The Death of American Christianity

These thoughts have been on my mind all week long, but I hesitate to share them. I don't want to be misunderstood and I certainly don't want to offend anyone. But as I look across the church in general, I can't help but lament the state of Christendom in America. Bluntly put, we're dying. And I think I know why.

It's because we see so little Biblical Christianity.

Don't get me wrong. People claim to be Christians. They feel passionately about many things. They understand the fundamentals of the Christian faith; but they're not Biblical Christians. They don't operate from a Biblical world view. Their "feelings" are inconsistent with Scripture and they don't care. Most people today believe what they want to believe and they don't want to be confused with Bible verses! They don't care if their views are inconsistent with the Scriptures.

So, this week I listened to a woman in Bible study passionately defend her position that Terri Shiavo "died 15 years ago" and her life had "no value at all" and she had "no quality of life." The Biblical concepts of all life having value, the purification that comes from suffering, and God's sovereignty meant nothing to this dear friend because she passionately believed that since she wouldn't want to live like that, Terri wouldn't, either. I went from that to a conversation with a former religious leader who explained why he was vehemently against the death penalty, which he felt was completely in harmony with Scripture. I couldn't help pointing out that it was God who instituted the death penalty. But it didn't matter. What he believed was "right" regardless of what the Bible taught.

I wish these were the only two examples.

American Christianity won't die because of persecution from without. It will die from a lack of Biblical understanding from within. Let's face it: When you take away the Bible all you're left with are a lot of really nice ideas and no objective standard of truth at all. Somehow we need to get Christians to be Biblical Christians -- to embrace the Word of God and to immerse themselves in it until it transforms their thinking. Maybe that's why Paul was so insistent that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds in Romans 12:2.

So, this morning I "happened" to read this excerpt from Dallas Willard's The Spirit of the Disciplines (in Devotional Classics, p.14, 16):

"The word 'disciple' occurs 269 times in the New Testament. 'Christian' is found only three times and was first introduced to refer precisely to the disciples. . . The New Testament is a book about disciples, by disciples, and for disciples of Jesus Christ.

"But the point is not merely verbal. What is more important is that the kind of life we see in the earliest church is that of a special type of person. All of the assurances and the benefits offered to humankind in the gospel evidently presuppose such a life and do not make realistic sense apart from it. The disciple of Jesus is not the deluxe or heavy-duty model of the Christian -- especially padded, textured, streamlined, and empowered for the fast lane on the straight and narrow way. He stands on the pages of the New Testament as the first level of basic transportation in the Kingdom of God.

"For at least several decades the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian. One is not required to be, or to intend to be, a disciple in order to become a Christian, and one may remain a Christian without any signs of progress toward or in discipleship. Contemporary American churches in particular do not require following Christ in his example, spirit, and teachings as a condition of membership -- either of entering into or continuing in fellowship of a denomination or a local church. . . So far as the visible Christian institutions of our day are concerned, discipleship clearly is optional. . . .

"Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God's overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10)."

In Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus says we are to make disciples, not "Christians." We are to teach people to obey everything that Jesus has commanded in the Word. Disciples are continually being taught. They have teachable spirits. They spend so much time with their teacher that they begin to think like he does and talk like he does. They adopt his attitudes. And so must we if we are truly disciples of Jesus Christ. It's not enough to simply be grateful for the provision of the cross. It's not enough to have an experience of conversion. If we're not disciples -- if we're not seeking to be Biblical Christians -- do we really have anything at all? Or are we just fooling ourselves?