THE DECLINE OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH IN AMERICA--Part I of III

The Church Relating To Scripture Like The World.

If you're a hard head who hates compromise in the church, I want to encourage you with this article. It is personal observations about life under the big tent of today's Evangelicalism. I want to share these observations so you can be reminded you're not alone and to encourage you to keep speaking out. Assuming you weren't in a coma since 1962, you might just have the feeling a moral and spiritual slide has taken place. Our big tent covers a dung heap. You can smell it. And I'll bet, if you're a righteous man who loves God, you have actually said something about what you smell. And you've been told to shut up over and over again. So you go to church and you listen and you watch.

And you feel like Lot in Sodom.

That's actually how I've felt for a looonnnggg time. Let's list some of the things we have seen compromised in the last 50 years:

1. The authority of Scripture.

2. The inviolability of Scripture.

3. The clarity of Scripture.

4. The sufficiency of Scripture.

5. The gender roles as laid out at creation and reiterated in the New Covenant.

6. The efficacy of the gospel.

7. Separation from the world.

8. Uprightness in the pulpit.

9. Scriptural practice only.

10. Godly zeal and doctrinal vigilance.

11. Fear of God.

12. Wrath of God preached.

I mentioned 50 years for two reasons. First, that's how old I am. So that's what I remember. Second, the acceleration of evil in both the world and the church seems evident to me. Let's take a quick look at the twelve compromised Christian distinctives I have listed.

NUMBER 1. THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE. When I was a kid, the only authority openly considered in any discussion of doctrine, practice, or message was the Scripture. Oh sure, the old folks were sons of Adam. They wanted to sin as much as you and I. However, at least the veneer was Scripture. The argument was never, cultural relevance or church growth. It was Scripture. Even the man who wanted to sin had to try to argue his case by twisting Scripture or hide it altogether. The ethic was Scripture. And so it served as a dam against the flesh which was always looking for leaks.

Now the dam has fish runs. We can call in the authority of psychology or the latest Christian author. Just before I went to seminary, psychology was introduced to Bible schools and seminaries. Why? Because to really minister to the folks, we needed Skinner and Freud. Paul and Moses weren't good enough. More on this under change number four. We call in the authority of church-growth gurus. We have churches putting aside the Scripture for weeks at a time to study other books, like the Purpose Driven Whatever.

NUMBER 2. THE INVIOLABILITY OF SCRIPTURE. When I was a boy and my uncle was inventing the wheel, my dad had a rule. He made sure my two brothers and myself never did anything disrespectful to the Bible. The lesson he wanted to burn in was the sacredness of God's Word. Even outside the Perkins household, never was there any thought to altering the Scripture to make it more appealing. "Appealing" was just not given a thought. Obedience was all. In the society at large, most would not consider changing the Bible. Debating it would be like debating the blueness of the sky. Mentioning the possibility would put one into the realm of the mentally touched. You'd be thought of as having something wrong with your thought process. There's something you don't understand here. This is the Bible we're talking about.

No longer. With men like Stuart Briscoe and John Stott endorsing the TNIV altered translation the unthinkable is now thinkable. We stand in judgment over the Word. The excuse is that poor old God just got tongue tied. He said stuff that might offend the ladies. So we straightened that all out for Him, like Uzzah and the Ark. Now the ladies will love God, too. Recently I caught a big name Christian blogger, Tim Challies, pushing an audio version of the TNIV. I wrote and asked him why he thought that was okay in view of all the Scriptural demands to always honor, preserve, and accurately transmit the Word from one to another. He didn't see fit to answer the question. Instead, he got angry. When I served notice of Challies' sin to the folks over at another really big name Christian blog, Team Pyro, they just circled the wagons. The excuses from Phil Johnson and Frank Turk ranged from ridiculous to dishonest. Of course, I was impugned as stupid and evil. That was step number one. Turk claimed that the Deuteronomy 18 admonition to reject a prophet who misrepresented what God had said did not apply to translators and translations. Johnson said it was okay to use a purposely altered translation as long as it was not altered to create "damnable heresy." Neither dealt with the sin of lying about what God had said. So they continue to endorse Tim Challies.

NUMBER 3. THE CLARITY OF SCRIPTURE. Theologians call this the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture. "Clarity" communicates it, though. This particular problem has been growing for decades. When I was in college, I knew a young lady preparing to go to seminary. I asked what was her career aim. She said she wanted to be a pastor. Knowing about Paul's teaching to Timothy I asked her about what she did with I Timothy 2. After 30 years I still remember her answer: "You can get around that!" I was shocked at that. The reason I was shocked, was her excuse. I'd never actually heard that particular excuse stated out loud. I had seen it practiced by folks purposely twisting Scripture, but I'd never heard anyone actually have the nerve to say it.

Today this sort of answer is common. The question asked in a doctrinal discussion is often, "What is your position?" Or, "Can you justify your position?" We never talked about that when I was a young drug-to-church boy. We only asked what the Bible said. Nothing else mattered. My position didn't matter and whether or not I could squint my eyes enough to see a Biblical text a certain way was not given a thought. The Emergent takes this uncertainty idea even further. They have excused any and all behavior and doctrine by saying simply that certainty is arrogance. The Bible says disobedience is arrogance, and I'm certain of that.

