I’ve been making a case that the evangelical community needs reformation by identifying symptoms demonstrating that the evangelical community is not well. The past two days we looked at the evangelical divorce rate and our lack of concern for our persecuted brothers and sisters around the globe.

I take no pleasure in disclosing the faults of the evangelical community for several reasons. First, that community, more than any other, represents the Lord in our society. Therefore, the issues which I have been discussing detract from the glory of God’s name. That is a cause for heartache. In addition, it is painful to identify evangelical maladies because the evangelical community is my community. Beyond that, merely identifying problems is counterproductive. Imagine a surgeon cutting somebody open and doing nothing. That would be a heinous act. So would be leveling a string of criticisms at the church with no positive goal in mind.

Rather, my ultimate purpose is to suggest remedies and encourage people to take them. People are not going to pop pills or undergo surgery if they are not convinced that they are sick. Likewise, evangelicals will not undergo change unless they are convinced that their present condition is pathological.

This brings me to the issue that I would like to address for the rest of this posting. Evangelicals who hear my assertion that our community needs reformation might object by pointing to the many indicators that the evangelical community is healthy. We seem to have a powerful presence in our society, representing the swing vote for the previous election, having one of our own in the White House, publishing books at an overwhelming rate, possessing a presence in the national media through radio, television, guests on major news programs, etc. Leading evangelicals are household names in our society. All of this and more points to the conclusion that the evangelical community, rather than being sickly, is robust and powerful.

The problem with this thinking is that many of these issues are externals. From a scriptural perspective the real test of our spirituality is found in our personal lives and in our relationships. In John 13 Jesus asserted that people would be able to identify His disciples by their love for one another. Yet the symptoms mentioned in the last two postings convey a serious lack of love. If evangelical spouses loved each other, their marriages wouldn’t fall apart. If we loved our persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ around the globe, we would be relentless in our efforts to come to their aid.

All of this points to the fact that the church in the United States is much like the athlete who appears to be in top-notch shape, but who upon undergoing a routine physical is told that he is critically ill. As evangelicals we must be careful not to put too much stock in external appearances of health. Rather, we must make our evaluation based on diagnosis of the Great Physician in His Word.