Burden and Purpose (Or, In Which I Take a Shameless Cue from Nancy Leigh DeMoss)

What makes Faith Today tick? Why is it here? Why do I do what I do, as sporadically and falteringly and bumblingly as I do it?

Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Initially, this was going to be a permanent page on the side of the blog, right under "Doctrine." Since this is my online condominium I can do exactly as I please with it, and so if need be I may repost this there. But I decided this was too important to risk sidelining to a section many readers might not even notice.

I decided it would be a good idea to share with all of you why I am writing this blog, and to do that requires something of a history lesson wrapped within a (only seeming) rabbit trail.

In 2001, Nancy Leigh DeMoss founded Revive Our Hearts, a women’s radio ministry which was to succeed Elisabeth Elliot’s Gateway to Joy program. (ROH also functions as the women’s outreach of Life Action Revival Ministries, which Del Fehsenfeld founded in 1971 and with which Nancy has been closely involved in speaking, counseling, and revivalist capacities since 1980.) Having traveled extensively as a women’s conference speaker and women’s revival summit leader for several years, Nancy became increasingly concerned with the spiritual devastation gripping the lives of multitudes of professing Christian women who came to hear her speak. They were dissatisfied, demoralized, desperate, flirting with immorality, proud, frazzled, contentious, drained, depressed, resistant to God’s Word, enslaved to everything from food to shopping to memories of past sins, and more than a few were quite literally suicidal. 

They did not believe God, and they were in bondage.

While I have none of the graciousness, multudinous published books, or hard-won Biblical insight after 50 years of walking with Christ that Nancy does (and which makes her teaching ministry immensely attractive – or should – to men, as well), I too have an increasing burden as I watch the decline of American Christianity today. I, too, am extremely distressed at the unbelief, autonomy, Biblical illiteracy, carnality, pride, and resultant fruitlessness and spiritual devastation that haunts the vast majority of evangelical churches and ministries today.

I grieve for the teeming millions of evangelicals who have no idea they are lulled into spiritual lethargy, benighted immaturity, and mediocrity because everyone around them is similarly mediocre, carnal, and lethargic, so they have no idea anything is amiss. I am angered by the seemingly endless Christians who find themselves proudly indifferent to -- if not incensed by, and opposed to -- to the inflexible and all-consuming authority of Scripture; who resist having the confining weight of Biblical standards placed upon them, too blind to realize that therein is the only path to freedom; and who resent being expected to be and do anything higher because their weak preaching and insipid spiritual lives have never created a genuine brokenness or a longing for accountability and conformity to Christ’s narrow way…and who think they’re spiritual in doing it.

I am distressed at the theological culture which perceives discerning and Biblically-faithful people as killjoys, enemies, Pharisees, and basically all-around dreadful people who inexplicably have the audacity to insist -- worse, with anything approaching earnestness and force -- that professed Christians actually subordinate the entirety of themselves to the imperial authority of God through the Word. I am angry that vast numbers of evangelicals vilify and savage the motives and methods of such people, instead of doing such the carnality and unbelief they rightly expose, and from which they seek to sever us, that we might be even wholly captive to Christ.

I am disheartened at the dearth of truly Biblical preaching, replaced as it is with shallow, man-centered, topical, psychological pep talks which fail to grasp the depth of the heart of God and truly transform and break sinners. I am horrified at the seemingly endless willingness for virtually every stripe of spiritual harlotry to be aided and abetted by professed Christians, either attempting to use Scripture to do so, or simply asserting what they want to believe and do regardless of Biblical prohibitions.

And while I have not been around long enough to see the demoralized, drained, and depressed end-result, I know both from Scripture and sanctified common sense that it will indeed come, absent repentance.

To best understand the burden and purpose of Faith Today, I reached back into the hidden vaults of the Internet to find several articles Nancy wrote in the early days of Revive Our Hearts. I have tweaked these snippets just a tad, primarily in the pronouns, so that they might apply more readily to both men and women. However, I have yet to find a better non-inscripturated statement of the very thing I am attempting to do by creating this blog.

