Typical, American, Christian Teaching Is Shallow

I was always taught from my Christian school that God gave man a choice to either obey God or disobey Him in the Garden of Eden. That was God’s master plan, to plant a tree that was forbidden for them to eat of, to test them. It was never really said if God knew what would or would not happen beforehand. The school believed that God was all knowing, so they would have claimed that God knew man would fall if they were pressed, I would assume, but they never addressed that issue. I, and most of the other students, never thought that issue through either. It was an answer we were given, and in my shallow understanding of things, it worked. I was isolated in a Christian bubble, sealed off from the “real world” full of unbelievers and believers with different interpretations, counter-arguments, and rebuttals. In fact, I thought this was the only interpretation for the Christian. I took the school at its word, and thought little more of it.

A Testament to Poor Teaching In Christian Schools and Churches

I am sure this is why many Christians struggle when they go to a secular college. They come out of this Christian bubble of Christian schools and churches, where very little doctrine has been taught to begin with, and then they are bombarded with tough questions by skeptical professors and students at universities who know the Bible far better than they do. Soon, some show they were never saved to begin with, and leave the faith they once professed (although never truly possessed), while others, the true believers, are in a state of despair, and begin searching for the answers. But alas, they are already at a severe disadvantage, and by the time they catch up, if they do catch up, they are out of college.

This is a testament to the poor teaching in Christian schools and churches yet again. At the same time, something needs to be said for the student’s lack of interest in Scripture as well. While I was certainly interested in studying the Word and, if I may say so without sounding arrogant, I believe I had more of an interest than many of my peers, nevertheless, my commitment to studying Scripture on my own, to thinking about and asking the hard questions, was greatly lacking. I always perked up during chapel services or Bible class, hoping to glean something helpful, and sometimes I did. But by the time I was in high school, the questions I needed answered were questions that I should have had down pat in middle school. The questions I still didn’t understand were elementary. I was getting some of them in high school, and because I was so shallow in my faith, it seemed helpful. It was helpful, but it was merely scratching the surface. I would have been destroyed by an atheist or anyone who had actually studied the Bible with sincerity and found it contradictory, immoral, absurd, fallible, or uninspired (To this day, I am still playing catch up in those areas). I thought there was little else to Scripture and the Christian faith, but I was wrong.

For instance, I had no clue that the Old Testament was full of stories where God commands the Israelites to kill other nations- man, woman, and child. I would be willing to bet there are some in high school or even college reading this who had no idea either until just now. A friend of mine, doubting his faith when I was a junior in high school, pointed this out. He had trouble with the morality of a God who slaughters nations, including children. I had no ready answer. This didn’t sound like the God, or especially the Jesus, that I was accustomed to hearing about from my church or school. I knew there had to be a good explanation, but what that explanation was, I did not know.

The Apologetics Lessons Weren't Great, Either

Then there was the whole issue of how we know God exists. Again, my science books and science teachers didn’t offer a whole lot, except to say that both evolution and atheism or Christianity and creationism are accepted by faith. That was the grand argument, that it took faith to believe both. True enough, but so what? That doesn’t prove the existence of God. Perhaps they were implicitly stating that God couldn’t be proven. I disagree, now, many years later, but at the time I just took their word for it, that both were accepted by faith, and that the appearance of design indicated that there was a Designer. None of us would have had a chance against an evolutionist, or even someone who simply disagreed. We never explored the logical necessities of God, and I can vaguely remember one of my teachers touching on the moral proofs of God in passing, as if it were an afterthought. You weren’t aware that there were such things as “logical necessities of God” or “moral proofs” of God? Never heard of the cosmological or ontological arguments? I hadn’t either.

At School, I Learned Little That Was Actually Christian

So at Christian school, I learned little that was actually Christian. I didn’t grow in my faith much because there wasn’t much being taught that would enable me to grow. The gospel, the “Americanized” version that is, was the main concern of the Christian school. Get students in, get them saved, and then discipline them so that they will have a passion to get others saved. The name of the game was reproducing, numbers, or so it seemed to me and some of the other students. That was what most chapels were about. To be fair, some chapels and Bible class did teach us a bit, but it was basic facts, like what the temple in the Old Testament looked like, or a quiz on what such and such a verse in Scripture says, or that drinking beer and smoking and having sex outside of marriage was a sin and the rapture was just around the corner. Rather than expounding on the Scripture itself and drawing out its meaning and implications, we mostly got a few lists of things to do, or not to do, if we want to be good Christians.

