The kind of Christian I am . . .

I don't usually pay much attention to "manifestos." These things come and go, creating a brief cultural ripple before sinking out of sight and mind. But some of my favorite bloggers (Jared, Justin, Joe, etc.) are paying close attention to the Evangelical Manifesto, which is the product of several years of work by a group of Christian leaders for whom I have a great deal of respect.

I'm not going to thoroughly assess the manifesto here (the three bloggers mentioned above have done admirably well at that), but I take notice because I myself have been asking the simple question of myself, what do I believe? More precisely, what are the fundamentals of my faith? In other words, what kind of Christian am I?

My first response to the Evangelical Manifesto was, that kind of Christian! Justin's summary of its seven main emphases is helpful:

1. Jesus, fully divine and fully human, as the only full and complete revelation of God and therefore the only Savior.
2. The death of Jesus on the cross, in which he took the penalty for our sins and reconciled us to God.
3. Salvation as God’s gift grasped through faith. We contribute nothing to our salvation.
4. New life in the Holy Spirit, who brings us spiritual rebirth and power to live as Jesus did, reaching out to the poor, sick, and oppressed.
5. The Bible as God’s Word written, fully trustworthy as our final guide to faith and practice.
6. The future personal return of Jesus to establish the reign of God.
7. The importance of sharing these beliefs so that others may experience God’s salvation and may walk in Jesus’ way.

All this comes at a time when I'm feeling the need to define what I believe carefully. The reason the seven emphases listed above seem important to me is because much of my experience of Christianity is fairly vague on these seven foundational points. As a part of the charismatic side of Christianity, I am finding that much time is taken up with secondary issues, and even frivolous nonsense (one only has to glance at the Elijah List to understand that my assessment is in fact an example of extreme understatement). Anyway, more on all this in the coming posts.

"Lord, make my life a miracle."

I really like this excerpt from the diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge (Like It Was: The Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge):

Walking around St. James' Park I thought intensely of the difference between Tolstoy and St. Augustine. Tolstoy tried to achieve virtue, and particularly continence, through the exercise of his will; St. Augustine saw that, for man, there is no virtue without a miracle. Thus St. Augustine's asceticism brought him serenity, and Tolstoy's anguish, conflict, and the final collapse of his life into tragic buffoonery."

"No virtue without a miracle." That's worth repeating. No virtue without a miracle.

I found the Muggeridge quotation at Ray Ortlund's blog. I'm repeating Ray's thoughts here because they simply cannot be improved upon by the likes of me. Ray wrote:

Authentic Christianity is more than a mechanism for intensified will-power over our temptations. Authentic Christianity is miracle through-and-through.

And he wrote:

Every one of us is so massively ordinary. Still more, we are sinners who break out in a rash at the approach of God our only true Friend. But the good news is that that Friend works miracles of love in ordinary, evil people who don't even want him around, people who continually oscillate between self-hating moral failure and self-exalting moral success. The miraculous virtue he creates comes through a Spirit-imparted bright new awareness and embrace of Jesus Christ crucified for sinners.

And he wrote:

The questions I never stop asking are, Is that miracle my experience today, right now? If not, how can I get back into that zone? Is that miracle our corporate experience at church? If not, how must we adjust to stay in that zone where God, God, God is at work with his unmistakable power?

I just don't want anything else. Only having correct doctrine, important as that is, and biblical structures and attractive programs, etc. -- reducing Christianity to the humanly manageable is unendurable to me. The miracle is too desirable. Lord, make my life a miracle. Make my church a miracle.

Please excuse the extensive quoting of another blogger, but these are very special words, special insights. I wish I could shout this from the rooftops! But at least I can put it on my blog.

Whither Christianity?

Have you seen this article, reporting the results of Christianity Today's recent survey of self-described Christians. I think it's pretty fascinating. The pollsters sort the results into 5 categories, or as they say "5 kinds of Christians." One of their conclusions:

...for a vast number of people who consider themselves Christian, Christ is not the central figure of their faith.

Isn't that so not surprising! After all, Jesus is not the "the central figure" of a "vast number" of the sermons we hear from our pastors.