“Several years ago, God began birthing in my heart a vision for wide-spread personal and corporate revival and reformation among Christian men and women. I pray that God will use Revive Our Hearts to help that dream become a reality. Here, in a nutshell, is my burden for this ministry:

• To help Christians experience spiritual freedom and fullness through practically applying the Word of God to every area of their lives and relationships. To help them discover biblical answers to the root issues that keep them from being all God created them to be.
• To help Christians become spiritually fruitful.
• To call believers to a life of surrender, sacrifice, service, and Spirit-filled living—that they might be life-givers and instruments of revival in their homes, churches, and communities.
• To mobilize a "counter-revolution" of holy, humble, surrendered, thankful, praying Christians who will reflect to our world the wonder and the beauty of His heart and His ways—believers whose lives will advance His Kingdom and His redemptive purposes in the world.” (Source; emphases mine)

When asked what led her to take responsibility for ROH:

• A growing burden as I looked into the eyes and listened to the stories of thousands of Christians who are living defeated, barren lives and who are in perpetual bondage.
• An irresistible sense of the call of God to speak the Truth to believers and to call them to respond in surrender, obedience, and faith.

And, later in the same article, when asked what she hoped to accomplish with ROH:

I am believing God for genuine revival among Christians. I pray that He will raise up a movement of surrendered, trusting, joyful, wise, praying, fruitful disciples who will reflect the beauty of His ways in their homes, churches, and communities. (Source; italics mine)

I, too, pray that God uses this simple blog written by a flawed, frail kid to produce impossible reformation and revival within His people...especially me...as He gives me voice and platform to proclaim with bold, brokenhearted  authority His precious, transforming Word.

Amen.

Something More Important than Comfort

I have been involved with enough churches and Christian organizations – and known enough professing Christians – to have learned a few things.

One of the more incessantly interesting is the prevalence amongst said professing Christians to meet Divine commands with an arsenal of “buts” which are usually followed by what I call an autonomous bait and switch.

Take one of my favorites: “But I’m not comfortable with that.”

This has nearly endless applications and permutations. Often, whiny discussions of “boundaries” and whether one “feels” like doing something are not far behind.

I offer a representative, non-exhaustive list. To wit:

• Invite a new member family, otherwise unknown to you, over after the evening service for dinner, and so obey the commands to show hospitality without grumbling (1 Peter 4:9; Romans 12:13)? Or, befriend -- and remain friends with -- a fellow believer in obedience to the same, even when they rub you the wrong way, cross your will, and act like a jerk? “I’m not comfortable with that."
• Show physical affection to a fellow Christian, especially if you’re a man (Acts 20:37; 1 Corinthians 16:12)? “I’m not comfortable with that."
• Have an emotionally intimate, affectionate relationship with a fellow believer, especially if you're a man (2 Corinthians 6:11-13; 1 Thessalonians 2:7-8; Philippians 1:7-9; 2 Timothy 1:4, 4:9, 21)? "I'm not comfortable with that."
• Force yourself to engage with fellow Christians and your local Body, let people into your life, be vulnerable, confess sin, accept rebuke, be humble, sacrifice, serve (Hebrews 3:13, 10:26; Romans 15:7; James 5:16; 1 Peter 5:5; John 15:13; Galatians 5:13)? “I’m not comfortable with that.”
• Rebuke a fellow professed Christian for ongoing sin, which includes theological error (Luke 17:3)? “I’m not comfortable with that.”
• Graciously and intimately welcome a fellow Christian who struggles with sins different than yours (Romans 15:7)? “I’m not comfortable with that.”
• Oppose worldliness and embrace the Lordship of Jesus in your choices of dress, personal deportment, entertainment and music, political affiliation, consumption of alcohol, allegedly unimportant “secondary” matters of doctrine like the charismatic gifts and eschatology, and basically any other area about which some permissive believer – or the world – would pitch a hissy fit (Romans 12:1-2; 1 Corinthians 12:3; 1 John 2:15-17)? “I’m not comfortable with that.”
• Love other Christians devotedly, persistently and sacrificially no matter how flawed they are nor how messy, or how costly it is (Romans 12:9-10; Philippians 2:1-3; John 13:34; 1 Peter 4:9)? “I’m not comfortable with that.

And on it goes.