A Surprise Shock Before We Release You To College Wolves

Fortunately, that did change a bit my senior year, where we had some good stuff and were exposed to Marxism and postmodernist thought, but prior to that we were encapsulated in shallow Christianity, almost exclusively. That Bible class my senior year, as much as I enjoyed it, was also a rude awakening. It was like the school was saying, “Surprise, there is so much you don’t know about, and we have neglected to teach it to you, but we are going to try to give you a picture of what it’s going to be like just before you are thrown to the wolves at college.” Or, perhaps, my Christian school just assumed that all good Christians go to Christian schools. Bad assumption. By this time, most of my fellow classmates could care less about the “deeper” things of God, and they could barely grasp surface level truths.

The Typical American Gospel Is Shallow, Hollow, and False

I say all that to say this- the only way I will be able to convince you, the reader, that the typical American gospel is a false gospel, is if you begin to realize that the Christian institutions in America, the schools, and the church primarily, aren’t doing their job. They aren’t really teaching. They are more concerned with the rapture, or if drinking beer is a sin, or sharing wild testimonies, and getting “decisions for Christ,” than they are with growing in the faith. The question needs to be asked, what exactly are we winning people to? Christ, yes, of course. But what does that look like? Just continue being a moral person, telling others about Jesus and how they too can be saved and avoid punishment? Is that really all there is to it? Is it that simple, that basic? I don’t think so.

-Thomas

An American Gospel That Heals No Wounds

Talk to a typical Christian in the United States, and you will soon realize that, despite their claims to loving God and desiring to see others saved for Jesus, they don’t know a whole lot about the Bible. If you asked them how a loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful God could allow evil and possibly be considered good, you are sure to get a confused glazed-over look on many faces, because most American Christians have never even considered such a question before. They may appeal to the free will of man, but the question remains, “How can a supposedly loving God, who is all powerful and knows all things, allow evil?” God made man with a free will, thus allowing the entrance of sin into the world. How can God do that? With that question, I would have just stumped the vast majority of American Christians.

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When Interest In the Bible Fades Away... At Eleven

You see, for my whole life (twenty-one years) I have grown up in a Presbyterian church and attended a basically Baptist Christian school from K-5 to graduation. In both cases, I have found the instruction to the congregation, and to the children, to be wanting. Further, I found that few young people were truly interested in the things of God, of knowing Him more deeply, past the age of eleven or twelve. I have several theories for why that is so, but the one that seems most obvious is that God loses his relevance by the time you are eleven or twelve or thirteen. What does God matter when you have reached puberty and you are becoming a more social creature? What does God matter beyond a few cutesy Bible stories like Noah and the Ark, Jonah and the Whale, Joseph and the coat of many colors, Daniel in the lion’s den? Neat stories, for kids. But you aren’t a kid at eleven or twelve or thirteen anymore.

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Oh I know, believe me, I understand. There is more to the Bible than stories like that. After all, there is the gospel. And therein lies the problem- nobody is teaching the gospel to young children anymore (or the adults for that matter). Sure, you may hear in Sunday School that Jesus loves you, and will care for you, and that you should be kind to Jesus and learn about Him out of gratitude. You may even hear that God should be obeyed, and no doubt moralism wins the day in the teaching of our youngest children at church, and in the Christian schools.

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You Don't Need Jesus To Be A Moral Person

But you don’t need Jesus to be moral. You don’t need anything to be moral really. Most people strive, by their very nature, to be morally upright people. What are the odds that your son or daughter is going to turn out to be a murderer, or rapist, or thief? Not that great. As long as you tell them about prison and teach them to be nice and respectful, voila, you have your typical human being, the outside of the cup not looking too bad at all.

