What Americans Believe

Recently LifeWay Research took a poll that surveyed Americans on a variety of theological issues. The piece below is from an article by Trevin Wax analyzing an article on this poll by Bob Smietana entitled, “Americans Believe in Heaven, Hell, and a Little Bit of Heresy,”

There Is Something Beyond

Your neighbor is likely to belong to the 67% of Americans who believe in heaven. If your neighbor identifies as evangelical, the number shoots up to 90%, which explains why books and movies on heaven find such an adoring audience. There’s little debate that heaven is for real.

Similar percentages reveal people believe in hell too, although few seem to be worried about going there. The same number of people who affirm belief in a heavenly afterlife also believe humans are basically good, even if they sin a little. And only 18% of Americans say small sins lead to hell.

In other words, your neighbor is more likely to believe in heaven and hell than not, but they’re not too worried about which destination they’re headed to.

Takeaway: Use the common ground of belief in the afterlife to bring up questions of eternal significance. But don’t forget that most people who are lost won’t recognize themselves as lost. The heaven and hell conversation is likely to be an entry point into deeper spiritual matters. Your evangelism will need to probe deeper than the question,“What happens when you die?”

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

The findings on salvation are distressing, especially when so many of these responses come from people who identify as evangelical or Catholic. Smietana summarizes:

"Most Americans (71 percent), and in particular Black Protestants (82 percent) and Catholics (87 percent), say people must contribute some effort toward their own salvation. Two thirds (64 percent) say in order to find peace with God, people have to take the first step, and then God responds to them with grace."

The idea that Christianity teaches that salvation comes through keeping a moral code is prevalent today. Sociologist Christian Smith described America’s religious views as “moralistic therapeutic deism,” a worldview he explains in five statements:

1. “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.” That’s the “Deism” part. God created the world, watches things, but doesn’t do much in the way of intervening in human affairs.
2. "God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.” That’s the Moralistic part. The goal of religion is to be a nice, moral person.
3. “The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.” That’s the Therapeutic part. The most important thing in life is to be happy and well-balanced.
4. “God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.” Now, we see the Deistic view of God combine with God’s therapeutic purpose. He exists to make us happy.
5. “Good people go to heaven when they die.” Salvation is accomplished through morality.

Along these lines, it’s no wonder that so many Americans believe there are more ways than Jesus to get to heaven. The good news is, evangelicals are much more likely to affirm the Christian teaching that Jesus is the only way to God, a sign that despite offering moralistic understandings of salvation, they recognize there is something uniquely powerful about Jesus and His gospel.

Takeaway: Realize that most gospel presentations are going to be interpreted from within a moralistic framework. Terminology like “Get right with God” and “make a decision for Christ” is likely to be heard by lost people as “get your act together” and “ask Jesus for help in being good.” We must always stress our inherent sinfulness and Christ’s gracious rescue in order to counter the moralistic assumptions of our culture. 

If It’s Not Practical, We Don’t Get It 

On fundamental Christian doctrines like the Trinity, the results are abysmal. Almost 60% of self-identifying evangelicals claim the Holy Spirit is a force, not a person. The findings get worse from there, even among the most religious.

Perhaps one of the reasons for this doctrinal confusion is that Americans are unlikely to have much patience for truths that don’t provide immediate practical benefits. Churches, in turn, are less likely to see a doctrine like the Trinity as relevant to the Christian’s daily life, thus leading to less emphasis on these matters in weekly teaching.

Americans respect the Bible, and evangelicals score well on affirming a concept similar to inerrancy (a sign that the battle for the Bible led to higher views of Scripture among many churchgoers). But the survey also shows that Americans are more likely to look to Scripture as “helpful” rather than see it as objectively true.

Takeaway: We need to do a better job teaching the basic doctrines of the Christian faith and why they matter. The pastor should handle Scripture, not as a manual for life betterment and moral instruction, but as a grand narrative that gives us a worldview – a formative story that shapes our attitudes and actions. 

The Afterthought Church
Americans love their independence. If the church wants to come alongside and strengthen their personal, individualized sense of spirituality, well and good, we say.

But church leaders shouldn’t assume their congregants see attendance as essential to spiritual growth. Half of Americans think worshipping alone is just as good as going to church, and a staggering 82% say their local church has no authority to make a pronouncement about their Christian identity. (No wonder baptism gets reinterpreted as an individual expression of faith and church discipline is rare!)

According to this research, churchgoing is an afterthought. It’s an optional exercise judged primarily by its usefulness in one’s spiritual journey, not an essential part of faith and commitment.

