By TOM GILSON, Stream, 7/23
I used to think the biggest problem with American Christianity was that we don’t understand Christianity well enough. Now I’m thinking it might be that we don’t understand America well enough.
Hear me out, please, because what you think I mean probably isn’t what I do mean. I’m certainly not diminishing the importance of Christ and His Word. It’s more like something I still remember saying to our church’s pastor a full 25 years ago. He’d just come home from a national church conference. Our denomination was widely known for its strong global mission sending. He said, “We’re doing great everywhere in the world except North America.” I said, “That’s because everywhere else they know they’re missionaries.”
Maybe America was once a Christian nation with Christian values and a Christian way of looking at life. Or maybe it wasn’t. I don’t even care where you stand on that controversy; the fact is most American churches assumed it was true. The crazy thing is, most American churches still act as if it were true.
We play new songs on different instruments, and we don’t dress up anymore. Otherwise church today is practically indistinguishable from my first memories of church 60 years ago.
In the Mission Field for Real
And it’s killing us. It’s been strangling us slowly for decades. We preach and teach as if we all lived in comfortable Christendom, when we ought to be praying and preaching and training like missionaries in a hostile foreign culture. Because that’s exactly where we are.
All my life I’ve seen churches with signs at their exits reading, “You are now entering the mission field.” It’s time we took that seriously. Better yet, change it to, “You are now entering the foreign mission field.” Our teaching needs to be on how to do mission work in a foreign culture.
Every believer in America who’s ever prayed, “God, please don’t send me off to be a missionary” has had half that prayer answered. God didn’t have to send us away to far-away, unfamiliar places. Your own home town has morphed into that instead. You haven’t moved — the culture has.
Christendom No Longer: This is Cross-Cultural Missions Now
Do I need to prove that to you? Or is it enough just to raise it to your attention? Try this exercise: Watch the evening news tonight on one of the three legacy broadcast networks or on CNN. Write a list of the issues they cover. Ask yourself, “Is there a distinctively Christian viewpoint on this issue? Do people think there’s a Christian viewpoint on it? If so, is it controversial, or do most people agree on it?”
Take gun control, for example. You may or may not think there are biblical reasons to support the Second Amendment. Doesn’t matter. You’re still likely to find yourself looking down the barrel of a challenge like, “You Christians always so you’re so pro-life. So why won’t you do anything about gun violence?”
You can hem and haw your way through half an answer and walk away thinking, “What do they know? I’m still a Christian, and I’m still okay with that.” Imagine an actual missionary being content with that!
Or you can stare your own ignorance in the face, and come out saying, “I don’t know. Maybe they have a point. Maybe this whole American Christian gun freedom thing is just power-hungry politics.” Then you’re left wondering just how much that same mistake spreads over all conservative Christianity. Maybe even wondering whether any of it’s true.
The Challenges Keep Coming … and Coming …
That might be too extreme an outcome for you, but remember, there are many out there who think “Christianity” means “white Christian nationalism.”
And what about your 17-year-old daughter, or your college student son? Or the kids in your church’s youth group? What happens to them (and to you) when the questions keep coming, and coming, and coming … I could have written a long list here, but I think it works better on audio:
Click on Title Below to Listen to Audio and Continue Reading
The Biggest Problem With American Christianity: Not What You Think It Is
Tom’s negative, hopeless view among “churchie” types in Modern America. It’s why I don’t go to the area churches for the past couple decades, waaaay too negative. Tom does not grasp the #history #time and #attitude to cope with a 60 year path of imposing Godlessness in the America culture.
Psalms Chapter One is the purpose, path, and knowledge necessary to function in today’s “lost”, Godless #culture in the USA. I’ve lived/married in Central America and – while similarities exist – the Godless, material culture that pervades so much of the Lower 48 is not tolerated – in large part – in some latin countries. God’s Word reigns and inner discipline, knowledge & wisdom comes exclusively from God’s Word and the Apostolic teachings (especially the Book of Romans, chapter 1:18 and following. I’ve seen THAT comin’ since the 1990’s).
When Christianity comes to mean white Christian Nationalism, that’s the politicized language the Left Wing uses to take away your God-given rights. It makes what is intrinsically good look evil by associating Christianity with a fake racism and diverting attention away from God-given Constitutional rights. It’s the language of Godless “social justice” which demeans our way of life.
A Christian-oriented USA always promoted freedom and justice under the rule of law but a Godless social justice system doesn’t do that when it “levels the playing field”. It just bullies everyone with tyranny. Those social ‘blue’ cities and states are engaged in social justice tyranny against free Americans.
The trick is to know that social “justice” language is all hype designed to hide what is true and good behind a facade to make it look evil.