NUMBER 4. THE SUFFICIENCY OF SCRIPTURE. When I was in grade school the only authority we had as Christians was Scripture. If I had a problem in my soul, it was the Bible to which we looked. We knew nothing of addiction and recovery, we knew all about sin and obedience. We really did not read many Christian books. Instead, we studied the Bible. The first book after the Bible was a concordance to help study the Bible. Then, you might want to buy a commentary. That was pretty much it. The preacher on Sunday read and preached from the Bible. I can't remember hearing many quotes from other authorities.

By the time I was in college, however, three things had changed. First, psychology was fully integrated into our way of thinking. We had biblical doctrine, but to really counsel someone about deep things, psychology was essential in our minds. This lead to a number of bad things. We no longer thought of sin as the worst plague of man. Self-esteem became important. Self-actualization was the new ethic. Self-denial was what Miss Higgins taught us back in Sunday School, and, well, she was nice, but she didn't listen to current music and she was rather dull and negative, talking all the time of sin and obedience. Many of us, including myself, got degrees in psychology. We, including myself, thought of our parents as quaint, but not up to current thought. Most of our parents hadn't been to college and sometimes I wonder if that was not part of the ethos of change in those days. We loved our parents, but they were not educated. We wanted to be Christians, but not like our parents. We wanted to be educated Christians, not fuddy-duddies.

The second thing that happened to shake our confidence in the sufficiency of Scripture was a turning to our own psyches for answers to the deeper questions of life. It is legitimate to ask the chicken and egg question here. Did selfish narcissism lead us away from Scripture, or did our lack of confidence in Scripture lead to our self-centeredness? I don't have the answer. This inward turning led to more than an intellectual change. It lead to a societal change that was manifested both in and outside the church and the change was personal with each and every member in society whose thoughts were not strictly governed by Scripture. The change of which I speak was personal selfishness. This new personal selfishness worked itself out in private ways in our lives and in public ways that degraded the church and revolutionized American law.

For the first time ever, it was thought legitimate to justify behavior personally, ecclesiastically, or nationally because it lead to one's personal fulfillment. As a boy in 5th or 6th grade I knew that argument was just an excuse. Why didn't anyone else? I think they did. We all gave a national wink to each other and went on our merry ways. In the church, we didn't take the behavior as far as the world, but we did adopt "fulfillment" as the new ethic. It was disastrous. In the nation, in 1973, we decided that it was okay to kill babies. We had two very good reasons. We didn't want the baby to grow up unwanted and we didn't want the mommy to be burdened.

I was 16 in 1973. And still I was smarter than our nation's nine smartest lawyers. I knew abortion was not about caring for either mother or child. It was so Tommy could nail Suzy and not get in trouble for it. The Supreme Court couldn't figure that out, though. They thought they saw a penumbra.

About that time in California Governor Ronald Reagan got a law passed to have no-fault divorce. Because of the new ethic of personal fulfillment, marriages were not expected to be honored just because you promised on your wedding day. As a result the courts were flooded in California. In order to relieve the strain of this overload, the state simply decided to have a new kind of divorce. The younger among us will not recall the days before no-fault divorce. There was a time when a couple was expected to be faithful for life. Divorces were only granted if the one suing for divorce could demonstrate the other had broken the contract of marriage by violence, unfaithfulness, failure to support the family, or some other form of debauchery. If the court found in favor of the plaintiff, the defendant would pay a hefty price.

To clear the courts, California simply decided to do away with all that and grant divorce to just about anyone for any reason. The properties were then spit up according to a preordained formula and off go the happy non-couple. The devastation to the country that broken homes would bring was not a big deal. Fatherless children were not considered, either. In fact, the thought that a marriage vow be honored for the good of the kids was often and publicly scoffed at in order to normalize infidelity. These attitudes and ideas may not shock you as a resident of the 21st century, but to me, it was the dissolution of all that I had believed in and counted on. The sheer selfishness of the entire nation and this insidiousness seeping into the church was alarming to anyone who thought about it much.

So we tuned in the rock and roll and turned up the volume.

The third thing to shake our confidence in the sufficiency of Scripture was the proliferation of Christian publication. When I was in high school and college, it became fashionable for teachers and preachers to recommend books to read. And we did. The first real page turner I read was The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay. I couldn't put it down. On the other hand, Haggai was a bit dry. From that point on it only got worse. By the time I was in seminary, there was no subject in Christian doctrine one could bring up without someone recommending a book. Of course, there was no popular Christian book on the subject of wrath or the mortification of sin, but those sorts of things were not spoken of much in Evangelical circles by that time. Those subjects didn't lead to self-esteem or fulfillment. Talented authors became Christian heroes. To really get the meat of a doctrine, one needed to buy the book. Study of the Bible was not enough. So we didn't do much of it.

Today I can go down to the Bible Book Store right here in Billings, MT and get quite a number of Christian books. Some will tell me not to study the Bible so much. For that, get Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life. Another will tell me that I cannot be sure if I ought to have much confidence in what I believe in the Bible. That is an easier subject to find. Pick just about any Emergent title for that. Interestingly, what started out as a supplement to help us understand the Bible became a replacement for it, and then a denial of it.

Now we are so far from basic familiarity with the Scripture in the Evangelical pew that we are losing even our biblical vocabulary. And that is an entirely different story and it will end in apostacy.

In Christ,
Phil Perkins.