Takeaway: We need to ensure that when we invite people to respond to the gospel with repentance and faith, we are making it clear that we are calling them into a community. Repentance and faith entails belonging to the community of repentant believers in Jesus. Church attendance is not the fine print at the bottom of our gospel presentations.

Reading the Bible With A Missional Perspective

Interesting article by Robert Lynn at Christian Worldwiew Journal:

Wrong assumptions in our approach to Bible study

What do you do with an overgrown field if you want to plant? If you’re an avid gardener or a farmer, you already know this. However, for the rest of us, a little instruction might be helpful. You have to clear the ground. Out comes the chain saw (or maybe even a tractor) because trees need to be felled. Better have your stump grinder on hand as well. Then there are rocks and boulders that need to be removed. After that, there’s brush to deal with. Lastly, you’ll want to rototill the remaining plant material into the soil to enrich it with nitrogen and other nutrients.

May I suggest that in some important ways our field of Bible study has become overgrown with assumptions and practices that leave us unprepared to do the biblical reflection necessary for engaging God’s mission in the world? The cultural history of the West is such that we’ve spent centuries reading the Bible with a sense of the Church as chaplain to a world that shared our assumptions. However, that world has changed significantly. Consequently, the ground needs some serious clearing in order for us to engage the Scriptures in new ways in a social setting that is more like A.D. 50 than 1950.

The late South African missionary scholar David Bosch, in his book,Transforming Mission, raises an important question, “Did the New Testament give rise to mission or did mission give rise to the New Testament?”[i] We’re inclined to think it’s the former. Bosch rightly corrects us and says it’s the latter. Post-Pentecost, the church has no New Testament but it moves out in mission – from Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria and then beyond to the Gentiles. So where does the New Testament come from?  In what context did it arise? It arose in the context of mission, the mission to the nations. The early Christians did not suddenly find themselves the proud owners of a New Testament, study it in isolation for purposes of in-house edification, and then discover to their amazement that, “Wow, one of the really important themes in the New Testament is the mission of God. Let’s go guys!” Rather, as they took the gospel across geographical and cultural borders, they thought out loud about that mission. One form of that out loud thinking was the New Testament.

Reading the Bible with different lenses

How might that shift to a missional perspective change things? Consider, for example, Paul’s letter to the Roman church.  Often I hear it described as Paul’s systematic theology. What it is, in fact, is a missionary support raising letter. Paul is informing the church about his planned mission to Spain and outlines the reasons the Christian community in Rome should get on board and support him (15:14-33). That has to change how you read this pivotal letter. Take the epistle to the Philippians. Whatever you’ve heard about this apostolic missive, for a new perspective, try reading it as the missionary thank-you letter it really is (4:10-20).

It’s easy to think of a letter like Romans as Paul’s ruminations about theological themes divorced from the day to day concerns of mission from the trenches. We’ve become so accustomed to the notion of theology as the musings of those in the academy and seminary, that we’ve come to think that biblical and theological reflection can be divorced from the big picture of the mission of God, His purpose to recapture a runaway planet. And so we read the New Testament as a rather intra-ecclesial document – to the church, for the church, and about the church.

But consider the pattern we see at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. What drives this ecumenical council of apostles and elders to study the Old Testament Scriptures? Mission! God’s mission! Reports from the trenches of Gentiles submitting to the Lord Jesus fill this infant Jewish church with wonder and puzzlement.  “What do we make of what’s happening? How do we respond?” And so to the Scriptures they go, wrestling with questions of mission and cultural engagement (they are Gentiles after all) until James declares, expositing Amos, “This is the rebuilding of the fallen tabernacle of David (vv. 12-18).” What this means is that we don’t simply read Romans or Philippians as missionary documents but every New Testament book as a missionary document. In one way or another each book is reflecting on the mission of God and the life of His people as the agents of that mission.

How Jesus read the Scriptures

Let’s step back for a moment to take in the bigger picture. If Jesus is to be believed in Luke 24:13-49, it’s not only the New Testament that is to be read in light of the mission of God but the Old Testament as well. Speaking of Jesus teaching the disciples on that first Easter Sunday, Luke says, “Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures” (45). What Scriptures? The Old Testament Scriptures! And what did he teach them about the message those Scriptures contained? “ He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day,and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (46-49). For Jesus, this is the story told in the Old Testament.