The problem with each of these examples is that they all make a fundamental, presuppositional error in judgment: They all assume that what the individual feels or desires is paramount, such that it even trumps direct statements from Scripture.

I doubt that such expostulations are consciously thought of as such. There are two reasons for this. The first is that there is a legitimate usage of wisdom and discretion. We are commanded in no uncertain terms to be wise and shrewd in our dealings in this life (Matthew 10:16). Obviously, not everything that can be done should be done. I am certainly not saying that a sense of foreboding is automatically or inherently wrong. Nor am I saying it is unimportant. Given the realities of a fallen world, as well as our own awareness (incomplete and biased though it be) of our own inadequacies, such hesitancy can at the least be understandable.

However, wisdom and discernment are gifts from the Lord (Proverbs 1:2-5, 2:3, 6; 1 Corinthians 12:10). If they are from Him, then natural they cannot conflict with what He has said in His Word. Indeed, “wisdom” in Scripture is the ability to live life skillfully in the fear of God – the skill to know how to navigate life as one relates all of it to the lordship of Christ expressed in His Word. It is skill in living out the reality of God being God and me being under His sovereign authority. As such, wisdom is a key component of – if not shorthand for – obedience to the revealed will of God. “Discernment” is to basically look at a thing and have insight into its nature and purpose, insight into how things are and how God says they are to be, to look at two things and to see what God sees (if I may allude to John Kitchen’s excellent definition from his commentary on Proverbs!). And so we must not say we are simply trying to be wise when in reality we are really disobeying Him.

The second reason is a bit more sinister, but it is the more basic and foundational.

We simply think we are the final authority.

It is the nature of fallen humanity to find comfort and delight in anything and everything devoid of God’s authority and under the reign of Self. This dogged tendency is slain and loses dominion but is not eliminated in the truly converted. After decades of a model Christian life, Paul could say in his flesh dwelt no good thing (Romans 7:23), and what was true for the revered apostle until death will be true of us as well.

I apply thusly: That God said a thing, whether directly or by inference, is not what matters to us. What matters to us – what is our deciding factor of whether we will obey or not, and thus in the end what is actually our authority and our God – is what we feel, desire, and think. And since we do not feel like obeying…since that would be messy and costly and revolutionary and tiring and hard, and would require more than a few minutes – in fact, would require no less than everything we have and are – since what we really do not feel comfortable with is exchanging our will and priorities and worldview for God’s…since we apparently think that professing to be Christians (which is to say, professing to be slaves under the authority of the God-Man Christ Jesus) should only have the impact on the details of our daily lives that we want it to have, and no more…we react to Divine injunctions with a “but” and a litany of excuses.

Which is to say we expect God and His imperial authority to bow before our precious felt needs, whims, and fancies.

Had I both the patience and experience to be a fulltime Biblical counselor, I would often wish to ask such people, “Jesus commands you point-blank to crucify yourself daily and follow Him [Luke 9:23]. He clearly has no compunctions about directly asking you to do something that is about as far from ‘easy,’ and ‘comfortable’ as can be. And you ask about boundaries? Jesus is asking you to slay your will, your preferences, your worldview, your perceptions, your wishes, your hopes, your dreams, your everything and exchange it all for His. I do not think He means to leave out your ‘boundaries.’

“So, seeing as He tells you to die to self…which isn’t comfortable in the least…and since He directly tells you something the very content of which is meant to comprehensively assault your comfort and ease…do you really think the rest of His commands and their grace-empowered, real-life, moment-by-moment obedience are going to be anything less? Do you really believe your unbroken will, multitudinous lusts and panicky rationalizations trump the authoritative Word of the sovereign God?"

Given what I know of the dark and unyielding corners of my own heart, I already know the answer.

And what is true for me is true for all of us, apart from daily, humble, intelligent surrender to the merciful and mighty presence of the Messiah.

Follow-up to "Believing God"

I came across this interview with Dan Phillips from a while back, and it is actually what prompted my previous post from today. I wanted to share it with you all because I think it perfectly underscores (and that succinctly!) the point I was trying to make. The italics are mine.

I praise God for His kindness in sending His dear Son to die on the Cross for His people, after perfectly living a life of believing obedience to the whole Word of God in our place. Thank God that we have the power to believe and the power to obey, won by the precious blood of the Incarnate King.

