Category: Evangelism

Tim Keller is a big name in Pop Christianity. He Pastors a large Church in NYC. With popularity, comes influence. Keller recently wrote something on evangelism that I think merits a close look.

Tim Bayly brought this to my attention and he took his own shot at this but in reading his insights I decided to have a go at this myself.

Dr. Keller was asked,

“Religion-less Spirituality” (How do you reach people who think church is the problem, not the answer?)

In the blockquotes below I will give part of Dr. Keller’s response. Keller’s full response can be accessed here,

Click to access Religionless%20Spirituality.pdf

I want to make it clear that some of what Keller says is thoughtful and commendable. However, some aspects of what Keller says is quite bad.

Second, we must demonstrate the difference between religion and the gospel in our deeds—how we embody the gospel in our community and service. Even more than Marx, Jesus condemned religion as a pretext for oppression: “If you only greet your brothers, what do ye more than others?” (Matt. 5:47). Lesslie Newbigin makes the bold case that Christianity is a better basis for true tolerance of opposing beliefs than any other religion or even secularism. Saved only by grace, Christians true to the gospel will not feel superior to those with whom they differ. This must be more than rhetoric. Only
when Christians non-condescendingly serve the poor, only when Christians are more firm yet open to their opponents will the world understand the difference between religion and the gospel.

First, Keller tries to make the case that religion is bad while the Gospel is good. This is an unfortunate distinction because religion is an inevitable category. Keller would have been better served by make the distinction between true religion and false religion. True religion is the outgrowth of the true gospel. False religion is the outgrowth of false religions. Keller’s emphasis on the Gospel is good, but to suggest that the true gospel doesn’t create true religion is misguided.

Second, Keller is correct in saying that “Christians true to the gospel will not feel superior to those with whom they differ.” However, that is not the same as saying that Christians will not believe that Christianity is superior to the faith systems of those with whom they differ. This is a necessary observation since we must steer away from the idea that all faiths are equally good. While Christians understand they are but sinners saved by grace, they also understand that unless those who are not Christians convert they will be eternally lost. Our whole desire to see people converted communicates the idea that Christians do believe that Christianity is superior to whatever faith system the unbeliever is involved in.

Therefore we must say that Newbigin’s observation is not completely correct. I think it would be better to say that Christianity is a better basis for true sympathy of opposing beliefs than any other religion. However, it is precisely because Christians are sympathetic to opposing beliefs, having lived under the oppression of false faith systems, that they are so intolerant of opposing faith systems. This opposition is not based on a sense of superiority, as if Christians believe they are made out of better dirt then non-Christians, but rather their intolerance is born of love for God and love for people caught in the slavery and bondage of false belief systems.

Finally, on this score Christians should serve the poor, as Keller suggests, but never at the expense of calling those who are poor, because of their wicked faith system to repentance. Impoverishment is not always the result of false faith system but there are many times that it is.

While Christians are not superior to other, Christianity is superior and being superior it should be intolerant of all faith systems that seek to overthrow Christianity.

We will be careful with the order in which we communicate the parts of the faith. Pushing moral behaviors before we lift up Christ is religion.

Keller needs to be asked here exactly what he means by this statement.

First, if he means that one can’t be saved by becoming moral he is exactly correct.

Second, when Keller speaks of the order in which we communicate the parts of the faith, it has been often understood that communicating the faith begins with the Character of God. The Gospel starts with the Character of God with the hopes that people will see their sin in light of God’s holiness so that they may repair to Christ. So, while we would never push moral behavior, in the sense that of telling people that if they become morally better God will accept them, we do realize that before we lift up Christ, we must articulate the character of God and this often leads to people seeing their moral turpitude.

Second, if people don’t see their sin — something connected with the realization in the awakened sinner of their moral failure — why would they be interested in the lifting up of Christ? Dr. Keller must answer the question as to why people would desire a lifted up Christ if they do not see themselves as sinners full of moral failures? Indeed, so clearly must this moral failure of sinners in light of God’s justice and holiness be communicated that we shut the door to the idea that the moral failure of our listeners can be eliminated in any way but the fleeing of sinners to a lifted up Christ.

