Year: 2015

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

Moral scrupulosity for the sake of moral scrupulosity is one of the hardest things for a believer bound-up in legalism to put aside; yet it must be put aside if real life in Christ is to be realized. Our tendency to try to accomplish our goals through “playing by the rules” is universal, at least in those who do not have the seared conscience of a Sociopath. The attempt to attain to righteousness through moral effort was not only the heart and soul of the Judaism of Christ’s time, but of virtually every other world religion, both then and now. This effort is inextricably bound up in the instinct of fallen men and woman to find a self-centered solution to the problem of intrinsic human evil.

The message at the core of Biblical Christianity is twofold; that human beings will never be able to achieve on their own the perfect righteousness necessary for real relationship with a holy God, and that faith in the Son of God and His death on their behalf does achieve it. This is the essence of the Christian message. It is also the entire basis for the actual living out of the Christian life. Salvation and sanctification are both dependent on the personal appropriation of this truth by grace, through faith. Salvation and sanctification are both the gift of God in Christ.

So why is the abandonment of our old effort to meet the demands of God’s moral law seemingly so difficult for many of us to realize, even after our moment of salvation? There is more than one reason. From a psychological perspective we may have been greatly molded by the worldviews of the people who had the most human influence on our early development, our parents. If, for whatever reason, one or both of our parents were highly moralistic, and they did their best to transmit the idea that moral effort is the core of what makes someone “a good person”, we may have this faulty idea deeply imprinted upon our hearts. Unfortunately some who have this “imprint” are now in teaching positions in the church and communicate the false gospel of works, often unconsciously, to those sitting under them.

Another problem in fully receiving the freedom from meeting the demands of the law that Christ came to grant us is that we do not yet completely understand and receive the fullness of both His identity and His work on the cross. His identity as God in the flesh makes Him absolutely capable, as our substitute, of satisfying God’s just condemnation of human sin. His actual crucifixion and resurrection are, therefore, the absolute solution to our bondage to a law we can never satisfy in our fallen imperfection. In Christ God has Himself absorbed His own punishment for the sins of the human race throughout all human history, past, present and future.

Finally we must grapple with the fact that many of us find some perverse, prideful pleasure in continuing to at least partially live in the cycle of self-effort, failure and self-condemnation that is engendered by “works-righteousness”. Perhaps this is a form of spiritual masochism. It sometimes seems easier to exist this way than to risk fully surrendering our hearts to the lordship of Christ. But it is not easier. To continue in self-empowered moralism is to resist the love of God and to condemn ourselves, at the least, to a life of bondage and frustration that His love would otherwise relieve. Such a life is not true life at all.

In each of the above three cases it is we who, at the end of the day, must grapple with and overcome these barriers to living in the grace of God. Yet, paradoxically, it is God Himself who is the Author and Finisher of our faith and the Source of our very ability to overcome. As He works in us to “work and will according to his good pleasure” we can choose to reject legalism and, at the same time, surrender to the life Jesus Christ has obtained on our behalf. In fact that surrender is, itself, made possible by His saving and sanctifying love, a love that is infinitely more desirable than living in the misery of self-righteousness.

Copyright by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

We live in a material world. God ordained matter and called it good. He made us substantive beings, not just spirit but flesh, and called it good. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with material things. The wrong comes when human beings assign an inordinate value to those things. The elevation of created things over the Creator is the very definition of idolatry.

Today the average person does not bow before an idol of wood or stone but idolatry lives on nonetheless. One form it takes in our world is materialism. Nowhere on Earth is this materialism more evident than in the 21^st Century West. As the bumper sticker says “He who dies with the most toys wins” and whether we know it or not many of us have bought into that philosophy to one degree or another. An older saying is “money can’t buy happiness” yet so many of us keep trying to do just that. We think just one more car/home/smartphone/etc. will give us the fulfillment and contentment we desire. But this is, as Solomon said, “a chasing after the wind” and an expensive wild goose chase it is.

So how much is enough? The Apostle Paul encouraged us to be content with what we have. He went further to tell us that we should, at least could, be satisfied with our daily bread and the clothes on our back. This is a scary thought to most of us today who have become so defensive about the earthly riches we store up.

