Let’s Just Love Jesus
As to loving Jesus, he made it quite clear that to love him means to obey him and to keep his commandments. It is not some emotional experience or some content-less feeling. It is a very particular sort of love: a love that says no to self and that says yes to God.
Hmm, a nice sentiment that. What Christian would quibble over this? Isn’t loving Jesus the main game? Isn’t that all we need as believers? Well, sorta! Of course we are to love Jesus. But that is not the end of the matter. Both of these key terms – ‘Jesus’ and ‘love’ – must be given some actual specific content, or they will mean absolutely nothing – and may even lead us astray.
What exactly do we mean by ‘love’? And who exactly is this ‘Jesus’ that we are to love? These are very important questions indeed. The truth is, anyone can say they ‘love Jesus’. But not everyone actually does love – in the biblical sense of the word – Jesus, at least as he is defined and understood by Scripture.
So we must be much more specific and definite in what this is all about. For many people love can just be lust, or sentimentalism, or accepting anything and everything, and so on. And there are countless versions of Jesus – but only the biblical Jesus is the true Jesus.
As to loving Jesus, he made it quite clear that to love him means to obey him and to keep his commandments. It is not some emotional experience or some content-less feeling. It is a very particular sort of love: a love that says no to self and that says yes to God. See more on this vital truth here: billmuehlenberg.com/2011/06/18/loving-god-and-keeping-the-commandments/
And all this talk about loving Jesus is determined by what the Bible teaches. Without Scripture we would not know what real love is, and we would not know who the real Jesus is. So we must be much more precise – and biblical – if we want to speak about loving Jesus.
A recent social media exchange helps to bring all this into focus. I trust my friend will not mind if I share this for the edification of my readers (he did kindly like my reply – bless you sir!). I had put up a post on one current topic of interest. It had to do with a former Qantas pilot who has been at the forefront of resisting medical mandates and statist overreach as he stands for freedom. I had said this:
Some Christians have asked about the champion freedom fighter Graham Hood concerning his being a Seventh-day Adventist. Is it a cult? Should we work with him? I would say two things about this:
1. The noted cult expert Walter Martin was somewhat ambivalent here. He said this in The Kingdom of the Cults: “It is my conviction that one cannot be a true Jehovah’s Witness, Mormon, Christian Scientist, etc., and be a Christian in the Biblical sense of the term; but it is perfectly possible to be a Seventh-day Adventist and be a true follower of Jesus Christ despite heterodox concepts which will be discussed.” See my article on Ben Carson (also SDA and also someone we support) in the link below.
2. This is once again about co-belligerency. We support Carson and Hood at least in terms of the culture wars, just as we supported Israel Folau, even though he is anti-Trinitarian. Theological orthodoxy is of course important, but there is a place for working with others in specific causes, such as in the pro-life, pro-family and pro-freedom wars (see the link below).
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The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism
Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Evangelicalism has successfully adapted to new media, with various groups creating huge online and social media followings. It has adapted to the rise and fall of evangelistic strategies such as revivals and street preaching. Christians may indeed be a declining and unpopular moral minority, but that is no reason to assume that evangelicalism’s day is done.American evangelicalism is deeply divided. Some evangelicals have embraced the secular turn toward social justice activism, particularly around race and immigration, accusing others of failing to reckon with the church’s racist past. Others charge evangelical elites with going “woke” and having failed their flocks. Some elites are denounced for abandoning historic Christian teachings on sexuality. Others face claims of hypocrisy for supporting the serial adulterer Donald Trump. Old alliances are dissolving. Former Southern Baptist agency head Russell Moore has left his denomination. Political pundit David French has become a fearsome critic of many religious conservatives who would once have been his allies. Baptist professor Owen Strachan left an establishment seminary to take a leadership position in a startup one. Some people are deconstructing their faith and leaving evangelicalism, or even Christianity, behind. Where once there was a culture war between Christianity and secular society, today there is a culture war within evangelicalism itself.
These divisions do not only represent theological differences. They also result from particular strategies of public engagement that developed over the last few decades, as the standing of Christianity has gradually eroded.
Within the story of American secularization, there have been three distinct stages:Positive World (Pre-1994): Society at large retains a mostly positive view of Christianity. To be known as a good, churchgoing man remains part of being an upstanding citizen. Publicly being a Christian is a status-enhancer. Christian moral norms are the basic moral norms of society and violating them can bring negative consequences.
Neutral World (1994–2014): Society takes a neutral stance toward Christianity. Christianity no longer has privileged status but is not disfavored. Being publicly known as a Christian has neither a positive nor a negative impact on one’s social status. Christianity is a valid option within a pluralistic public square. Christian moral norms retain some residual effect.