Now, certainly we must lift up Christ as the answer to people’s awakened conscience, but it is difficult to see how consciences are awakened apart from people seeing their moral failures. Now, we can certainly speak in generics about how sin is offense and rebellion against God’s majesty, but when we start getting into the concrete it is not just generic sin that people are guilty of. People are guilty of violating God’s moral law, and part of Gospel preaching is concretely exposing sin.

So, I agree that moral failure rectified by moral improvement would be the improper order of communicating the faith, but I do not agree that the proclamation of the moral failure of the sinner, in light of the grandness of God, is something that is to be communicated after Christ is lifted up in our proclamation. Such an approach would be obtuse.

The church today is calling people to God with a tone of voice that seems to confirm their worst fears. Religion has always been outside-in-“if I behave out here in all these ways, then I will have God’s blessing and love inside.” But the gospel is inside-out-“if I know the blessing and grace of God inside, then I can behave out here in all these ways.”

I guess Keller and I are listening to different voices. I don’t hear the Church speaking with any tone that confirm people’s worst fears. The tone I hear the Church speaking with is a tone that communicates to aliens and strangers to the covenant is that all is well and there is no reason to fear God. I hear the Church using the tone of recruitment and not the tone of repentance.

Now, I agree with Keller that the Church would be in grave error if it was communicating to people that if they just clean themselves up God will accept them. But is that really what is happening?

I’m sorry I just can’t help but hear Keller saying that he doesn’t want to deal with the problem of people as sinners until they are Christians. Keller seems to be saying that once people become Christian then we can begin to deal with their sin nature and sin behavior. Does this make sense? Now certainly, once people flee to Christ we have need to continue to deal with the sin nature and sinful behavior, just as we have to deal with it in ourselves every day of our lives, but to suggest that moral behavior is something that is only dealt with after we lift up Christ is curious, to say the least. However, such an approach does have the distinct advantage of offering a Gospel that has no offense.

A woman who had been attending our church for several months came to see me. “Do you think abortion is wrong?” she asked. I said that I did. “I’m coming now to see that maybe there is something wrong with it,” she replied, “now that I have become a Christian here and have started studying the faith in the classes.” As we spoke, I discovered that she was an Ivy League graduate, a lawyer, a long-time Manhattan resident, and an active member of the ACLU. She volunteered that she had experienced three abortions. “I want you to know,” she said, “that if I had seen any literature or reference to the ‘pro-life’ movement, I would not have stayed through the first service. But I did stay, and I found faith in Christ. If abortion is wrong, you should certainly speak out against it, but I’m glad about the order in which you do it.”

First, note Keller’s use of euphemisms. The woman in this story, “experienced three abortions” as if she was the victim. Someone experiences ‘rape’ or experiences being beaten but one doesn’t normally experience abortion apart from self infliction.

Second, opposition to abortion as communicated by sitting out pro-life literature can hardly be thought to be an insistence that people have to become moral before God will accept them. In my estimation it sounds as if Keller is using conversion stories in order to defend his methodology. This is never a good idea for by such reasoning any methodology can be justified. This is the same type of reasoning that Charles Grandison Finney used to justify his methodology. It basically reduces down to, “people have gotten saved by how we do things therefore how we do thing must be correct.” Now, Keller’s reasoning is wrapped up in a much more urbane and sophisticated language but it is the same reasoning that Finney used to justify the anxious bench, that Moody used to singing sentimental altar call hymns, and that Graham used to dimming the lights right before the altar call. Keller is merely saying above … “My method works therefore my method is biblical.” Only time will tell if Keller’s methods are any more superior to Finney’s, Moody’s and Grahams.