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The church has basically attached this moralism to Jesus Christ and called it the gospel. Don’t believe me? Walk into a church and see what they preach. Is it not essentially that, if you trust in Jesus, try and follow Him and what He says to do, and believe that He loves you and cares about you and died for you, then you will go to heaven? That is what they preach, no matter what special effects or outer garments they try to dress the message in. It is nothing more than a gospel on morality, intermixed with some emotional appeals to how Jesus loves you and calls you to be the best human being you can possibly be, and that without Jesus, life just isn’t quite complete.

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Now, do we really need Jesus Christ as a life coach, pleading with us to do what is right? Of course not. Buddha fits that bill just as well, probably better. So did Gandhi. The only thing that Jesus offers in this moralistic gospel that Buddha and Gandhi cannot, of course, is everlasting life, forgiveness of sins. So the reward is better if you choose Jesus’ version of morality, and that’s the sweet piece of the pie that you have been missing, and can only be found in Jesus. After all, you get the Creator of the universe to swoon over you, make you His Son, save you from torment in hell, and grant you everlasting life where you get to strum harps and bounce off clouds all day. That may be why Jesus’ version of morality has usually won out over Gandhi and Buddha’s. Plus, Jesus has a Book, boosting His credibility.

The Difference Between Moralism And The Gospel

And that’s it- that’s basically all the knowledge that most Christians have in America. Have a good day, I’ve just articulated American Christianity to you. They will preach to you this gospel of morality, offer you eternal life if you trust that Jesus died for your sins, on condition that you choose to live for Him and stop living for sin and for yourself. They couch the whole repenting business in easy-to-swallow terms of course, making it sound like you are getting a steal of a deal, something for nothing. That however, is not the case, which is evident if you read the last two sentences. The grievous error, above all else in this American gospel, is that it has placed the emphasis of being saved on a life-altering, self-sacrificing, morally commendable decision and commitment of men rather than the life-altering, self-sacrificing, perfect obedience of Jesus Christ to the law of God.

A Short-Changed American Gospel That Doesn't Save

In other words, we have short-changed Jesus. We have made Him an enabler to save man, depending on what man chooses to do. Instead of proclaiming salvation through Christ alone, we have claimed that we are proclaiming salvation through Christ’s work on the cross alone, all the while preaching salvation by a decision to be obedient to Christ by our own willpower, which is clearly another gospel and understanding of salvation altogether.

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What gets taught is that Christ has done His part, He has done everything He can do. His death was an expression of His love for you, now you need to express your love for Him by choosing Him over sin, and then you will be forgiven. So, strum up the soft guitar music, dim the lights, everyone bow their heads and close their eyes, and let’s get down to business, shall we? Are you ready to make that all important decision for Christ? Choose Him, deny your sins, pray that He will come into your heart, and then you can know you are saved. Oh, and make sure you walk down to the altar and fill out this card, that’s very important.

Oh and one more minor thing, make sure for the rest of your life you don’t fall away from your decision for Christ, because, after all, the reason God saved you is because you chose Him, not because He chose you.

Sounds Positive, But It's Mediocre News With a Smile

Is that good news? I mean, the only good news in that is if you add “I love Jesus” to your set of beliefs, you will get into heaven, while the rest of the world, ignorant of that phrase, will live equally, if not more moral lives than you, yet miss out on heaven and wind up in hell, a place of everlasting destruction where the fiery wrath of God is poured out forever. Awesome news, that is. You get heaven in exchange for your morality and your belief in Jesus loving you and dying for you, while the rest of the world gets hell for striving to follow (by and large) the same precepts that Jesus taught. Their great sin was doing it in ignorance of the name of Jesus. You, however, were fortunate enough to hear of Jesus and therefore you get heaven.

I don’t think I am misrepresenting American Christianity at all by saying this. There are exceptions, of course. There are those who still preach the true gospel. They are called monergists, and most of them are Calvinists. They follow the teachings of Jesus, of Peter, and Paul, and they don’t compromise on the gospel. They are more concerned about preaching the true gospel than how people will react if they don’t like what the gospel says. They are more concerned about proclaiming a Savior that actually saves and a God who sovereignly dispenses His grace and chooses who He will save, rather than making man the author of their own salvation by saying their salvation is up to their free will ability to give up their sin and clean up their acts.

