An analysis of two predominant ideologies hurting the American Church from within.
As the Church we should not be surprised when the world acts like the world. We should, however, be surprised when the Church acts like the world.
There is nothing new under the sun to include the issues I am presenting here; each ideology has taken its place in history. However, I am burdened enough by the misdirection of these beliefs, oftentimes unknowingly to the participant who is more caught up in the culture wars of today than our fight for the Gospel (Galatians 1) to speak directly to the matter. These increasingly divisive viewpoints are splitting the American Church, pulling believers away from foundational biblical beliefs, and hurting the testimony of the professing Christian.
These are:
- Dominionism – the often conservative perspective of taking more control over the culture in order to implant Christian beliefs in our nation for the sake of spreading biblical truths.
- Syncretism, the often liberal perspective of diminishing the problem of sin and combining world views to biblical truths for the sake of love of others.
Each of these problematic views claim to be doing God’s work, one for the fight for truth and the other for the fight of love. However, love without truth is hypocrisy and truth without love is impossible. We know God is love (1 John 4:16). He demonstrated His perfect love by sending His son Jesus to die for us. “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Most professing Christians today would not dismiss that we are called to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, this along with loving the Lord with all of our heart, soul, and mind, is the greatest of the commandments confessed by Jesus Himself in Matthew 22:36-40. The argument arises then with how we are to express that love, which in a fallen world, only Christ himself could do perfectly. Jesus did not leave us alone but with help from the Holy Written Word and the Holy Spirit (John 16:7, Luke 24:25-27). If these are not our guides then we are blind guides, “and if the blind lead the blind, then they will both fall into a pit” (Matthew 15:14).
In John 6, a great crowd is following Jesus.
He and his closest disciples have no food, but the people are hungry and need to eat. Jesus, having compassion and wanting to teach his students a lesson, takes five loaves, two fish and multiplies them to feed a multitude with leftovers to spare. This is a story many Christians are firmly familiar with. The story teaches of Jesus’ compassion for the multitude and a sign of His deity. But what happens after this miracle reveals more to me about our motivation towards Christ. The people who experienced the feeding, deemed Jesus the great prophet that had been foretold and they intended to take Him by force and make Him king. But Jesus withdrew to avoid them. They wanted a king with great power to solve their problems, particularly with Rome. I don’t blame them. They were suffering greatly under Roman rule and had been waiting for the promised Messiah to save them. What Jesus does next draws me to Isaiah 55:8: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” The next day when the crowds again found Jesus, He had them at His fingertips, in the height of His wilderness ministry. He could have said almost anything to have them confessing Him as Christ. There could have been a massive altar call, many new converts and believers. All Jesus had to do was give them a simple message. Instead, Jesus in His perfect wisdom gave the crowds a heavy and hard truth (John 6 vs 35-59). Foreknowing their response, He gave it anyway. They left grumbling, even many of His disciples, exclaiming this is a hard saying (John 6 vs 60). Many turned back and no longer followed (John 6 vs 66). So Jesus turned to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Peter responded for the group, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and come to know that You are the Holy One of God” (John 6:67- 69).
John 6, which I encourage you to go back and read in its entirety addresses with heavenly wisdom the aforementioned issues. The twelve, unlike the multitude, were able to receive Jesus’ message. Why? Because they had a relationship with Christ built on love and truth; certainly not one without the other. Jesus had chosen them just as much as they chose Him. Jesus loved the crowds too, it was evident in His ministry to them, He came for them too, He met their physical needs, performed signs and wonders for them, but most importantly He preached to them truth and love because they needed both.
1. The problem of Dominionism :
The multitude wanted Jesus to use His power to take over and change the current political and social construct of the time. The power in control was not a good one, we can all agree to that. But that was not Christ’s intentions then nor is it now in the age of the Church. Under the new covenant of salvation by faith (John 1:12), we give witness of how to live alongside but differently than the culture and time that we are placed in. We know this from the examples set by Christ himself, our early church fathers in Acts and the New Testament Epistles.
