Who’s Gonna Save Me? He answers his own question by saying, “When you can see the strings that control your life, you tend to wonder.” Duncan saw himself as a puppet controlled by strings with no power to break them. This hopelessness led to his capitulation to the forces of evil within him.

The evangelical community has adopted something of the same victim mentality. We are taught that we are victims of emotions that have been stored within us, of parental failure, of our biological makeup, and our circumstances. We label a host of temptations as addictions and diseases, conveying that they have control of us. In fact, we tend to label every temptation as an addiction, thus absolving ourselves of the responsibility of allowing it to control us. If food is an addiction, then overeating is not a sin, but a disease, and I am not responsible.

In today’s American evangelical world, to suggest that the power of Christ enables us to break the strings is to risk being labeled a Neanderthal. Informed people recognize that when believers succumb to such addictions it is not their fault. To suggest otherwise is judgmentalism at its worst. It is just another case of “shooting our wounded.”

Not only is this victim mentality unbiblical because Christ has empowered us through His Spirit to be overcomers, but this perspective is cruel because it robs the individual of hope. Seeing ourselves as having the resources to overcome sin can be uncomfortable because it makes us responsible, but with that responsibility comes the wonderful hope of living as free people, as overcomers. Had Joseph Duncan understood the power available through Christ to break the strings that controlled him, he and his victims could have been spared. Likewise, many evangelicals might be enjoying freedom and triumph rather than slavery and defeat if they were not taught to see themselves as victims but instead as victors in Christ.

Victims or victors might be more biblical terminology, but I’m not sure. Jesus was a straight talker, and I suspect that if He was addressing a National Association of Evangelicals today he might refer to those propagating and embracing the victim mentality as wimps. And there is a lot of the victim mentality floating around evangelical circles today.

It is of interest to me that conservatives in general and evangelicals in particular tend toward being wimps. Isn’t it amazing that conservatives control the White House and both houses of Congress by a substantial margin and still fund Planned Parenthood, National Public Radio, and all sorts of other liberal causes?. One gets a little tired of seeing a majority of conservatives being bullied by a minority of liberals. It’s sort of like a Chihuahua chasing a German shepherd down the street. It would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic.

We are still waiting to find out if the Republicans have the intestinal fortitude to exercise what the liberal media refers to as the “nuclear option.” It is sad that the party has to go through all these theatricals to pass what should be a no-brainer and should have been passed several years ago. The conservative movement needs less wimps and more winners.

That’s one quality we loved about Ronald Reagan. He was willing to call the Soviet Union the “evil empire,” and endure the smirks of Sam Donaldson and the intellectuals, who still owe him an apology.

Unfortunately, evangelicals tend to possess the same wimp mentality. For example, if somebody gets offended we are sure that the offender must be in the wrong. For contemporary evangelicals the first commandment seems to be, “Thou shalt not offend.” The offender might be wrong, but then again he might have said or done the right thing in the right way at the right time, and the person who got offended might just have reacted sinfully.

Christ offended plenty of people, in fact so much so that they finally killed Him. In Mark 9:32 and Luke 9:45 it is recorded that the disciples were afraid to ask Jesus a question. When is the last time you heard a sermon about that Jesus? And notice that Jesus did nothing to assuage this fear. We read nothing about him saying, “Oh, don’t be afraid. Feel free to ask anything that is on your mind.” The fact is that Jesus is a strong personality who at times, certainly not all the time, was intimidating and offensive.

Please don’t misunderstand. The New Testament commands us to work at not intimidating or offending. But as with Christ, in the process of doing God’s will at times this will be the outcome. Contemporary evangelicals in their effort to be inoffensive regardless of the cost have lost their strength and become wimpy. Instead of allowing the example of Christ to be a corrective for us, we have recast Jesus into the image of Mr. Rogers, that is, into our own image.

Not only does our fear of offending make us into wimpy ministers, but it produces wimpy followers. Instead of exhorting the person who gets offended without legitimate cause, we coddle him, encouraging him to feel sorry for himself instead of challenging him to face his faults and deal with them. In so doing we confirm him in his weakness rather than helping him develop strength. We allow him to see himself as a victim rather than encouraging him to become a victor. We produce a wimp instead of a winner.

The fear of offending at all costs is just one of the ways in which evangelicals are inclined to be wimps and engender that quality within the evangelical community. Tomorrow we will consider another area, and in future days we will identify the force that is influencing us in this direction. We need to eradicate that influence. God calls us to be overcomers, victors. Evangelical reformation requires the transformation from wimp to winner, from victim to victor.