Cultural Christianity: The Disaster of Abandoning the Gospel

By Andrew McKinney

There is a messy secret within the Western evangelical church, and it is starting to get out. We're not who we think we are, and it is becoming painfully obvious to the rest of the world around us. The secret? We have abandoned the preaching of the true gospel and, as a result, admitted thousands of people into our local assemblies who are lost and dead in their sin. This has landed the evangelical church in utter ruin and devastation. Rather, than hearing the cross and the gospel of Christ proclaimed in our churches, we now hear the relative gospel, a gospel of ceremonial works that cannot save anyone. And we are facing judgment because of this. Scandals wreck whole denominations. Sin plagues our congregations and pulpits. People remain dead in their sin, and the testimony of Christ suffers shame. The church is now almost indistinguishable from the secular culture that we are called to reach. We have wholly embraced cultural Christianity.

It is time to face the ugly truth in the mirror and return to the preaching of the true biblical gospel as revealed in Holy Scripture. We must return to preaching the fundamental truths of God's Word. God is holy in His righteousness. Man is dead in his sin and incapable of saving himself. Hell awaits any who would dare to trust in anything other than Christ to save them, for He alone is our atonement and propitiation. Trusting in His death and resurrection is the only means of salvation from sin and hell. We must call people to repent of their sin, submit to Jesus as Lord, trust in Him alone, and follow Him.

It is time to condemn the relative gospel in all of its forms for what it is--a false gospel. Salvation is not found in a ceremonial ritual, politician, political party, or ideology. It is found in Christ alone. We must repent, turn back to the Bible, preach it unashamedly, and trust God alone to save. It is time to condemn cultural Christianity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888329429

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Cultural Christianity

The Disaster of Abandoning the Gospel

Andrew McKinney

ISBN 979-8-88832-941-2 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88832-942-9 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Andrew McKinney

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

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Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Deadly Secret and the Divine Solution

The Great Invasion

The Frightening Resemblance

The Deceit of Emotions

The True Gospel

There Are Few Who Find It

Wrought in God

The Gospel Essentials

The Beginning of True Philosophy

The Biblical Jesus

Totally Depraved

The Reality of Hell

The Shocking Atonement

Faith

The Cost of Salvation

The Call to Salvation

The Current Manifestation

America and Rome

Where Are We Now?

The Answer

Bibliography

About the Author

To Katie, who puts up with my Calvinism debates

And to Charlotte and Reuben, for whom it is that I wish to grow in Christ

Introduction

C. S. Lewis was right to fear that the term Christian would lose all sense of purpose and meaning, for this is precisely what has happened.¹ While the word Christian once referred to someone who adhered to the biblical gospel and the doctrine that it espoused, it has now come to refer to anyone who wants to have any association with Jesus and considers themselves to be spiritual in the vaguest sense of the word. The term Christian has become malleable, changeable, and I'm quite sure that Lewis is rolling over in his grave. I also put Jesus in scare quotes because not only has the term Christian become malleable, but the person of Jesus has become pliable as well, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Someone may believe Jesus is, or was, a spiritual being; whether He was real or not historically doesn't matter. If Jesus is whoever you want Him to be, it is not necessary that He be an objective historical person. Now this person who believes Jesus to be a spiritual figure may also be very spiritual themselves—i.e., they believe that the supernatural exists in some vague form. The culture today would no doubt call this person a Christian in every sense of the word. In fact, the culture would scold you if you said that there was more to being a Christian than having some vague belief about Jesus and being spiritual yourself. The term Christian has come to a place where it is nothing more than clay in the hands of a potter, a term that people may throw and shape to their personal preference. It can mean whatever they want it to mean. The term Christian is now a relative term.

The term relative simply means that there are no absolute standards by which reality—or at the very least, concepts or definitions—may be judged to be true or false. In fact, in relativism, there is neither truth nor falsehood. If religion is not absolute, this means that it is subjective or relative to the individual. This means that there is no singularly true religion that, by definition, makes all other religions false. No! For religion to be relative means that all religions are true at the same time. If a person happens to be Muslim, then his religion is true for him individually in the sense that it does not have to be true for anyone else. He can be a Muslim while the lady standing next to him can adhere to Hinduism, and her religion is no less true than his. According to relativism, they are both correct.

