From the desk of Pastor Jason
Pastor Jason
(231) 392-4259
E-Mail Jason
Are we the Problem?
For one of my classes we were asked to read and article entitled, “Are Churches Secularizing America?” by Michael S. Horton.
You can read the entire article at www.modernreformation.org. This section was particularly profound, the sociologist Christian Smith was interviewed on NPR last week, Americans have always been "can-do" people. Pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, we assume that we are good people who could do better if we just had the right methods and instructions. Add to this the triumph of the therapeutic in popular culture and we end up with "moralistic, therapeutic deism..." ....University of North Carolina (now Notre Dame) sociologist Christian Smith led a team in a remarkable study of teen spirituality in America today. From his extensive interviews Smith concluded that the dominant form of religion or spirituality of American young people today is "moralistic, therapeutic deism." It is difficult to define this somewhat amorphous spirituality, especially since, ironically, "22 percent of teen 'deists' in our survey reported feeling very or extremely close to God (the God they believe is not involved in the world today).
" Apparently, God's involvement is restricted to the inner sphere of one's private world.
Smith observed that most teens-including those reared in evangelical churches who said that their faith is "very important" and makes a big difference in their lives-are "stunningly inarticulate" concerning that actual content of that faith. "Interviewing teens," he relates, "one finds little evidence that the agents of religious socialization in this country"-i.e., parents, pastors, and teachers-"are being highly effective and successful with the majority of their young people." In contrast to previous generations that at least had some residual knowledge of the Bible and basic Christian teachings, it seems that there is very little serious ability to state, much less to reflect upon and examine their beliefs, much less to relate them to daily life.
Many young people seem to be living on the hype and the familiar circle of friends in the youth group, both of which eventually lose their influence, especially in college. Smith defines "moralistic, therapeutic deism" as expressing this sort of working theology: "God created the world."
"God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and most world religions.""The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself."
"God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem." "Good people go to heaven when they die." The sense one gets from reading Smith's study jives with my own anecdotal experience of popular religion in America today. Basically, the message is that God is nice, we are nice, so we should all be nice.
Do young people rose in evangelical homes and churches really believe this? According to Barna's reports — not to mention the studies of sociologists like Smith (as well as James Hunter, Wade Clark Roof, and others) - the tragic answer is yes. This approach, Smith says, reflects similar studies of their parents' generation. Even Lutheran youths active in the church could not define "grace" or "justification," he says, pointing up the disparity between what churches say they believe and what they are actually communicating week in and week out. Smith pointed out that in the working theology of those he studied, "being religious is about being good and it's not about forgiveness.
It's unbelievable the proportion of conservative Protestant teens who do not seem to grasp elementary concepts of the gospel concerning grace and justification.... It's across all traditions."
Whatever churches say they believe, the incoherent answers offered by those entrusted to their ministry further substantiate my argument that a moralistic religion of self-salvation is our default setting as fallen creatures. If we are not explicitly and regularly taught out of it, we will always turn the message of God's rescue operation into a message of self-help.
This content is troubling. The Solution is the word of God. To be in it, to read it alone, to talk about it in Bible study and to hear it preached on Sunday. The one thing that Christian faith cannot be is mildly important it is either the most important thing or a thing of no importance whatsoever.
Peace in Christ,
Pastor Jason
