Walking as Living Spectres and Ghosts in the Graveyards of Life

Earlier this morning I put up several collections of Halloween poems on my poetry site and as I did I could hear the many Christian responses of, "Oh! You can't do that! It's not Christian! You're worshipping the devil! It's the devil's holiday!"

But when you come right down to it, these collections of poems were about the hopes and fears, the superstitions, and churchly beliefs, of men, women, and children, in their day and age - if not the very poet himself, or herself, as they attempted to circumscribe the universe by pen and by will.

And given a thorough reading of poems of this nature one can learn a lot about what people think about life and death, God and man, devil and spirit, when stirred in a cast-iron vat of rhyme and poetic passage. Adding ingredients of heartache, dread, and crushing aloneness, to be ladled out in personal litanies of echoing despair, deep anger, boiling resentment, and hot unfairness.

For the astute observer, its important to pay attention to the raw emotions of people who have spoken, filmed, or sung about their inner demons. Of an uncaring, withdrawn society filled with evil witches and warlocks. To research and meditate upon a culture's perennial observations of life and death so that at some later time we might be better able to speak to the various subjects and themes that come from our worst fears and wandering beliefs.

Beliefs about what we expect of one another or God or, perhaps, don't expect of either. Or, fear to ask. Or, if asked, fear receiving the very response we knew would someday come for voicing our personal complaints and deep displeasures. Or, perhaps saying nothing at all to experiences of injustice, sharp unloving tongues, selfish attitudes, actions, and behavior. Becoming both victim and victimizer.

To pay attention to people's basic fears in the middle of the night as they lay awake in a cold sweat on a disheveled bed tossing and turning unable to sleep. And when slumbering dreaming those dark, ugly nightmares from deep within a pained subconscious. Otherwise, how can we expect to minister to people in the middle of the day when fear has been washed away by the common daylight of human companionship and goodwill?

So, in a sense, Halloween can be an everyday event of the year within our lives. It doesn't simply come-and-go on a dark hollow's eve between the hours of 5:00 to 8:00 pm as impish trick-n-treaters squeal, squawk, and dash about in dizzying delight from one house to the next. Or flee for their lives before fun-luvin' pranksters rising from carefully placed frontyard coffins that creak and groan. Or from scary ghoulish spectres greeting children in darkened doorways boding tasty treats and delights. Or from creepy hanging things dangling unseen off dark trees and wires by thread and bobbin.

No, in another sense (h)alloween is with us every day of the year. It is carried within our hearts overburdened by what we have said or haven't said. Did, or didn't do. Saw, but didn't respond to. Felt, but never voicing the hurts and pains carried deep within us locked up like the crypt of the undead.

Or, if we did, we didn't know how to express ourselves as recovering addicts to life's carousels of whimsical delights and never-ending mendacity's. Looking for the next rush that might invigorate a dulled life too dreary to contemplate its endless days and nights. Leading us further and further away from those deep-seated hurts from a dad, a mom, sibling, or friend, who deeply failed us when we needed them most.

Or, harmed us so that now we walk as the living dead. Zombies to life's beauty unseen, untouched, unfelt, and unheard. Wishing to feast on any so unwise or so foolish to come too close to us. Living with those buried hurts and bitter hatreds of the wrongs we suffered so meaninglessly, cruelly, or meanly at the hands of the very devil himself. Cruel hands pinched in our blood, sweat, and tears.

Nay, this is not a day that is so easily made fun of and then forgotten by some of us still living in ghostly shells knit of vaporous skin and hollow filaments. For some of us the night of the living dead lives each day of our nightmarish lives with no end in sight except more pain and lostness.

For those souls hell is already here with no angel or God in sight. Just the Devil and his cruel brigands of death. And yet, isn't this what the Psalmist felt when abandoned by God and by very mankind itself? Or the prophets who wandered alone prophesying doom and judgment upon a careless people gripped by pride and greed? Or even Jesus Himself bowed of hoary head and weary heart in the Garden of Gethsemane praying alone when He most needed another prayer partner by His side?