What does this have to do with the term Christian? And further, what does this have to do with our phenomenon that we will call cultural Christianity? Well, this is what has happened to both Christianity and the gospel altogether. Within Evangelicalism, both Christianity and the gospel have lost all meaning and clarity, so it would only follow that the term Christian would as well.

When C. S. Lewis said that he feared that the word Christian would lose its sense of meaning, he was describing only a symptom, not the virus itself, so we must identify the virus if we are to put forth the proper cure. Consider it like this: When someone says they are a Christian, what do they mean? There is no clear answer, and in our postmodern world, there are no wrong answers.

As we've already said, the term has become relative to their preferred meaning of the word. Are they a fundamentalist? Are they Reformed? Do they believe in the deity of Christ? Do they even believe Christ was a real historical person? Do they believe in total depravity? Are they Mormon? Are they a member of the Watch Tower Society? Or do they mean that they are simply someone who considers themselves to be spiritual and believes that Jesus was a good man? In our society today, all of these people would be right to say they are a Christian, but there is nothing that binds them together. Some believe Jesus to be God; others do not. Some believe salvation to be sola fide; others do not. Some believe the Bible to be the actual Word of God; others do not.

The greatest tragedy in all of this is that we do not know whether someone has actually been regenerated or not when they say they are a Christian. Are they born-again? Have they repented of their sin and exercised true saving faith in Christ? Who knows? Only God knows. You can no longer assume that when someone says they are a Christian, they adhere to the traditional teachings of Scripture and the true gospel.

While we know that the true church will always be the true church, it seems that within our nation and society, you cannot tell the true church from anyone else, at least not on the surface. Christianity seems to have been swallowed up by the culture. It's all become one large gray conglomerate. Christianity within the West no longer seems to be pure and undefiled religion, as James defined it by keeping oneself unstained by the world (James 1:27 NASB). We certainly have become stained. In fact, we have become so stained that you can't tell where the stain begins or ends.

In some cases, you have whole denominations within Protestantism and churches within those denominations that are in crisis, endorsing homosexuality and the redefining of marriage, the killing of the unborn, worshiping at the altar of environmentalism, and falling wholescale into the depraved mindset of God's judgment by accepting transgenderism. What is worse than this, these issues have become political in nature. The church has looked to the government to enforce her preferred morality rather than simply preaching the gospel and trusting God to change hearts.

It is no shock or surprise that unbelievers would look to the government in order to enforce their morality and worldview. For the unbelieving, when God is out of the picture, who else would you look to? The strong man is the only place you have to look: the monarch, the leader, the president, etc. But for the church—for believers—to look to the government in order to legislate and enforce a biblical morality is tantamount to insanity. All that this has accomplished is the reduction of theological and biblical issues—marriage, life, personhood, reality—down to mere political quarrels on social media rather than keeping them in the higher realms of biblical truth where they belong.

So this begs a question: How did we get to this point? How did we get to a point where Christian means whatever someone wants it to mean, where the gospel is whatever someone wants it to be? How did we get to a point where issues like marriage, personhood, and reality are decided by the congress or the courts rather than by God? The answer is simple: We abandoned the true gospel.

Cultural Christianity defined

If true Christianity, at its simplest point, is defined by the true gospel, then cultural Christianity is defined by the relative gospel at its simplest point, and it has infected the church. Much in the same way that the Galatian churches had been deceived by another gospel that really wasn't a gospel at all, so we in the evangelical church have been hoodwinked into accepting another gospel as well (Galatians 1:6–7).

It is crucially important that we understand this clearly. Most people carry on as if nothing has happened or as if nothing has changed within Evangelicalism. We see the results of this disaster, and we wonder at what has taken place to bring about such chaos within the church, but for all our wondering, no one seems to see the cause. It is very simple: We have adopted another gospel that isn't really a gospel at all. The result of this is that we have been handed, in turn, a Christianity that isn't really Christianity at all; rather, it is cultural Christianity.

But just what is this phenomenon that I call cultural Christianity? Well, even though we see the results of this false religion, it can be rather hard to pinpoint and define. The trail of unbiblical culturalism is easy to see in our churches if you simply look for it. Cultural Christianity seeks to claim the name of Christ and even claims to believe in Him while, at the same time, it removes the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, and consequently, the transformation that comes from the Holy Spirit. It is characterized by being man centered rather than God centered. It is emotionally driven rather than Spirit filled. It seeks to keep man comfortable within his sin rather than calling him to repentance and submission. It calls people to seek after personal fulfillment rather than after righteousness. It is concerned with temporal, worldly matters and arguing over vain political ideologies rather than preaching the true gospel. In accepting this false religion into our churches, we have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25 NASB).

