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Buy the truth and do not sell it; get wisdom, discipline, and understanding.
Proverbs 23:23
If you have ever been given poor directions, you know the frustration of relying upon information that turns out to be inaccurate and/or incomplete. Whether it’s how to assemble that new bicycle or how to get from point “A” to point “B,” bad information can doom even your best efforts. You can quickly find yourself lost and confused.
And doesn’t this describe the American Church today: “lost and confused”? We instinctively know that we’ve drifted away from God, yet we seem incapable of finding our way back to Him—we just can’t seem to find the straight and narrow path that leads to life. Which is why revival continues to escape us. And why Christianity in this country continues to fade from prominence. And why the
moral condition of our nation continues to degenerate…
So what’s keeping us from finding God? The problem certainly isn’t our “Map,” for we have been given the inerrant Word of God! Thus, given that our “directions” aren’t the issue, the reason we have become disoriented must be that:
- We’re in no particular hurry to get anywhere, so we’re content to go wherever the road leads us…or to go nowhere at all.
- We know where we need to go, but since we think we already know the way, we don’t even bother looking at the Map.
- When we do look at the Map we don’t really understand how to read it, so we are effectively turning “left” when we should be turning “right.”
In reality our current situation stems from a combination of all these problems. Many Christians don’t spend much time reading their Bibles, and when they do their earnest efforts are inevitably frustrated by the subtle idolatry that has permeated the church. The end result is that as we try to live out our faith we often end up wandering farther away from our intended destination, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Practically speaking, this is a disaster for Christians who are trying to be obedient, for even if our hearts desire to do the right thing, our efforts are largely thwarted. We boldly set out to follow
Christ, but find ourselves falling back into patterns of sin that lead us away from Him, not closer to Him—we keep “falling off the wagon,” so to speak. All the while we wonder why our prayers go
unanswered, and why God seems so distant.
At the same time, our worship is reduced to little more than ritual observance. It becomes something we do because we know we’re supposed to, not because our hearts are in it, and so we end up coasting through the existence of our daily lives…just like the Laodiceans. Oblivious to the fact that our half-hearted, lukewarm religion is an affront to God, we falsely believe that we are pleasing Him when in fact the opposite is true.
What we’re left with is something that comes up well short of the abundant life that Jesus has promised us, and we quickly find our faith getting battered on multiple fronts. This in turn leads to feelings of guilt and discouragement, and before long our love for God has grown cold—which, incidentally, is another condition that God does not look upon favorably:
Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.
Revelation 2:4
And perhaps worst of all, since we aren’t quite sure how to personally live victoriously in Christ, it is virtually impossible for us to convince anyone else of their need for Him. Our words and our testimony ring hollow, betrayed by the witness of a life that is devoid of any power or confidence.
The Call to Repentance
Some might attribute our situation to the constant attack we face from our culture. We’ve been conditioned to believe that faith and reason are incompatible, that truth is relative, that rewards are earned, and it can be very difficult to prevent these notions from tainting our understanding the Bible. In other words, we end up misreading the “Map” because we’re unconsciously viewing it through the lens of our culture.
Others might think that our predicament is an inescapable consequence of our fallen natures, such that we unwittingly distort the “Map” in order to accommodate our sinful behavior. This undoubtedly happens more often than we realize, but aren’t we also new creations in Christ? We have been given new hearts, so the desire for the things of God now lives within us…even if we don’t always respond to it the way we should.
Regardless of the many contributing factors, though, the main reason we’ve lost our way is that our idolatrous perception of God has rendered us spiritually “hard of hearing.” There are a myriad
of voices that call out to us from our culture as well as from our own selfish hearts, and unfortunately we aren’t familiar enough with the Shepherd to distinguish His voice clearly from the others. As a result, we end up going down paths that lead us away from our Lord because we’re listening to the wrong voice altogether. Moreover, even in those cases where God’s truth penetrates our hearts and alerts us that we’ve gone off course, the Evil One is right there ready to give us 1,001 reasons why we should just maintain our current heading. And far too often, that’s exactly what we do.
This reality raises two important questions that need to be asked by everyone who professes faith in Jesus Christ:
- If you are having a hard time hearing His voice, if God seems distant and elusive, then how well do you really know Him?
- Furthermore, if you do believe that you hear His voice, how can you be sure? Just because you think that you are on the straight and narrow path, how do you know that you aren’t being deceived?
Now please don’t misunderstand me, because I am not trying to suggest that believers never struggle, never fall, or that they are somehow disqualified from God’s gift of salvation when they do. Scripture is clear and emphatic that we are saved by grace, through faith, and not of our own worthiness or merit. However, Jesus is also clear that as His followers, we are supposed to recognize His voice:
I am the good shepherd; I know My sheep and my sheep know Me… My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me.
John 10:14,27
So the point of these questions is simply this: are we faithfully following Christ in spirit and in truth, or are we being led astray as we sincerely pursue a “Jesus” who tells us what we want to hear?