Yes, it would be naive to think that God's people have not gone through the deep pains of life. But for those who have, you'll find them on the street with an understanding smile, a helping hand, a serving heart. Behind the cash register, at the waitressing table, in the school room, or on the field coaching kids and adults.

You'll find some amongst those special pastors who fill a pulpit with warmth and wisdom while staying true to their humanity when knowing how deeply inhumane life once was for their own hard pasts. Or that kid's counselor at the youth center willing to help if they are allowed. Or the boss who'll make sure you succeed against every particle of your body that wishes to fail. Or that aunt or uncle who was there all the time but you saw them not.

Yes, looked at again, God and His angels are everywhere about us. But we've gotten so use to fleeing from the crypts and coffins of our lives that we've run right by them with sightless eyes filled with self-loathing and hatred.

Forgetting that the crosses of Easter are just as meaningful this time of the year as the ragged crosses staked into the ground on a Hallow Eve's black night. You just have to pull those raggedy stakes out-of-the-ground-of-your-life and turn them the-other-way-around, away from your heart and soul. And when doing so seeing the one Cross of this world that was placed for all the world to see on a hill named Golgotha. A Cross of freedom, healing, and empowerment.

To be drawn to another graveyard on Calvary's hill knowing that there is a Redeemer-God who received death's hells upon His very self so as to provide a resurrection through His Son Jesus to this life's sins and woes. That in the darkened graveyards of our existence can be raised not ghostly spectres, but what we might become in the power of the living Holy Spirit. And that the candies of this world are no longer the food and meat of a Spirit-filled warrior-believer seeking to live life as it was meant to be lived as a crucified, penitent, servant of the Holy God raised beyond the grave of death's hopelessness.

Nay, if one is going to feast at the table of slaughter-and-ruin let it be on the draculas and demons of our sinful heart slain before the Sonlight of this wicked world before the living God of all. It is He who rules the day and night and none other. Be they demon or ghost in this life it is yet our life to valiantly claim and not so easily lay down before the hellish feasts of another. To place a crucified stake in the ground of belief and say with all authority, "Here I stand with my God and my Savior. Though heaven and earth be moved this day I shall stand in the power of the Holy Spirit and be all that I can be till life expires." Amen

R.E. Slater

October 30, 2014

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If God Be For Us Who Can Be Against Us

Romans 8.31-39 (ESV)

31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be[i] against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.[j]35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;

we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Parable of the Grain of Wheat

John 12.20-36 (ESV)

20 Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. 21 So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.

The Son of Man Must Be Lifted Up

27 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? Butfor this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.”30 Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. 34 So the crowd answered him, “We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” 35 So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.”

What Emergent Christianity Can Offer a Secularized World

A Postmodern Emergent Church Response

At Relevancy22 we have systematically responded to the secularity found in Evangelical modernism by proffering a postmodern version of Christianity known as Emergent Christianity which actively recognizes the syncretic effects that modernity has brought into the Evangelical church. And in response, have sought to identify those modernistic elements within the church by deconstructing them, often to the alarm and dismay, of many well-meaning evangelicals. And yet, in the aftermath, there has arisen an emergent Christian faith which lives more hopefully in these postmodern times, in the rediscovery of the God of the Bible in our everyday lives. Who is real, and is faithfully connected to, our turmoils and troubles, our witness and mission, our worship and fellowship, through Jesus.

 

Moreover, in the recovering of the supernatural presence of God in daily living and witness, there has resulted a continuing, sustaining presence of the Holy Spirit who empowers the Gospel of Jesus as presented in, and through, His church. So that when considering secularity, the answer is not to so simply return to those starry-eyed days of pre-modernistic Spirit-filled fellowships, but to incorporate what this would then mean to the church when placed within today's more discriminating postmodernistic times. For Emergent Christianity should not be thought as more charitable to those undiscerning protestations of miracles, the supernatural, spiritual warfare, angels and demons, but more critical of it in the defining sense of re-considering how those Christian positions oftentimes support an indiscriminate modernism found present within Evangelical Christianity. Thus withholding it from transitioning to a mandated postmodern re-definition of itself. Meaning that, we do not wish to trade one defeated "religious perspective" for another "less competent perspective" but to incorporate a more vigorous postmodern vision that gives life-and-breath back to the Word of God without relying on earlier superstitions, non-scientific assessments, religious folklore, traditions, fictions and fantasies. More simply said, an emergent Christian would not deny these biblical portrayals so much as re-express them in a postmodern sense of Christian enactment and divine presence.