This woman had had her faith incubated into birth our Sunday services. In worship, we center on the question “what is truth?” and the one who had the audacity to say, “I am the truth.” That is the big issue for postmodern people, and it’s hard to swallow. Nothing is more subversive and prophetic than to say Truth has become a real person! Jesus calls both younger brothers and elder brothers to come into the Father’s arms. He calls the church to grasp the gospel for ourselves and share it with those who are desperately seeking true spirituality. We, of all people, ought to understand and agree with fears about religion, for Jesus himself warned us to be wary of it, and not to mistake a call for moral virtue for the good news of God’s salvation provided in Christ.”

I would love to know how this woman’s faith was incubated apart from seeing her moral failure which raised against her the wrath of God and could only be quenched in the lifted up Christ. How was her faith incubated apart from a deep sense of her own unworthiness?

How can Truth be communicated apart from the notion that Jesus came to die for idolaters, blasphemers, sabbath breakers, parent haters, child killers, adulterers, thieves, liars, and the covetous? Did Keller’s woman flee to Christ on the basis that only in Christ could she find the truth that He alone could undertake the wrath of God that she deserved?

I think Keller’s approach leaves a great deal to be desired.

“Apart from the power and promise of God, the preaching of such a religion as Christianity, to such a population as that of paganism, is the sheerest Quixotism. It crosses all the inclinations, and condemns all the pleasures of guilty man. The preaching of the Gospel finds its justification, its wisdom, and its triumph, only in the attitude and relation, which the infinite and almighty God sustains to it. It is His religion, and therefore it must ultimately become a universal religion.”

W.G.T. Shedd
19th Century Reformed Theologian
Sermons to the Spiritual Man, page 421

Large and influential segments of the Church no longer believe that Christianity is God’s religion. This can be seen in the reality that the much of the Church has abandoned the notion that the success of the Gospel is dependent upon the power and promise of God of which Shedd speaks. Instead what we find is that the success of the Gospel is dependent upon etymological legerdemain. What we are doing, with increasing rapidity, is maintaining the accidentals of the Christian language and faith while filling them with new meaning. It is as if we have emptied a bottle of wine and refilled it with vinegar all the while insisting that it is still a bottle of wine.

This can be most clearly seen recently in the Emergent Church movement, but before the Emergent Church the same thing was done with the whole Seeker Sensitive movement. This phenomenon is not unique to our times though. If one goes back to the rise of Unitarianism or Transcendentalism in this country one can find large sections of the Church retaining Christianity only by this etymological legerdemain. Similarly if one reads the Sermons or hymns of the Social Gospelers early in the 20th century or examines the same work of the Existentialists later in the same century one can find that while the language of the Gospel has been retained the meaning of the Gospel has been changed. It matters little whether we are talking about the Christianity of the Unitarian Chauncy or the Transcendentalist Parker or the Social Gospeler Gladden, or the Existentialist Niebuhr, or the Seeker Sensitive Hybels or the Emergent Rob Bell. The one thing they all have in common is this refusal to practice what Shedd calls Quixotism. All of them redefined the Gospel so as to mirror the zeitgeist in which they lived.

In considering history one finds only periodic conviction that the Gospel is supposed to be an adventure in Quixotism. Occasionally one will stumble across the Quixote’s. Occasionally one will find a Boniface with an axe in his hand or a Latimer with burning green wood at his feet or a Solzhenitsyn in a Gulag or a Machen on trial or a Lull preaching to hostile Muslims, but more often it seems what we get is ministers redefining the faith according to the prevailing zeitgeist.

Ministers today are more like Derrida then they are Cervantes. We ministers today have little intent to tilt at windmills by preaching a Gospel that “crosses all the inclinations and condemns all the pleasures of guilty man.” Instead we aim to deconstruct (my etymological legerdemain) the message so our listeners can go with the flow of the prevailing culture. After all we have market share to worry about, not to mention our 401k.

With the Church’s constant adaptation to the times it is easy to begin to wonder if there is any there, ‘there’ to the Christian faith. Does the Christian faith have a essence that is supposed to be handed down from generation to generation or are we to understand that it is just so much ideological morphism, dependent on whatever wind happens to be blowing in any given generation? May our Lord Jesus Christ raise again a generation of Quixote’s who rely on the power and promise of God.

