Post-Christianity is . . .

 

A video banned from social media asks a simple question, “What is a woman?” and the answers so far, particularly from those who are doctors, psychiatrists, university professors and so on, are not answers. Most of them try to explain the current ideas about gender and sexuality but their worldview eliminates this definition because worldviews have radically changed, even since the devotional I am reading was published.

Worldviews affect how Christianity is defined. Currently, people are not using honorable deeds so they look like Christians or to earn their way to heaven. Good is relative and heaven does not exist. Reality is not defined objectively. If a person believes something, then that something is true for them, even if they think they are a turtle or a sheepdog.

My mother often said that nice people must be Christians. Her way of evaluation may have been based on Scripture like this:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2:14–17)

That way of defining Christians needs to include more than being nice. Faith must be in the equation because without it, no one can please God (Hebrews 11:6). Faith is about trusting Him, not our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5ff) and biblical faith is  the source of doing good. This means good works are not initiated by human effort but by the Lord through a changed life, a life that follows God’s leading and obeys Him.

Dead faith is contrary to that. No one can produce the work that God wants because godly goodness depends on Holy Spirit power. Dead faith is self-motivated and for personal gain. In contrast, Jesus said, “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

The Christian way of thinking is limited in today’s world by current philosophies and definitions of reality. Many people think there is no God (atheism) or that God (if there is a God) is not involved in this world. The concern to please God is replaced by whatever pleases self, and faith is replaced by “truth is relative” which negates objectivity and renders the Bible obsolete and passages like this one:

He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. (Romans 2:6–8)

Christianity is thought to be repressive — and it is — because it considers sin as bondage, and relying on self and doing our own thing is sin. It tells us to put off that kind of life. From a Christian perspective, the current world view is no different than it was when Christ lived, died, and rose again, except for its extent and for the damage that is done by those who decide what is true for themselves. People no longer want to be rid of sin, but to have it declared okay, even good. This thinking was predicted by this warning: “Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires.” (2 Peter 3:3) It began with rules concerning marriage and food . . .

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth . . . . (1 Timothy 4:1–5)

It continues by turning away from biblical teaching:

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Timothy 4:3–4)

It comes down to what I’m hearing from the so-called wise of this world: “ . . . Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge,” for by professing it some have swerved from the faith.” (1 Timothy 6:20–21)

PRAY: Lord, only You can open blind eyes and change hearts. Only You can change those “insatiable for sin” into those who are hungry for truth and to know You. You say, “Do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart . . .” (1 Corinthians 4:5). In the meantime, people will “suffer wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing” and people will “count it pleasure to revel in the daytime” and continue to “devote themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons” — unless You speak to their hearts. My challenge is to manifest truth with faith that produced a goodness that can be explained by ‘only God.’ Enable me to be totally obedient to You.

PONDER: John 15:1–8. What is my need concerning this slide of many into unbelief? What can I do to make a difference?

 

 

How does God see this world?

 

 

In recent reading about various ways of thinking, the notion of WORLDVIEW can be summarized by how anyone would answer these three questions:

1. How are things supposed to be?

2. What is the main problem with things as they are?

3. What is the solution and how can it be realized?

In looking at God’s worldview, the first question is fairly simple; when Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He said, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” In other words, the world is supposed to be in submission to the will of God.

However, that “S” word is exceedingly unpopular. Resistance begins with the attitude of a child: “I want what I want when I want it” and mom or dad jump to meet that cry knowing that the child will suffer otherwise. Yet we know the importance of children (and adults) learning “delayed gratification” because totally selfish demands easily slide into become tyranny and anarchy.

The root of the world’s problems is tied to this attitude. God’s Word says in Isaiah 53:6, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way . . . .” and with that, the second question is answered: when each person wants what they want, there is conflict between the ‘I wants.’

This does not mean all human desires smack of evil and selfishly grabbing, or totally ignoring the needs of others, yet behind our efforts to be good and do good is that “I will do it my way” motivation. This shows up in varying degrees from what seems okay to pure evil, however God calls all of it sin.

Various human solutions are offered for the problem of sin and selfishness from variations of, “Be nice to others because it feels good” to “Make and enforce laws to prevent it” and “Lock up all those who break those laws.” Yet none of these solutions and the worldview that sits behind them get to the heart of the problem — which is the human heart. We want things like ‘peace at any price’ and personal comfort and many other changes that seem to be answers, yet at the root of them is that “I want what I want” and failure to recognize what God intended when He created His world and what it means when He tells us to submit to His will.

It takes submission to the will of God to realize that God’s ways are not our ways. All that He says and does makes His worldview inaccessible to my mind unless I’m yielded to Him, just as Jesus said in Gethsemane, “Not my will but thine be done.” Did the will of God make sense then? Jesus, innocent of all sin, was going to die a horrible death and it made no sense — to His disciples, to us who read about it, and maybe even to the human side of this man who is God. Yet to make a solution to the problem of the way things are, the sin of wanting my own way could only be satisfied by the death and resurrection of God the Son.

John 3:16–18. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

God’s worldview requires sin forgiven, but even more, sinners transformed. We need the very mind and life of Christ in us to think like He thought — not my will but thine be done — so we can stop being selfish, die to our old ways and live a new way, loving God and loving others with a submissive heart and will.

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. Quickly I must say that selfishness still hounds me. I know the worldview of God and His answer to our dilemma, yet sin is so ingrained and powerful that choice-making can feel like a war, even in the simple things. Yesterday my hubby wanted to walk along the beach in the wind, and I wanted to sit in our rented Jeep and keep warm. Jesus poked me to choose to walk with him rather than do what I wanted. It is His “not my will” attitude that I’m to gaze at, to submit to, to be like — not always that simple, seldom that easy, but if the will of God is going to be done in this world, the only thing I can do to make that happen is to focus on Jesus and start with me.