Posted by I have always been a person that tracks current events and what is happening in the wider culture pretty closely. My preferred podcasts and Youtube channels reflect this. You will find me listening to and watching people from across the social and political spectrum. I am at a stage of life where I want to hear what all sides are thinking and then come to my own conclusion after digesting and working through what I’m hearing and reading. I’ve always liked reading and hearing from points of view I don’t necessarily agree with. I’ve found it makes me think. That is true for me when it comes to theology, social science, current events, and politics. I have to be able to defend my own beliefs and at times be willing to change how I view something. I naturally tend to pay really close attention to what is happening inside the Christian church.
I’ve been listening to and watching the deconstructionist/progressive Christian movement with some interest. I’ve listened to and read about some people’s experiences with churches, and I have to admit that there are some very unhealthy church cultures all over the doctrinal and theological spectrum, and I think people have been genuinely hurt, sometimes intentionally, but often unintentionally. I think churches can give unsatisfactory answers to questions people have about the Bible and God in general. The sad thing to me is that solid Biblically based answers are out there, but there are some leaders and church members that seem to think people shouldn’t be struggling with faith. I think all of us struggle with faith at different moments and for different reasons, and ignoring that or not being willing to accept this a reality and help people work through it is a mistake.
I also think a church can lean into legalism. I’ve been preaching through the Book of Luke on Sunday nights, and through that, I have done quite a bit of study on the Pharisees. They were the religious rulers of Israel during the earthly ministry of Jesus. They hyper-focused on the Old Testament Law, and that caused them to be out of balance. They wrote volumes expanding on the Mosaic Law in ways that God never intended. They made it all a burden on the people. They sat in judgment of everyone else. They are the very definition of legalism. They were so concerned with what was done according to the Law and outward appearances that they totally missed the grace and mercy of God that is found all over the Bible, including the Old Testament. The prophets and the Psalms are full of God’s grace and forgiveness. They speak constantly of restoration. Even the Book of Isaiah which is full of God’s judgment against a rebellious Israel also has passage after passage about Israel’s restoration, the road to forgivness, and His love for them. This leads us to a place of balance. The church shouldn’t be a place of legalism, follow the rules, or else, but it is also not a place where God’s standards clearly laid out for us in both the Old and New Testaments should be ignored. I know that striking that balance is hard, but to sit in judgment of everyone both inside and outside the church is wrong and to not be honest about the fact that Bible is clear that sin is a serious issue and can’t be ignored is just as bad. We also don’t get to pick and choose which things are still right or wrong. This is a major problem as people “deconstruct” Christianity. This movement is a nice way of saying I’ll just leave out the parts I don’t like. Depending on where your deconstruction stops you may find yourself ignoring sections of the Bible or maybe not holding to the foundational beliefs that underpin who God is and how He has reached out to us. This may mean people deconstructing aren’t really Christian in a historical and Biblical sense at all. It will be up to God how He judges this in eternity, but it scares me for people that want to abandon historical Christianity as it has been since the days of the apostles themselves.
The call to holiness found in the Bible isn’t a burden for us. It isn’t damaging to us. It is freeing and better for us. The only way to not see this truth is to ignore the Bible itself and say I don’t believe what it says, and when someone does that they would be better off to just go start their own religion and leave God and the Bible out of it all together. You have free will to choose to live as you see fit, and I don’t believe I can or should force anyone to embrace any belief system. As long as someone isn’t harming another person I say you can do just like Joshua said in Joshua 24 and choose whom you will serve. Joshua then gave a list of options to the people. Make your choice, but trying to warp what historical and Biblical Christianity teaches is a bad choice.
The Bible holds us to a moral and ethical standard. The Bible does this because God understands what is harmful to us. It is not damaging to tell people to seek to be modest in their dress. It isn’t damaging to tell people to flee from all forms of sexual immortality. It isn’t damaging to be honest about the fact that homosexuality is a sin. It should be viewed just like any other sexual sin. We should show love and care to people struggling with any sin, but it isn’t loving to say something is good in God’s eyes when it’s not. Changing doctrine and truth to make people feel better isn’t the answer.
I want everyone to understand how God views them. Every person is incredibly valuable in the eyes of God. He loves us and cares for us so much that God the Son Jesus Christ died for us. He took my place. I can’t imagine anything that shows how valuable people are to God, and that means the church should see them as just as valuable. When a church doesn’t do that then that church is wrong.
Churches will get things wrong. There are people in the church so to think the church will always choose the right path is foolish. We are flawed people, and we all need to understand that. People’s hurt can be very real, but blaming God for the sin and wrong man chose to commit is wrong as well. What every individual and church should do is to go back to the Bible and see what God has to say in His Word about how we are to teach, serve, and love those around us. Politics doesn’t matter. Denomination doesn’t matter. Personal opinion doesn’t matter. God matters and His opinion matters. The core of all of this deconstruction/progressive Christianity is an effort to make God more palatable to us and to the culture around us. That will never work. It runs counter to who God is. God is unchanging and He has laid out for us what is right and wrong, and we have no right to change that. I know some Scriptures can be debated, and there are different points of view about some things, but Christians should unite around what is clear in the Bible. I could make a nice long list for you, but I’m sure you can figure out most of them starting with fact that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation and His Word, the Bible is trustworthy. Maybe another time I will go into why this is the proper Biblical view, but that would take up way too much space in this post.
I’m sorry if you were hurt by someone else in church in a real way. I know that happens all the time, but if you are struggling with the truth found in His Word then that is a different issue. Maybe that truth could be spoken more in love as the Bible teaches, but truth is truth at the end of the day. Go back to the source of our salvation, Jesus Christ. Go back to the foundational teachings about love and right living. Let that guide you, and stop trying to reinvent the wheel, and stop trying to find a reason to reject sound teaching.
A Christian in the World 