Experiencing the Truth (eBook)

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BIBLICAL THEOLOGY

Experiencing the Truth about God

by  MICHAEL LEACH

What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish (Jonah 1:6).

Worldliness is the bane of the church and the robber of her theology. It could be argued that the modern church is like Jonah. It is comfortable in its carnality and is soundly sleeping at the bottom of the boat. So great is the impact of the world on it, that it has divested itself of its distinctive message, language, and sound. I fear that in many respects, today’s church is so dependent on secular culture that it is constantly borrowing from it in order to be more easily understood in its claims, more relevant in its message, and more user-friendly in its praxis.

Some have rightly said that the church and the world have “much in the showroom and nothing in the stockroom.” That is to say, the premier characteristic of our modern churches is their overwhelming superficiality. Instead of being renowned for their theological soundness, doctrinal purity, evangelical authenticity, and biblical fidelity, the church seems to have more in common with secular places of entertainment than with its historical, biblical definition as the people of the holy, transcendent, eternal God. In this regard, we painfully recall the trenchant sarcasm of former Tennessee senator and television and movie screen actor, Fred Thompson, when he quipped before the Commonwealth Club of California, “After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.”1

We are weeping today because the pervasive flippancy and levity of our times have so overrun the church that the irresistible thrust to be entertaining rules over it with an unassailable sovereignty. The seething desire to be relevant, practical, relational, up-to-date, and helpful is transforming the church into a seeker-pleasing, seeker-gathering institution, increasingly molded by the world while at the same time it sheepishly claims to be the citadel of Christ. This growing syncretism is producing such a bothersome blend that one justly fears that the term church, much like the word Christian, is undergoing such a momentous deconstruction as to render it unidentifiable from its biblical foundations.

After Light, Darkness

Popular religion, as flaunted on television and proclaimed in the vast majority of the large so-called evangelical churches testifies to the daunting reality that we are now re-entering a neo-medieval period of darkness. A fitting slogan for today’s religious community may well be post lucem, tenebrae: after light, darkness.2

The current darkness has a unique characteristic. It is not one which, like a fog or a billow of smoke, slowly advances from one corner of a city to the other, menacingly making its way until the entire area lies under its darkening haze. Rather, it is more like a pandemic shadow that is already hovering over the land and that is increasing in density as well as penetration. It is a grim spectacle indeed, for there are few oases of refreshing sunlight.

The Black Church Is Impacted

The black church is not exempt from this sweeping malaise. As part of the national religious landscape, it is also guilty of the vicious illness enveloping U.S. evangelicalism. Like the church at large, it also suffers from a blatant rejection of the Scriptures alone as the final and only absolute standard of truth in all matters of faith and conduct; a distorted view of preaching that now promises temporal prosperity, personal therapy, and individual glory; a shocking loss of the eternal and transcendent as its governing priorities; a distressing de-emphasis of the nature and significance of the sacraments; a vacuous understanding of the meaning and practice of kingdom discipleship; a human-centered, consumeristic notion of worship; and a truncated view of the church, ministry, and missions.

Given this dim background, as well as the significance of this work, this chapter attempts to set a biblical-theological paradigm for the remaining sections. Therefore we must engage with the prevailing notions of theology in the church as a whole and in the African-American church in particular.

The Need for Sound Theology

The truth this present work seeks to unveil is the overwhelming need for the understanding and application of sound biblical theology in all areas of faith and life. There is a thick and dominant strand within the pale of black religion that holds that blacks are not interested in the historic doctrines of the faith. Supposedly, blacks are mainly preoccupied with the application of Scripture to their pressing existential conditions. As a result, many African-­Americans tend to neglect in-depth studies of the rich doctrines of the Christian faith such as the Trinity, the deity and humanity of Christ, the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, the components of faith, the order of salvation (that is to say, the orderly process by which the Holy Spirit applies the benefits of Christ’s redemptive work to the hearts of God’s chosen people), and many others. Foundational terms such as redemption, regeneration, justification, reconciliation, covenant, sanctification, and glorification have fallen into the categories of a foreign language and would sound alien in many of our churches. Strangely, the reason for this neglect is not primarily that of disagreement, or of theological abstruseness, or even of some perceived logical incoherence, but rather because these subjects are considered to be non-essential in answering the existential question, how shall we then live? In other words, it is believed that for blacks the heavy emphasis on the application of Scripture precludes the need for a well-rounded theological foundation. In such thinking, the need for a systematic probing into the profound mysteries and truths of Christianity is replaced by an overemphasis upon applying Scripture to contemporary existential settings.

Doctrine versus Duty

A study of the supposedly most effective black churches in the United States showed that while these churches acknowledged the overwhelming need to apply the timeless, universal truths of Scripture in the context of everyday life, so as “to make theology relevant to the common man and to the common condition,” their emphasis on this necessary application betrayed a deep-seated antipathy toward the historic Christian doctrines. In the words of one author:

We simply do not identify . . . with many of the complex, esoteric, and impersonal theological concepts or doctrines held up before us. Indeed, while theologians go to extraordinary lengths to reconceptualize and articulate the life of faith, the actual struggle to find theology practical wrestles with the meaning of life and the daily experiences of living.3

In other words, in their haste to apply biblical teaching to local and temporal conditions, the most effective black churches actually exhibit an ingrained tendency to belittle the historic doctrines of the faith “once delivered to all the saints.”4

Obviously, such a situation bristles with several problems, one of which is the fallacy of the false dilemma or the either/or fallacy. In the words of one observer:

[T]heology, if it is true, is lived. It is lived in the life of the church, those whom God has called out from a rebellious world. Moreover, it is lived in the midst of the world, not in isolation from it. God has not removed the church from the world of rebellion, nor has he removed the world of rebellion from within the church.5

To say the least, theology is intrinsically practical. Its very content, the character and work of the infinite, sovereign, and holy God in history, inescapably requires the fitting response of all his creatures.

The ensuing disaster of such a false division is manifest. In spite of the dizzying religious activities in most predominantly black churches—activity marked by Bible reading, Sunday school and worship attendance, prayer, and fasting—far outstripping that of whites and Hispanics, a recent poll revealed that:

22 percent of the black respondents deny the existence of Satan.

Only 27 percent affirm the reality of absolute moral truth.

Fewer than 50 percent uphold the need to witness to Christ and his work in their lives.

30 percent agree that good works can merit salvation.

A staggering 52 percent deny the sinlessness of Jesus Christ.6

The last two points are most crucial: a significant percentage of the respondents believe in a salvation by works scheme while a majority deny the perfect character of Jesus Christ, in spite of the clear and contrary teaching of such biblical texts as 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Hebrews 4:15; 7:26.

The matter becomes even clearer when George Barna and Harry Jackson state that blacks’ faith in Jesus Christ is their ultimate safety net, “a powerful means of understanding the tragedies and disappointments of life even if their theology is not fully defensible on biblical grounds.”7 Here, a few observations are necessary.

First, apart from being manifestly erroneous and unbiblical, the above findings highlight the grave danger we face when we elevate our experiences above the need to be solidly planted on the unmovable foundation of biblical truth. What we really have is the claim of a genuine Christian experience that is based upon unbiblical grounds. This amounts to defining Christianity in unbiblical...