Last week I wrote a Blog post on the importance of Christians being courageous and loving well. That post was in response to the spiritual climate of our culture. We see a growing darkness that we have not seen since the counter cultural movement of the 1960's. This darkness is in many ways more apparent and tangible due to the presence of social media. We see it everywhere.
If you have not yet read that post, please do so. It will provide a framework for better understanding this post.
When we see such spiritual darkness in the culture, we must ask, 'how did we get here?
There is not a simple answer. There are many factors that brought us to this point. We can (and should) look at the breakdown of the family. We can (and should) examine the role social media has played. We can (and should) examine how relativism, pluralism and many other 'isms' have shaped the culture in negative ways. There are many things we can and should examine to better understand how, exactly, we got to this point of cultural spiritual darkness. I will do my best, in the weeks ahead, to address some of these issues so you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, can be equipped to understand the times we live in and how we are to respond.
That said, it would be a terrible omission if we did not acknowledge the role the church has had in helping us get to this time of spiritual darkness. One thing we must not do is look at the culture and blame 'those people,' (outsiders, those who do not belong to Christ) for being solely responsible for this spiritual and cultural darkness we are experiencing. Tragically, the American church has facilitated this plunge into spiritual and moral anarchy.
How, you may ask, is the church responsible? Let me give a partial list of ways the church in America has helped facilitate this spiritual and moral decline. I am speaking in broad generalities of course because the items that follow are not true of all churches. There are many churches that have remained faithful and many Christians who have remained faithful. That said, we have seen disturbing trends in many churches and denominations for some time now. These trends are all indicative of the church turning away from God, the Word of God and abandoning our role as the prophetic voice in the culture.
As Leonard Ravenhill once said: 'The church is not suffering from the sins of the nation. The nation is suffering from the sins of the church.'
The American church has helped facilitate this spiritual decay by:
1) Being ashamed of the Word of God. We are to preach and teach 'the whole counsel of God' (Acts 20:27). Many churches have stopped preaching books and texts that offend modern sensibilities. Sermons are often reduced to a hybrid spiritual 'Ted-Talk' and self-help motivational speech with a few (often out of context) verses sprinkled in for good measure. Many professing Christians can go to 'churches' now and never hear the full gospel. Sin and repentance and hell and God's righteous wrath against sin are not discussed. The gospel is reduced to 'God loves you and wants you to have eternal life so pray this prayer and ask Jesus into your heart.'
This is part of the gospel, but we cannot understand the good news (and that is what the gospel is...good news) without understanding the very real bad news first. Once we understand just how bad our condition is apart from the grace of God demonstrated through Jesus Christ, we truly do find the gospel to be good news! Grace truly is amazing when we understand why we need to be saved in the first place.
And, when it comes to the full counsel of God's Word, as we walk through books of the Bible we will inevitably have to address hot-button issues for the culture. For example: the Bible is very clear on sex, marriage, gender, abortion and race relations (to name a few cultural hot topics). When churches steer away from what God clearly says in His Word for fear of offending the culture, the church abandons the prophetic voice God gave us. If we are not committed to the full counsel of God's Word, we will only preach and teach those things that people will like and affirm.
Related to this is the problem of churches and Christians 'reimagining' Scripture to fit cultural sensibilities. That usually goes something like this: 'Well, the people of that time were not sophisticated as we are today. They don't know the things we know today, so this is why they believed this and that about this and that. We know better.'
I would like to say that it is rare to find churches and professing Christians who are ashamed of the full counsel of the Word of God, but that would be a lie. It seems more and more churches are bending the knee to the culture and turning away from Biblical authority. How can the people of God be ashamed of the Word of God?
This drift from Scripture is also responsible for false expressions of Christianity that lead people into confusion and bondage, such as the Word of Faith Movement, the NAR, the Prosperity Gospel and so on. We are to hang on to and teach the faith that has been 'once and for all handed down to the saints' (Jude 1:3). We are to proclaim the historic faith. We are not free to reimagine it or twist it and distort it.
God have mercy on us.
2) Prayerlessness. Prayer is vital and central and essential to the life of the Christian and to the life of a church. There has never been a great movement of God in history apart from prayer. Prayer always precedes authentic revival and awakening.
If ever the people of God should be praying and crying out to God for mercy, to renew His works in our time (Habakkuk 3:1,2), it is today. And yet...many professing Christians do very little in the way of praying for the nation, and many churches simply don't' gather to pray. We can never pray too much. God still answers prayer. My fear is that many Christians seem to think He doesn't, or no longer does. This is tragic.
The war we are engaged in is ultimately a spiritual war. The war is won through spiritual means.
3) Fear and failure to love as we should. Please see last week's Blog post for more on this.
I could go on.
The point is, brothers and sisters, we must not look at the darkness in the culture and blame 'those people out there,' without first taking an honest look at ourselves first. God has placed us here to be His ambassadors, to be salt and light, to proclaim the Truth in love. We have a role in being the light that shines in the darkness and the prophetic voice that calls people to Christ, and to the Truth. When/if we forfeit that role, the culture suffers.
May the Lord renew His works in our day and may it begin with you and me and this church, with your family and mine, and may it spread to churches all over America.
He is our only Hope. He always has been.
Grace to You,
Pastor Kevin