I HAVE TO, I HAVE TO, I HAVE TO.
The din is deafening. It is heard from every corner of American life, from the ballfield to the conference room, from the university classroom to the family, from government officials to trained counselors. And sadly it is heard from many if not most American pulpits today. What is this loud noise that we are hearing from our pulpits?
Be kind
Love your neighbor
Sacrifice
Love your wife
Take your kids to the park
Be patient
Be diligent
Be discerning
Be stricter
Be more Lenient
Work on: relational skills, parenting skills, marriage skills, time management
Love better
Love harder
Think less of yourself
Think more of others.
Have more people over
Flee idols
Go to church more, read your Bible more, pray more, meditate day and night, memorize Scripture
Never grumble
Always rejoice
Be thankful all things
Fight abortion
Be light and salt
Bear insults
Never joke crudely
Meet God before dawn
Give generously
Never use credit
Fight the devil
Stop breathing……….
Just kidding; but only half so.
The din. It never stops. No wonder we are schizophrenics as believers. We are told when we are saved that we are free and then we spend the next fifty years being told what to do or what not to do. Some of the rules are biblical, others are what Pastor Ken Jones once called ‘house rules.’ In either case the Christian enters his Christian life with a tome of expectations that could fill a thousand tablets of stone.
But we are free. Oh really?
Maybe you feel the pain, maybe the agony. Do you resonate with that list? Many of you do. My guess is that of all the institutions on earth the one that is most adept at laying heavy burdens on people is the church. This is a sad reality seeing that Christianity is advertised as being the place where sinners can find freedom, forgiveness and joy. The very place that advertises grace as its chief currency is often the same place where grace is scarcest. In a world where people are beat up daily by a variety of pressures, the one oasis of refuge for the weary should be the church. But where church goers come to find rest in the truth that God loves them and has saved them, what they hear instead is an expressed or implied ‘you must do this’ rather than God’s beautiful message of ‘God did this.’ That is the gospel. But many pastors and Bible teachers seem to have forgotten to succor men’s souls with that free gift and instead come up with a warped gospel that poisons God’s free gift with ‘oh, but now that you are saved you must do…..’ It makes church sound more like the office, or the sports field, places where the sheep have been beat up all week. And so multitudes leave church every Sunday with the same meal they’ve gobbled down the rest of the week. They are told they are not performing up to standard and they need to try harder. Sadly many are so used to this, they think its normal.
But this ‘ah yes, you must also do…’ gospel has been sowed into the church for many decades and is beginning to yield its noxious fruit. It provokes two possible responses among the sheep who are exposed to it. And if you look around you’ll see the visages of both responses in the pews. The first response is inadequacy which tempts many to give up and ultimately to check out of church. The other is Pharisaical self-delusion which tempts many to more deeply check in to the competitive challenge of Christianity as they play the game of human righteousness.
INADEQUACY
Tender hearted believers react to the constant bombardment of commands by waving the white flag and checking out of serious involvement with Christianity or worse. Generally these are sheep who have had numerous struggles with indwelling sin and/or have a tender conscience. To them, the Christian faith has become a game at which they cannot win. They are told to pray, but they fall miserably short. They are to evangelize their neighbors daily, but have no idea how to start a conversation. They are to read their Bibles, listen to Christian podcasts, serve in the Church and be the best parents since the Duggars but they never seem to have the energy or the time. They re told to be friendly, well read, disciplined, timely, happy, trustworthy and faithful. But they know they have fallen short in every category. In times of crises they are told to smile while saying God is in control. Of course when the preacher gives examples of those who have run the race well it is always those missionaries who lost a child to smallpox or Jonathan Edwards. Sometimes they hear accolades from the pulpit about that super mom in the congregation who teaches Sunday School while juggling the needs of six kids, preparing healthy meals, packing her husband’s lunch, organizing women’s groups, visiting nursing homes, while still finding time to write notes of encouragement. Perhaps they are asked to look at sister Millie who never lost her temper, or brother Earl who somehow has memorized the entire book of Ephesians while holding down a high tech job. Bring all that pressure down to a very plebian mom who struggles to get out of bed in the morning, and has two active toddlers, and you have the perfect recipe for spiritual masochism. Day after day she beats herself up for every failure, and no matter how hard she tries she knows she will never win at the game, never lead a lady’s ministry, never be praised by the pastor. And when she manages to drag herself into church on a Sunday morning, beaten, wounded, confused, depressed and in pain, the only thing she hears is a message that could be summarized by ‘TRY A LITTLE HARDER.’
Extend this pattern out for several years and see what happens. The inevitable result is that people like this mom who know they have failed, and know they will never achieve the level of spirituality expected of them, begin to believe that God is only interested in high performers (for that subtle message hovers in the air), and slowly but surely her soul will begin to shrivel up. We see such sheep in our churches all the time, the hollow smile, the slumped shoulders, those repeated sighs of resignation and that secret desire to run out the nearest exit. And the tragedy is that there is no one around to help. The game is on and everyone is playing.
Oh sure, there is an attempt to help. But when others do try to help it always comes in the form of advice. ‘You should try this,’ which is just another variation of the message they have heard from the pulpit, and to their ears it sounds to them like ‘all you need to do is climb Mount Everest.’ Sometimes the well-intentioned help comes in the form of a Bible verse, a podcast, or a book recommendation. Sometimes quick prayers are given. But it is all the wrong medicine. Nothing helps. So the inadequacy and guilt remain despite the best efforts of the church to salve this poor bruised and aching conscience.