Shoot, I’d be pleased with a few Sancho Panzas.

“The battlefield where the devil has amassed his greatest forces and is thrusting his deadliest armies is the surrender of our national sovereignty and independence, and the creation of global government. And it is our own political and corporate leaders that are facilitating this chicanery. Furthermore, by refusing to oppose this surrender, our Christian leaders are complicit as well.”

Chuck Baldwin
Presidential Candidate — Constitution Party

Though I will vote for Mr. Baldwin in November this statement is utterly false. Make no mistake, National sovereignty and independence are crucial but they are not where old slewfoot is gathering his deadliest armies. Old slewfoot understands that National sovereignty and independence will drop into his lap like over-ripe fruit if he uses his deadliest armies to attack the sovereignty and independence of God.

America’s incremental loss of National sovereignty and independence is because of a increasing surrender to the armies of General Slewfoot of the notion of God’s absolute sovereignty and independence. If Candidate Baldwin desires to rescue America’s sovereignty and independence he must see that where the battle rages hottest in that contest is in pulpit’s throughout America. When the Church surrenders a sovereign and independent God it is only a matter of time until the people in the wider culture surrender their National sovereignty and independence. If we will not bow to God’s eternal sovereignty and independence it will only be a matter of time until we surrender our independence in order to bow to the temporal sovereignty of some usurper.

America was founded as a nation by a people who understood God’s absolute sovereignty and independence. The colonialists shook off attempts at English sovereignty going into battle with battle cries like, “no King but King Jesus.” Their descendants, having lost their Father’s sense of God’s sovereignty and independence, will inevitably come under the dominion of some tyrant’s sovereignty.

Candidate Baldwin will never win in the worthy cause of restoring a sense of National sovereignty and independence if the nation is in the spiritual bondage that comes from denying God’s absolute sovereignty and independence. The Battle therefore is not hottest on the score of National sovereignty and independence. That is just a brushfire skirmish. Where the real Battle rages and where Satan is attacking with his fiercest serpentine army is America’s pulpits. The reason National sovereignty and independence is such an issue is that the American clergy have given up on God’s total and absolute sovereignty and independence. They will not be rallied to oppose globalism until they are rallied to oppose the encroachments in the Church against God’s sovereignty.

I applaud Candidate Baldwin’s fight against globalism and I join him in it but I realize that the fight against globalism (tower of Bableism) will never be won until God is seen to be as sovereign as He never ceases to be.

“God Loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” So said a high profile ‘evangelist’ 50 odd years ago and that script has been hardwired into Evangelicals the way Bill Gates hardwires his machines with Internet Explorer. But is it true? Does God Love everybody and have a wonderful plan for his or her lives?

About a year ago this issue came up when I attended a Mormon open house designed to turn their best face toward John Q. Public. A blanket invitation was given in the local newspaper and I decided that it might be interesting to see what the Mormons look like when they have all their makeup on. Upon arriving one was greeted with the requisite punch and cookies as well as the ubiquitous Mormon smile. After the general bonhomie settled down they invited us into an all purpose room to watch a promotional film for the Mormon ‘faith.’ The lights went dim, the VCR whirred and the beautiful people came on screen. Imagine my surprise when one of the first things out of the TV people’s mouth was … “God Loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” (or something very much like that). Now in my exuberance I yelled out … “Stop the tape, Stop the Tape,” which they very obligingly did (when somebody is trying to impress you with how nice they are you can get away with murder). They assured me that they were glad for my questions wherever they came in the program and encouraged me to go ahead and ask my question. And so I did. I asked them, “If God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life then what is the purpose of becoming Mormon?” I mean, if God already is so hotsie totsie for me in my non-Mormon state then why should I change anything?

Silence.

More Silence.