Enter, the Calvinist Gospel of Grace

Calvinists proclaim that only God’s grace can save you, and then actually preach the gospel of grace rather than a gospel of works and morality, unlike most other strands of churches and preachers today. They preach salvation as a supernatural work of God whereby the Holy Spirit gives new life to spiritually dead souls, sight to blind eyes, hearing to deaf ears, so that the gospel can and will be received with rejoicing and thanksgiving, rather than as a command for man to do something so that they can earn God’s favor and get out of hell. Calvinists preach a gospel that tells you what Christ did to save you. The typical American gospel tells what Christ did so that you can either do something, or believe in something, and through that belief or action, or both, you can be saved.

The difference is night and day. This American gospel, the one I grew up with before I became a Calvinist at eighteen years of age, told me to have faith in my own faith if I wanted to be saved, instead of having faith in the finished work of Christ alone for my salvation. The American gospel told me that Christ didn’t actually save me on the cross, because I still had to give Him my life and choose to live for Him before I could be forgiven. The result, of course, is that one can never be sure when he or she has placed enough faith in their own faith and works. One can never be sure one has done enough in obedience to Christ and His commandments to know that he or she is committed to Christ sufficiently to receive forgiveness. The tricky thing, as I have already said, is that this gospel is presented in such pretty wrappings that you don’t realize everything is contingent upon your ability to uphold your commitment of service to Christ and faith in Him.

That Nasty Contradiction, That Horrible Inconsistency

The question undoubtedly becomes this: If I must commit my life to Christ and His ways to be saved, what constitutes saving commitment? If in a few weeks, a few months, or a few years from now I fall away from my commitment and start sinning like nobodies business, was I ever saved in the first place? Do I simply need to rededicate my life to Christ, redouble my efforts? And say I do rededicate, what happens when I struggle and stumble again? I saw many students at Christian school rededicate their lives to Christ, multiple times. Many have fallen away from the faith altogether, and understandably so. Christ claims to offer rest, that His yoke is easy and burden is light. This American gospel, however, is a heavy yoke that no one can bear.

That is the vicious cycle that I want to break everyone away from, and only the true gospel, the gospel of Calvinism, and the Calvinist’s God, can do that. For many who are not Calvinists, that will sound extreme. Surely, you may think, Calvinism cannot claim a monopoly on the gospel? Surely there is room for interpretation? If that is what you are thinking, I think by the end of this writing you will be persuaded differently, if you are open to the truth of Scripture. Can a non-Calvinist truly be a Christian? Yes, but don’t let out your collected breath just yet. The yes is a qualified yes. The qualification is only if the non-Calvinist Christian is affirming a contradiction, an inconsistency. And this great contradiction and inconsistency will malign your efforts to serve Christ, and it will diminish your joy as a Christian. Maybe you think you are quite happy and comfortable as a Christian. Maybe you are, but when you get that nasty contradiction, that horrible inconsistency cleared up, I guarantee you you’ll be happier than ever before.

Let's End This Post Where We Began

Before I close this chapter, let’s return to the question I opened with. How can God be a kind and loving God if He is all-powerful and all-knowing, yet allows evil? God also claims to know the end from the beginning, so He cannot claim ignorance. God knows what will happen; He knew Adam and Eve would fall into sin, yet He let it happen anyways. Why? The curse of sin, the fall of man, all the pain, suffering, death, and hell that ensues, is a result of God’s plan for man as much as it is man’s plan to disobey God, if, after all, Ephesians 1:11 speaks the truth when it says that God works all things according to the counsel of His will. Some skeptics and atheists say that this makes God, if He were to exist, a moral monster. The reason why most Christians have yet to ponder such a question is quite often due to their lack of interest in the Bible and the deep things of God, or it may be that they have been so indoctrinated into a lacking belief system, a non-Calvinist belief system, that they cannot recognize the real questions anymore. Many live in a “Christian bubble,” where their friends are primarily other Christians, being taught the same shallow and flawed teachings.

