My, my, how things have changed in the world we live in . I'm speaking specifically to the United States of America, American churches, and American Christians. Back when President Clinton was in office, the mid and late 90's, he signed into law the defense of marriage act. In just over a decade things have changed drastically. In fact it wasn't that long ago that President Obama's stance on marriage was "evolving". Now today he is poised to throw open the social flood gates of this country through his stance on same sex marriage. Some churches are doing the same and others are considering joining up as well.
These issues are not going away but I'm not going to address the cultural/political issues here. My charge in this post is to address how people who claim Jesus as Lord think.
If you claim Jesus as Lord of your life, you are now entering a point in history where your point of view is not shared by the majority of people and in some parts of the country only a relatively small minority of people share it. Gone are the days where your neighbor's worldview was the same as yours. So my question to you, "Christians," is What Lens Do You Look At Life Through?
The people you come together to worship the Lord with on the weekends don't often hold the same worldview as the person sitting next to them or in front of them. I'm not saying we all must have the exact same thoughts, but they don't see life from the same lens. When I say lens, I mean that they don't project their life from a Christian worldview standpoint. They may be born again Jesus followers but they do not understand Jesus or the Bible to the point that they think, believe, and act from a biblical perspective. This is why I asked the question about which lens you look out of.
Let me explain what I mean. As a follower of Jesus I must look at everything in life through the lens of the bible and then interpret what I see in life and filter it through the scriptures. So I begin believing the bible is the authority on all things and then work from there trying to understand how to respond to situations, people, and issues. But what I see in the American church today is people who claim Jesus but look to the bible for justification for what they believe about life, society, relationships, politics, etc... If they can't find the justification then they distort the scriptures to make them fit what they want to believe. What they do is assume that something they believe is true or acceptable or our culture says is right and then try to figure out how to wrap the bible around what they believe to be true. The lens they work from is what our culture has taught them rather than what the bible has to say.
Herein lies the problem, once you say "yes" to Jesus you are a new creation, the old things are gone the new has come. (1 Cor. 5:17) We cannot stay the same, we must as Paul said in Romans 12: 2, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will".
Paul says we must change the way we think. We must change the way we view life, we must change the lens through which we look through. The life that comes after you've said yes to Jesus is a life that is in preparation for life with Him in eternity. It is a life that He has called us to participate in. But it is so much more than just preparation for eternity. Jesus spoke about His kingdom in the future, but He also spoke about His Kingdom that is now. We are to usher in that kingdom with him. We are to love and care for people on the margins of society, and to help heal the hurts of this life and move people towards how we were originally created. We are to point people back to the way things were supposed to be and remind them that those things will come again at Christ's return. Romans 8: 29 says that "... he predestined us to be conformed to the likeness of his Son". Becoming like Christ is what is to be going on now and will continue until we go home to Him. So it matters how we view this world. It matters how we think and believe.
Unfortunately people aren't the only ones with this approach, many churches have adopted the same kind of thinking and reasoning. Except the greater calamity of the church, is that they have exchanged a biblical lens for a cultural one. They are changing positions on issues like homosexuality, same sex marriage, living together before marriage, sex before marriage, evolution, and so on. (An example would be a message on creation and evolution that was presented through the science/evolutionary lens with the bible then wrapped around it, rather than through a biblical lens with the science wrapped around it.) When this happens in churches it is scary because they have begun to forsake Biblical truth in an effort to gains man's approval (Gal. 1: 10). It's scary because people come to church looking for answers to these issues or subjects and the answers they receive confirms what culture says. This corrupts the average believer because unless they figure things out on their own they'll continue to believe it because the church said so. This is a serious failure on the churches part and they will one day have to answer for leading people astray.
Churches today have a handy cover story that they use to justify their position; it's called love and that Jesus loved and accepted everyone so we should do the same. The problem is that the person of God doesn't change and things like justice and personal holiness and righteousness are expected as well as love and other things. Jesus told people he demanded more. Read the new testament if you don't believe me. He never left someone they way He found them. There was always a command or an expectation to "Go and sin no more".
As a follower of Jesus everything in life is looked at through the lens of the bible. It is impossible to separate your beliefs from the issues of this life. For example, the election in November was an exercise in worldview, as stated by Albert Mohler. And there are Christians who say they can separate politics from their beliefs. They lie to themselves if they believe this, because a person can only have one core belief system, there isn't room for two. This isn't about Republican or Democrat it's about where you project your life from and the lens that you look at life from. You can't separate how you believe from how you respond to anything in life, including an election.
It's a scary thing to think about how our culture has changed, and I believe it will shape the American churches for years to come. As American Christians we haven't been challenged to understand why we believe what we believe. We just believe, because that's what most of America believes. But not anymore. If we don't come to grips with Biblical truth and the reality of what our culture is saying is acceptable, we will be washed away like so many individuals and churches have in the stream of moral relativism. If we don't recognize that Jesus expects our minds to be transformed and not conformed to the patterns of this world then we'll continue to accept things in our lives and our churches that are in direct opposition to him. We'll make our God smaller and smaller until He isn't big enough to do anything anymore. (We can't actually change God, He doesn't change) But the God we will convey to others is small and weak and isn't worth following. As followers of Jesus are we going to own our faith and begin to look at things through the lens of the bible and transform our minds or are we going to continue to look through the lens of our culture, not change the way we think, and then try to wrap the bible and our faith around it?