While the answer to this question will vary from one person to the next, when you consider the decline of the American Church as a whole, it seems pretty clear that we have been led off course.
For if we were truly following after Christ, it’s hard to imagine that we would find the church in the state that it’s currently in; if we’re following after something else, though, then the reason for our condition becomes obvious. Furthermore, since we know that God’s healing comes upon a nation when His people return to Him in humility and contrition, what does it mean when God allows a
nation to come under attack? I highly doubt that it is on account of our faithfulness.
That being said, all indications are that this nation is heading towards the edge of a proverbial cliff—and it’s taking the Body of Christ along with it. Our Shepherd is trying to lead His flock to safety, warning us to break away from the culture and its present path of destruction, but since we can’t hear Him clearly most of us don’t even realize that He’s calling to us. And tragically, even if our spirits are momentarily quickened to His call, as they were on September 11th, we are swiftly put at ease by false notions of “peace, peace” that are whispered into our ears by the Tempter, by our culture…and even by the church.
Repairing the Foundations
Over time, essential truth has been slowly and imperceptibly driven out, thereby making room for error to take its place. This in turn has led the church into the trap of idolatry, and the only way we
will break free is by recovering those truths that have gradually been lost. When that happens, we will finally be able to get ourselves back on track because the errors in our thinking will be exposed for what they are. And maybe…just maybe…revival will come to this nation the same way it came to Judah when the Book of the Law was rediscovered while repairing the Temple:
And [King Josiah] went up to the Temple of the Lord with all the people of Judah and Jerusalem, along with the priests and the prophets—all the people from the least to the greatest. There the king read to them the entire Book of the Covenant that had been found in the Lord’s Temple.
The king took his place of authority beside the pillar and renewed the covenant in the Lord’s presence. He pledged to obey the Lord by keeping all his commands, laws, and decrees with all his heart and soul. In this way, he confirmed all the terms of the covenant that were written in the scroll, and all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.
Then the king instructed Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second rank and the Temple gatekeepers to remove from the Lord’s Temple all the articles that were used to worship Baal, Asherah, and all the powers of the heavens. The king had all these things burned outside Jerusalem on the terraces of the Kidron Valley, and he carried the ashes away to Bethel.
2 Kings 23:2-4 (NLT)
Sadly, though, the Body of Christ has grown so accustomed to the errors we’ve been taught, that the truth sounds foreign to our ears. Moreover, just as the Laodiceans were lulled into complacency by their wealth, we have grown so comfortable in this nation that most of us don’t even recognize there’s a problem. In short, we’ve lost our eyes to see and our ears to hear.
So how did we get to this point? It would be easy to fault our pastors and priests for failing to proclaim the entirety of God’s word and leave it at that. And while this is certainly a major concern, it is once again as much a reflection of the problem as it is a cause. For if errors have crept into our pulpits, it’s only because the Body of Christ has tolerated them in the first place.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.
2 Timothy 4:3-4 (NKJV)
We need to be crystal clear on this issue, because God has always appointed shepherds to guide His flock and will hold them accountable for the extent to which they faithfully discharge their duty. Still, the calling that God places upon those who teach His word in no way diminishes our personal responsibility both to know God’s word and to submit to its authority over us.
When I say to the wicked, “O wicked man, you will surely die!” and you do not speak out to dissuade him from his ways, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the wicked to turn from his ways, and he does not do so, he will die for his sin, but you will have saved yourself.
Ezekiel 33:8-9
So in the final analysis, while there is certainly plenty of blame to go around, there is one simple reason for our present state of confusion:
My people perish for lack of knowledge.
Hosea 4:6 (NKJV)
Quite simply, the Body of Christ is starving for the truth, having grown weak and malnourished on a steady diet of half-truths that have been offered in place of the whole counsel of God. Like Adam & Eve, we have been deceived by a lack of information, which in turn has distorted our doctrine and allowed errors to quietly permeate our hearts and minds. Consequently, we are no longer sure what to expect of God, or what He expects of us.
It should be little wonder, then, that we have gotten lost along the way, because we haven’t been getting key pieces of information that we must have in order to read the Map properly. In other words, the church now finds itself in places God never intended because years ago we started wandering down paths where God was not leading. Perhaps the worst part, though, is that our susceptibility to the half-truths of the Enemy is largely self-inflicted, born out of our own ignorance of Scripture. For we’re clearly more “Thessalonian” than we are “Berean”:
Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
Acts 17:11
Fortunately, though, Jesus assures us that even faith as small as a mustard seed is capable of moving mountains. Thus, God is calling each of us today—wherever we are at—to rededicate ourselves to Him. He longs for us to rekindle the love that we had for Him at the moment of our conversion, and He stands ready and waiting to welcome back our prodigal hearts.
Go, proclaim this message toward the north:
“Return, faithless Israel,” declares the Lord, “I will frown on you no longer, for I am merciful,” declares the Lord, “I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt—you have rebelled against the Lord your God, you have scattered your favors to foreign gods under every spreading tree, and have not obeyed me,” declares the Lord.