***

If you could pinpoint the main problem with evangelicalism today, what would it be and why?

Unbelief.

Since that word is so often misused, and it would be easy to misunderstand what I mean, let me unpack what I am saying. I mean that God tells us a great deal in the Bible, and professed evangelicals don’t really believe it. God tells us we are lost and hopeless and comprehensively ruined by sin, but we don’t think we’re really that bad off. God tells us that He is brilliantly holy and righteous, and may be approached only on His terms, yet we think we can negotiate. God tells us that His word is living, powerful and sufficient, yet we think we need to improve on it and pep up our presentations with other things that sideline the Word. We give pulpit time to things other than the warm, truthful, passionate exposition of His Word. God tells us that the Gospel must be preached purely and grasped resolutely, but we think we can barter off the unpopular bits. God tells us Christ is the celebrity of the universe, but we have others (or “re-envisioned” Christs) we find more congenial. That, and more.

So, what is the one word that sums up the state of affairs that obtains when God tells us something, but we do not really embrace, stand on, and respond to His words with trust and obedience?

Unbelief.

*** 

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope" (Romans 15:13 ESV, emphasis mine).

Believing God...or Maybe Not

One thing I have watched for years in American Christianity but could never put my finger on is the prevalence of unbelief.

By that, I mean that God has told us all sorts of things in His inerrant, infallible, verbally-inspired Word (and yes, that means I have already lost some of you academics), and multitudes of professed Christians: (A) Do not believe that God actually said a given thing, whether by denying the inerrancy of Scripture or forcing a prefabricated theology into the text; or (B) believing that God indeed said it, but that they are (inexplicably and inconsequentially) excused from believing and living accordingly.

One would think in a nation where the English Bible is shamefully available that such unvarnished stupidity would be rare, that it would be the hallmark of only the truly Biblically illiterate, or blatantly obvious apostates.

However, self-and-oft-proclaimed evangelicals are more than capable of such arrogant, autonomous disregard for the Holy Text. To wit, I offer a non-exhaustive, representative list:

God says that He created the world in six literal, twenty-four hour days (Genesis 1-2; cf. Exodus 20:11, 31:17), but believing that would make me look like a fundamentalist/what about all of the scholarship that disagrees/I’ll look like a cult member/why does the universe look so old/a literal reading of Genesis doesn’t matter.

God says speaking in tongues is the ability to give inerrant revelation in unlearned, actual, identifiable human dialects, and that Holy-Spirit given tongues must only be exercised one at a time and must always be accompanied by translation (Acts 2; cf. 1 Corinthians 12:10, 14:21-22, 27-28), but maybe there’s another gift of tongues/private prayer languages don’t have to be interpreted/you’re just quenching the Spirit through unbelief!/Paul talks about tongues of angels/I know I’ve spoken in tongues because I’ve experienced it/insert some other claim to exercise a gift of the Holy Spirit which allows it to look absolutely nothing like anything the New Testament describes, despite the Holy Spirit inspiring the very verses it contradicts.

God says He unconditionally elected a vast number of souls to salvation from all eternity, apart from any foreseen faith or anything outside His own will (Acts 13:48; Romans 9; Ephesians 1:4, 11; 2 Thessalonians 2:13), but what about free will/that’s so unfair/I don’t know that God/that stifles evangelism/it doesn’t really matter because it’s just a big mystery.

God says everything Paul writes is Scripture and a command of the Lord (2 Peter 3:15-16; 1 Corinthians 14:37; cf. John 16:12-15; 2 Peter 3:2), but the red letters are the only really important ones/Paul was wrong/insert some other claim that totally invalidates the reality of Paul’s apostolic authority and verbally-inspired writings, and Jesus’ authorization of both.

God says the instrument of the believer’s justification, not its ground or cause, is repentant faith alone apart from any works and that this is the dividing line between a true and false gospel (Romans 3-4, Luke 18:9-14), but what about James/that’s antinomianism/that leads to false security and carnality/insert some other rationalization which spits on Jesus’ plain words here.

