It’s Table Turning Season

Do you feel like you’re swimming in sludge? Or is it just me. Being part of the Bride of Christ has been challenging of late. I know this is a topic I write about a lot. And that's obviously because I care about it a lot. So you can expect me to bang this drum a little longer. Feel free to cover your ears and close your computer. Or perhaps engage this with me.

The modern church has taken a beating in recent years. And by the church I’m talking about the western American/Canadian church. Because let’s be real, the global church takes actual beatings every single day with real persecution and threats of real persecution. While us soft folks in the west fight about how comfy our pews are and how masks during a pandemic make us feel less free.

For a very long time the church in the west has experienced nothing but affluence and freedom. That is until the pandemic caused us to worship in a new way. And then most of us lost our minds. During quarantine and after, Christians have demonstrated some of the worst examples of trust in the Lord.

And perhaps you have noticed - like I have - that a moral-veil was lifted within the pressure cooker walls of the pandemic. While all our blood pressure was high and our good critical thinking low. In fact the time we’re still in now. In the midst of this season we’ve watched and heard stories of great Christian moral failure both current and in recent history. And it has only added more spiritual heartache to these already tense times. The testimony of the western church has taken a beating. Our faith has proven to be pretty flimsy.

Here in Canada the discoveries of Indigenous children's bodies outside old residential schools rocked the country. It was horrific and awful and put a red target on every church in our Bible belt town. And how could it not? We can blame the government and other denominations all we want. But those institutions stole children from their families and then sent them to learn about Christ. And because of that, the testimony of the Canadian church is now linked to that atrocity and mishandling of the gospel.

In January we watched in horror when people with Jesus and confederate flags stormed the capitol building in America. They broke down windows and doors and then prayed when they got in. It was embarrassing. Seeing misled Christians fight for worldly power through anger and force was not just a small stain on an otherwise clean record of holiness for the western church. But yet another blotch of privileged hypocrisy. And for anyone on the fence about whether or not they should follow Jesus, this was the final nail in the coffin. Splashed all over the news, it was the most pertinent testimony of the American gospel.

We also heard about the disgusting moral failings of a dearly loved apologist, Ravi Zacharias. It shocked and disturbed us. As it should. I personally felt duped and stupid for platforming a wolf. Those he debated were jointly vindicated of their godless beliefs as the revelation made for a thunderclap final win to the other side of his debates. That is the testimony of Jesus through the hypocritical life of Ravi now.

But those aren't the only stories of failure we’ve endured. In recent months Christianity Today has put out the podcast, the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, and those of us who are listening (which is a whole lot of us) are being confronted with the very real truth that narcissistic leaders are running rampant in our church’s. Spiritual abuse has been our strategy and arrogance the proof of “vision”. Many have spoken out, and few have listened. Many more leaders will fall, but not before more spiritual damage has been done. Mark Driscoll is not some anomaly, he’s just the one who got a podcast dedicated to him. This is the testimony of the modern protestant church.

All of this has pushed to the forefront an #exvangelical movement like no other. Deconstruction of the faith abounds, as the hypocrisy of it all leaves an after-taste too much to bare for young people in the faith. And can you blame them? The church that should be known by our love, is now known more by our hate. Our arrogance. Pride.

Sin!

Is this mic on?! We have a problem here!

Can we finally do some soul-searching? Because something has gone terribly wrong. I’m no historian, but it’s obvious that over the last 100 plus years, in our affluent freedom we’ve believed some western anti-gospel lies about our own deeply eastern-rooted faith. More individuality, less community. More self-adjulation, less honor. More personal rights and freedoms, less self-sacrifice. It’s not just the prosperity gospel folks who’ve believed an American-dream Christianity. It’s all of us.

We've democratized our faith and mingled Christ with an individualist Western ideology. This marriage has spat out a sanctimonious over-politicized Christianity, with many church leaders leading the way, and failing.

The much more astute Nancy Pearcey speaks about it in her book Total Truth. She writes,

In the second Awakening [19th century United States ], church authority itself was denounced as "tyranny". Many began to argue that the American Revolution was not yet complete. We have cast off civil tyranny, they said, now we need to cast off ecclesiastical tyranny. The priesthood of all believers was taken to mean religion of the people, by the people, and for the people.