Churches are filled with such people. It is right to ask, “How did this happen?” As Protestants the hallmark of our theology is that salvation is the free gift of God in Jesus Christ and that there is nothing that stands in the way of any sinner from laying hold on the remedy…at no cost, no performance required. But there has been a subtle shift in the message that has severely obscured his clear vision of Christ. And that shift can be expressed by a subtle shift in the message that goes something like this: “Jesus saves you freely, this is true, and now you must live in such a such a way in order to validate your salvation.” In other words, faith has been discreetly redefined from being the empty hand receiving all the fullness of Christ without money and price, to a faith that drags along with it some act, some promise, some commitment on the part of the sinner to do better. In other words, law has snuck into the gospel through an unguarded side door. What was once free now demands the impossible. According to Paul this is no longer the gospel. And where there is no gospel there is no power. And when there is no power in the gospel then the power must find residence somewhere else, in human intention. When human intention is now the focus, it leaves behind a trail of despair and the grime of a guilty conscience. And when human intention tries to clean off the grime it only adds to the thick coat of mud and cleanses nothing.
PHARISAICAL SELF-DELUSION
Not all Christians respond to this modern gospel the same way. Many who find it rather easy to engage in self-justification find this gospel of high expectations to be a riveting challenge. They see the message in the same way that most Americans view life: play the game, work harder, exceed the opponents and be blessed. This new gospel message is understood as, “God gives us a free gift now it is up to us to produce a return on His investment.” And the way to get to the medal stand is by, of course, keeping the law. After all, the law is the only measurable component in the Christian faith. You can actually quantify your progress in the Christian life by the law. You can actually put your performance on a stat sheet and compare your stats with others. It feeds right into the American mindset and attracts a huge following. Like the Rich Young Ruler or the Pharisee in Luke 18, this group sees the Christian life as a new start by Christ’s death followed by a sincere effort to check all the moral boxes. And the Holy Spirit is the One helping them to do this. Of course.
One problem stands in the way of this approach, which those who buy into this model must address early on. Even with the help of the Holy Spirit one can never say he or she has kept the law perfectly. So if put on a scale of law-keeping, that person still falls short. This leads to cognitive dissonance, which demands a solution to the tension of wanting to obey God but knowing deep down that one has not. The tension is increased when the message from the pulpit feeds one’s need to excel. All those expectations listed earlier in this article now force the person who wants to play the game to find a way to assuage this tension. So what he does is invent a third category that enables him to live in a state of delusion. Some call it walking in the Spirit, some living above all known sin, some partial obedience, some Lordship Salvation. In his day Walter Marshall (The Mystery of Gospel Sanctification 1692) called it sincere obedience, for even back in his day this kind of quasi gospel was being preached. In other words, in order to play the game outlined by this quasi-gospel one must lower the standards of the law so that he feels capable of attaining to this newly created standard.
This paradigm of living the Christian life has two fatal flaws. The first is simply that there is no acceptance with God on any level except for perfection. No amount of holy Christian living (however that is defined) can in any sense bring one to glory. Only a life rooted in the completed work of Christ can save because it puts the soul on a firm standing that is completely independent of the quality of his life going forward. One is either in Christ or not in Christ and no amount of sincere obedience can change that identity.
A second problem is that even if one’s holiness of life could help improve one’s standing before God, then he is immediately confronted with two questions: “What exactly is holiness of life, and how does one measure it?” Ask any two Christians what holiness of life looks like and you will come up with two different answers. There are so many standards out there that one could go dizzy trying to analyze them. Is holiness rooted in keeping the commandments, evangelizing, being faithful to spiritual disciplines, generosity, involvement in the Christian community? What is it? No one knows.
But even if we could agree on what holiness looks like then we would have to ask; “How much holiness is acceptable to God?” In the long jump we can measure the distance jumped down to the millimeter. But can we do that with holiness? If the Bible is true and Christianity is really an internal reality more than anything external, then how does anyone know when someone is being sincerely obedient or not? And even if external acts are the measure then how many external acts are enough? How many hours of prayer? How many evangelistic encounters? How many works of charity? What universal measurement can gauge if they someone is really obeying enough? If you doubt the difficulty of this enterprise then earnestly endeavor to evaluate your every motive throughout the day and see how certain you can be of your level of holiness. It is impossible.
No matter how you slice it, those who try to play the holiness game in Christianity are bound to end up in the realm of self-delusion. Such people will undoubtedly think higher of themselves than they ought to think. Their focus in life will not so much be looking at Jesus as the Author and Perfecter of faith, but at their own performance. Eventually this will slowly descend into a mindset of superiority, arrogance, and a life focused more on their accomplishments than what Christ accomplished two thousand years ago. And they will always come up with a law or a standard that suits them, which is never the zero tolerance law of God.
CONCLUSION.
When the pulpit continually proclaims a message of ‘you must, you must, you must’ then the audience will invariably hear it as ‘I have to, I have to, I have to.’ This will inevitably lead to two very toxic responses. Some will realize they cannot meet the standard no matter how hard they try and so in one way or another they check out of the game altogether. They may leave church physically mentally or emotionally but in every case they leave even while remaining in the pew.
Many others see this gospel is a ripe opportunity to play the religion game and to excel their rivals by achieving the challenges issued from the pulpit. And so their lives consist in checking all boxes with the goal of bringing themselves up to the stature of favored acceptance by God.
No matter what the response, this quasi-gospel is always harmful to the sheep and to the church. And could we have expected anything different? For whenever we tamper with the gospel of God, ‘which is no other,’ we will eventually destroy the foundations of the faith and the church will invariably sink back into a human-centered religion. And then we lose the centrality of the cross altogether. It happened in the middle Ages and we needed a Reformation to reverse the slide into spiritual oblivion. Is it saying too much, given the preaching that we hear from American pulpits, to admit that we need a return to the everlasting gospel once more? That alone is God’s corrective for all the evil in the world.