God does not condemn wealth but He does condemn the love of wealth over the love of Him who gives it. In 1 Timothy 6:18 the rich are told “to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.” God does not tell everyone to sell everything they have and give it to the poor. There is a place for the wealthy Christian in God’s eyes. There is no place, however, for those who have knowingly or unknowingly made materialism their God.

It falls on Christians in the affluent West to regularly ask ourselves whether or not we are becoming slaves to our desire for things. If “More toys” are getting in the way of our love for and dependence on the Lord then maybe some or all of those toys need to go. The process of letting them go may be painful but what if that is the price of true contentment? Beyond that what is the price of slavery to things that are subject to decay, cannot truly satisfy us even in this life, and will not travel with us beyond the veil of death?

Copyright 2015 by Shea Oakley
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God, I’ve found, is not in the habit of giving me exactly what I want in life. I think all Christians have had the same experience. We know that what we want and what He gives us often does not appear to be in synch. A perhaps lesser recognized truism about how our Lord deals with our desires is the opposite experience. He rarely gives us the thing we want least. By this I mean that what we most dread happening to us usually does not happen.

While it is true that God sometimes asks us to do things we desperately do not want to do this is not what I’m speaking of. Rather, I’m referring to what might be called “the worst case scenario;” many of us live our lives haunted by it. We have a tendency, in the language of the counseling office, to “awful-lize:” to assume the worst in any given challenging circumstance.

A recent two-part poll discovered an interesting truth about anxiety and reality. People in the test group were asked to name the things they worried about the most. They were then re-polled months later to find out how many of these anxiety-producing fears actually came to pass. The figure turned out to be 8%. This is a testimony to God’s grace being operative even among non-believers, at least in the sense of temporal concerns. Things just do not tend to turn out as badly as they, or we, think…92% of the time.

This is perhaps part of why Jesus told us not to be anxious. He knew that the fallen human tendency to worry is often not justified by actual experience. His grace, even His common grace, is operative in the lives of all men and that alone means that we are wasting time and energy by worrying. Anxiety is one of the most effective robbers of our joy and far too many people (myself among them) are caught up in it with no justification to be found in actual experience.

This being the case it might be salutary to pray that God would open our eyes to the reality of the 92%. By his Spirit we have the ability to apply this new “head knowledge” to our hearts, even though our head and our hearts are separated by possibly the longest 18 inches in human experience. May our Lord bridge that gap as we trust in Him to help us banish unnecessary fear from our lives.

Copyright by Shea Oakley

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It has become almost a cliché in Evangelical circles to say that most individuals under about the age of 45 cannot be effectively brought to faith through rational argument alone. That said the statement is largely an accurate one. Many of us who make up the generations born since the late 1960’s do tend to see the world through the prism of visceral experience. The emotive aspect of our being is often given more credence in interpreting reality for us than the cognitive aspect. Some say this is because we have been heavily influenced by the sensuality that our generations are often accused of embracing. Such an explanation is certainly debatable but let us assume, for the moment, that it is for the most part true. Is this automatically a bad thing?

When most conservative Christians hear the word “sensuality” they think of illicit sexual activity but this is, at best, a limited definition of the term. It can actually be applied to any experience that comes from and is connected to the five senses (“sense” being the root of the word.) Use this better meaning and sensuality becomes a morally neutral thing for the obvious reason that our Creator built it into us before the Fall of the human race. It is a part of the design God Himself called “very good” when he made us in His image. We were intended to know feelings by a Being who, it can be assumed from Scripture, also feels and feels deeply. Passion is part and parcel of the biblical narrative. There are no “Mr. Spocks” in the Bible, only emotive people relating to an emotive God.

But during the Enlightenment of the 18^th Century Western civilization started to believe reason was the best, perhaps even the only, way to know God or anything else. Rationalism became the spirit of the age in both the secular and the religious worlds and remained so for three hundred years. Modernism was the ultimate embodiment of the scientific approach to existence and has remained a powerful philosophy in the West. However it is not the only or perhaps even the dominant philosophy anymore. In the Post-Modern Age other ways of knowing reality have re-asserted themselves. The Greco-Roman culture that gave rise to Rationalism is becoming less a guide today than the Hebraic culture that existed before and in opposition to it. The Hebraic culture does not marginalize feelings. Read the Old Testament and you will see this is true.

