The American church is dying and parts of it are already dead. If one needs proof of its condition, a re-reading of Part II will reveal the severity of its illness. This is not to say that Christianity is dying for Jesus said, “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” [Matthew 16:18. KJV] [emphasis added] The remnant church will always survive, perhaps bloodied and bent for the moment, but it will survive.
There are three prescriptions for what ails the evangelical church in the West: development of the art of resistance thinking to challenge the forces of cultural captivity (conformity, popularity, and a quest for a distorted cultural relevance); return of the church to New Testament Christianity by embracing all of its distinguishing elements; and revival of the body of Christ as it moves and operates in the full power of the Holy Spirit.
Resistance thinking
The church has been captured by the modern humanistic, secularized culture, and this captivity has led to fragmentation of the Christian worldview in the West. This captivity has resulted in a loss of a right understanding of objective truth found in God’s divine revelation recorded in the Bible. This loss has caused many Christians to descend from the glorious heights from which they once could clearly see truth to a forest of facts and minutia that obscure truth and ultimately destroys within men’s minds the concept that truth exists. This is the consequence of the cultural captivity of the church.
How does a Christian regain a vantage point from which to rise above the distortions caused by their cultural captivity? Without such vantage point, one cannot understand and resist the prevailing spirit of the world that has invaded much of the modern church. Os Guinness called resistance thinking an art form, something a Christian “can learn and cultivate until it becomes a habit of the heart.” But apart from God’s help, a Christian’s efforts to develop the traits necessary for resistance thinking are futile, and he falls into the same mindset of the culture from which he intends to escape.
Guinness proposes three practices that will help Christians “cultivate the independent spirit and thinking that are characteristic of God’s untimely people.” These are an awareness of the unfashionable, cultivating an appreciation for the historical, and paying constant attention to the eternal. Their relative importance is shown by their ascending order .[1] Notice that the first deals with the temporal, the second concerns the past, and the third is eternity which is beyond time.
Awareness of the Unfashionable
Many of the problems of the modern church occur because of its desire to be fashionable which usually sits on the three-legged stool of conformity, popularity, and the quest for a warped cultural relevance. These comprise the links in the chain that binds the church in its cultural captivity. To discern and resist the essence of the fashionable church’s captivity, Christians must have an awareness of the unfashionable by which is meant an awareness of God and His ways which stand in contradiction to much of what passes for modern Christianity.
Following his call for repentance of the northern kingdom of Israel, the prophet Hosea added a postscript, “Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; whoever is discerning, let him know them; for the ways of the LORD are right, and the righteous will walk in them, but transgressors will stumble in them.” [Hosea 14:9. RSV] Because the wise Christian has the knowledge of God and His ways, he may also discern the fashionable ways of the world that must be resisted.
The Christian message conformed to the fashionable methods of today’s popular evangelicalism is little more than a consensus of opinion that arises from group thinking which has little connection to God and His ways. Such thinking leads to a fuzzy theology which is one of the reasons that a large majority of Christians cannot make a biblically accurate presentation of the gospel as described in Part II. Like their liberal forerunners, the evangelical church in the latter half of the twentieth century and to the present day has abandoned New Testament Christianity and replaced many of its doctrines with another gospel. Guinness described this sorry state of affairs.
And now, early twenty-first century evangelicalism mimics popular culture as closely and successfully as anyone could ever hope to while still getting away with it. In each case the end result is not only a betrayal of the faith but a hapless impotence before the very audience the church was out to impress…Signs are that, unless some drastic rethinking takes place soon, the corruptions in evangelicalism will worsen and show through in theology, not just in practice. Evangelicals have followed the broader cultural shift from “religion to spirituality” and in the process have become chronically individualistic rather than corporate; they have become “do-it-yourself” in their preference rather than living under authority; they are increasingly syncretistic rather than exclusive and discriminating.[2] [emphasis added]
This was written in 2003, but fourteen years later widespread corruptions in evangelicalism are now present its in theology as well as practice as Guinness predicted. One need only listen to the latest heretical pronouncements from the Pontiff in Rome or tune in to many of the mega-church pastors in America. These false teachers forfeit the unambiguous truth of God in the name of cultural relevance through an accommodation of the spirit of the world within the church. But such accommodation leads to a Christian faith that dispenses “…a license to entitlement, a prescription for an easy-going spirituality, or a how-to manual for self-improvement.”[3] It is a false religion, a weak and unrecognizable shell without the sustaining truth and power of New Testament Christianity.
True Christians must define themselves by the gospel and remain faithful in the day in which they live. But the world doesn’t want to hear their message for it is untimely because it conflicts with the audience-friendly message dispensed by many within the evangelical church. However, the radical call of Jesus to come and die will always be unfashionable in the modern world. To retain their prophetic untimeliness, faithful Christians must always have an awareness of the unfashionable.
Appreciation for the historical
One of the central tenets of the humanism is progressivism which is built on the dictum of the perfectibility of man, a “…belief that critical and autonomous human reason held the power to discover the truth about life and the world, and to progressively liberate humanity from the ignorance and injustices of the past.”[4] We see the outworking of progressivism in humanism’s creation story of evolution, the self-centered striving to climb the ladder of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, the social engineer’s incessant push for equality through leveling society, and the psychologist’s endless efforts to minister to the needs of unfallen but damaged man.
