I'm coming to the conclusion that Evangelicals as a whole are ignorant people. I do not think we care about truth. The modern American church today is entertaining itself to death. We care about performance and numbers and lights and sounds. And we are stubborn. We have our specific set of beliefs. We are reformed, or charismatic, or baptist, or anglican, or methodist. We are an incredibly fragmented people.
But here is my problem with us. We are ignorant. Immensely ignorant. How many Calvinists do you know that have studied John Wesley in your church. Or cessationists studied the charismatic movement. How many Baptists have studied amillenialism. How many people are there that have no clue what these things mean.
My problem is that I feel like almost no one I know outside of the academic world seems to care much about studying these things, and if and when they gloriously do, they do not question or challenge what they think at all. Thank would be horrible sin. How many people have you heard after a church service say, "I'm really just struggling with my belief that the Bible is innerant." Probably none. Most may not care (hopefully not those who are genuine believers). Many inside are screaming these questions, but they suppress them because they oppose their beliefs.
If something is true, then what are we afraid of. Do we know WHY we believe in innerancy? Do we know why we believe in the incarnation? In the return of Christ? Do we know what we believe is the proper interpreation of the Old Testament, or the New Testament? Or do we blindly follow what we have been saved into. If you were saved into the Catholic church, you wouldn't question your beliefs either. Maybe you were lucky and you are in the right church. But if it is true, then it is true, and there should be no harm. Not with a humble and godly heart.
But it seems like the church just preaches the same simple message every week, and no one is even aware of the complexities of the Bible. We are studying GOD. Just think about that. God is our subject. And he isn't simple. We can't even know Him at all actually. He is completely transcendent. Except he has revealed himself in the Bible. But we don't care to know that Bible as the church. Just showing up to church once a week is pretty much sufficient. I mean, most people don't do that, right?
God is crying for us to seek him, honestly and openly. And for the mature and humble, that should mean pursuing and quesitoning truth and establishing themselves in it. Now, I guess this isn't for everyone. Because some people, by questioning, could fall away from the truth or go into some craziness. But are those people really believer anyways? I don't know.
I don't excluse myself from this either. And I feel woefully ignorant. I feel like all of my time at Liberty I was presented on the evangelical, Baptist, premillenial, non-Calvinist view of everything, and never given an avenue to explore the plethora of other ideas and beliefs. Maybe we wouldn't be so segregated if we got to know what other people, at least within evangelicalism itself, believed. I am not saying you have to go study liberalism or other religions, though that could be beneficial for some very mature believers, but study the Bible. And not just your church's interpretation of the Bible. If the only think you use to study the Bible your whole life is a John MacArthur Study Bible (which I love to death and do all my quiet times with), then its going to be hard to understand anyone having a view other than his theology. Explore the riches of Christ. Unless we have something more important to do. I mean there is American Idol and being an American and working 90 hours a week to buy a bunch of stuff that when we die will have no value, so we could pursue that. I guess I am frustrated because I am more Biblically trained than the average pastor and that is horrible. I am in the same boat as everyone I am talking about. Wake up call to John - learn about God!
Take this into account. Cathoic priests study a lot more than Evangelical pastors and they don't marry. They sacrifice a lot to study God and know Him. Mormons commit (all, not some, all) to do a mission for two years and that is all they do those two years. I'm not saying these people are right. I am saying they seem to care a lot more than us. Maybe they feel like they have to earn God's favor more, which is wrong, I do not know. But their actions should convict us.
Just realize, when we go to heaven, and we stand before the great white throne of God Himself, in all His glory, and we say, well I went to church, he probably won't be impressed. He wants us to know Him. And he isn't simple. And it takes work. But I am sure he will be ok with our excuses. I mean, the movies are important. And so is TV, pop culture, the mall, and working hard to save up for nice things. Maybe He will let us slide. I mean, it is only God we are studying, right? Who cares what grade we get?
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4 comments:
First of all, I admit that I don't know what a 'John Wesley' is.
I like your ideas here John. I also feel the weight of ignorance that is being IGNORED in American Evangelicalism. "If something is true, then what are we afraid of." Exactly right John, I think that we try to either inoculate the Gospel against ourselves, thinking that we are too weak to be discerning, or that we rape Lewis (Mere Christianity) or Chesterton (Orthodoxy) or any other wise theology and make it, however much it might suffer from it, into a reductionistic theology. This is unfortunate to say the least.