We've simply been talking about what it looks like. What we are after, though, is knowing what it is, so what we will attempt to do is boil it down and define it in the simplest terms possible so as to avoid any confusion regarding its philosophy. We said that at its simplest point, cultural Christianity is defined by its relative gospel. So based upon our definition of the relative gospel, we would be able to biblically define cultural Christianity, and we certainly want to be biblically accurate and precise with our definitions.

So what is the relative gospel? Simply put, it is the true gospel that has been changed. That is, as simplistic as it seems, the relative gospel. This is to say that the relative gospel is the true gospel that has been altered by both omission and addition. To go a bit further in our definition, it is the true gospel that has been altered by both omission and addition in order to fit a specific audience's preference. This shouldn't surprise us. This is what Satan does. He takes that which God has given us (in this case, the true saving gospel) and alters it to his damning purposes. His strategy has not changed from the Garden of Eden. Satan takes the Word of God, in which the true gospel is revealed, and twists it into a lie.

This relative gospel can take many forms and shapes depending on the lie that is being told. This is why we call it the relative gospel. Because according to cultural Christianity, the gospel is relative to the individual depending upon their lived experience or their felt needs. Peoples' lived experiences or felt needs become the authority in determining what the gospel should and should not include in its message. Most recently, it has taken the shape of the social justice gospel. Without going full scale into the whole matter, this specific relative gospel preaches that people aren't actually responsible for their sin but are instead victims of the sins of others.

While it may be true that people are victims of the sins of others, as we all are at some point, it is most certainly not true that mankind is not responsible for his own sin. This is an incredibly fatal alteration. Telling people that they have been victimized (which, again, maybe they have been) and that their sin is in reality not their fault but rather the fault of someone else is not the saving gospel. But this isn't meant to be the saving gospel. This is the relative gospel. The whole goal of presenting people with the relative gospel is convincing them that they can become Christians without the hard tasks of repentance, submission, dealing with sin, and seeing the holiness of God.

This, then, is cultural Christianity, a false form of Christianity fabricated by Satan and forwarded by a relative gospel that serves man's preferences and Satan's damning purposes rather than the redemptive purposes of God. Whereas the true gospel's source and authority is Scripture, the relative gospel is derived strictly from man and his nature, ultimately being a lie straight out of hell. This is clearly shown in that the true gospel biblically exposes man's sinfulness, how he is hopeless to save himself, and teaches that salvation is purely a work of God wrought by His grace. Cultural Christianity and its relative gospel claim that man can, through some ceremonial practice and exercising of his will, save himself. This relative gospel is clearly not the saving gospel. It cannot save, has never been able to save, nor will it ever be able to save. Cultural Christianity is a false religion.

The fatal subtraction

That is a tall charge, I realize. However, I say this because it is no small matter. It manipulates and alters the true gospel in order to have in mind the things of man rather than the things of God. The entire point of this manipulation is to keep man blind to the holiness of God, his sin, and his need for repentance and a new life that only God can provide. The reason is obvious. Without seeing the holiness of God and your own sinfulness, there is no cause for repentance. Without repentance, there is no evidence of new life in Christ, and without new life in Christ, there is no salvation. This will undoubtedly upset many people, but it is nevertheless the truth. We can no longer spare people their emotional well-being while the gospel suffers violence at the hands of lost men who forward the satanic counterfeit. We cannot, under any circumstances, alter the gospel to fit the sinful desires and preferences of man.

In each and every case of gospel alteration, the relative gospel removes two key components of the true gospel: the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. This is something we cannot afford to miss. In every case where man, buying into a lie, adds something to the gospel, it is always designed by Satan to remove the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. Remember that we defined the relative gospel as the true gospel that has been altered by both omission and addition in order to fit a specific audience's preference. Here we see the omission that always occurs in any gospel alteration.

Unfortunately, we have really missed this. They have been snuck out the back door while we've been entertaining all these new cultural nuances. Is social justice part of the gospel? Is ethnic experience part of the gospel? Is feminism a part of the gospel? Is economic or environmental justice a part of the gospel? Is socialism a part of the gospel? You may scoff or laugh, but these are real questions that real people who purport to be evangelicals are asking.