The common theme of progressivism is that the good old days were all bad and have nothing to teach mankind in his march toward perfection except for one thing. History can serve as humanism’s “horrible example” preceding its altar call. Thereafter, man can kneel at the shrine of progressivism and repent for his original sin of dabbling with a supernatural God.
The progressive view of history rests on the belief that the most advanced point in time represents the point of highest development. It assumes that “…that history is an inevitable march upward into the light. In other words, step by step, the world always progresses, and this progress is inevitable.”[5] A consequence of this view of history is that the historical record must be judged only in light of current beliefs, assumptions, and politics. If one holds the progressive opinion of history, the views of the present generation must be superior to timeless truths, tradition, heritage, and the wisdom accumulated through the ages.
However, the historical record is one of the greatest contributions to Western thinking, and by default the Bible stands at the center of that history in shaping and molding the Western mindset. Undoubtedly, the weight of history supports the biblical worldview which is a reflection of truth received not only through biblical revelation to the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians but is also a reflection of those unchanging cultural universals built into God’s creation and observed down through the ages. But in their rush to relevance and accommodation, evangelicals have abandoned an appreciation of their own historical roots.
In their haste to cast off the wisdom and experiences of generations of our Christian forefathers, today’s evangelicals have mischaracterized the meaning of sola scriptura which has led to a measure of anti-intellectualism and spiritual shallowness. The church must not reject its rich history and knowledge gained over the centuries which are invaluable to understanding of scripture. The successes and failures of the church through the centuries serve as priceless lessons that both illuminate and elaborate upon the Bible’s teachings. The teachings and writings of the great minds of the Christian past such as Augustine, Luther, and Calvin give much insight into a right understanding of the scriptures.[6] Given the benefit of hindsight, we know they got some things wrong, but without a doubt they were profoundly right on many things.
Guinness believes that an appreciation for the historical gives the best counterperspective to the distorted perspectives of the modern day arising from the humanistic spirit of the world that has captured much of the church.[7] Therefore, an essential for cultivating the art of resistance thinking necessary to become prophetically untimely is an appreciation for the historical.
Constant attention to the eternal
Constant attention to the eternal is the last but most important element necessary for cultivating resistance thinking and is characteristic of the prophetically untimely followers of Jesus Christ.
God said, “For I am the Lord, I change not…” [Malachi 3:6] But in our modern times, the church has lost sight of this truth. Over one hundred years ago, the rejection of God’s unchangeableness was evident in the liberal churches of the era. In 1910, Earle Marion Todd, writing in The Christian Century, captured the spirit of the liberal churches’ abandonment of unchangeable and eternal truths.
Change, unceasing change, is the eternal law…Not only are things changing; they are growing. The world, the universe, is becoming more beautiful, more wonderful, more complex…[T]he church, like every other institution that is to continue to live and discharge a vital function, must adapt herself to the changed conditions. (Jan. 20, 1910).[8] [emphasis added]
So too, in the name of change and relevancy, the modern evangelical church since the 1960s has become increasingly obsessed with the temporal at the expense of the eternal. It seeks to make better men for the day but neglects the destiny of their eternal souls.
But as Guinness points out, “the church’s pursuit of relevance by being constantly timely is a mirage.” [emphasis added] Such relevance becomes self-authenticating, that is, we are relevant because we say we are relevant which is meaningless to the point of being dangerous. To be in constant pursuit of relevance, the church must bow to the “unholy trinity of the powerful, the practical, and the profitable.” Guinness writes that by bowing to the idol of temporal relevance, the church has ridden “slipshod over truth” which is a “means of corralling opinion deceptively. Until, that is, we finally deceive ourselves.”[9]
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An awareness of the unfashionable, an appreciation of the historical, and constant attention to the eternal are necessary elements in the development of the art of resistance thinking. Resistance thinking is not just a mental exercise but also a matter of the heart that requires a return to the hard and unpopular themes of the gospel. Resistance thinking is an essential prescription for what ails the church. The second of the three prescriptions will be discussed in Part V: a return of the church to New Testament Christianity by embracing all of its distinguishing elements.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] Os Guinness, Prophetic Untimeliness-A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance,” (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2003), p. 95.
[2] Ibid., p. 98.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Christian Smith, The Secular Revolution, (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2003), p. 54.
[5] Murray N. Rothbard, “The Progressive Theory of History,” Ludwig von Mises Institute, September 14, 2010. http://mises.org/daily/4708 (accessed October 28, 2014).
[6] Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth-Liberating Christianity from its Cultural captivity, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2004, 2005), pp. 280-281.
[7] Guinness, Prophetic Untimeliness-A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance,” pp. 100-101.
[8] Earle Marion Todd, Christian Century, January 20, 1910, quoted by Keith Meador, “My Own Salvation,” The Secular Revolution, Christian Smith, Ed., (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2003), p. 279
[9] Guinness, Prophetic Untimeliness-A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance,” p. 106.