Of course the Mormon oi poloi are taught to evangelize according a very set pattern and if you get them out of that rut (which my question accomplished) they take on the statuesque demeanor of a herd of deer frozen in the mystery of fast approaching headlights. Perhaps some other time I will tell the rest of my ‘Mormon Open House’ story but the point that I made that night in that simple question with the Mormon tribe is the same point that Evangelicals need to consider when they embrace the notion that God loves everybody. The news to the lost that God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their life pre-empts the attempt made later in the conversation to set the Evangelical hook regarding repentance for what need is there for repentance if God already loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life?

Now, it might be the case that people will say at this point that repentance is implied in the statement about God’s universal love for everybody. To which my rejoinder would be, ‘Well if repentance is required before God loves people then it obviously is the case that those who are not repentant God doesn’t love, and therefore it is not true that God loves everybody.’ Then my rejoinder might go on to wonder if God doesn’t love the non-repentant then what is His dispositional state towards the non-repentant? Could it be a disposition of opposition? Could it be the case that the Psalmist is correct when he says that God hates workers of iniquity? And if those who are un-repentant are by definition workers of iniquity (what else could they be working) then it might be just as appropriate to say those who show up for your open house that ‘God hates you and unless you repent He has every intent to punish you for your iniquity working,’ though I wouldn’t suggest leading with either sound bite.

But we don’t say that and we never get to it. We don’t say that because even the hearing of that grates against the hardwiring even though the Psalmist can confess that he hates God’s enemies with a perfect hatred. To suggest that God Hates people is just not something that we have grown up being taught and early-learned ways of thinking are difficult to re-program. Another reason we don’t say it is that we think Evangelism is akin to selling cars and nobody buys a car when the Salesman starts off by saying, ‘if you don’t buy this you will be damned.’ So, thinking that we have to make the sell and close the deal, we look out for the esteem of the buyer and avoid those truths that would violate their esteem. Now, the idea that God hates both sin and the sinner, I am sure you would agree, definitely falls into the esteem-crushing category. But then perhaps that is what we mean when we talk about ‘the stone that makes men stumble and the rock that makes them fall?’

Why do we find it odd though to hear the words, ‘God hates workers of iniquity?’ Even we mortals who love certain truths find the countervailing truths and the people who hold them to be loathsome. For example, if we love the notion that abortion is wrong we are foursquare opposed to those who love the notion that abortion is right. Every truth that we embrace and cherish comes with the notion of despising the opposite. If we love freedom we will hate slavery AND those who would seek to enslave us. If we love Christian Education we will hate non-Christian education AND those who would seek to force non-Christian Education upon people. To love something is always to hate its opposite. A person cannot love without hating at the same time. Even the Scripture recognizes this when we are taught to ‘cling to that which is good and to hate that which is evil.’ And again the Psalmist can say, “Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way” (Psalm 119:104). There is such a thing as Biblical Hatred and it is defined as the revulsion we have towards those things that are the opposite of what we are commanded to love.

Now, if this is true for we mortals, how much more so is it true of God? God’s love is ultimately set upon Himself in His Trinitarian Self and all those that despise Him God despises since He hates those who hate what He loves. If God loves in one direction then God hates in the opposite direction. If He loves the good He hates the wicked. If He loves the glorification of Himself He hates those who would steal His glory. If He loves His people then His wrath is upon those who oppose His people. If He loves workers of righteousness then He hates workers of iniquity (Psalm 5:5, 11:5). His Hatred, like ours, is but the reverse mirror image of His Love. As a principle it is impossible to Love without also hating, for to love that which is estimable is to hate that which is desultory.

But here is where it gets interesting. In matters touching Evangelism God’s Hate is often based on His love. That is to say in many cases His Hate is serving His love. Augustine, the 4th century Church Bishop had this in mind when he said, ‘Even when God hated us He loved us.” When God through the proclamation of the Gospel reveals His opposition to people who are by nature children of Wrath (Eph. 2:3) it is often with the purpose that His people would flee to Jesus for safety from His present wrath (Rmns. 1:18). That is to say that in God’s economy the reason God makes known His wrath against workers of iniquity is so He might pour out His love out upon those who take refuge in the self-appeasement He has provided in His Son. We who proclaim such a message do not take some kind of maniacal pleasure in God’s opposition to sinners, enjoying seeing people squirm, but rather the reason we declare God’s wrath (and what is Wrath but hatred expressed?) is so that His people would discover their sin and dreadful situation and flee to Jesus and in Jesus learn that God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their lives. When we proclaim God’s opposition it is with the express purpose that people might discover His unmerited favor.