God says an integral part of saving faith is surrender to the sovereign and comprehensive Lordship of Jesus; salvation necessitates turning away from sin and unbelief to turn toward a humble, loving, and submissive devotion to and complete dependence on the Lord Jesus alone for salvation; that there is no distinction between a Christian and a disciple; and that genuine Christians must and will persevere in personal faith and holy living until they meet the Lord in Heaven as the holiness without which no one will see the Lord; and that as such this is another dividing line between a true and false gospel (Matthew 28:18, Colossians 1:21-22; John 8:31-32; Romans 10:13, 11:22; ) but that’s for a different dispensation/that’s adding works to salvation/submission is adding something to saving faith/Christians can be carnal/the Bible never says Christians will persevere/the fruit might not be visible to anyone else/GRACE!!!!!/ insert some other example of stubbornly poor exegesis and bad theology here.

God says women are not supposed to be pastors (1 Timothy 2:11-14, 3:1-2), but that’s just cultural/Paul didn’t really write those letters/Paul was wrong/that’s misogynistic and evil/what about women who have a calling/the wider culture will think we’re insane.

God says genuine masculinity has nothing to do with bravado, an obsession with sports, a rejection of emotional intimacy and physical affection, and lack of verbal communication but with reflecting Christlikeness (Galatians 5:20-22) and which expressly includes tenderness, vulnerability, intimacy and passion (Acts 20:37-38; 1 Corinthians 11:1; Matthew 11:28; Philippians 1:7), but guys shouldn’t say they miss each other/it’s weird for guys to hug/what will my wife think/what will my pastor think/insert some American and non-Biblical view of masculinity here, often without even a token attempt to support such from Scripture.

God says that love normatively includes deep emotions and a profound heart attachment (Romans 12:10; Philippians 1:7-8; 1 Peter 1:22; 2 Peter 1:7; cf. the negative example in Jeremiah 8:2), but love isn’t an emotion/love is an act of the will to do good things for someone/God would never command emotions/God doesn’t care about how I feel/insert some banal stupidity about having to love other Christians but not like them.

God says that love includes verbal and physical affection, devotion, emotional yearning and intimacy, and sacrificial commitment despite the messiness of relationships (Romans 12:10; 2 Corinthians 6:11-13, 7:2; Galatians 4:19; Philippians 2:25-26, 4:1; 1 Thessalonians 2:7-8, 17-20, 3:10-13; Titus 3:15) but I’m exempt because I’m a man/the Bible doesn’t really speak to relationships/that’s inconvenient and messy/that’s for a different level of relationship/I’m not called to that/that isn’t the way I show love/what will my wife or husband think/that violates my boundaries.

God says the Bible is sufficient to meet all the believer’s spiritual needs and contains everything we need for life and godliness (Acts 20:32; 2 Peter 1:3; 2 Timothy 3:16-17) and that we are complete in Christ (Colossians 2:9) with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3) and the pathway to fullness of blessing and joy is believing obedience to the revealed Word of God (John 15:5-11, 16:12-14, 23-24, 17:17; 1 Peter 3:8-13) but the Bible isn’t really enough/psychology speaks to the mind and the Bible speaks to the soul/biblical counseling is simplistic/the means of grace aren’t enough/how can you help people with mental illnesses?

God says rejection of another believer or even holding them at arms’ length is sin and rooted in selfishness (Romans 15:7; Philippians 2:3-4), but I have to have my boundaries/I’m doing it out of love for them/I have a right to what I want/those verses don’t apply to this relationship.

God says that His inerrant Word is to be the standard and control for everything we think, say, believe, feel, and do (Jeremiah 8:8-9; Psalm 119:118, 128,142, 150-151, 160; 1 Timothy 6:3; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; Titus 2:15; Matthew 5:18; cf. 2 Chronicles 20:6; Matthew 28:18), and thus that we are supposed to test everything including our perceptions and assumptions by His Word or else have a false and distorted view of reality, but the Bible isn’t sufficient/there are grey areas/I don’t agree with your interpretation/insert some arrogant rationalization by appealing to some contrary authority while still claiming to believe in Biblical authority.