-Thomas

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This post was originally posted here at Thomas' main blog, The Tulip-Driven Life

My Journey to Calvinism

My journey to Calvinism is an unusual one. I went to a Presbyterian (PCA) church my whole life, went to a Christian school, and yet never learned the doctrines of grace. If they were taught to me at all as a child in my church, I do not remember. Once, as a senior in high school, I remember our new pastor talking about the five points of Calvinism. We went through them briefly, but for various reasons, including the lightness with which we studied the points and my own failure to see their importance and understand what was being taught, no real impact was left on me.

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Evangelistic Methods Hit Rock Bottom

A few months after that, my senior class went on what can best be described as a senior trip where we do some ministering to the locals in the Dominican Republic. We fed them some, played with them for an hour or so, sang silly songs, did a few silly skits, gave a testimony or two, and then gave an invitation for the Dominicans to ask Jesus into their hearts if they would like to be forgiven of their sins and go to heaven. Yes, we said Jesus died for them. No, we did not explain what that meant, or even why we needed a Savior in the first place. Repentance was not preached. It was simply A-B-C evangelism. Admit you are a sinner (what being a sinner actually means wasn’t important enough to discuss, except perhaps to say that everyone does bad things sometimes). Believe Jesus died for you (how did He die for us, the issue of justification, wasn’t really presented). Confess your sins to Jesus (you would think this might mean repent, but no, it basically meant to tell Jesus you wanted to go to heaven, and wanted him to come into your heart).

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So of course, “hundreds” of souls were saved on this trip, because we asked them to pray that prayer that would magically save them. Now I had been skeptical of the evangelistic methods of my Christian school for quite some time at this point, but this reached rock bottom. And I wasn’t alone. Two of my other friends saw the manipulation, the absence of repentance being preached, the skimming over of our sinfulness and what Christ did to save us from sin. While we decried these things privately, a few other students overheard us and scoffed at us, saying we were simply suppressing the Spirit, denying what God was doing down here.

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It was at that point that I finally realized, in full measure, how this type of evangelism was ruining the Church. It dawned on me that most all mission trips done by my Christian school were likely very much like this, and that many of the students were imbibing this shallow evangelism as if it were gospel truth. The desire to experience and see God move so radically resulted in an unbiblical, sinful way of bringing about those desired ends, where now the willpower of man, coupled with a shallow, less offensive gospel was confused with the power of the Holy Spirit and the finished work of Christ on the cross. A very serious error indeed.

Getting Involved With the Baptist Student Union

Still, even after graduating high school, I had no desire to attend Christian college. I figured most of them were all like my Christian high school. After all, the colleges that came during chapel to pitch themselves seemed no different than what I had grown accustomed to. I didn’t realize at the time that it only made sense that a Christian school with free will theology would invite like minded Christian colleges to try and lure students to their campuses. I decided on attending a public university and major in English. To be honest, I just liked writing; I liked reading too, but not Shakespeare or poems. English was really my only option at the time, and I knew I would have to wade through the bits I didn’t care for.

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I also wanted to involve myself with the Baptist Student Union, not because I was Baptist, but because it was the only Christian organization at the college. I didn’t know what to expect, if there would be many students there or not, if they would be serious about their faith or not. What I found, oddly enough, was that most everyone who went to the BSU were very sincere about their faith. I know this is because, at a public university, you have to seek out Christians and that godly atmosphere. At Christian schools, and even in Christian college, it is expected, it’s supposed to be the norm, and oftentimes parents are the ones who send their kids there, more so than the kids actually wanting to be there.

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I talked to a guy named Lars at the BSU, who was a student in his last semester and headed up the Bible studies. I wanted to lead one, but that wasn’t something that a freshman usually did. He asked me what denomination I was, and I told him I was Presbyterian in the PCA. He said he liked Presbyterians, and then asked me if I was “reformed.” Reformed? What does that mean? I had no clue. I was about to tell him that I wasn’t sure what he was asking, but then I remembered my father, who went to Westminster Theological Seminary, sometimes talk about being reformed, and I thought maybe I had heard that once or twice at church. So, I decided to nod yes, I was reformed, because I was pretty confident that was what I was supposed to be, even though I had no idea what the word meant.