 

Hence, we have been careful within this blogsite to question (and then restate) just what miracles are; what the nature, mission, and operation of spiritual gifting (tongues, healing, prophecy) under the ministry of the Holy Spirit is and can be; how to conduct a literary and not a literal reading of the Bible, of God, and of God's mission to the world through today's postmodern church; what the ministry of the church is to society; what sin's relationship to creation and humanity's free will is; how to read the Bible in a postmodern sense; how to minister and comport our lives within a postmodern setting; and generally, a revisioning of what it means to see the Holy One of Israel apart from the Evangelical blinders that we have too readily adopted uconsciously through the veneers of religiosity too comfortably adapted into our lives, our thoughts, our beliefs, tongues and dogmas.

Specifically, a postmodern assessment of secularization will not encourage those Third Wave Christians, nor spiritists amongst the church, backwards towards earlier beliefs and participations that once housed varying forms of mystical gnosticism. Nor towards an indiscriminate reading of either the bible, or modernity, or both; a reading which generally gives way to more naive forms of cloistered, pre-modernistic, Christian communities and worship fellowships. But then again, nor do we wish too discourage our brethren either for we have much in common with such mindful Christians wishing to apprehend God and live for Jesus in witness, work, and ministry. To such mindful groups we would challenge not a reversion away from modernism into pre-modernal living, but a progression forwards in renouncing modernal expressions of Evangelicalism. While coming to appreciate, if not adopt, a postmodernal, Spirit-filled Emergent expression and understanding of Christianity. For if this is not undertaken, than the church can not - and will not - have a contemporary global witness that is effective within this postmodern world of ours so long as we live and walk and breathe upon this Earth the dead-and-dying airs of yesteryear's secular modernity.

Moreover, Dr. Olson (below) has well pointed out the deficiencies of modernized Christianity. And though a postmodernist would wish to depart from such oversimplified characterizations of "secularity" knowing that such dualisms are a part of the classical modernal world being left behind, still Dr. Olson does point out (in modernal terminology) the deficiencies of modernity in using this type of categorical representation. However, in counterpoint, a postmodernist labors to remove as many of the dualities of the modern mindset as possible from the language of postmodernism, and from postmodern Christianity, so as to remove (reduce, or exclude) classical thinking and its paradigms from oversimplifying the person and work of God, His Word, His world, and mission through Jesus. While also seeking to remove modernal attitudes placed upon God, His Word, world, and mission, that are self-referential and self-reinforcing producing a prohibitive witness and exclusionary fellowships to God, His Word, world and mission to the world.

In its place a postmodernist seeks to integrate a wholism to life that incorporates a pluralistic perspective that places dualities along the fuller theological spectrum of quantum insights and definitions. It is a language that can only grow and occur as future generations develop it and the church absorbs it. Moreover, a critical component of postmodernal thinking is that it demands, as a mandatory basis for enjoining oneself to it, a self-criticism and introspection that would create a healthy respect for doubt, mystery, and a closer respect for those individuals and people groups who are different from ourselves. In this way it becomes a superimposing superstructure that can better give way to any future philosophic eras arising along the lines of demonstrated authenticity and global participation. How? By requiring a decentralization of our personal experiences to that of the expanding whole of humanity, as well as to that of creation ecologically. It has well been said that a journey of a 1000 miles cannot begin without first questioning the need for such a journey. For where there is no introspection or doubt, so too will there be found delusion and contempt (which is my humble attempt at speaking in terms of Peter "Rollinisms").