While we've been busy arguing over these heretical additions, we've missed the point completely that each addition to the gospel is designed in such a way so as to subtract the sinfulness of man and God's holiness from the equation altogether. Without confronting man with his sinfulness and the holiness of God, there can be no true salvation. This is the lie. This is the plot. This is the whole goal of the enemy: to remove any saving power from the message of God by changing it in order to make it more palatable. In the name of that which is noble—reaching people for Christ—we have totally assured their destruction.

Understand this: the two most basic matters of importance in the gospel are the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. After all, these two issues are what make the gospel necessary in the first place. If God were not holy, then we needn't worry about our sin. Just the same, if we were not sinful, then we needn't worry ourselves with the fact that God is holy.

However, we know that God is holy. Worse yet, we know that we are, in fact, radically corrupted by sin. Because of these two inescapable facts, the gospel is thus necessary, or we are all justly destined for eternal damnation. This is where the true gospel must begin. These two concepts serve as the foundation for our understanding of every doctrine within the gospel as well as its necessity.

However, it remains that we, the evangelical church in America, have altogether dropped these two doctrines. Very few seem to be preaching the holiness of God. Consequently, few are proclaiming the sinfulness of man. This has resulted with a gospel that will not save and, most tragically, a congregation of people who believe themselves to be saved but, in reality, are not.

Now I can hear some people asking the question, how do I know that this is all really the case? How do I know that we've really exchanged the true gospel for a relative gospel? And the answer is more simple than you think. It is evidenced in what is preached. It is shown in our Sunday school literature and classes. It is projected in how we live, how we fellowship with one another, and what concerns us within each local body. In other words, what do people wish to gain by going to church? We do not care about our sin. We are not terrified of God and His holiness (Isaiah 6:5). We do not mourn over our sin (Matthew 5:3–4). We do not care about righteousness and sanctification (Matthew 5:6). If we truly understood the holiness of God, we would be utterly devastated by our sin (Romans 7:14–25). Likewise, if we understood how sinful we really are, the holiness of God would have us on our knees in holy terror, begging for grace and forgiveness. Instead, however, we are making decisions for Christ, repeating prayers, and asking Jesus into our hearts and then congratulating ourselves on how many were saved.

A prime example

Now I know that people are already upset. It seems that I have attacked the main way in which we portray justification and salvation to children: asking Jesus into our hearts. And it's true; I have. But this really serves as a prime example of exchanging the true gospel for the relative gospel. The act of asking Jesus into your heart or any other alteration to the gospel or ceremonial ritual is nowhere found in Scripture to be necessary for salvation. In fact, the complete opposite is found for such things: condemnation. It is no different than the ceremonial rituals of tradition taught by the religious leaders of Jesus's day, and that is precisely what it is, a traditional, ceremonial ritual. You will not find a single verse in which we are commanded or encouraged to do this in order to be saved. It is simply another alteration of the gospel so as to appeal to a different audience.

And worse yet, we are portraying this to children. Children needn't be given a kid-friendly gospel. They are little sponges, as we say all of the time. They soak things up like sponges do water, so why should we give them a different gospel than we give adults? Not to mention the fact that nowhere in the Bible will you find a child coming to salvation. The only case you will find that could even be remotely related to this would be in phrases like in Acts 11:14 (NASB): You and your household. This assumes, however, that Cornelius's children were old enough to understand the gospel for themselves; we don't know how old they were.

And to further bolster the matter, when you look at Acts 10:34–44, you'll find that Peter nowhere tells the children of Cornelius to ask Jesus into their hearts. Instead, he gives them the whole biblical gospel: Christ; His messiahship, death, burial, resurrection; and faith (repentance is implied in verses 42–43).

We wouldn't tell an adult to ask Jesus into his heart. Why? Because we know such things do not make any biblical sense. Paul, Peter, John, and James—they all agree. Repentance and faith are our responsibility when it comes to salvation. These are the only two things that are required of us, and these only come after regeneration—the new birth. Jesus says plainly to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him (Luke 9:23). This means that if you are going to follow Christ, repentance and faith are required, not repeating a prayer or asking Jesus into your heart.