And finally:

God says to respond to His Word with anything other than comprehensive, heartfelt, believing obedience and submission is to respond with a stiff neck and the height of arrogance (Psalm 119:21, 85; cf. Proverbs 16:5), but God wants a broad perspective/we have to hold our positions with humility and not dogmatism/there is so much we don’t know/humans are finite and see through a glass darkly/there just has to be a center of core truths and then nothing else matters/insert some story that smugly lambasts those bigoted and small-minded fundamentalists, ironically proving my point.

God says to dither or be ambivalent or apathetic towards any of His Word, once understood, is to disobey and disbelieve Him and thus be chastened accordingly (e.g., note Jeremiah’s example in Jeremiah 13:1-2; cf. Psalm 119:60, 128, 158), but I don’t agree with your interpretation/where is grace in that?/that’s the attitude of someone who confines God to a book/insert some rationalization that presupposes God is perfectly okay with Christians waiting to believingly obey Him until it is not sacrificial or they feel like it.

As a graduate of a professedly evangelical undergraduate institution, I wish I could say being surrounded by educated professing Christians all day meant I never heard these kinds of flimsy dodges, rationalizations, and attempts at intellectual autonomy.

Alas, no.

Many of the above responses to these Biblical claims are ones I actually heard from fellow students and even faculty (especially faculty, who were often the worst culprits), either to these or similar statements. Such is the beauty of rationalizing away our responsibility to obey Jesus. Most of our excuses work on more than one uncongenial command.

The problem underlying all of these excuses is simple. Each categorically, silently presupposes that the Christian life is a process of negotiation, and that individual Christians have a note from God which excuse them (but only them) from having to do or believe all sorts of things they don’t like. How such a note can be from the Lord yet blatantly contradict His Word -- and how professed believers can seriously think the Christian life is a democracy, not a master-slave relationship -- is rather conveniently not even considered.

Also, notice not one objection intelligently and cogently deals with the Biblical assertion. It merely presupposes that the Biblical assertion is wrong because it crosses the objector’s will, and an alternative course, consisting of mere gainsaying and rationalization of disobedience, is chosen.

I find all of this quite sad.

We live in an evangelical culture where unbelief and autonomy are so profoundly entrenched that anyone who dares to stand against it on the authority of the inerrant written Word alone is perceived as a threat, as an intruder, as opposition that mist be quelled and dealt with, often with the fervor of people who think their sin is really what God wants (with mangled Bible verses to prove it).

 

There are only two ways to live: God's way, or our own. Knowing and following His way comes from an intimate and submissive relationship with His precious Word in all areas of life and leads to salvation, fullness, and blessing. Anything contrary to that, then, is our Own way" -- our default, which dishonors Him and exalts self, and leads to damnation, emptiness, and cursing (Numbers 15:39; Psalm 73:27, 119:128, 130; Proverbs 2:13, 3:32, 11:3, 20; 13:13, 14:2, 15:10, 16:20, 21:8, 1 Timothy 6:3; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; cf. Proverbs 16:18). It is from our own way that we were delivered (Isaiah 53:6) so that we might come under God's power and kingdom (Acts 26:18, Colossians 1:13), which is decisively opposed to the current world system of unbelief and autonomy (John 18:36).

As Christians, we profess to have made a fundamental, foundational, life-altering commitment to the authority of Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:3). This authority is mediated to us through His Word because the Word is how God speaks to His people. As such, any person who rejects the right of Christ to rule over him en toto is clearly not a believer, whatever he might claim.

However, numerous professed Christians reject the right of Christ to rule over them in specific areas of theology or practice -- and such is considered a mark of noble spiritual maturity. Of not being legalistic and narrow-minded and restrictive. We’re free in Christ! Grace! Mercy! We don’t want to be angry fundamentalists! And so on. They never actually deal with the Text. They simply assume its obvious interpretation is wrong because such would cost them, entail repentance and humility and submission and death to self, exchanging their will and way of thinking for that of God’s, and allowing Him to settle in ever more comprehensively as the sovereign Lord of every part of their lives…and all of that is just too messy and difficult and painful and hard.

Which is the nuanced, dishonest, and polite way of saying, “I just don’t really care about obeying Jesus; I will fight anyone who has the gall to hold me accountable to my professed embracing of the Bible and the lordship of Jesus; and His commands don’t really apply to me because I’m really the one in control.”