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This very much pleased Lars. It turned out that he was reformed too. Then we started talking, and I really connected with the guy. To this day, he remains the most influential person in my Christian walk, and was the key person that God used to bring me to Calvinism, even though I only knew him for one semester. I still remember how, on that first day I met him when he asked me if I was reformed, he told me to check out Paul Washer on YouTube. I did so, and found the famous shocking youth message.

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Paul Washer's Message Changed My Life

Paul Washer’s message changed my life. More than any sermon, any praise and worship song, this hour-long message turned my world upside down. The Spirit moved in my powerfully. Everything that was wrong with Christianity and the Christian school I went to, Paul Washer addressed. Not only did he rightly diagnose and point out its problems (some of which I had yet to realize myself), he gave a solution to them. That solution was the gospel, the true gospel. Particularly, it was the supernatural nature of the gospel, how God alone grants faith and repentance through regeneration. This passionate, gospel centered, monergistic message had a profound effect on my thinking. I had an 8 AM class the next morning, but watched that hour long message three times, back to back to back, the first time by myself, the second time I called a friend and made him watch it from his house with me, and the third time I called my Dad and made him watch it with me from his home.

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It was through Lars and a few other Calvinists at the BSU that I was introduced to the doctrines of grace. Really, I studied them for hours as soon as I heard of them. Quickly I accepted them, in less than a month. I was missing classes because I was staying up all night learning from the Word of God and from gifted, reformed teachers.

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Lars Suggested I Start a Blog

At the end of the first semester, Lars was set to graduate, and I was set to take his place as Christian growth coordinator. I knew I wasn’t ready for that. I was a Calvinist for only about three months, and now I was to lead the other Bible study leaders, who would in turn lead the masses. That was too much responsibility for an ignorant freshman. On top of that, I had a strong yearning to quit college, to take a semester off and simply study the Word of God, and to return home and share this new gospel, the true gospel, with some of my old high school friends.

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That is precisely what I ended up doing. The way I did it, firstly, was through blogging. Lars suggested that I start a blog, so I did. Actually, I just used notes on Facebook and posted on there. I cannot explain to you the madness, the anger, the vitriol with which my blogs were greeted. Granted, I was angry, and I wrote angry at times. The tone more than suggests that. At the same time, I was challenging very fundamental beliefs of many of my Christian friends, and they didn’t like it. I was getting blocked by the dozens, and had a major fiasco when I wrote about a former student who I said was outright lying about many things, and yet was on his way to becoming a pastor at the age of 20.

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Over time, I have learned to season my words with salt. I blog much more evenly now, trying to speak the Truth in love, which simply means speaking the Truth boldly in such a way that everyone understands you are not doing this because you want them to see how wrong they are, but because you want to show them how concerned you are that they are wrong. I try to write so others can see that yes, we are getting many things wrong, including the gospel, in Christianity, but also that this stuff matters, that it is rightly understanding God that increases our love for God by the power of the Holy Spirit, and if our love for God is increased, our lives will be increasingly lived out for Him, not for ourselves.

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Calvinism Increased My Evangelistic Zeal

In the end, it’s about glorifying God, and Calvinism does that, because Calvinism is simply what the Bible teaches. When I first understood that I never would have chosen to trust in Christ as Savior unless He made me willing to do so, and that the difference between me the believer and the unbeliever was nothing but the blood of Christ and the grace of God, this actually increased my evangelistic zeal. Before I was a Calvinist, I was too afraid and too ignorant to share the gospel. After I became a Calvinist, I shared the gospel as if it was the secret to curing cancer (because it is, and then some). The one thing that changes you more than any other when you understand Calvinism, is that Christ alone melts our hearts of stone. We have no willpower, and thus, we are totally reliant on the grace and mercy of God. I don’t get heaven because I asked Christ to give it to me. I get heaven because Christ died for me, and His sacrifice secured my belief. When you understand that, you understand that you didn’t sign a contract with God, that you didn’t administer salvation by your own willpower, healing your cancer, but rather He signed a contract with you before the world began, and He applied the saving ointment, the blood of Christ, by giving you faith as a gift, not something you create by your own will. He chose to save you, to change you, to make you willing, to grow you in the faith.