Negative World (2014–Present): Society has come to have a negative view of Christianity. Being known as a Christian is a social negative, particularly in the elite domains of society. Christian morality is expressly repudiated and seen as a threat to the public good and the new public moral order. Subscribing to Christian moral views or violating the secular moral order brings negative consequences.The dating of these transitions is, of necessity, impressionistic. The transition from neutral to negative is dated 2014 to place it just before the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, which institutionalized Christianity’s new low status. The transition from positive to neutral is less precise, though the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War in 1989 was clearly a point of major change. I selected 1994 for two key reasons. It represents the high-water mark of early 1990s populism, with the Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives (and, arguably, the peak of evangelical influence within U.S. conservatism). And it was the year Rudolph Giuliani became mayor of New York City, signaling the urban resurgence that would have a significant impact on evangelicalism.
For the most part, evangelicals responded to the positive and neutral worlds with identifiable ministry strategies. In the positive world, these strategies were the culture war and seeker sensitivity. In the neutral world, the strategy was cultural engagement.
The culture war strategy, also known as the “religious right,” is the best-known movement of the positive-world era. The very name of its leading organization, Moral Majority, speaks to a world in which it was at least plausible to claim that Christians still represented the majority of the country. The religious right arose during the so-called New Right movement in the 1970s, in part as a response to the sexual revolution and the moral deterioration of the country.
Up to and through the 1970s, evangelicals and fundamentalists had voted predominantly for the Democratic party. Jimmy Carter, a former Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher, was the first evangelical president. He won the Southern Baptist vote, 56 to 43 percent. Newsweek magazine proclaimed 1976, the year of his election, the “Year of the Evangelical.” As late as 1983, sociologist James Davison Hunter found that a plurality of evangelicals continued to identify as Democrats. But under the leadership of people like Jerry Falwell, this group realigned as Republican during the 1980s and became the religious right. Evangelicals remain one of the Republican party’s most loyal voting blocs, with 80 percent supporting Donald Trump in 2016.
The religious right culture warriors took a highly combative stance toward the emerging secular culture. By and large, the people we associate with the religious right today were those far away from the citadels of culture. Many were in backwater locations. They tended to use their own platforms, such as direct mail and paid-for UHF television shows. They were initially funded mostly by donations from the flock, a fact that imparted an attention-grabbing, marketing-driven style. Later, groups such as the Christian Coalition began to raise money from bigger donors, having become more explicitly aligned with the GOP.
Major culture war figures include Jerry Falwell of Moral Majority (Lynchburg, Virginia), Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network (Virginia Beach), James Dobson of Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs), Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition (Atlanta), and televangelists Jimmy Swaggart (Baton Rouge) and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (Portsmouth, Virginia).
A second strategy of the positive-world movement was seeker sensitivity, likewise pioneered in the 1970s at suburban megachurches such as Bill Hybels’s Willow Creek (Barrington, IL) and Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church (Orange County). This strategy was in a sense a prototype of the neutral-world movement to come. But the very term “seeker sensitive” shows that it was predicated on an underlying friendliness to Christianity; it’s a model that assumes that large numbers of people are actively seeking. Bill Hybels walked door to door in suburban Chicago, surveying the unchurched about why they didn’t attend. By designing a church that appealed to them stylistically, he was able to get large numbers to come through the doors.
Seeker-sensitive churches downplayed or eliminated denominational affiliations, distinctives, and traditions. They adopted informal liturgies and contemporary music. Seeker sensitivity operated in a therapeutic register, sometimes explicitly—the Christian psychologist Henry Cloud has become a familiar speaker at Willow Creek. They were approachable and non-threatening. Today, there are many large suburban megachurches of this general type in the United States, which to some extent represent the evangelical mainstream.
In the neutral world, by contrast, the characteristic evangelical strategy was cultural engagement. The neutral-world cultural engagers were in many ways the opposite of the culture warriors: Rather than fighting against the culture, they were explicitly positive toward it. They did not denounce secular culture, but confidently engaged that culture on its own terms in a pluralistic public square. They believed that Christianity could still be articulated in a compelling way and had something to offer in that environment. In this quest they wanted to be present in the secular elite media and forums, not just on Christian media or their own platforms.