This means it is also the nuanced, dishonest, and polite way of pushing Jesus off of the throne of your heart and life and settling down upon it yourself, scepter and crown firmly in place.

The Bride With a Broken Back

I have something to say.

That will not come as any sort of surprise to people who know me, since I usually talk a lot and write even more! (I once remarked to a pastor friend that I possessed the spiritual gift of long-windedness. Being a preacher, he had the same outpouring, and was honest enough to admit it.)

It is difficult, however, to always know precisely how to say a given thing, even if (usually especially if) the thing is immensely important. One might imagine such a case would be rare for the man who graduated with a BA in English but, alas, no.

Here’s my point: The Bride of Christ in America is trying to function with a broken back. She is paralyzed by unbelief.

I suppose I have, in one way or another, known this was the case as long as I have been a Christian. Even before that, during my messy early teenage years, I was unusually sensitive to theological issues within the wider Body of Christ that to some extent continue to be issues of concern today -- I just didn’t know their root cause, or how to address the problems even if I did.

From the time of my conversion in my senior year of high school until now, I would...notice things. Things that bothered me, things that concerned me, things that I knew were unbiblical and thus sinful but couldn’t really explain or concretely identify. Perhaps most pivotal in this regard was the time I spent as an undergraduate student at an extremely high-profile and academically rigorous -- and benightedly self-proclaimed “evangelical” -- institution in the Southeastern US. To say that I generally found my interactions with students and faculty, including the several in both groups to whom I became close, equal parts vibrantly exhilarating and blatheringly dumbfounding, would be axiomatic.

I underwent a reasonably significant theological sea change while away at school; I transitioned from the doctrinally conservative but minimalist high school senior to the theologically-informed, very conservative, forceful, more spiritually mature post-undergrad I am currently. There are many reasons for this, though the ultimate and most obvious is that I was repeatedly and submissively exposed to Scripture at my local church, and was then forced to proclaim and defend that near-constantly at school.

That in itself was admittedly eye-opening for me. Coming from a public school background as I did, where I was one of only three or four believers, I was eager to be whisked away to what I thought was a place where I could be secure, welcomed, affirmed, and grow. Well, I certainly did grow. And I was secure and so forth on an individual level, among my friends. But to be quite honest, I hadn’t the foggiest idea that evangelicalism was such a profound wreck until I entered what was ostensibly a mainstream evangelical institution.

The anecdotes I have to confirm this are literally almost endless. There was the time I couldn’t finish writing a paper in the library during my sophomore year because a group of students (including one of the men who would be my RA during my senior year) decided to break out into the laughing revival on the first floor, right smack in front of the staircase, distracting everyone and without a soul rising to shut them up (or, as I would have done, politely asked where in Scripture God ever commanded believers to thrash on the floor like crack-infused hyenas to cries of “More, Lord, more!”).

There was the video produced by friends of mine during senior year that contained snippets from students about how God spoke to them, and interestingly not one student that I recall mentioned anything remotely like the most obvious answer: The Bible.

There were the numerous professors who categorically denied inerrancy, and the dozens of others who enabled and covered for them by shrilly proclaiming inerrancy was not a fundamental of the faith, or that the school was supposed to have a broad spectrum of views, or that the school didn’t require instructors to hold to inerrancy (only infallibility or the generically-titled “authority” of Scripture -- without bothering to explain how a non-inerrant text could be considered authoritative in any meaningful sense, or how they could hold to Biblical authority when denying its very claims about itself).

I still remember when I had to explain to a professor friend of mine, an exceptionally bright man with multiple advanced degrees, what the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy was. Or the time I had to explain to a new professor, from 1 Corinthians 15, how a person couldn’t deny the virgin birth or inerrancy and still be saved, because they were implied in the broader statements Paul was making there. (He was not convinced.) I remember the toxic levels of bitterness and invective hurled towards cessationists, often because the faculty or students did not stop to consider that one of them was sitting right there, not unlike how white supremacists cut loose with the N-word when they think they’re among friends. I remember how one theology professor would openly slander Calvinism during class lectures and of course not one student (except for me, the token Calvinist) would speak up, because not one student had any real theological grounding or exposure; they had no idea what they were being taught wasn’t true.