For those modernists amongst us, we will always feel less convinced and less willing to let go of our dualisms. But in the world of quantum physics, as in the world of quantum living, such classical descriptors cannot be helpful. Neither to a postmodern way of living and thinking, nor to our biblical studies and Christian worship. Emergent Christianity is a different type of Christianity than we are use to seeing. It is foreign to us, and startling new and refreshing. And as such, generally feared and dreaded, called names, and chastised as from the devil's own pit of hell, by the less informed, or less willingly to move forwards towards God's gracious calls of repentance and submission.

 

And though it is true that postmodern emergent Christianity has radically changed many of the goal posts of pre-modern, and modern, evangelical Christianity, it should also be known that God is still the same, only now we are gaining a richer, more fuller, understanding of His majesty and glory. As such, the wisdom of God's salvation through Jesus is itself radically removing all the goalposts of our Christian (and non-Christian) lives unto the furthering majesties and glories of God's renewing Kingdom. Not magically, nor mystically, but in a very real, definitive sense of spiritual undertaking by the Holy Spirit. Requiring the insights of today's younger, more nimble postmodern minds and spirits, which are more willing to rediscover the God of the Bible lost upon the foundering sands of religious secularisms and secularized lifestyles (I speak in modern day terms here, just as Paul did to his first century listeners!).

 

Underneath will be found a truer spirituality than can be found through the fantasizations and mysticisms many think must accompany a reforming Christianity. Certainly, there will be devils enough to fight; and, principalities and powers too! But don't be surprised to find those devils and powers housed quite comfortably within the halls and board rooms of the church. For inasmuch as there be heaven-sent angels let them be likewised clothed in flesh-and-blood hearts and souls through the postmodern day you of emergent Christianity. Who will globally speak Jesus' love and healing in as many tongues, and prophetic ministrations, of the redeemed to an unredeemed world lost in its hedonisms, atheism, pride and hate. It will require a greater power than our own human spirit of altruism and social justice. It will require the spiritual power of God's Holy Spirit testifying in-and-through us, to the power and resurrection found in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. Who Himself will put down all principalities and powers, and even the sin found in me and you. For it is to this postmodern day power of liberation and freedom, healing and forgiveness, that we are called to speak in Jesus' uplifted name. Amen.

 

R.E. Slater

January 4, 2013

   

 

 

 

How Secularized Has American Evangelical Christianity Become?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/01/how-secularized-has-american-evangelical-christianity-become/

 

by Roger Olson

January 3, 2013

Comments

 

How Secularized Has American Evangelical Christianity Become?

 

In a recent post here I talked about what I see as the secularization of evangelical Christianity in America. I gave some examples of its symptoms—that is, symptoms of secularization in American evangelical church life. I simply took for granted that secularization had long ago gripped and changed so-called “mainstream” Protestantism in America. Traditionally, that has been one of the primary ways of distinguishing “evangelical” from “mainstream” or “mainline” Christianity in America.

 

Some commenters have wondered if secularity is necessarily bad. How, for example, can evangelical Christianity engage in mission to secular people without some degree of secularity? Of course, that raises many questions, too many to discuss here. All I want to do here and now is discuss what I mean by “secularity” (and “secularization” and “secular”) and explain why I think it is something evangelical Christians should avoid. (By “avoid” I don’t mean “separate from” physically. I’ll explain further on what I mean by it.)

 

The word “secular” has a long and rich history and many meanings. In one sense, not the one I mean, it is simply a description of priests and nuns who do not belong to any particular order. Its alternative is “religious.” A priest or a nun is “secular” who does not belong to, for example, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) or the Carmelite Order. A “religious” priest or nun is one who does belong to a particular order (which usually involves taking certain special vows and living a distinctive lifestyle). Just to be clear—this is not the meaning of “secular” here.

 

What I mean by “secular” (and its cognates) is belief that human life can be lived successfully without God or religion. “Secularity” is implicit belief in that; “secularism” is explicit and, usually, aggressive belief in that.

 

When I suggest that American evangelical Christianity is largely “secular,” I do not mean that it has bought into secularism. No evangelical I know espouses secularism. Evangelicals usually recoil with horror from it. It is “the enemy” (e.g., “secular humanism”).

 

No, what I do mean is that, to a very large extent, as I see it, American evangelical Christianity has bought into secularity—an ethos, an outlook, a way of living life “in the world and of it” that is often, usually, unintended and even denied.