Yes, the kingdom belongs to those who are like children, and yes, God has special provisional grace for children who are not yet at the age of accountability (Mark 10:13–16), but this does not give us license to distort and change the gospel into something unbiblical so as to try and force it upon someone who does not yet understand it. This is a dangerous practice. It is almost a gross form of manipulation where we, as parents and teachers, wish to give ourselves peace about the salvation of our children. So we push them into doing something that they do not understand and that is unbiblical while at the same time giving them false assurance, for when they do come of age and God holds them responsible for their sin, they believe themselves to already be saved when they are not.

I could not tell you how many stories I have heard of people who said that they thought they were saved at a young age only to find out that they were not. And praise God for His grace that did save them in His due time. If a child understands the basics of the gospel, praise God! Continue to present them with the gospel and call them to repent of their sin and trust in Christ. They are in God's hands.

But this is the sort of thing I am railing against. We are in the business of altering the gospel so as to make it acceptable to our audience. It doesn't matter whether it is a child, a pagan, or a humanistic culture. The correct answer is never to alter the gospel but to always preach and present the biblical gospel. In trying to alter the gospel to make it more appealing to a specific audience, we act as if our presentation of the gospel is the determining factor in whether or not someone will be born-again.

Let me be crystal clear. It isn't our responsibility to save anyone. Presenting the gospel in a certain way to someone isn't what determines someone's destiny. In fact, to be perfectly frank, it doesn't matter how you present the gospel as long as you present the biblical gospel. Your oratory skills are hardly a stumbling block to God. He is the One who saves, not you, not me. You present the gospel. I present the gospel. He is the One who gives the new birth.

Realize this: it is inevitable. When we alter the gospel, holiness and sin (at the very least, the purity of holiness and severity of sin) go completely out the window. Whether we're trying to make them easier for a child to understand or soften them to make them more acceptable to a hostile unbeliever, both alterations are wrong and unbiblical. Without the preaching of the holiness of God, man does not know how sinful he desperately is within his heart. Without the knowledge of sin, there is no calling to repentance, no need for counting the cost of salvation, no fear of judgment and hell. Without repentance, there is no justification—that is to say, no salvation.

Two tragedies

This has landed us in complete and utter ruin. To use a common phrase, this is a disaster. This doesn't mean that we begin flailing about, waving our arms and hands, screaming and panicking, and burning the place down. No! It is true that we are in the practice of abandoning the biblical gospel and, in so doing, guaranteeing people's comfort on their way to hell. But this does not mean that God is out of control. Rather, this is simply a call back to the biblical preaching of the true saving gospel and a call to understand the consequences that abandoning the gospel has brought about. Lost sinners, whose sin remains unforgiven and whose lives are not transformed and void of the Holy Spirit, now teach Sunday school; sit on deacon boards, committees, leadership; and even stand behind pulpits with a Bible in their hand. The church is filled with souls who are lost and do not even know it.

Ultimately, abandoning the gospel has resulted in two unspeakable tragedies. The first tragedy is that these people have false hope. They believe themselves to be saved and on their way to heaven because they walked an aisle, repeated a prayer, had an emotional experience in the past, asked Jesus into their hearts when they were in grade school, or were baptized and went to church with Mom and Dad. How devastating and shocking it will be for them when they die, cross over into eternity, and hear those most dreaded of all words, Depart from Me. I never knew you (Matthew 7:23).

These people need the biblical gospel. They need to hear of the holiness of God, the evil and deceitfulness of sin that resides within their heart, the conviction that comes from the Holy Spirit, and the new birth that only God can give. Perhaps the most tragic of all cases in this sense is the person who rightfully doubts their salvation. They see no transformation in their lives or thoughts. They then go to their pastor with this concern, and he asks them if they have ever prayed a prayer or asked Jesus into their heart. They naturally respond in the affirmative. He pats them on the back and assures them that all is well. That false assurance is then only bolstered and strengthened, all but assuring that it will follow him directly into hell.

The second tragedy is that because the church is infected with false believers, the testimony of Christ suffers. In other words, pastors remain burdened over church members and congregants who continuously stumble into sin, remain untransformed, and bear no fruit unto righteousness (c.f., Matthew 3:8). Scandal and sin plague the evangelical church. As of this writing, the SBC has just been hit with a litany of sexual abuse allegations. When things like this take place, we look around at one another surprised and wonder to ourselves what has gone wrong. We have abandoned the gospel. We have abandoned the preaching of holiness, transformation through the Holy Spirit, the sinfulness of man, and the calling of lost sinners to repentance and submission to Christ.

