David Takle
I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel (Gal.1:6)
The Western Christian Church today is currently undergoing a precipitous decline in numbers, power, and relevence. Many theories have been suggested as to why we are no longer reaching the people of our culture, and why it is that we can now refer to this time in the West as the post-Christian era. I would like to propose that the reason is simply this: that the Christian church as a whole is no longer preaching the Gospel of the New Testament.
One of the great ironies of the modern church is that many Christians who proclaim the “gospel” the loudest are in fact guilty of preaching something that is not even true. This includes every denomination from the most liberal social gospel to the most fundamentalist hell-fire-and-brimstone plea for repentance. Most of these theologies are but poor reflections of the gospel preached by Jesus, Paul, and the other leaders of the early church.
Now I realize that nearly everyone who promotes one of these distorted gospels will argue strongly that he/she preaches the true gospel, and that it is all those other people who are in error. I am not so sure that this article will convince any of them that their particular brand of the message has in fact destroyed the power of the gospel. So this article is intended to offer an explanation of the losses of Western Christianity to those who have the eyes to see that the church is in ruins and is willing to consider, if just for the sake of argument, that the real message of the New Covenant has been stripped of its heart and purpose, and that such caricatures of the gospel have lead directly to a religious climate that lacks credibility, authenticity, and meaning.
While there are many variations on this theme, virtually all of the gospel pretenders fall into one of three categories:
1. The Gospel on the Left
The message here is that our greatest problems are a toxic environment, institutionalized oppression, and other evils of society. If we would simply all do random acts of kindness and prohibit all forms of organized evil, we could all live in harmony and bring about the Kingdom of God. In short, we need to identify and destroy evil through legislation and other cooperative means.
2. The Gospel on the Right
At the other end of the spectrum is the message that sin is bound up in the individual, and that our greatest problem is not the condition of society but the condition of the human soul. The gospel is all about how to rid oneself of the stain of sin so that he/she can go to heaven when they die. Printed tracts put out by the right present the alternatives in very clear terms: either pray the prayer on this page or go to hell.
3. The Gospel of the Consumer
The last variety may or may not be very explicit about being on the right or the left. The most important aspect here is that the gospel will meet your felt needs, primarily emotional and financial. Sunday morning gatherings are full stage productions, with entertainment being high on the agenda, regardless of what terms are actually used. When people grow tired of the show, they go find another church or simply opt for playing golf.
What’s Missing
The problem with all of the above approaches is that no one is preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, which is, God has decided to make his home inside us so that he can make us into the people he wants to have for his own. God is not just trying to see how many souls he can pull off this sinking ship called Earth before it goes down. And trying to build a just society without changing the human heart is doomed to failure.
God’s real heart is to transform human beings into light and salt for the earth and into creatures who live and breathe the presence of God in their lives. This is not an optional second-level goal that He would like to have from those who have accepted some get-out-of-hell free card. Nor is it some future result of fixing society. Rather, transforming people into the people of God what redemption is all about.
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