These issues are not going away but I'm not going to address the cultural/political issues here. My charge in this post is to address how people who claim Jesus as Lord think.
If you claim Jesus as Lord of your life, you are now entering a point in history where your point of view is not shared by the majority of people and in some parts of the country only a relatively small minority of people share it. Gone are the days where your neighbor's worldview was the same as yours. So my question to you, "Christians," is What Lens Do You Look At Life Through?
The people you come together to worship the Lord with on the weekends don't often hold the same worldview as the person sitting next to them or in front of them. I'm not saying we all must have the exact same thoughts, but they don't see life from the same lens. When I say lens, I mean that they don't project their life from a Christian worldview standpoint. They may be born again Jesus followers but they do not understand Jesus or the Bible to the point that they think, believe, and act from a biblical perspective. This is why I asked the question about which lens you look out of.
Let me explain what I mean. As a follower of Jesus I must look at everything in life through the lens of the bible and then interpret what I see in life and filter it through the scriptures. So I begin believing the bible is the authority on all things and then work from there trying to understand how to respond to situations, people, and issues. But what I see in the American church today is people who claim Jesus but look to the bible for justification for what they believe about life, society, relationships, politics, etc... If they can't find the justification then they distort the scriptures to make them fit what they want to believe. What they do is assume that something they believe is true or acceptable or our culture says is right and then try to figure out how to wrap the bible around what they believe to be true. The lens they work from is what our culture has taught them rather than what the bible has to say.
Herein lies the problem, once you say "yes" to Jesus you are a new creation, the old things are gone the new has come. (1 Cor. 5:17) We cannot stay the same, we must as Paul said in Romans 12: 2, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will".
Paul says we must change the way we think. We must change the way we view life, we must change the lens through which we look through. The life that comes after you've said yes to Jesus is a life that is in preparation for life with Him in eternity. It is a life that He has called us to participate in. But it is so much more than just preparation for eternity. Jesus spoke about His kingdom in the future, but He also spoke about His Kingdom that is now. We are to usher in that kingdom with him. We are to love and care for people on the margins of society, and to help heal the hurts of this life and move people towards how we were originally created. We are to point people back to the way things were supposed to be and remind them that those things will come again at Christ's return. Romans 8: 29 says that "... he predestined us to be conformed to the likeness of his Son". Becoming like Christ is what is to be going on now and will continue until we go home to Him. So it matters how we view this world. It matters how we think and believe.
Unfortunately people aren't the only ones with this approach, many churches have adopted the same kind of thinking and reasoning. Except the greater calamity of the church, is that they have exchanged a biblical lens for a cultural one. They are changing positions on issues like homosexuality, same sex marriage, living together before marriage, sex before marriage, evolution, and so on. (An example would be a message on creation and evolution that was presented through the science/evolutionary lens with the bible then wrapped around it, rather than through a biblical lens with the science wrapped around it.) When this happens in churches it is scary because they have begun to forsake Biblical truth in an effort to gains man's approval (Gal. 1: 10). It's scary because people come to church looking for answers to these issues or subjects and the answers they receive confirms what culture says. This corrupts the average believer because unless they figure things out on their own they'll continue to believe it because the church said so. This is a serious failure on the churches part and they will one day have to answer for leading people astray.
Churches today have a handy cover story that they use to justify their position; it's called love and that Jesus loved and accepted everyone so we should do the same. The problem is that the person of God doesn't change and things like justice and personal holiness and righteousness are expected as well as love and other things. Jesus told people he demanded more. Read the new testament if you don't believe me. He never left someone they way He found them. There was always a command or an expectation to "Go and sin no more".
As a follower of Jesus everything in life is looked at through the lens of the bible. It is impossible to separate your beliefs from the issues of this life. For example, the election in November was an exercise in worldview, as stated by Albert Mohler. And there are Christians who say they can separate politics from their beliefs. They lie to themselves if they believe this, because a person can only have one core belief system, there isn't room for two. This isn't about Republican or Democrat it's about where you project your life from and the lens that you look at life from. You can't separate how you believe from how you respond to anything in life, including an election.
It's a scary thing to think about how our culture has changed, and I believe it will shape the American churches for years to come. As American Christians we haven't been challenged to understand why we believe what we believe. We just believe, because that's what most of America believes. But not anymore. If we don't come to grips with Biblical truth and the reality of what our culture is saying is acceptable, we will be washed away like so many individuals and churches have in the stream of moral relativism. If we don't recognize that Jesus expects our minds to be transformed and not conformed to the patterns of this world then we'll continue to accept things in our lives and our churches that are in direct opposition to him. We'll make our God smaller and smaller until He isn't big enough to do anything anymore. (We can't actually change God, He doesn't change) But the God we will convey to others is small and weak and isn't worth following. As followers of Jesus are we going to own our faith and begin to look at things through the lens of the bible and transform our minds or are we going to continue to look through the lens of our culture, not change the way we think, and then try to wrap the bible and our faith around it?