In some ways I feel that we're all caught up in the spirit of the Post-Enlightenment. We're searching for some certain truth, or we're being told by the world that we should. The tragedy is that we're afraid that the Bible can't stand up. I think that in some places IT CAN'T. There are places where, based upon an analytic theory of truth, metaphysical claims cannot be proven. Yet, this belies the basic problem with this theory or this definition of truth. It starts with Descartes, from the self, and moves to judge the world and say which things are or are not true. The problem with this is that we shouldn't, and descartes didn't, start with a blank slate worldview. He started with all sorts of presuppositions and beliefs. Here I think we can appreciate a little Thomas Reid and common sense philosophy. The point is that we either must accept the secular view that theism is dubious, or we must accept the theistic view that skepticism is dubious. But either way, we're choosing, somewhat arbitrarily, which one to assume. If its an assumption either way, then why accept the assumption of skepticism? We should start from the things we know to be true, and then try to explain how we know then, not how we can know them. The distinction here is subtle, but powerful. This is also true when talking of God. We cannot explain how the infinite has broken into the finite, or how a finite can know the infinite. The fact is that God did, and to some extent we can. We know this, Jesus made himself known, and in him, and this i still don't fully understand, we know the Father. I don't know how it works, but it would be irrational for me not to think it true. Is it just a coincidence that Reid was a contemporary with Kant, I think not. After the Enlightenment there are two paths, and I say we should follow Reid as he follows Christ. Does this mean we should save ourselves the trouble of bothering with Kant and his followers, NO. It means that we should study them with confidence, for they cannot disprove the Gospel. I think it is in God's grace that he made himself "unprovable", except in a weak Thomistic sense. If he were provable to the skeptic, then it would require no faith, it would swallow up the opportunity for transformation. We could believe on our merit, our intellect, and so could hold back a part of ourselves from God. But it is also in God's good grace and lovingkindness that he likewise makes himself impervious to skepticism. The sword of certain knowledge cuts both ways: we may not be able to prove He is, but they cannot prove that He is not. We ought thank the Lord for placing us so, for I am sure that it has saved us from many sins.
First of all, I admit that I don't know what a 'John Wesley' is.
I like your ideas here John. I also feel the weight of ignorance that is being IGNORED in American Evangelicalism. "If something is true, then what are we afraid of." Exactly right John, I think that we try to either inoculate the Gospel against ourselves, thinking that we are too weak to be discerning, or that we rape Lewis (Mere Christianity) or Chesterton (Orthodoxy) or any other wise theology and make it, however much it might suffer from it, into a reductionistic theology. This is unfortunate to say the least.
In some ways I feel that we're all caught up in the spirit of the Post-Enlightenment. We're searching for some certain truth, or we're being told by the world that we should. The tragedy is that we're afraid that the Bible can't stand up. I think that in some places IT CAN'T. There are places where, based upon an analytic theory of truth, metaphysical claims cannot be proven. Yet, this belies the basic problem with this theory or this definition of truth. It starts with Descartes, from the self, and moves to judge the world and say which things are or are not true. The problem with this is that we shouldn't, and descartes didn't, start with a blank slate worldview. He started with all sorts of presuppositions and beliefs. Here I think we can appreciate a little Thomas Reid and common sense philosophy. The point is that we either must accept the secular view that theism is dubious, or we must accept the theistic view that skepticism is dubious. But either way, we're choosing, somewhat arbitrarily, which one to assume. If its an assumption either way, then why accept the assumption of skepticism? We should start from the things we know to be true, and then try to explain how we know then, not how we can know them. The distinction here is subtle, but powerful. This is also true when talking of God. We cannot explain how the infinite has broken into the finite, or how a finite can know the infinite. The fact is that God did, and to some extent we can. We know this, Jesus made himself known, and in him, and this i still don't fully understand, we know the Father. I don't know how it works, but it would be irrational for me not to think it true. Is it just a coincidence that Reid was a contemporary with Kant, I think not. After the Enlightenment there are two paths, and I say we should follow Reid as he follows Christ. Does this mean we should save ourselves the trouble of bothering with Kant and his followers, NO. It means that we should study them with confidence, for they cannot disprove the Gospel. I think it is in God's grace that he made himself "unprovable", except in a weak Thomistic sense. If he were provable to the skeptic, then it would require no faith, it would swallow up the opportunity for transformation. We could believe on our merit, our intellect, and so could hold back a part of ourselves from God. But it is also in God's good grace and lovingkindness that he likewise makes himself impervious to skepticism. The sword of certain knowledge cuts both ways: we may not be able to prove He is, but they cannot prove that He is not. We ought thank the Lord for placing us so, for I am sure that it has saved us from many sins.
im supposed to be writing a paper so i'm gonna make this short:
yes.
two thoughts now that I read this again:
1. I think fragmented and diverse are different. Although I think the church is severely fragmented and that is a sad thing, I also think that the diversity in the church is something good. I'm not talking about ethnic or cultural diversity, I'm talking about denominational diversity- it allows people who experience spirituality in different ways to express themselves in different ways. But I agree about them being ignorant about why they're in their respective denominations. Even so, sometimes we like things simply because we like them even if we don't know enough about ourselves or the thing we like to know why.
2. I think we have to be careful to not think that knowing God means knowing more about God. Knowing more about God is crucial, but some of the pharisees could recite the Torah. I'm just learning that lesson with the concept of being "crucified with Christ." Maybe I'll write a blog about it. But whatevs, I think this is a prayer God always answers- when we pray to experience what we're learning. To GNOSKO it. See, I wasn't only thinking about my date at camp.
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