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I finally realized what it meant to be called. I understood that salvation had a purpose, and that purpose wasn’t that God couldn’t bear the thought of sinners getting what they deserved, but rather, God’s purpose was to glorify Himself, through His grace and mercy as well as His wrath and justice. That difference is profound- it is the difference between having a man-centered view of God and His purposes, and a God-centered view of God and His purposes. I began to see that everything we do, should be done to glorify God, and indeed that there was a way in which we must understand God in order to do things for His glory.

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God-Centered, Not Man-Centered

In short, Calvinism taught me that God wasn’t saying “Will you please do this for Me?” but rather, “I chose to save you, I will do this for you, and for my name’s sake, for my glory, and for your greatest joy .” I became God dependent, not self-dependent; more God-centered, less man-centered. I trusted in the power of the Holy Spirit, not the power of my own will. I realized that in myself, I have no power of will. Ever since then, I have been staying right in that lane. I think the narrow road is trusting in the power of God, his sovereignty, His Spirit, and giving up on self altogether. How else will we resist the sinful flesh? How else will we resist the wiles of the devil? How else will we stay on the narrow road that leads to eternal life? We are to live and walk by the Spirit. The flesh profits nothing. God is shaping and directing the entire course of human history according to His predestined plan. I have been called as a vessel, a means by which He shapes the world, and shapes me.

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It is to this end that I strive, by the grace of God, and it is to this end that I hope you will strive too, by the grace and power of God.

-Thomas

Christians Lie to Make Converts

What makes something ethical? Some people think that actions in themselves are good or bad no matter what (deontologist), and others believe that it really depends on the situation and whatever results in the greater good (utilitarian). Take abortion for example: Lots of Christians are deontologists who argue -passionately, and I think rightly- that abortion is always wrong because a human life is at stake. Most non-Christian feminists seem to be utilitarian, countering that abortion doesn't harm society at large and that it results in greater freedom for our culture, and especially women as a whole. One has a strict moral code that cannot be transgressed; the other shrugs their shoulders and mumbles that the ends justify the means.

And this brings us to the all-too-common phenomenon of Christians lying and manipulating to make converts - it's classic "Ends justify the means," utilitarian behavior, totally inconsistent with the way Christians approach the abortion debate. We see this kind of thing in every lazy apologist who lies rather than doing the proper research that they should be doing, in every camp speaker who has ever capitalized on the emotional vulnerabilities of children, and in Christian missionaries who withhold food from the hungry until they can extract a confession of faith.

A Stroll Down Imagination Lane

Okay, let's stop for a second. Let's imagine that you believe people can choose whether or not they want to follow God (the term for this is Arminianism). You also believe in Hell, a place of ongoing torture which lasts forever, and you believe that everyone who chooses not to follow God ends up going there, and you don't want that for anybody! Right? So, maybe, if you have to lie and manipulate to get someone to accept Jesus, that's just what you'll have to do. Sure it goes against your moral code, but it ends up serving the greater good. The ends justify the means. Maybe you hope that by the time your manipulation has worn off, or the lie has been found out, that person will have found some more solid reasons to believe in Christianity. So you go ahead and lie to the poor sap and exploit his need for friendship, and by the end of the month, he's a baptized member of your adult Bible study.

Deceit, Inconsistency, and Arminianism

These kinds of things happen all the time. A Christian council in Geneva recently had to issue a ruling against this sort of behavior, according to The National Post:

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"A coalition representing most Christian churches around the world launched a rule book on Tuesday for spreading their faith that aims to reduce tensions among themselves and with followers of other faiths... It reaffirms their right to seek converts but also urges them to abandon 'inappropriate methods of exercising mission by resorting to deception and coercive means', saying that such behaviour 'betrays the Gospel and may cause suffering to others'. Christian missionaries have long been accused of offering money, food, or other goods to win converts in poor countries, either from other faiths or from rival churches."