We have wrongfully proclaimed for far too long that salvation comes at no cost when in reality, it will cost you everything: your sin, your autonomy, your dreams and desires—truly, your entire life. We have also wrongfully told people for far too long to come as you are, as if Christ will not require complete and total transformation in their hearts and lives. Do we not realize that Christ actually turned more people away than He accepted during His earthly ministry?

We willfully and gleefully tell people that they can come to Christ as they are (and yes, this is true), but we will not tell people that if they are truly saved, they will not remain as they are. Yes, God meets people in time where they are in their sin and gives them new life through regeneration. However, if they are truly saved, then it will inevitably result over time in transformation. Each new birth will result in newness of life. Without the fruit of righteousness, there is no evidence of true repentance and salvation (Matthew 7:15–23, 12:33–37; 2 Corinthians 5:17; James 2:14–26).

The end result of this should be totally and completely clear. The cost for abandoning the gospel in order to cater to a culture that rejects it has been a complete and utter disaster. We have brought into our churches millions of people who believe themselves to be saved when they are not. In so doing, we have welcomed sin and Satan's minions into our churches with open arms. We then ironically have the wherewithal to look stunned and shocked when scandal wrecks and dismantles us from within.

The purpose of this book

So what is the purpose and aim of this book? It really has three main goals: (1) to diagnose the current condition of the evangelical church, (2) to clearly present the biblical gospel, and (3) to call the church back to the preaching and teaching of the true biblical gospel. It is this simple.

When we abandon the gospel, disaster will strike. This is not a hard concept to grasp nor a hard thing to predict. Scripture, as well as history, is crystal clear about this. We are in the midst of a disaster within the evangelical church. To say that it is far past time to return to the preaching of the gospel—holiness and sin included—is an understatement. In reality, we have no other choice. Should we continue down the path that we are currently on, I do not think it hyperbole to say that it will lead to the utter destruction of our nation.

Again, I understand that the true church will always be the true church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against her (Matthew 16:18). I am not saying that the true church will be destroyed, but what I mean to say is that I fear that the true church in America—and really, the West at large—has been so infiltrated and drowned out by the culture that only a severe sifting will separate the wheat from the chaff. But perhaps this is what is most needed in our day.

Make no mistake, God will separate the sheep from the goats—true believers from false believers (Matthew 25:31–33). He will have His true church proven faithful. This sifting, historically speaking, has taken place under extreme duress and oftentimes under penalty of death. I'm not saying that this is where we are at, but it would not surprise me to find us there several years in the future. The relative gospel will not survive the purge, nor will any Christian who is a Christian in name only. For the sake of the church and for the sake of those who are harboring false hope, we must preach the true biblical gospel, and it is there that our journey together begins.

It is my prayer that as you move through this book, you will prayerfully consider each chapter, learn in each chapter, and that you are challenged to look inward and examine your own heart. It is my desire for each believer to grow in the knowledge of Scripture, the knowledge of the gospel, and in the knowledge of God. As for the unbeliever, if you find yourself reading this, then it is my prayer that the Holy Spirit would perform His quickening work in your heart and bring about conviction and salvation in your life through each passage and topic examined.

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

—Philippians 1:6 (NASB)

Part 1

The Deadly Secret and the Divine Solution

Chapter 1

The Great Invasion

You will know them by their fruits.

—Matthew 7:20 (NASB)

J. R. R. Tolkien tells the story of Frodo in his world-renowned series of books known as The Lord of the Rings. Frodo found himself the possessor of a strange but beautiful golden ring. It had been passed down to Frodo from his uncle Bilbo upon Bilbo's 111th birthday. It was actually on that occasion that Gandalf had witnessed Bilbo use the magic ring to disappear and escape the nagging crowds of his neighbors. Gandalf became suspicious of something very unsettling upon discovering the ring's magical qualities. Could this be the Ring of Power crafted by Sauron within the fires of Mount Doom?

Once Bilbo had set off on his journey away from home, Gandalf cautiously examined the ring. Though he feared the worst, he needed to confirm his suspicions. If it was indeed the Ring of Power, this would put Frodo and the rest of Middle-earth in grave danger. Soon, Sauron's minions would be searching tirelessly for it and killing whoever stood in their way, so when Gandalf was setting out for Minas Tirith to forage through the records of the late king Isildur, he told Frodo something vitally important: Keep it secret. Keep it safe.