This assault on authority and learning was part of a general "democratization of truth", says historian Gordon Wood. The concept of "unalienable rights" was transferred from the political realm to the realm of ideas, where it meant the right of ordinary people to think as they pleased without deferring to the judgements of the well-bred and well-educated. As a result, "Americans of the Republic experienced an epistemological crisis as severe as any in their history," Wood writes. Truth itself seemed to be shattered, and everything was left to the individual - the voter, the buyer, the religious believer - to make decisions strictly on his own.

Unfortunately, many evangelicals were caught up in the same "epistemologist crisis." They absorbed the American ethos, and in some respects even led the way to an anti-authoritarian, anti-historical, individualistic out-look - which, as we will see, had devastating consequences for the Christian mind.

The consequences of marrying the American spirit with the Christian faith as spoken above has no doubt led to the current individualistic spirituality we find today. It leads to a people platforming brash and bold characters whose perceived strength makes them unwilling to apologize when they fail. And it leads to a church that is defined by a collection of individuals who stubbornly reject wisdom from the educated and rebuke from their leaders.

Because the answer to the problem of failed leaders is not to abolish all leadership. It is not to ignore the authorities that have been laid out for us in Scripture ( Romans 13:1, Hebrews 13:17). We ought to uphold the experienced, educated and humble in their field. Honor them well and seek to live counter-culturally in community with others. All so that we don't create superstar leaders out of people we don't know. Allowing their voices to carry more weight than the flesh and blood leaders and friends around us.

Since the third day in the garden, God has been calling His people to repent. Almost every single prophet in the Old Testament was sent to call the people of God to repent. Not the pagans - but Israel. Paul's entire ministry was setting up churches and then regularly reminding them to stay faithful to the gospel. And it was Paul who said, What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside (1 Cor 5:12-13). Yet this is what we've been guilty of doing for decades. It has never been the job of christians to judge outsiders and its also never been our job to grip desperately for societal control and power as we've seen displayed in the church.

As Russell Moore says in his book, The Courage To Stand,

We clamor for the kind of power the world can recognize, while ironing the very power of God that comes through Christ and him crucified. We trade away the Sermon on the Mount for influence and access because the Sermon on the Mount seems weak and surrendering. And through it all we demonstrate what we really care about - the same power and self-leverage this age values. We think if only we were more aggressive and dominant and powerful then we might not be victimized. We might win, like Thor, instead of lose, like Jesus.

We’ve always wanted to fight power in order to get power. It’s what the people of God wanted when the incarnation took place. Except Jesus arrived on a donkey and died on a cross. And His victorious resurrection was to give us life, so that we may bring life to others. Serve the lowly, share the good news and love our enemy. His ways have never been our ways.

With a faith that places moral expectation on us, we ought to expect tough scrutiny from the world around us. And when we (as the church) fail - which we most certainly will do - or when histories of harmful pasts come to light - the response ought never be an intellectual defence or excuse. It must always be as the great John Newton said, “I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great Saviour” - we have fallen short of the glory of God. Full stop.

1 John 1:7-9, But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Too long we’ve been pointing our finger at the world and not addressing the sin within. But church, it’s table-turning season (Matthew 21:12-17)! And we should welcome it with remorse. Wear it like the red letter A that it is. We have been an adulterous bride, cheating on the One we claim to love and fear. We cheat with politics and money and clout and bigger auditoriums.

The church - a den of robbers. We’re no better than the Pharisees. Let the tables turn wildly in our faces.

Perhaps by God's mercy, what’s happening now is the Holy Spirit has sent a spiritual wind of reckoning to our doorstep. And we will either kill our sacred cows and lament or fight hard to continue life as usual. Perhaps this onslaught of spiritual failure is being uncovered, so that we will open our eyes to it and see our own spiritual failure. Our own negligence to keep 2 Timothy 2:23-24, Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.

May we swim in the sludgy mess we created and drop our pride, our rocks, our excuses and receive the criticism we deserve, even from the outsiders we don’t like. Then humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God and be more like Him - Gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love (Psalm 145:8).

Let us be willing to die on a politically charged cross, sacrificing all our individual rights so that all may live.