Voices of Concern
Wayne Turner

For the past several years, a number of evangelical writers have voiced their concern about the compromising influence of culture among those who claim to believe the Bible is God’s inspired and authoritative word.  Ronald J. Sider, in The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (2005) points to the disparity between their confession of faith in Christ and lives that are no different from the rest of the world.  Many, “by their daily activity … commit treason (i.e. to Christ – WT)…with their actions, they demonstrate loyalty to money, sex and self-fulfillment.”  He refers to this as a “crisis of disobedience in the evangelical world today.”  He cites a study by Barna that showed the rate of divorce among evangelicals was slightly higher than in the overall population.  He also pointed to problems with materialism, sexual immorality, racism and physical abuse in marriage among evangelicals.

More recently, Michael Horton, in Christless Christianity, said that Satan, “lulls us to sleep as we trim our message to the banality of popular culture and invoke Christ’s name for anything and everything but salvation from the coming judgment.”  He speaks of people becoming “distracted from Christ as the only hope for sinners.  Where everything is measured by our happiness rather than by God’s holiness” and of becoming better people needing only “a life coach, not a redeemer.”

Mark Galli, of Christianity Today, in an article, “In the Beginning, Grace,” notes that this move to a more subjective faith has created a tendency for many evangelicals today, when dealing with an issue, to “frame the problem horizontally” – to look for answers on a human level and downplay the need and role of God in finding a solution.  As this subjectivity downplays the place of the objective truth of scripture, it reduces evangelicalism to deism.  Galli uses a study of the spiritual lives of teenagers by Smith and Denton to define his thesis.  (i.e. seeking God through human reason rather than revelation.)  Deism rejects the supernatural – miracles – while still claiming to believe in God.  According to deism, people can save themselves, lead good moral lives and will eventually end up in heaven.  Galli likens many evangelicals today to the teenagers in the study.   He cites Smith and Denton’s conclusion that “a new religion had emerged in America.”  Its five chief tenets include: “God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other…The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself…God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem…Good people go to heaven when they die.”  We’ve all heard messages like these from religious and secular sources.  This is the popular religion of today. Galli calls it the “new evangelical creed.”

We might legitimately ask two questions.   First, why is this shift happening?   One answer was suggested by Mark A. Noll back in 1995.  In “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,” he observed that “the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind … evangelicals are not exemplary for their thinking.”  He finds this a “curious situation” because “Modern evangelicals are the spiritual descendants of leaders and movements distinguished by probing, creative, fruitful attention to the mind.”  Noll is not arguing for a deistic search for God through reason which minimizes revelation and scripture.  Neither should the quest for God be mindless.  Christians should not “park their brains at the door.”   William Barclay, in his commentary on the book of Revelation, described the church at Sardis as “untroubled by any heresy” because it was “too lazily lethargic for the effort of thought.”  When those who claim to believe the Bible do not study it or meditate and think about it, they lose their only defense and become vulnerable to unbiblical ideas - they lose the ability and the will to resist the effects of culture.

The second question is why does this matter to us?  At the very least, we face the same pressures to conform to the world as the evangelicals.  Even more, on the religious map, we sit closely by the evangelicals.  While there are some differences, we share similar views of the inspiration and authority of scripture.  We read books and articles written by evangelicals.  Sooner of later, many of the ideas, fads and problems of the evangelicals will find their way into at least part of our brotherhood. 

The voices of concern among the evangelicals should also speak to and warn us.  A subjective “feel good” message shaped by culture is not the Gospel of Christ.  It only can lead to what Horton’s title suggests, a Christless Christianity.  Our real need is not happiness.  Our problem is not a lack of self-esteem. The answers don’t come from within us.  Our problem is that sin separates us from God.  Our only hope for redemption is through the blood of Christ.  Paul said that it is by this message we are saved. This is the one and only Gospel.