So, how might Jesus’ impromptu Easter Sunday seminar on the Old Testament clear the ground and prepare the soil for better Bible study? Take the Torah, for example. It didn’t exist independently of Israel for decades or even centuries. God didn’t happen to have it hanging around so that when He redeemed Israel out of Egypt, He thought, “Wait, I just happen to have a book that might be useful for devotional purposes.” These are books that arise in the context of God redeeming a people to whom he gives a missional purpose. “This,” He says, “is who you are and this is what you are called to do.”[ii] What if, for example, we read the first five books of the Old Testament as the missional identity documents of the people of God, recently redeemed from Egypt in order to be a light to the nations? What might we see if we read Genesis through Deuteronomy as documents that outline the missional life of God’s people who are blessed in order to be the conduit of blessing to the nations in fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham? Not only would we have a better sense of what Moses actually had to say but we’d have a better sense of how these books fit into the larger Biblical narrative as well as the proper launching point for missional engagement of our own cultural moment....

Seven Gifts From Francis Schaeffer

I still miss the late, great Dr. Francis Schaeffer! And I'm sure I always will.

Here's an interesting list of Seven Things That Francis Schaeffer Did for Evangelicalism (from J.I. Packer by way of Justin Taylor):

"First, with his flair for didactic communication he coined some new and pointed ways of expressing old thoughts (the “true truth” or revelation, the “mannishness” of human beings, the “upper story” and “lower story” of the divided Western mind, etc.).

Second, with his gift of empathy he listened to and dialogued with the modern secular world as it expressed itself in literature and art, which most evangelicals were too cocooned in their own subculture to do.

Third, he threw light on the things that today’s secularists take for granted by tracing them, however sketchily, to their source in the history of thought, a task for which few evangelicals outside the seminaries had the skill.

Fourth, he cherished a vivid sense of the ongoing historical process of which we are all part, and offered shrewd analysis of the Megatrends-Future Shock type concerning the likely effect of current Christian and secular developments.

Fifth, he felt, focused, and dwelt on the dignity and tragedy of sinful human beings rather than their grossness and nastiness.

Sixth, he linked the passion for orthodoxy with a life of love to others as the necessary expression of gospel truth, and censured the all-too-common unlovingness of front-line fighters for that truth, including the Presbyterian separatists with whom in the thirties he had thrown in his lot.

Seventh, he celebrated the wholeness of created reality under God, and stressed that the Christian life must be a corresponding whole—that is, a life in which truth, goodness, and beauty are valued together and sought with equal zeal. Having these emphases institutionally incarnated at L’Abri, his ministry understandably attracted attention. For it was intrinsically masterful, and it was also badly needed."

Amen, Dr. Packer, Amen!

Sinks and Faucets

There are two kinds of Christians.

“Sink Christians” view salvation like they would a sink. The water of salvation flows into the sink so that Christians can soak up all the benefits: eternal life, assurance in the present, strength in times of trial. Those who adopt this mindset concentrate solely on what the Bible says God has done and will do for them.

“Faucet Christians” view salvation differently. They look at the world as the sink and themselves as the faucet. The blessings of salvation flow to them in order to flow through them out to the wider world. They rightly see that the Bible describes salvation as something that God not only does for them, but also through them.

- Trevin Wax, quoting from his forthcoming book, Holy Subversion: Allegiance to Christ in an Age of Rivals

From: Are You a Sink or a Faucet Christian? « Kingdom People
(Sounds like a book I might want to read!)

Core Beliefs and Political Philosophy

There is lots of discussion on the cable channels and in the blog-o-sphere the past two weeks on the relative power to move voters of the convention speeches by the candidates for President and Vice-President. In my humble opinion, if you do not know who you are going to vote for in a national election prior to this point in the cycle, it may be a sign that you do not know your own core beliefs.

Here's an exercise that everyone should go through at least once in their life - the younger the better.

1. Write down at least five statements of basic beliefs about the role of government. What does government exist to do? Are there areas of life governments should not touch?

2. Next think through your reasons for believing those statements. Why do you believe this? What brought you to this conclusion? Is this belief picked up by osmosis from family, friends or the media? Do you have evidence for your convictions? Are these beliefs compatible with your faith? Are you sure you believe this? Could you explain why, if asked?

3. Finally, think through the implications of those each belief statement. If this is true, what should government do or not do? Is it realistically possible to do these things?

Once you have done these three steps, you will know your core beliefs. After that, deciding who to vote for is a matter of identifying the party and candidates who most closely mirror your core beliefs. Wouldn't hurt to re-do this exercise at least once a decade to stay current and take into account new situations and the "hard knocks" lessons of life.

This sure beats voting for who looks good, promises the most goodies or is considered "cool" to support.

Hope this helps.