The leading lights of the cultural engagement strategy were much more urban, frequently based in major global cities or college towns. The neutral world emerged concurrently with the resurgence of America’s urban centers under the leadership of people like Giuliani. The flow of college-educated Christians into these urban centers created a different kind of evangelical social base, one shaped by urban cultural sensibilities rather than rural or suburban ones. These evangelicals tended to downplay flashpoint social issues such as abortion or homosexuality. Instead, they emphasized the gospel, often in a therapeutic register, and priorities like helping the poor and select forms of social activism. They were also much less political than the positive-world Christians—though this distinction broke down in 2016, when many in this group vociferously opposed Donald Trump. In essence, the cultural-engagement strategy is an evangelicalism that takes its cues from the secular elite consensus. Sometimes they have attracted secular elites or celebrities to their churches.
The political manifestation of the cultural-engagement approach is seen in politicians like George W. Bush, who touted “compassionate conservatism” and an evangelicalism less threatening to secular society. The vitriol directed at Bush by the left should not obscure the differences in Bush’s own approach. For example, less than a week after 9/11, he made the first-ever presidential visit to a mosque to reassure Muslims that he did not blame them or their religion for that attack. He opposed gay marriage but supported civil unions and pointedly said he would not engage in anti-gay rhetoric. It is important to stress, however, that pastors and other cultural-engagement leaders within the evangelical religious world were typically studiously apolitical. They consciously did not want to be like the religious right.
Most of the urban church world and many parachurch organizations embraced the cultural engagement strategy, and some suburban megachurches have shifted in that direction. Major figures and groups include Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (New York City), Hillsong Church (New York City, Los Angeles, and other global cities), Christianity Today magazine (suburban Chicago), Veritas Forum (Boston), Sen. Ben Sasse (Washington, D.C.), contemporary artist Makoto Fujimura (New York City), and author Andy Crouch (Philadelphia).
These different movements represented different responses to the three worlds. But they also reflected other theological, sociological, and cultural differences among the various camps. The culture warriors had a fundamentalist sensibility, and often came from that tradition. Jerry Falwell and Francis Schaeffer both had fundamentalist backgrounds, for example. The seeker sensitives and cultural engagers had a more evangelical sensibility.
Fundamentalism prioritized doctrinal purity and was frequently separatist and hostile to outsiders or those who would compromise on biblical fidelity. Evangelicalism developed, beginning in the 1940s, as an attempt to create a kinder, gentler fundamentalism that could reach the mainstream. Its priorities have been more missional than doctrinal. If we view it in terms of sensibilities, we will find that this split—between doctrinal or confessional purity and missional focus or revivalism—has manifested itself persistently throughout American religious history.
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The Hardest Season of All: How to Fight for Joy in Winter
How does Paul accomplish such personal resilience? By nurturing his relationship with Jesus Christ and setting his expectations on a life that reflects the character of Christ, even in hunger and need (Philippians 4:13). The key to not getting crushed in a disappointing holiday season is to reshape our hearts to find ultimate satisfaction not in the trifles of this world, fickle and frail as they are, but in the glories of the next. For there, and there alone, will our expectations not only be met, but abundantly exceeded.
As I walked briskly through downtown on a cold January morning, I asked my friend, a family lawyer, a typical small-talk question: “How are things at work?”
“It’s our busiest time of year,” he responded, “so I’m currently getting crushed.”
“Really?” I said. “That surprises me.”
“The week kids return to school following the holiday break, our office gets hammered with divorce inquiries,” he said glumly.
Initially, I was shocked. Yet as I thought more, I realized his experience as a family lawyer matched my own as a counselor and pastor. My email inbox, text messages, and voicemail go crazy in the days and weeks following the new year. Before you know it, if someone wants a counseling appointment, they are being booked into the spring.
Five Shades of January Blue
Why do so many people feel crushed after the holidays? Why are so many people hurt, sad, angry, and confused coming off a season usually marked by joy, peace, and anticipation? In my counseling, pastoring, and experience with my own heart, I’ve encountered at least five reasons January can hit us so hard.
Exhausted
First, some are simply exhausted coming out of the holiday season. We planned and attended parties. We acquired gifts. We made mad dashes to stores because someone was left off the list, or one kid had too few items. The church calendar teemed with a plethora of worship services and events from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve, half of which required some sort of extra practice or manpower. The pace of these responsibilities and opportunities, especially in contrast to the rest of the year, can seem breakneck, leading to an exhausted, strung-out feeling when the second week of January hits.
Hopeless
Second, the holidays themselves can become the foundation of our hope rather than just an expression of our joy. We can end up hoping in the sights and sounds, the people and presents, instead of simply enjoying these gifts. Anticipation of favorite flavors, favorite carols, favorite people, and what we hope will be our favorite new possession can propel us through this busy season. But when the food is eaten and the last carol has been sung, when people return to their normal lives and the presents turn out to be just more stuff to fill our homes, our spirits can crash as our hope seems to evaporate.