Biblical examples like:
1 Peter 2:9-17
1 Thessalonians 4:1-12
2 Timothy 2
God’s new covenant instructions were not for us to change the culture through political means or make disciples by forcing people to believe what we believe but to live set a part. The time will come when Christ returns, in that second coming He will assert His dominion over the whole of creation which will restore perfect peace (Isaiah 11:1-11, Revelation 11:15-18). Until that time we must read God’s Word to dictate what truth in love looks like and not use our own understanding, desires and will. We are not, as some insist, Israel in Canaan, we (the church) are more notably like Joseph in Egypt, Daniel in Babylon, or Paul in Rome, we are living as pilgrims. We are a holy nation, set apart by Christ work on the cross, awaiting his return as exiles in a land that will be redeemed (John 14, 1 Peter 2:9-17). Each of the mentioned faithful servants served in a culture under rulers vastly different from that which they and we are called to follow. While they did not change the culture or political structure they did make a kingdom come impact. It wasn’t Paul and Silas’ political unrest in Acts 16: 25-34 that led to the salvation of a prison guard and his entire family but very much the opposite. When the soldiers came to arrest Jesus in the garden, Peter’s intentions to defend Christ by cutting off the soldier’s ear were good, but they were still wrong (John 18:1-11). When we take by force what people must choose on their own, we misrepresent the mission of Christ. In Matthew 16, Jesus asks His disciples who do you say that I am? Peter in his zeal and passion for the Lord confesses correctly, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus praised Peter saying, on this principle (this rock) I will build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Vs 13-20). What seems like mere moments later, Jesus again foretells the necessity of His death and resurrection to the disciples. Peter, in his zeal, rebukes Jesus for this. Jesus’ response was swift, strong and firm, “But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God but on the things of man” (vs23). Jesus had to deliver a hard truth to his closest friends, not doing so would not have been love at all; furthermore, it would not have prepared them for what was to come. We must serve one another in love not fearing this world as our Lord has promised, “the gates of hell cannot prevail against it” (vs18). But don’t mistake that Christ takes very seriously our misguided passion, though zealous, that offsets His and our primary mission. Standing up for our faith is good and right, and this should be done. However, our most familiar posture should be like our Savior’s who kneeled down to wash the feet of the friend who would soon be His greatest traitor. The truth we wish to share must be covered by Gods Word, layered in prayers, and rooted in expressions of extravagant love of God and others (2 Timothy 2:14-26).
2. The problem of Syncretism:
Jesus, while willing to sacrifice His life for the whole world, was never willing to sacrifice His truth. Sermons today are filled with three points to a better life, funny anecdotal stories, and illustrations using familiar songs and movies. All in the hopes to engage more and more followers to an easily digestible faith– We see in John 6 and other places (Matthew 13:10-17) this was not Jesus’ method. The problem in our often honest goal to reach a multitude is that we create a religion of half truths and promises that never fulfill what our souls know is true. That we are sinners (Romans 3:23). Thus the great risk of Syncretism. The good news of the Gospel is that, while the wages of sin is death, the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus or Lord (Romans 6:23, John 3:16). In another familiar story Jesus approaches a Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) and asks her for a drink of water. This is unheard of and countercultural for many reasons. She is a woman and He is a man. She is a Samaritan and He is Jew. She is an adulterous sinner having 5 husbands, living with a man who wasn’t currently her husband and He the perfect sinless Messiah. Centuries before this woman was face to face with Jesus, the northern 10 tribes of Israel separated themselves from the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin. They would not go down to Jerusalem to worship in the temple so they created their own customs and ceremonial practices. They wanted to worship the God of their ancestors but in a new way that felt right to them. One step led to another until ultimately they were deep into a false religion that included the corrupt immoral practices of the nations around them. God sent prophets to warn the northern tribes, now called Israel, to repent. But they could no longer identify truth and refused. Via God’s righteous judgments ultimately Israel was destroyed by the nation of Assyria. The Samaritans are a people that evolved overtime, part Israelite – part a conglomerate of other backgrounds, religious practices, but mostly self-created religion. Jesus approached the Samaritan woman at the well to fix what sin broke long ago. But just as Jesus did not sugar coat it for the multitudes in John 6, neither did He for her. For in Christ you cannot have love without truth. He came not to leave Her in sin but to offer Her living water (John 4:13-15). Jesus said to her, “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:21-24). History has a way of repeating itself. It is not enough to have spirit, zeal, or longing of worship, there must be objective truth in the who and how you worship. We love the picture of Jesus with the sinners. Of Him sitting at the dinner table with the outcasts of society the religious elites would not so much as let the dust of their sandals touch. In Matthew 9:12-13 Jesus tells the Pharisees “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” The good news is that the Gospel doesn’t leave us in the hospital, if Christ came for the sick it’s always with the intention of healing and not leaving us as we are. This is why Christ paid the highest cost on the cross. But the enemy’s greatest trick is convincing us we are more virtuous than we really are. Thus creating the religion of morality. When we diminish the consequence of sin, which is death, then we dilute the need for grace (John 1:14-18, John 3:16). God is serious about sin (Matthew 5:29-30). We often hear how all sin is equal, and I agree that all have sinned and all fall short (Romans 3:23). But all sin is not the same, and the consequences of those differences ripples out to harm all that surrounds it (1 Corinthian 6:12-20, John 19:10-11). How we love our brothers and sisters in Christ within the Church is to hold one another accountable to Biblical truths for that is the love Christ so perfectly demonstrated. “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:1-4). As for those outside the church, Jesus said it best “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another” (John 13:35).
To the Church whom I know and love…
Our greatest commandment was first to love God with all of our heart, soul and mind and then second to love our neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40). This order is just as vital as the commandment itself. We learn how to walk this out by loving one another in community based on biblical truths. We will not always agree but we do have a guide. Let’s not be the same people from John 6 that ate a meal from our Savior’s hand only to walk away from His message.
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and come to know that You are the Holy One of God.” – John 6:69
With love and truth,
Christy