I have literally dozens of stories, from conversations with professors to reading papers as a coach at the college’s writing center, to overhearing things friends or colleagues said when they thought I wasn’t listening. Classroom lectures, long talks during office hours with a favorite instructor and best friend, quotes I still remember from textbooks, dreadful things I can’t forget from the mercifully few times I ever dared to waste time at the chapel services…I kept my eyes and ears open. I kept my nose in my Bible and good Christian books. I prayed nonstop.

And I learned.

And the main thing I learned was that the root problem, behind all of these errant comments and bad practice and things that everyone, without question or reflection, accepted to be true, was one thing: Unbelief.

I do not mean that the people I met were not Christians. I have no reason to question the salvation of essentially everyone I met while away at school. Rather, I mean this: God has spoken, unequivocally and clearly in His Word. This is not something one needs a Th.D. to understand. He has spoken, and He did not stutter, and He expects (and desires!) to be heard, believed, and obeyed.

The problem I found at my college was that basically everyone I met, on some level, recognized that God has spoken, and simply chose to not believe what He said.

Certainly, it is a bit more complicated than that -- in fairness, most of the people to whom I refer would probably quite vigorously say they are in fact believing God, that their interpretations of Scripture are just different (read: less stringent) than mine. To an extent, that is true. But I would wager that their interpretations are different precisely because they are not believing God’s Word.

Take the foundational premise I alluded to above: the authority of Scripture. Anyone with two synapses to rub together can see the Bible:

• is the final authority for God's people in everything they believe and do (Deuteronomy 32:47; Proverbs 13:13, 16:20; John 12:47-49; 1 Corinthians 2:10-16);

• is without any error or contradiction in the original manuscripts on all matters to which it speaks (Psalm 119:142,151,160; John 10:35, 17:17);

• must be the control and filter for the believer's thinking (1 Corinthians 14:37; 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21);

• asserts the by-definition, unilateral, unconditional, and lifetime duty of believers to mark themselves off as slaves and submissive learners of Jesus by conforming every area of their lives to His Word, knowing intimately His truth, persevering therein, and thusly being continually set free from the corruption of unbelief, autonomy, and bondage (John 8:31-32; cf. Matthew 28:19; Colossians 3:16; 1 Timothy 6:3-4); and

• is completely sufficient to address any spiritual need of any person in any age (2 Timothy 3:15-17).

See? That isn’t a matter of interpretation, much less a secondary or unimportant issue: That is the blatant, unvarnished, obvious teaching of Scripture. If words mean anything remotely intelligible, there is no way for an honest interpreter to get around this.

The problem, however, is that many of the people I met simply did not believe this. I in part blame the kind of scholarship they were exposed to as a reason, but even apart from that, when I talked to people, they simply did not believe some or all of those things. The reasons varied: perhaps those were just one interpretation of the passages cited; perhaps they were simply ignorant and untaught; perhaps they had become too intellectual and divorced their faith from their scholarship, leading to deplorable theology; perhaps they simply strained their ears to listen for the inward voice of the Holy Spirit and did not need to concern themselves with “theological minutiae,” since after all cessationism was worldly and functional deism by confining God to a book.

And yet…and yet…

What else do you call it when there is a clear, authoritative, binding, inerrant word from the Living God (which is to say: any word from God), and, for whatever surface reason and however sincerely or humbly or politely, it is not believed?

Unbelief.

Professed Christians today are in a predicament. They gladly name the name of Christ, yet do not know, or do not believe, that the definition of a Christian is one who has savingly yoked themselves to the Lordship of Christ, to learn from and relate to Him as Lord in every area of life -- and that the most fundamental element of that yoking is to understand, own and embrace the authority of His Word in all things. That many believe and live in direct contradiction to that claim, and do so without realizing it, is the root problem not only of every theological and practical problem within American Christianity, but in the personal lives of millions of people as well.

Over the next weeks, we will explore in some detail these issues, examine what the Scriptures have to say, and hopefully find a cure.

And I have it on good authority that there most certainly is (cf. Zechariah 1:3; Joel 2:12; Matthew 3:2; Acts 20:23; Romans 8:13, 15:13).

“Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight…the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Proverbs 9:6, 10, ESV).