Church, let’s believe what we teach.
Earlier this month, a Gallup study came out saying that for the first time since they’ve been tracking the topic, less than half of the country belongs to a church of any kind.
ERLC Director Russell Moore had strong words for the American evangelical church in response:
“Where a “de-churched” (to use an anachronistic term) “ex-vangelical” (to use another) in the early 1920s was likely to have walked away due to the fact that she found the virgin birth or the bodily resurrection to be outdated and superstitious...now we see a markedly different—and jarring—model of a disillusioned evangelical. We now see young evangelicals walking away from evangelicalism not because they do not believe what the church teaches, but because they believe the church itself does not believe what the church teaches.”
I fear that reactions and words I’ve witnessed on social media this week in the shadow of two tragic deaths illustrate just how true Moore’s words are.
We believe that “God showed his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8),” yet we respond to our grieving neighbors of color citing criminal records and unfollowed instructions from police officers as a reason not to mourn the death of one made in the image of God, and give of ourselves to protect what God has made.
We rightly affirm the humanity and value of the unborn (Ps. 139; Luke 1, to name just a few), yet with a lack of concern and easy answers diminish the dignity of those same unborn 20, 40, 60—or maybe even just 13—years after their birth, refusing to cry out to God over the loss of life outside the womb because “they shouldn’t have been out after dark”, “shouldn’t have run,” “should have obeyed more quickly,” “should have moved more slowly,” and on and on it goes.
We believe that Jesus was God in the flesh (John 1), completely God and completely human, yet we say that the church should care more about the souls of the marginalized than about their bodies, as though the incarnation of Jesus did not affirm the dignity of the human body and demonstrate that body and soul are inextricably bound to one another and will be for all eternity when we are resurrected on the last day.
We believe that all believers around the world and throughout time are united in “one body because we all share in one Bread (1 Cor. 10:17),” yet we disbelieve, dismiss, and discredit brothers and sisters of color who are bound to us in Christ—even going so far as to question their faith or their commitment to the gospel—in favor of those who share our ethnicity or political ideologies but not the same Lord.
We believe in God who says he “visit[s] the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate [him], but show[s] steadfast love to thousands of those who love [him] and keep [his] commandments (Deut. 5:9-10),” yet reject our neighbors of color when they tell us they feel the painful effects of injustice from generations past in our own day.
We believe we are born into iniquity, that there is “none righteous, no not one (Ps. 14:3; Rom. 3:10-12),” even using terms like “total depravity” to describe our hopeless situation apart from Christ, yet we cannot even concede that it is possible that attitudes and beliefs that would prefer “us” over “them” may be alive and well in our own hearts.
We believe that it is God’s “kindness that leads us to repentance (Rom. 2:4),” yet we avoid conviction, confession, and repentance like the plague, as though we have something irreplaceable to lose in the confession of our sin, and not life and freedom in Christ to gain.
Church of the Living God—enough of this!
These are not some fringe doctrines we are rejecting with our actions. These are core to the message of the gospel and our identity as those who are in Christ.
What if we implored the Spirit to take these truths from merely something we recite in the creeds on a Sunday, or something for theologians to debate, and instead to empower us to consider with all seriousness how these truths transform our hearts by the Spirit to love the Lord and cause us to walk in the way of Jesus? Worship of our glorious God and love for our neighbor would flow like a river from people of God. Can you imagine it?!
It seems we are so terrified of preaching a false gospel of “salvation through social justice” that we’ve rejected the rightful place of binding the broken, feeding the hungry, strengthening the weak, and bringing home the rejected (Ezek. 34:16), of joining God in “working righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed (Ps. 103:6)” as part of what it means to imitate Christ and participate in his coming kingdom.
We approach these descriptions of the character of God with discomfort, making false dichotomies between spiritual and physical oppression. We approach Jesus’s actions in the gospel accounts with confusion about whether we are meant to participate in his life in this way. We approach Jesus’s commands spoken in love and fulfilled in his own sinless, sacrificial life with excuses for our disobedience, as though he didn’t really mean for us to do what he said.
Adapting from Paul’s words to the Galatian believers (Gal. 3): We foolish Americans! Who has bewitched us? Having begun in faith and allegiance to God by the Spirit, are we now being made whole by means of the flesh?
To quote Russell Moore again:
“A religion that calls people away from Western modernity will have to say, with credibility, ‘Take up your cross and follow me,’ not ‘Come with us, and we’ll own the libs.’ One can do the latter on YouTube and one needn’t even give up a Sunday morning.”
Jesus rebuked Peter just after his confession that Jesus was the Christ (Matt. 16). Why? Because despite Peter’s belief that Jesus was the Rescuer, he “did not have in mind the concerns (Matt. 16:23)” or the ways of the kingdom of God—or of the King.
Let’s consider the words and actions of Jesus, watching carefully for what compelled him and what repelled him, without fear and with confidence that his way really does lead to life.
It is our birthright, privilege, and holy responsibility as the Church to receive the gospel, then hold out our Passover Lamb, our Coming King as the only hope of the world. We bring into the light all that is evil in our hearts and in our world, and push back the darkness with everything we’ve got as those who belong to a kingdom that is not of this world and a King who defeated death, rose in power, reigns at the right hand of the Father, and waits for his word to come back for us and—at last! at last! at last!—restore and reconcile all things.
Come, Lord Jesus!