Frodo, nervous though he was, agreed.

Many months passed, and the ring remained hidden away in the house that was built into the hillside. In fact, the ring almost seemed to pass out of his mind. He carried on with life as normal, gardening, reading, enjoying the company of his neighbors and friends. Life seemed to be carrying on as perfectly normal until one night, after spending the evening at the tavern, Frodo comes home to find that someone has broken into Bag End. He slowly opens the door and finds that all of the candles have been extinguished. There is no light save that of the moon that shines in a single window. All is eerily quiet and still. You can almost feel the presence of the intruder even though you cannot see them.

As he peers around his dark home, a hand reaches out behind him and moves toward his shoulder. It suddenly latches on. Frightened for his life, Frodo wheels around to see the face of his intruder. He was face-to-face with Gandalf. He looked more weary than ever. His face was full of anxiety and terror. He had two questions. Is it secret? Is it safe?

The open secret

There is a great secret within the church of America. Much like with our case of the ring and Frodo, we are deeply afraid of it, and we would rather hide it away and forget about it. We glare at those who dare to get suspicious of our secret, and before they can even inquire about it, we shut them down. Keep it secret! Keep it safe!

But the secret is getting out. Everyone is beginning to notice the symptoms. Our palms are sweaty. Our eyes are shifting. We're beginning to tap our feet and breathe faster. We're getting nervous. We have told the lie so often and so much that we have nearly convinced ourselves that it is true. We don't really want to face the reality of the matter. We know that we are really not who we claim to be. We don't want to admit that fact, but we cannot keep it hidden forever. The mask is about to come off. You can already see the rotting flesh around the edges.

Even with the mask slipping, we still refuse to admit the secret of our condition (when I say we or the church, just to clarify, I mean the church here in the United States, specifically Protestantism and Evangelicalism). Our secret is becoming a problem that it is so atrocious that we cannot bear to even think about it getting out. We even grumble about the problematic secret in Sunday school, but we refuse to let it slip out between our lips. It is like the name Voldemort. We mustn't utter it. No! If we do, there will be terrible consequences. We stuff this problem underneath the rug and then try not to kill ourselves tripping over the hump of the carpet.

See, we can't bring it up. It's not that we like the problem or think that it's not a problem. It's just that if we bring it up and talk about it, then it will upset everyone, and they might leave and not come back. People who have been here for years and become pillars in our churches would be offended and hurt. If they left, it would hurt our offerings and tithing, and we just can't have that. A better way of handling it is to just talk about the problem as if it's them or they who are involved and to blame. It's not us or our church. No, it's those vague and elusive other believers. You know the ones I'm talking about: anyone but you and me. We have absolutely nothing to do with it. We couldn't possibly be to blame. We go to Sunday morning worship. We say our prayers. We sing in the choir. We volunteer during Vacation Bible School. We'll even occasionally go to church on Wednesday nights. We do our part.

What is this problem exactly? Well, it's rather distasteful and unpleasant, but I'll tell you since you ask. There is a dead body that we have tied to ourselves. That's right. And yes, even you have one, whether you know it or not. We're walking around with a corpse tied to our backs that we put there by our own doing. It stinks of putrid decay and eats into our flesh, slowly killing us. We're all dying a very slow and gruesome death. Endless infection plagues us and in some cases, eventually takes over our entire beings to the point that we are incurable. The stench of death fills our sanctuaries each Sunday. People are always commenting on the smell of others' corpses but never seem to notice their own. We are constantly tripping, falling over, and stumbling on one another's dead companions. This, in turn, brings about bitter infighting within many local churches, but even then, people still do not notice their own corpse. They imagine that if someone trips over it, it is just them being foolish. It is so obvious, glaring, and inescapable, and yet a majority of us simply do not see our own corpse.

I realize how absurd this must sound—that only some of us notice our own dead body. I mean, how could someone not see or notice something like that being dragged around behind them literally everywhere they go? It is heavy, putrid, foul, and glaring, but I tell you no lie: only some of us can actually see our own. Not a single person can honestly deny that they are there collectively. The stench of this problem is far too stout for that sort of nonsense, but everyone who is oblivious to their own corpse simply blames the stench on everyone else. Oh, yes, they are able to see the corpses of others. They have no problem seeing them at all, but as for their own, they would fly mad the very instant you suggested they had one.

But this leads me to a nagging suspicion. I believe that the only possible explanation is that some