Dark
Third, do not discount the power of darkness. I’m not speaking metaphorically about Satan and his minions; I mean actual darkness. In the Northern Hemisphere, the short days and long nights can dramatically influence our mood and energy level. This change is just beginning to happen when the holidays arrive, but as we emerge from the holiday season, the nights are long and cold, the days are often dreary, and the world around us seems bare and lifeless as winter has had its effect. All of nature seems to reflect something of our internal assessment that life is a sad, dismal affair.
Lonely
Fourth, while the parties, worship services, and service opportunities may be demanding, they do get us around others consistently. Conversely, once the holidays are over and life returns to normal, many of us find ourselves living our modern lives of relative isolation. No more groups of people laughing and merrymaking — instead, one day bleeds into the next while we retreat to our secluded abodes, and the voices of friends and family are replaced by the digitized voices of our favorite on-screen characters.
Disappointed
Last, while the holidays can be a time of exuberant joy and excitement, for many they turn into another season of disappointment. Family interactions are difficult and painful. Husbands and wives who hope the holidays will provide respite from seasons of bitterness and disdain discover new occasions for those feelings to grow stronger.
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How Should We Then Live in a Time of War?
As Europe was facing the onset of war in 1939, Lewis preached a sermon in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford. With many other academics and students in attendance, the issue of how we should now live was certainly a pressing concern for all those present. So Lewis entitled his address, “Learning in War-Time”. What the academic community was thinking about learning while on the verge of total war was a most pressing matter indeed. Lewis gave those in attendance some very helpful advice.
How we live in peacetime is often quite different from how we live in wartime. How people were living in Ukraine a few years ago for example was quite different from how most are living today, with their homes being destroyed, their very way of life put on hold, and many millions being forced to flee the country.
I have often spoken about these matters in terms of the Christian life. Especially during these dark days where the faith is under such sustained attack and where the culture wars seem to be threatening the very existence of the church, we need to think about living in times of war. As I said in one piece in this regard:
In a time of war not everyone stays true. Many surrender, or go over to the other side, or go AWOL. And individual believers risk doing the same thing. In the battles we face today there is no place for sitting on the fence, or trying to stay in the middle of the road.
When warfare is all around us, the only proper response is to engage in the battle. With faith, freedom and family all at risk, this is no time for business as usual. This is not the time to live a normal life. It certainly is not a time to have the fear of man, or a time to seek to please men. Let’s try pleasing God instead, even if it means ruffling a few feathers. billmuehlenberg.com/2017/03/22/wartime-not-business-usual/
And one quote I have often used to ram home this point is also worth repeating here. In a 2014 essay called “A Time for Heroism” American Catholic philosopher Melissa Moschella said this:
Perhaps there are times and places in the history of the world in which it is possible to go through life as just an ordinary, good person—a faithful spouse, a loving parent, a concerned citizen, a regular church-goer, an honest and industrious professional—leading a normal, quiet life, not making waves or standing out in any way. Perhaps. But the United States of America in the year 2014 is not one of those times and places. Rather, in our contemporary society, the only way to be good is to be heroic. Failing to act with heroism inevitably makes us complicit in grave evils.
I of course still agree with all those sentiments that I have so often shared. But there is another way that Christians can look at all this. It is perhaps more accurate to say that we are in a state of warfare not just during times of great crisis or upheaval, or when the days are getting especially dark and evil, but ALWAYS.
That is, the Christian will always be in a state of war with the world around him, with the powers of darkness, and with this present evil age. Sure, sometimes the battles seem more intense than other times, but the Christian is never fully living in peacetime.
Even when most of the surrounding culture was Christian or at least fairly sympathetic to Christianity, the true Christian was always a bit of a misfit in this world. Indeed, we will never fully be at home here. We will always be in some sort of warfare – certainly always spiritual warfare.
Thus the practical question is this: how should we then live? When Christians are being heavily persecuted, rounded up into prison camps, and being killed, such a question takes on real urgency and significance. But we always need to be asking these sorts of questions.
And the issue is, do we just drop everything we are doing, head for the hills, and prepare for the end of the world? Or do we just go on living more or less normal lives, but with an eye always on eternity, and an awareness that this is not really our home, and battles will always be with us?
Christians can take differing approaches here. Some simply pull out of the world altogether, either to live as monks or as end-time survivalists. But some Christians live as if there is no war going on, and have very happily made themselves quite at home in this world.
Somewhere in between these extremes might be the biblical way to proceed. And to help me discuss this further, I once again simply draw upon the insights and great wisdom of English academic and Christian apologist C. S. Lewis.
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