We proclaim God’s hatred of the workers of iniquity so that we might proclaim to them that God’s hatred for those who look to Jesus has already been extinguished in the cross. That is to say that workers of iniquity can now become beloved of God because the hatred God had for them was poured out upon their substitute in the work of the Cross where His wrath against His people is exhausted. We also tell them though that if they will not look to Jesus and become part of a local covenant community (Church) then the Wrath of God remains on them. If we start by telling unbelievers that God loves them then the Cross makes no sense in the telling. The Cross only makes sense in the context of God hating sin and workers of iniquity. If God does not hate sin and workers of iniquity then the Cross was certainly stupid and definitely un-necessary.

If the objector now insists that God only loves people who repent then he ought to quit telling people who haven’t repented that God loves them because what he is saying is different then what he means and it certainly isn’t what Scripture teaches. What Scripture teaches is that God Loves and receives all those who labor and are heavy laden and are looking to Him for rest. What Scripture teaches is that God Loves people who are broken and contrite in heart. What Scripture teaches is that God loves those in the far country who come to themselves. Scripture does not teach that God loves everybody and has a wonderful plan for their lives and saying such things is putrid evangelism that gets in the way of someone who God is pursuing through their seeking and detracts from God’s Glory.

So, lets be done with ‘God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.’ The use of it is getting in the way of those of us who are trying to communicate something besides limp wristed notions of both God and love. If nothing else the present state and condition of the Church in the West testifies to the effectiveness of using that winning insight for the last 50 years. Indeed, it would be nice to be done with canned approaches in general. Certainly I am not advocating that the first thing out of our mouths to an unbelieving acquaintance is the truth of God’s hostility towards them. Shoot, given our culture the first thing may be time explaining the notion of God, the wickedness of autonomy, the reality of right and wrong, the idea of a Bible and other such topics.

Thanks to the wonders of Facebook, in the last few weeks I have heard from a couple old friends I haven’t heard from since I graduated from college in 1982. It was interesting catching up and finding out just a tiny bit about what has happened to them since 1982.

One of my friends works for (I’m not making this up) Hustler magazine now. Another of my friends works for a well known denomination at a kind of middle management level responsible for a missions aspect of the denomination. (In order to understand some comparisons I am going to make in this post you’ll have to read my previous post.)

After some reflection I decided that maybe there wasn’t much difference between those two occupations. They both are trying to evangelize people. The first one uses the lure of artificial women while the second one uses the lure of an artificial Jesus. They both are trying to build the Kingdoms of their respective bosses. The first one is building kingdoms for Larry Flynt. The second one is build kingdoms for Humanistic “Christianity.” They both are involved in businesses that excel in the lost of innocence. The first excels in the loss of sexual innocence while the second excels in the loss of spiritual innocence. Finally, the end effect of both is to create cynicism among their thoughtful converts. The first will find eventual cynicism about all things sexual in his thoughtful converts while the other will find eventual cynicism about all things spiritual in his thoughtful converts.

It is interesting but I find myself more concerned for the soul of my friend working for the Church then I am for the soul of my friend working for Larry Flynt. My friend working for Hustler is in a business that is far easier to see through the emptiness and charade of what it offers, and thus he is far more likely, humanly speaking, to come to the end of his pursuits and himself. My other friend working for the Church and saturated in a Church growth mentality is involved in a giant con game that works so well because everyone involved are “true believers” thinking they are doing the “Lord’s work.” He is far less likely to come to the end of himself and to see the emptiness and charade of what it pretends to offer.

Pray for my friends that they might know the delight of being captivated by the beauty, goodness, and truth that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.