Christianity as Crisis Manangement, or Christianity as House Building

I said it in the last post, but I'm going to say it again:

Our dire need, our urgent and terrifying problem, is the absence of righteousness in our very fiber. Our own, and in everyone else's.

Sometimes it seems to me that we Christians are led on by our own professional teachers to think of the Christian life as, primarily, all about having our fears and anxieties relieved. And yet, my reading of the New Testament tells me that the Christian life is, primarily, all about following Jesus, both in tranquil seasons and through the inevitable storms. The one great question on our lips should be, "Where to now, Savior?"

This morning I meditated a little on Matthew 7:24-27. These are the last words of Jesus' "sermon on the mount:"

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

By "these words of mine" Jesus meant his entire sermon, which focuses a good deal on the rather daunting subject of holy living. Great is the fall of any house, any life, built on the shifting sand of the world's brand of righteousness. And it makes me wonder, what kind of ground have I been building on? The thing is--and this is just a little scary to comtemplate--only the storm will tell.

That's what I've got to say today. Christianity as crisis-management, crying out to God when all hell breaks lose, is one thing. But the long labor of building one's house "on the rock" of Christ's righteousness is another.

We build our houses in seasons of relative calm. We have the choice of digging down to bedrock, pouring a solid foundation, or building quickly on sand. To the casual eye there may be no apparent difference. A foundation, after all, is mostly underground, out of sight. On the other hand, the house of the man who builds on sand may in many ways be the lovelier and more sumptuous of the two, since he was able to pour his resources into "appearances" rather than into solid foundations.

But it doesn't matter. Only the storm will tell whether the house is on rock or on shifting sand. You know the storm I'm talking about: the storm of life, the one that no man or woman eludes.

Pardon me, sermons about crying out to God in the midst of the storm are all well and good, but where are the sermons about digging down to solid rock and laying firm foundations? This is the great need of the body of Christ in our time.

Something's Missing

Much of what I do around here lately is try to justify my own gnawing dissatisfaction with things-as-they-are Christianity. Nevertheless, the last thing I want to be is yet another blogging Christian curmudgeon, nor am I posturing as a paragon of Christ-like virtue. But it does concern me that American Christianity has positioned itself in the American marketplace as nothing more than a very effective avenue to self-esteem. It seems to me--and many others--that something is missing from our preaching, from our singing, and most fundamentally from our thinking. Jared Wilson has a long post on this very subject, and it deserves attention. He quotes a well-known Christian leader (who shall remain nameless) at length, and adds some insights of his own, like this one:

As long as our churches -- religious, irreligious, and anti-religious -- keep preaching Jesus as one who makes your life better rather than Jesus who makes dead people live, as long as we keep teaching Christianity as the gospel of personal fulfillment rather than the call to self-crucifixion -- we are proclaiming Christianity as an unneeded cure for a mythical ailment.

The truth is not that we don't like ourselves enough, have enough success, get happy enough, etc. The truth is that we are sinners in need of resurrection. If no less a giant than Martin Luther could acknowledge this, what makes us stumble over admitting it for ourselves? I think it is because we are prone to believe the problem is everyone and everything else -- but not us. It is not safe or "nice" to talk about this stuff. Sin is a forbidden word in the American church. We don't want people to be uncomfortable or feel judged.

You should read the whole thing. You won't regret it.

Pollyanna Christianity

I like Milton Stanley's term Pollyanna Christianity. It's all in the context of a mildly rancorous discussion (here, here, and here) of a movie called Facing the Giants, which I have not seen. You can follow Milton's link to read more about this, but anyway the general notion is that American-style Christianity has become something like a Claritin-D commercial without the mandatory warning about possible side-effects. You know, beautiful healthy happy people joyously running and spinning through a field of daisies with not a care (or a sneeze) in the world.

My attitude: I know that God answers prayers, that miracles happen, and that there is abundant joy in the Lord. And yet I also know that the New Testament is chock-full of calls for patient endurance and cross-carrying. Any depiction of the faith that features one side of this coin to the exclusion of the other is significantly misrepresenting the faith and therefore leading people astray.