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December 29, 2021 - January 8, 2022
Did they know that salvation isn’t some kind of metaphysical fire insurance—a one-time policy you buy to lock down your eternal destination?
In the context of faith, deconstruction is the process of systematically dissecting and often rejecting the beliefs you grew up with.
Historically, Christians have believed that the Bible is the Word of God and that Jesus is God incarnate who died for our sins and was raised to life for our salvation.
For still others, the demands and tenets of historic Christianity have become too heavy to bear in a culture that vilifies anyone who challenges social norms or whose worldview doesn’t align with the wider society’s.
Still others have encountered skeptical claims they never came across in the sheltered Christian bubble they grew up in, while some people struggle with believing God is good when life sometimes is not.
Dr. R. Scott Smith wrote, “In effect, we tell people to shut up, just take the biblical teaching (which, on some topics, may really just be our own strongly held opinions) at face value as fact and accept it by faith, as though that by itself is a virtue. But biblical faith is not a blind leap; it involves knowledge—that God has spoken and is trustworthy.”[3]
But biblical faith is not a blind leap; it involves knowledge—that God has spoken and is trustworthy.”
False definitions of faith that are so often taught are based on a misunderstanding of the difference between unbelief and doubt. They are not the same thing. Unbelief is a decision of the will, but doubt tends to bubble up within the context of faith.
Unbelief is a decision of the will, but doubt tends to bubble up within the context of faith.
It’s not a blind leap in the dark, and it’s not 100 percent certainty. It is trust based on evidence.
Ever since I have been open about my own experiences of homosexuality, a number of Christians have said something like this: “The gospel must be harder for you than it is for me,” as though I have more to give up than they do. But the fact is that the gospel demands everything of all of us.
It can lead someone into progressive Christianity, which already devalues the historic Christian answers to these “worldview questions” and focuses on actions over belief. That becomes just another works-based gospel that ebbs and flows with cultural norms.
He didn’t just give us an answer to suffering—he became the answer.
The movement of progressive Christianity began with a legitimate desire for reform. But in seeking reform, its adherents found a false gospel.
Although they aren’t united around an official creed, progressive Christians are definitely united around a common set of (sometimes unspoken) beliefs. Like historic Christians, their beliefs are built around their responses to questions like “Why did Jesus die?,” “What is the Bible?,” and “What is the gospel?” While progressive Christians may bristle at concepts like certainty and the idea of landing concretely on answers, as we’ll see in the next chapter, progressive Christians are quite dogmatic about their answers to these questions.
But what united them all was a willingness to question the things historic Christians had believed and put their hope in for two thousand years.
As I’ve learned, progressive Christianity is not simply a shift in the Christian view of social issues. It’s not simply permission to embrace messiness and authenticity in Christian life. It’s not simply a response to doubt, legalism, abuse, or hypocrisy. It’s an entirely different religion—with another Jesus—and another gospel.
the progressive view of the Bible is to see it as primarily a human book. Most progressives see the Bible as an archaic travel journal that documents what ancient Jews and Christians believed about God. Not all of it is authoritative. Not all of it is inspired. None of it is inerrant. Sometimes, if you look really hard, you might find the word of God in it. But it’s up to you to decide which parts work for you and which parts don’t.
Augustine quipped, “You ought to say plainly that you do not believe the gospel of Christ. For to believe what you please, and not to believe what you please, is to believe yourselves, and not the gospel.”[12]
Tertullian was a prolific and influential African Christian writer in the late second and early third centuries. He wrote, Now, with regard to this rule of faith—that we may from this point acknowledge what it is which we defend—it is, you must know, that which prescribes the belief that there is one only God, and that He is none other than the Creator of the world, who produced all things out of nothing through His own Word, first of all sent forth; that this Word is called His Son, and, under the name of God, was seen “in diverse manners” by the patriarchs, heard at all times in the
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By denying original sin and God’s plan to redeem humans and reconcile them to himself, the progressive gospel gives us an impotent deity who can only stand in “solidarity” with humans in our suffering and evil but can’t cure it. This is not the gospel of Jesus.
Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced (ridiculous as the expression may seem) more true than the truth itself.[31]
According to progressive Christians, we have been wrong about the Bible. Have we just now, two thousand years later, discovered the right way to read it? Has God finally revealed the correct way to interpret and apply the Scriptures to a select few of the most affluent people of Western civilization?
I decided to figure out which facts they all generally agree upon. (For the record, this is a really good starting point if you feel confused about all the mixed messages coming from authorities in any field of study.)
What seems to be undisputed is how many manuscripts we have, the general dating of those manuscripts, and how many differences there are between the manuscripts.
the New Testament has more copies and earlier copies than any work of ancient classical literature.
Because scholars know what the meaningful variants are, we can be assured that not one of them changes any core Christian doctrine.
I’ve heard it said that a little bit of knowledge will make you an atheist, but a lot of knowledge will make you a Christian. I have found this to be true. Loads of volumes have been written on the reliability of the New Testament. If the doubter will keep reading—keep searching, keep digging—the truth will come out. It takes work, and the hungry doubter will do the work.
But now as progressive Christianity infiltrates and infects the true church, we all must decide: How much authority does this book hold in our lives? To inform our view of the Bible, we can choose to follow the whims of a godless culture or we can choose to follow Jesus. I choose Jesus.
The nature of hell is debated, but three things are made clear. First, hell is eternal. Second, in hell souls are conscious. Third, hell is torment.
Despite the abundance of biblical testimony, the one thing that virtually all progressive Christian thought leaders agree on is that Jesus didn’t die to pay the penalty for our sin.
A robust theology of the Cross is what will withstand the storms, sufferings, persecutions, and hardships that Jesus promised would confront those who are his true followers. That is a hard promise—not the kind you’ll find in a superficial pocket promise book. But along with his promise, Jesus left us this magnificent assurance: “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33, KJV).
Yet Scripture tells us of a God who not only gives us an answer for the problem of evil but literally becomes the answer.
Progressive Christians assume they are painting God in a more tolerant light by denying the substitutionary atonement of Jesus. But in reality, they are simply constructing a codependent and impotent god who is powerless to stop evil.
When I read the Bible, I no longer read with innocent eyes not yet clouded by skepticism and doubt. But I’d rather walk with a limp on solid ground than run with strong legs on breaking ice.
We don’t get to completely redefine who God is and how he works in the world and call it Christian. We don’t get to make the rules and do what is right in our own eyes and yet claim to be followers of Jesus. Our only option is to do it his way or not at all. He is love. His name is truth. His gospel is bloody. His way is beautiful. For God so loved the world.