The truth is, this is one of the practical problems with the belief that people can choose to follow God (Arminianism). If people were free to choose, and deceit could get them to that point (and out of danger of Hell), it would be difficult to say no to indulging a couple of well-meaning fabrications every now and then. The ethical situation would be a jumbled mess of deontologist values and utilitarian pragmatism. On the other hand, the Bible says that no one can come to Jesus unless God makes them do so (John 6.44), and thankfully, the Reformed Christian belief that God chooses to make some people Christians (Predestination) rescues us from having to be a religion of dishonest, shifty religious hucksters. It shows us that it's useless to lie to people to make converts anyways, because God is the one who does the real work of bringing people to faith. The truth is Christians do lie to make converts. The more comforting truth is that, if we understood conversion better, we wouldn't have to. Practically, Arminianism not only has some Biblical holes but creates some ethical ones as well, with the confusion over whether or not it's okay to cut ethical corners in sharing our faith. But I'm thankful that, also practically, the Calvinist belief in Predestination helps keep things ethically together. If you have ever had a Christian try to manipulate you into belief, then I apologize. If you are one of those Christians, then knock it off.

-SEAN

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*I need to include a note here, just in case there are people who aren't Christians reading this: Ahem. God doesn't have to change you because you're unable to follow Him (in which case you'd be faultless); He has to change you because you're unwilling to follow Him (which means you're not faultless, though Jesus does offer the way to forgiveness). This isn't meant to sound accusatory because we're all in the same boat: it wasn't too long ago that I was mocking God and writing "Jesus was the Antichrist" on my school binder, so I feel where you're probably coming from. Hopefully you at least appreciate my honesty.

No War Game: Israel Pushes Into Canaan, Levels Jericho (Josh. 4-8)

SEAN - Led by Joshua, the ancient Israeli army leveled and set fire to the Canaanite cities of Jericho and Ai in the 1400's BC, not leaving any survivors. PIC: modern Israeli soldiers, apparently training for urban combat situations. Photo courtesy of Google Images.

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Based on ESV.com's Chronological Bible In a Year schedule. If anyone would like to join in, this blog's comments sections would be a good forum for sharing what you find.

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God Determines War and Peace

1. As Joshua son of Nun led Israeli soldiers into the land of Canaan, they were confronted with the commander of Yahweh's army (Josh. 5.13-6.2); this means that while Joshua and his men were climbing over rubble and slaughtering Canaanites, God was the real worker. His work was clearest in the crumbling of Jericho's massive walls (Josh. 6.20-21), and in giving Joshua the plan to that was used to ambush the people of Ai (Josh 8.1,18-19). God determined whether Israel conquered Canaan, just like He determines every other thing. Can a city fall, unless God does it? No. God is in control. He determines what succeeds and what fails - He makes it happen.

Get Right With Your Maker
2. If God controls the outcome of everything, we had better get right with Him before we do anything else. That's why Israel circumcised themselves before commencing military operations against Jericho (5.2-3), and observed the Passover (5.10). After that, Israel had God's blessing and stormed the city and burnt it to the ground. Israel couldn't conquer Ai either, until they had dealt with the sin of Achan (7.1-26) and made things right with God. Maybe that is why the Bible talks so much about praying in the morning - we make things right with God before we start our day, because He decides whether our day is productive or not. I've got to work harder on that, then.

God Determines, But We Still Act
3. God made the walls fall down from Jericho, and gave the strategic plan to ambush Ai. He also worked during the battle in unseen ways, making the arms of Canaanite soldiers feel heavy and tired, while giving Israel quick reflexes and strength. But Israel still fought the battle. So that should be a lesson for us - divine sovereignty and human responsibility. God is in total control (sovereignty), but we still have to do our part (responsibility). We can not just sit back, grab a bag of doritos, and sink into the couch while pleading through crumb-filled lips, "God, please (munch) fix my marriage (crunch)." The God who made you and me and created the universe is in complete control... but you and I still have to work. His total control does not equal our total lazinesss.

Summing Up the Post

• God is in control of everything. Nothing succeeds or fails apart from Him.
• Therefore, we've got to make things right with Him before we do anything.
• God is in control (sovereignty), but we still have to work (responsibility).

Does a lion roar in the forest,
when he has no prey?
Does a young lion cry out from his den,
if he has taken nothing?
Does a bird fall in a snare on the earth,
when there is no trap for it?
Does a snare spring up from the ground,
when it has taken nothing?

Is a trumpet blown in a city,
and the people are not afraid?
Does disaster come to a city,
unless the LORD has done it?

-Amos 3.4-6