 

Before proceeding, I want to confess that I am not immune to secularity. I think it is extremely difficult to be immune to it. It’s an ingredient, if not the main feature, of the modern, Western culture most of us live in on a day-to-day basis. It would be almost impossible to avoid being influenced by secularity without leaving culture behind in the way, for example, portrayed in the movie “The Village.” There are lesser degrees of that kind of separation in many intentional Christian communities, but it seems to me the only way to avoid being infected by secularity entirely would be to create something like the community portrayed in that movie.

 

Also, I confess that I think secularity, a product of modernity, has brought about some good things. I don’t believe in shunning everything secular. For example, methodological naturalism in scientific research is secular. There is a sense in which separation of church and state is secular. I happen to think it’s also biblical and practical in that it is good for both church and state. It’s good theology and good policy. So, “secular” is not always automatically bad.

 

What is bad, in my view, is when secularity invades the churches (or is invited in) and becomes the shaping ethos in Christian life. That usually happens without anyone noticing it or pointing it out. It is like the proverbial frog in the gradually heating water who fails to jump out and ends up boiled to death. (I have read about that and, apparently, it doesn’t really happen to frogs. Still, I think it’s a good illustration for what can happen to Christians who accommodate too much to culture whether it be secular or pagan.)

 

I think to avoid secularity becoming a controlling norm in Christian life, including church life, we have to be conscious of it and intentionally resist it. We American evangelicals are, by and large, very critical of Christians in other cultures who we think practice “syncretism,” that is, uncritical and unbiblical blending of non-Christian cultural and religious beliefs and practices with Christianity. We talk much about “contextualizing the gospel” while avoiding syncretism. For the most part, anyway, evangelical missionaries (and their teachers and supporters in America) have criticized such things as ancestor veneration among Christians in certain African and Asian societies. In some African countries, some Christians practice animal sacrifice in Christian worship. In Central America some Christians have combined shamanistic practices with Christianity. All these things we denounce and demand that our “converts” stop and shun.

 

However, when evangelical Christians from other, non-Westernized, cultures come to us they almost always see and point out (when coaxed) our own syncretisms—especially the ways in which we American Christians uncritically blend secularity with our Christianity. I don’t always agree with them. Sometimes they seem to want Western (European and North American) Christians to live pre-modern lives in a puritan manner (purified of modernity and all its products). For example, I once succeeded in getting a Christian student from Ethiopia to open up and reveal his thoughts about American Christianity. As the old saying goes, “Boy did we get an earful!” Among other things he said (very politely and respectfully) that in much of Africa (the parts he was familiar with) questioning authorities was considered unchristian and yet I encouraged my theology students to question anything. The difference in his case seemed to be that critical thinking itself revealed impermissible syncretism, accommodation to secular culture. I disagreed (about the “impermissible” part, anyway).

 

On the other hand, at the same college and seminary, Ugandan evangelical bishop Festo Kivengere (1919-1988), “the Billy Graham of Africa,” gave us an earful about our secularized ways (not so much in his public talks as in his answers to our questions during a private lunch with faculty and administrators). I had to agree with his examples.

 

For example, many even non-evangelical African Christians speak warmly and enthusiastically about miracles as part and parcel of authentic Christianity. A few years ago I invited a Nigerian Catholic priest to speak to one of my classes. He was supposed to talk about Catholic theology (he was then the priest in residence at the Catholic student center next to the campus where I taught). Instead, he talked about miracles in African churches and among African Christians—including Catholic churches and individuals. That was his main topic. Clearly, he was attempting to evangelize American evangelicals, not with messages about Mary or the pope but about the power of God to heal the sick and raise the dead (which he claimed to have seen with his own eyes).

 

[It is supposed here that the subject area of fighting spiritual "principalities and powers" such as demons and the devil would also come under this same topic for a 3rd World beleiver. - R.E. Slater]

 

I think this is one of the best ways for American evangelical Christians to discover and avoid secularity among us and in us—to invite evangelical Christians from non-Western countries (especially Asia and Africa) into our churches and Christian organizations and ask them to talk to us about our own tendencies toward syncretism with secular culture.

