Paul's Passing Thoughts

Come now, let’s be honest with ourselves; we think much of the Bible is “in a manner of speaking.” We think God’s word is a book of pithy truisms to live by. We like that because (continuing to write on major themes of the TANC 2012 conference) truisms are easy, thinking is hard. As discussed at the conference, the first gospel wave (1950-1970) focused on getting people save while poo-pooing Christ’s command to “make disciples.” Making disciples is hard and takes lots of thinking and doing. The second gospel wave (1970-present) states the following via New Calvinism: discipleship is hard, but Jesus does it all for you.

This sounded good to the first gospel wave because they could shirk the “easy believeism” rap under the auspices of “orthodox” Reformed theology. The rest is history, along with the clichés to live by propagated by a combined effort of both groups. The biggie one is, “We are all just sinners saved by grace.” “Sinner” is an individual who sins as a lifestyle. Retagging sinners is easy—making disciples is hard. Disciples CHANGE. New Calvinist heretic Michael Horton adds his brilliance to Reformed easy believeism by claiming that those who think hard and work hard in sanctification are trying to “be the gospel rather than proclaiming the gospel.” And, “not our doing, but Christ’s doing and dying.”

Biblically illiterate truisms are deeply rooted in the psyche of contemporary Christians, and the espousing thereof is habitual. Susan and I enjoy challenging each other on them as we consciously reexamine all of our thinking. I pounced on the opportunity to challenge a sanctified truism just the other day when she tossed this one my way for consideration: “We need God’s grace every day.” Susan welcomes these challenges and the discussion lasted throughout the day. We concluded together that this cliché is not biblical—we received all of the “grace” that we needed when we were saved, and do not continue to need it. “Grace” is a justification/salvation concept, and both gospel waves like that truism because only salvation is important, or they believe we need salvation every day.

How about this one: “I didn’t do it, Christ did it through me.” Oh really? This is simply not true. And I remind you, the Holy Spirit sanctifies through truth—not error (John 17:17). This harkens back to John Immel’s brilliant three-part presentation at TANC 2012 regarding our moral responsibility to think and live up to the life that “bears our name.” Ya, why did God invent names? And why are they different? This speaks to the self-esteem issue that John aptly addressed at the conference.

“But Paul, the Bible states that it is God who gives us the will to do His good pleasure.” See, this is what I am talking about. Is this not a prime example of the average Christian’s inability to think? I even had a well-known Reformed elder state this argument to me. But what is a gift? Once we get it, we own it, and are responsible for what we do with it! For crying out loud, because life is a gift, and we didn’t create it ourselves, this means that God doesn’t expect anything? Really? “But Paul, the Bible states specifically that it is God who is doing the work in us.” So, how does that = us not doing anything including critical thinking?  The Apostle Paul’s specific argument in Philippians 2:12, 13 is the following: because God works in us, we have no excuse, and that should inspire us to work even harder because God is helping us. This passage states that God works in us; how does that = God does it all? In fact, you should cite this biblical truth to a counselee who states that they “can’t” do something. I like Jay Adams’ answer to that: “You can’t, or you won’t?”

Listen to me, not accepting every Christian truism in this tsunami, but rather rethinking them, has radically changed our home. Christians today don’t even think the Holy Spirit working within can make them good housekeepers: “Well, I have never been a good housekeeper (maintaining a clean and orderly house). That’s just not me.” Right: if the Holy Spirit doesn’t do the housecleaning “through you,” it just doesn’t happen. No wonder that the world isn’t coming to the church for answers to the deep problems of life—we don’t even have sense enough to know that God doesn’t clean the house for us!

What about this one in the next sentence? “God hates the sin, but loves the sinner.” And remember, Christians are also, “sinners” saved by grace. This is soooooo easy. We like this. If we happen to please God, wonderful! But if not—no big deal—He loves us anyway. Besides, depending on which gospel wave influences you most, working hard in spiritual matters is either optional or circumvents what God has already decided to accomplish in your life. If there was any chemical reaction going on in our brains that would evaluate this truism further, we would remember that even if there is truth to this cliché, the results are the same: God ends up sending the lovable “sinner” to hell along with the sin.

And Facebook is a treasure trove of these platitudes. I observed one this morning that instigated this post:

Oh my. Where to even start? Rethinking this poster is going be the subject of our family devotion this afternoon. And comments on it are welcome here.

paul