“The god of the average American church is not the God of the Bible. This god has an over-inflated and distorted sense of love, does not bring harsh judgments upon sinners, is never offensive to anyone regardless of their teachings or lifestyle, openly accepts sin, and is offended by the idea that he is sovereign over creation. He wants you to have a better marriage, a better job, a bigger car, and above all, he wants you to think he’s cool.”
from ZONICA:
His words took me by surprise. They were all at once a kind compliment and a stunning rebuke. He walked up to our booth at the conference and said, “Wes, I really enjoyed your session this afternoon. You know, of all the seminars I’ve attended at this conference, you’re the only who actually taught out of the Bible.”
Yes, you read that right. It was a Christian conference in the Midwest. There were probably a thousand people there and a hundred or more breakout sessions over the two day event.
This wasn’t the first time this had happened to me. A few months ago I had a similar situation at another Christian conference. Again, I did several breakouts over the three day event. After my last session, which was the last speaking event of the conference, a man walked up to me and said, “That was the best talk of the entire conference. You actually quoted the Bible.”
A Devastating Trend
Across much of evangelical Christianity in America the Bible has become a secondary or non-existent source of teaching. In many places, it isn’t even referenced at all on Sunday morning. In others, a verse may be quoted to start the message, but then the rest of the time is filled with a solid dose of the pastor’s “wisdom,” either from his vast “experience” or his scholarly “learning” at some quasi-pagan seminary.
Still other churches, who claim to be “Bible-based,” avoid many of the major teachings of Scripture for fear they will offend our oh-so-sensitive culture. They’re playing the marketing game, and the total teachings of Scripture just don’t fill the seats.
And then you have those who take the Bible and distort it to accomplish their own ends, namely, building self-help clinics for personal profit.
Across the nation, the Bible is becoming less and less a part of the life of the Christian church. We are quick to rail against the Catholics, Mormons, or Jehovah’s Witnesses for using another authority for their teaching (that is, a source of teaching other than the Bible itself), but we so conveniently overlook the fact that we do the same every day.
American Christians don’t know the Bible. They know what they’ve heard on Sunday morning for years or what they think the Bible says based on their own reasoning or ideas. But the true teachings of Scripture are far from their minds and lips. Let me give you another example.
A couple of times a year a new book will sweep through the church and create a great stir. Everybody will be talking about it, and many churches will quickly put their congregations through it. “This will revive your church!” they say. “This will revolutionize your ministry!” they proudly claim. But invariably, when I pick up the book myself, I’m often left thinking, “What’s so new and revolutionary about this book? This is taught all over Scripture. Our people should already know this!”
The content of the books we rave about is content we should have learned a long time ago. And not from some new release by Zondervan or Nelson, but from the Bible itself! What we need to revive our churches and revolutionize our ministries is not another book by some clever Christian pundit, but the Word of Almighty God Himself.
One of the Major Problems for the American Church
Our churches are a mess; we’re full of sin, self-centeredness, compromise, and conflict. Most churches are failing, and most of our youth are leaving. We’re in deep trouble to say the least. However, the main cause of our troubles is not the atheists, the ACLU, the Supreme Court, or the administration in Washington (as we so like to believe); the main cause is our shallow knowledge of the Word of God.
As we face our difficulties—like overcoming sin, standing against compromise, and finding victory in conflict—we no longer have the wisdom of God to guide and instruct us. We’re left with our own wisdom, and it always fails us.
But there’s another terrible consequence of marginalizing the Bible in the life and teaching of the church: Over time we become idolaters.
In biblical times, and in fact in many places around the world today, idols were formed by taking something from creation (a tree, a rock, a bar of iron), shaping it into an image, and then ascribing to that image the characteristics of the god desired.
But today, in modern American Christianity, we have put a new twist on creating idols. We take the God of the Bible, the true God, pull Him down from heaven, and remake Him into the god both we and our politically correct culture will accept.
The god of the average American church is not the God of the Bible. This god has an over-inflated and distorted sense of love, does not bring harsh judgments upon sinners, is never offensive to anyone regardless of their teachings or lifestyle, openly accepts sin, and is offended by the idea that he is sovereign over creation. He wants you to have a better marriage, a better job, a bigger car, and above all, he wants you to think he’s cool. . . . .
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True Discernment 