Jeremiah 3:12-13
God wants to revive us and fill us with His Spirit—He wants us to live victorious lives in Christ! Indeed, God wants to heal His church, but this cannot happen apart from our commitment to recover some fundamental truths of our faith. Because truth is the only foundation upon which we can firmly stand:
Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.
Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Ephesians 6:11-17
Apart from truth, the other pieces of armor will fail to work properly and sin will be your constant companion. You will find yourself repeatedly deceived, just as Eve was in the Garden of Eden, and your life will reflect not the righteousness of Christ, but rather the wages of sin. The peace that you long for will remain just out of your reach, your faith will falter, your joy will evaporate, and you may even come to doubt your own salvation.
And as for the Sword of the Spirit, the only piece that is not purely defensive? When presented with opportunities to claim “new territory” for the Lord Jesus—to win souls for Christ’s kingdom—you will be so weak and wounded that even if you manage to lift your sword, your battered countenance will belie the very power which you claim the Gospel holds.
So if we want to have any hope of restoring our churches and our nation, recovering truth has to be our top priority. Why? Because truth is the only antidote to the deceptions that have come to cripple our faith and our doctrine. That being said, though, we also need to understand that mere knowledge of the truth is not enough—repentance must necessarily follow in its wake. For if we simply acknowledge where we’ve gone astray and yet choose to continue on our present course, God will let us keep going.
Back to Basics
Just to be clear, the issue isn’t that our understanding of God is wrong per se, but that our overall perception of God has been warped by a culture that exalts mankind in place of God. We have
become accustomed to looking at God through our eyes, instead of seeing ourselves through His, and in the process have become proficient at seeing exactly what we want to see when it comes to the character and nature of God. We’ve gotten the whole relationship backwards, hence our lapse into idolatry.
Moreover, since we don’t have a proper understanding of God, we really don’t understand salvation either. We have distorted its very essence, once again putting ourselves at the center of this doctrine, and by failing to grasp the continuity between the Old and New Covenants have created artificial barriers between faith and practice. The net effect is that we have reduced Christian discipleship—the church’s true calling—to little more than eliciting professions of faith.
As disheartening as it may seem, though, our predicament is far from unique. False teachings and subtle errors are the same traps that ensnared the early church—not to mention the Old Testament Israelites. Indeed, our adversary is still using the same lies and tactics that he’s always relied upon, he just finds new ways to package them for subsequent generations. It’s just like Solomon said:
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9
Whereas this realization drove Solomon to despair, though, it should greatly encourage us! For if we are willing to learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before us, we should be able to
avoid the same pitfalls. We will be better equipped to stand against Satan’s schemes because we will more readily recognize his lies, and we will retrain our ears so that they can hear God’s voice anew…maybe even for the first time.
Indeed, the history of God’s people has much to teach us, so as we rediscover God’s truth about who He is, about faith, and about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, my hope and prayer is that the Body of Christ will be awakened to the voice of our Lord and experience the revival we so desperately need. And I’m not talking about a week of special services or rallies in stadiums. Those events may well serve as the vehicles for revival, but I’m talking about genuine, Biblical revival that is rooted in deep and lasting repentance. I’m talking about revival that restores truth to the pews, to the pulpits, and to our seminaries. Because as truth goes, so too goes the nation:
Therefore say to them, “This is the nation that has not obeyed the Lord its God or responded to correction. Truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips. Cut off your hair and throw it away; take up a lament on the barren heights, for the Lord has rejected and abandoned this generation that is under His wrath.”
Jeremiah 7:28-29
Revival is the only hope we have of changing the course of the church and subsequently our nation, because we have no more ability to turn things around ourselves than we do of earning God’s grace in the first place. The power of the Holy Spirit is the only solution to our problems, but rest assured that He will not move to heal either the church or the nation as long as we hold onto the false notions of Him that we embrace today. Practically speaking, this means that we all need to get “back to basics” and revisit some things that we thought we learned a long time ago. We must allow the truth of God’s word to shine anew into the darkness of our hearts and expose
our idolatry, so that by His Spirit we can be released from the blindness that presently encumbers us.
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
John 8:32
The catch is that once we see our errors, once God has shown us the depth of our backsliding, we must repent! Confession is just the beginning, and we cannot presume to ask God for wisdom and then second-guess it simply because we don’t like the implications:
If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.
James 1:5-8
Thus, the time has come to admit that we’ve taken God off His throne and fashioned a substitute in His place. We need to confess that we’ve redefined Him to suit our behaviors and our desires, and commit ourselves to worshipping God not only in spirit, but also in truth. In short, we need to bow before our Lord, acknowledge and repent of our idolatry, and worship the One to whom all glory is rightly due.
Because as Rick Warren so aptly noted: “it’s not about us.”1
(Next >> The Glory of God)
- Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life, (Zondervan, 2002) 17. ↩︎
Socratic Christianity 