 

So where do I see secularization in American evangelical Christianity? You might expect me to talk first and perhaps foremost about our general neglect of miracles and the supernatural in general. However, I prefer to begin by pointing out the ways in which our churches and Christian organizations operate along secular business lines. And I don’t mean only with money.

 

Business language pervades our churches and organizations. Instead of talking about “calling” a pastor, we now talk about “hiring” one. A small thing? I think not. In many evangelical churches today, the pastor is treated as an “employee” and falls under the oversight of the “personnel committee” (whatever name that might have). Now don’t get me wrong, I have no objection to churches having personnel committees. My objection is to placing the pastor and pastoral staff under its supervision. Churches used to have “pulpit committees” or “pastoral relations” committees whose job it was to work with the pastor(s) as lay representatives of the congregation. We also now frequently refer to the worship space using terms such as “auditorium,” “platform,” and “lobby.” But at a deeper level, many evangelical churches in America now make budget decisions in the same way businesses make them. Appeals by congregants to “have faith” are routinely turned aside as impractical. When there’s a budget shortfall, one or more staff members get “laid off.” In many cases, funds donated to the church or organization are put into endowments instead of being used for immediate ministry needs. Often, if not usually, the endowment proceeds are used for building maintenance (or, in one case I know of, to pay non-church member choir members).

 

In today’s evangelical Christianity I hear very little talk about God speaking to people, guiding and leading them, healing or providing for them—or doing anything (except giving comfort). I know one evangelical man who claims he had a “conversation with God” that resulted in what he sees as a miracle of provision for someone else through him, but he’s afraid to tell about it because he thinks even other evangelicals will think he’s crazy or a fanatic. He wrote an article about it anonymously and tells only a select few friends that it happened to him. Some “good evangelicals” he’s told about it have expressed skepticism that God really speaks to people that way or provides in that manner.

 

This is one area where I agree with fellow evangelical Wayne Grudem (many of whose other opinions I disagree with very strongly). Wayne has written about the demise of prophecy in Christianity and how important it is to recover that gift. And by “prophecy” he doesn’t mean what most evangelicals mean by it—good preaching. Another more conservative evangelical (than I am) theologian who has advocated a renaissance of non-secular Christianity among evangelicals is J. P. Moreland, author of, among other books, Kingdom Triangle (Zondervan, 2007). I once served on a panel with him and Greg Boyd at a National Pastors Conference. They both reminded me just how secularized I have become, along with most other evangelicals. Moreland talked very openly and publicly about angels who attend him. Boyd, of course, talked about spiritual warfare. Many in the audience, made up mostly of pastors associated in some way with evangelical emergent churches, looked very skeptical. (I was sitting with Boyd and Moreland on the platform [this was not in a church!] and examined the facial expressions and body language of the audience members I could see.)

 

I’m not advocating seeing angels or practicing spiritual warfare or renewing prophecy so much as I am simply pointing out how far we American evangelicals have moved in terms of absorbing a secular outlook on life. Evidence, as I see it, is not so much that we don’t do those things as that we are skeptical about them in a kind of knee-jerk fashion. (I wrote in my previous post about the dwindling of church meetings for fellowship and worship and other symptoms of creeping secularization.)

 

So, after all that, let me confess my own guilt. I was shocked and somewhat put off when my Christian medical doctor asked to pray with me after an examination for a medical problem. Why? Not because he was doing anything less than the very best medical science has to offer. He wasn’t substituting prayer for medical care. I suspect many, if not most, American evangelical Christians would have the same reaction I had—wondering if that was appropriate professional practice even for a Christian medical doctor. (I concluded it is, but my initial reaction was revealing.) Later, I wasn’t surprised to find out that he attends a “Third Wave” church in town that believes in miracles. I would have been more surprised to learn that he attends a “normal” evangelical church! I could go on giving examples of my own secularization of mind and heart and behavior. But I’ll stop for now and just ask you, my dear readers, to examine your own Christian lives and churches and consider whether, and to what extent, they have been compromised by secularity.