Paul's Passing Thoughts

“The lie that is sucking the life out of the American church started early and was repeated often throughout the service; Jesus Christ is alive and we are dead.”

 “This is why the American church is chocked full of spiritual despots and pedophiles; we only preach Calvin and Luther’s half-gospel of one resurrection and deny the primary purpose of the second, that resurrected saints would fulfill the law of God and destroy the works of the devil for the glory of God in this life.”

My wife Susan likes music and people. I love Christ, but don’t much care for contemporary Christian music that makes Him a Brahman and not the Lord and King of the forthcoming new heavens and new earth. We Americans love our mystical Jesus. We make much of Him so we can know little of Him. He is so high above us that to claim to know anything save Him crucified is arrogance. It’s Tal Bachman theology; he knew a girl that was so high above him, “Like Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, or Aphrodite,” that, “She comes to speak to me I freeze immediately,” and, “What could a guy like me ever really offer?”

The more subjective a god is, the more we can make it a god of our own making. Many will stand before Christ’s eyes of fire in the judgment and claim Him so wonderful that they couldn’t have known anything about Him that is objective. After all, only the gospel is objective and anything we think we know is subjective at best. Dishwalla, in their song, “Tell me all Your Thoughts on God,” present us as children who can’t really know God, but the song surmises that God is a woman. But that’s ok, after all, we are merely children who, “count only blue cars and skip the cracks in the street. And ask many questions like children often do.” The world has this gig down better than Christians; we are nothing compared to whatever the higher power is, so who is the higher power to find fault? Don’t worry, she won’t, all will end well.

Oh, but like Susan, I like people too, it was one of the conditions of our marriage contract. We compromised on the music. Since the Potter’s House is a very humble upstart, and the wonderment of the Easter holiday was upon us, off we went to a morning cantata service to experience American Easternism. And because I am a mere worm like all others that attended, I won’t name the Southern Baptist church located in Xenia, Ohio that we attended. Besides, the point here is that this service was undoubtedly representative of the vast majority of Easter Sunday services taking place in the evangelical church.

The lie that is sucking the life out of the American church started early and was repeated often throughout the service; Jesus Christ is alive and we are dead. One who was leading music pontificated that Jesus was resurrected to confirm that God was pleased with the sacrifice. What he couldn’t say would get someone thrown out of the church in our day: Christ was resurrected to give us life in the here and now; the same power that raised Him from the dead (EPH 1:18-20). This is why the American church is chocked full of spiritual despots and pedophiles, we only preach Calvin and Luther’s half-gospel of one resurrection and deny the primary purpose of the second, that resurrected saints would fulfill the law of God and destroy the works of the devil for the glory of God in this life (ROM 8:3,4, 1JN 3:8, JN 14:12). As a man thinks in his heart so is he, if he thinks he is a worm, he will act like one.

After an hour of everything life of Jesus and our depravity music, the pastor delivered a mini-treatise that was the usual Heidelberg Confession construct: all wisdom and true theology is a deeper and deeper knowledge of our evil as set against the holiness of Christ. He said we are “broken people in a broken world” and unable to do anything with pure motives. This is not how the Bible describes Christians at all. We are described as being resurrected WITH Christ and in high places with Him. We are described as “more than conquerors.” And the Bible does not even describe the unregenerate as incapable of impure motives because they were born with the works of the law written on their heart. They will not be justified by that, but it doesn’t render them incapable of doing good works. Yes, works they do in order to be justified are filthy rags, but that is not a sweeping metaphysical indictment of mankind in general.

Then he added the caveat that there is no real purpose in this life. And believe me, that’s how the American church lives. What purpose could there be if only Christ was resurrected and we are dead? And the practical application? As stated, “We overcome with the joy of our salvation.” Really? This aped the song that we also sang earlier: “We overcome by the blood and our testimony.” Stated another way by the Neo-Calvinists of our day running the church: “We shouldn’t be the gospel, we should only preach the gospel.” While New Calvinists bemoan the idea that the world is mostly unevangelized, I assure them that the gospel of preaching only is well known throughout the world and God is blasphemed accordingly.

Susan and I are beginning to note a trend in these churches as we visit some that we were previously acquainted with in the past: They are dead. The worship is half-hearted. It’s like, “Are we having fun worship yet?” But what do we expect? We are dead, right? I know that the theses is that by making much of Christ and little of us that worshipful manifestations will take place, but joyful skeletons singing aloud in praise is a pipe dream that Calvinists will never realize. They are sucking what life was left of the church after Billy Graham’s first gospel wave. Dr. Kevorkian is presiding over the terminal ill patient that is the American church: a reputation for being alive, but really dead, and proud of it.

Unfortunately, Susan and I had watched the epic Star Wars movie late into the night before. By the end of all of this, a part of the movie seized my mind: Darth Vader; “I find your lack of faith disturbing.” As I focused on the pastor finishing his skeletal rendition of the resurrection, I observed my hand raised up in a grasping configuration. I looked to Susan for help, but found little on her frowning face as she commented, “I have a problem with the suggestion that God [the Father] was resurrected.” But when you reduce Christianity to a narrow objective door, you enter into a reality of subjective monstrosity. Anything goes from there. Dishwalla followers see no need to change venue; counting blue cars and going to church is all the same.

Christ never commanded us to celebrate His resurrection via a special day on the calendar. It’s optional. But if we are going to do it, don’t make it a lie and a half-gospel—celebrate not only what Christ did, but His purposes as well. He came to give us purpose in the here and now as well as eternally. Easter is not only about the resurrected Christ Himself, but what he sought to do in us being resurrected WITH him as new creatures.

The half-gospel of total depravity is a lie and a false gospel. And let those who preach it be accursed.

paul