“Because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”
(Rev.3:16)
It is more than obvious to most, not only does our country seem to be in a massive decline, but we are in the middle of a “blame game” slug fest of why we are in decline: right vs. left, conservative vs. liberal, serious believers vs. atheists. We always point to the other side as the main culprit in our collective corrosion. But in the book “Bad Religion,” Ross Douthat argues that neither of these two polar-opposite groups are the main problem. He begins by saying that there is all kinds of useless theoretical finger-pointing of who and what is destroying America: Economic Systems (Capitalism or Keynesian debt), Governmental Structures (De-regulation or Statism), Conspiracy Groups (Weathermen & Reds or Greedy Corporations & Wall Street) or the cry that there either is “too much religion, or too little of it.”
He believes that the main problem is none of those things, but rather, “It’s bad religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional Christianity and the rise of a variety of destructive pseudo-Christianities in its place” Those pseudo-Christianities include The Health & Prosperity Movement, the Denial of an Historical Jesus, the New Age Influence, and the Politics as Savior movements. He thinks the only way to right America’s ship is by returning to orthodox Christianity. Not just in theology but in the institutions (churches) that are an outgrowth of that theology.
I completely agree, I think all those false Christianities are killing us. But in his definition of what he means by orthodoxy, I would like more clarification. I am not sure his answer of just going back to the old traditional forms of faith is the answer. I think it goes deeper and is more acute than that. If I could boil the problem down to make it simple, I think America is in decline because a large part of those who call themselves Christians in America are not Christian. Even more basic than that, we have a bunch of “professors of faith” but a small group of “possessors of Christ.” As the old saying goes, “Sitting in a garage does not make you a car, and sitting in a church does not make you a Christian.”
So what makes a Christian? I mean really? 4 big words linked together in the right order: Justification -> Imputation -> Regeneration -> Sanctification.
If you don’t know what those words mean, then do all you can to understand them. If you don’t care what those words mean, you are part of the problem. The man who claims to love Jesus, but wants nothing to do with understanding what it means to really love him is a liar. And there are a whole lot of liars out there. Jesus uses the word “hypocrite” for that. So Chris, what do they mean? I am not going to attempt to fully define them here, right now. For the next three weeks, I will break them down as simply as I can. My main objective for this post is to ask you two questions and give you two answers.
2 Questions…
(1) Do you really live your faith, or is it only a Sunday thing? If it is a Sunday thing it is like saying you are on a diet and you are hoping to lose weight by eating good food for only an hour on Sunday. Or it is like saying you are hanging with Jesus, but the devil has already made reservations with you Monday thru Saturday. In other words, words mean nothing if your faith isn’t ongoing.; it only makes you feel good about yourself.
(2) Do you really know God? I mean really talk to him, ask him questions, love his word and run to him in your time of need? Saying you do in public, and ignoring him in private is a terrible evil. “Hey everybody I am married…look at my ring. But don’t expect me to talk to my new wife when we get home. In fact, I have shut her up in a closet while all my buddies continue to come over to party.”
2 Answers…
(1) If you are only a Sunday person and ignore God on a regular basis, the world around you will continue to spiral down. We are salt and light, but if we don’t have God, we will have zero saltiness nor radiate the person of Christ. We can come up with all kinds of solutions, political arguments, structural changes, but we will have no life. Moving dead people with strings. But dead people always smell rotten regardless if they wear a conservative or liberal button.
(2) Connection to the life and power of God is possible. It really is. And when it happens real change will happen. It really will. And people will stand up and notice. They really will.
Last week my daughter made a strange comment, “Dad, I think our dog is a Christian?” I asked why, “He is kind, compassionate, and he listens. He doesn’t bite people like our neighbor’s dog, and he likes people. He really likes people…so he must be a Christian.” She gets it, the true life of God is real in people who really know God.
Do you?