The Church does not exist in a cultural vacuum. For better or worse the Bride of Christ has always been heavily influenced by the secular world around her. Our society is changing because we Westerners are coming to realize that the rational gods of Modernism are cold deities. The H.G. Wells and B.F. Skinners of the world have bequeathed to us nothing but an arid technological and deterministic interpretation of existence. Such an interpretation takes away the very richness of life God originally intended human beings to experience (and I use the word “experience” very intentionally). To the extent that this worldview has influenced Christianity it has taught us to assume that the mind is far more important than the heart.

“Never trust your feelings” has become almost a mantra in some of the more reactionary circles of contemporary Evangelicalism. Fair enough, however I would like to add “never trust your intellect” to that mantra and at the same time suggest a better one: “Trust God”. Truly trusting Him means we will ultimately allow our Creator to manifest Himself to us through both heart and mind. The younger generations do need to be open to both manifestations of the Divine but, for a time, as we are trying to find a balance it may be OK to be more interested in rediscovering the God our fathers often lost sight of in the pursuit of purely cognitive knowledge. We want to feel, to sense His presence and for this we need not apologize. For now, at least, this is the side of God many of us find most compelling.

Copyright 2015 by Shea Oakley

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We do not need the “God” we want or the “God” we do not want. We only need God as He truly is, irrespective of either our positive or negative desire.

An overabundance of subjectivity is part of our fallenness as a race. Being emotional beings is not a problem in and of itself (God Himself has emotions.) The problem comes when our passions become more of a driver in our spiritual lives than they should be. Feelings are not intrinsically sinful. What we do with them can be.

At any given time our emotions can be leading us closer to our Lord or farther away from Him. This is a function of how accurately those emotions are painting reality. It does not so much matter if they seem to us positive or negative. Most of us tend to know both poles of feeling on a regular basis and this is part of our nature as bearers of the image of a passionate, though perfect, God. What is far more important is how much credence we are giving to them as far as what they seem to tell us about His nature. It is in allowing either extreme to mediate our perception of God that we often get into trouble.

Emotions and desires are intimately intertwined in the human heart. We tend to want what we feel is good and not want what we feel is bad. This may be an obvious point, but it bears repeating because how we deal with desires that are mediated by our emotions has profound ramifications for our spiritual lives. It can be argued that nothing is more important than who we ultimately decide God is because that is the greatest determinant as to whether we decide for or against Him. We dare not make that decision based solely, or even wholly, on whom we want Him to be or not be; to paraphrase the discovery of Moses: God “is Who He is”, nothing more and nothing less.

Whether we like it or not who we desire Him to be is irrelevant to whom He is, but it is very relevant to who and where we will be eternally. It is vital that we come to know God as He really is. How best to get there is the problem we all face (and it should be stated here that the answer to this problem is not to elevate human reason at the expense of human emotion. Both our cognitive and emotive perceptions are equally fallen.)

This is where both God and His word come to the fore.

The answer to this conundrum is easier than we might expect it to be. The best way we can arrive at a true knowledge of Him, in defiance of what may be a faulty system that amounts to wish-fulfillment, is through a truly Holy-Spirit inspired knowledge of the Bible. We can learn to apprehend God’s self-revelation of Himself in the pages of scripture, but the only way this happens is through both immersing ourselves in meditation on that scripture and praying that it will be made real to us by His Spirit. We must also ask that this true knowledge of the Divine will become the one thing we most deeply desire. As this prayer is answered both the Bible and the Spirit behind it will become reliable “avenues” to Objective Reality. Our subjective desires must yield to this reality if we are ever to come to know the Lord we profess to serve. Only then will we know Him not as we want or do not want Him to be, but as He really is.

Copyright 2015 by Shea Oakley

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The answer to this question depends on with what we are content. It is one thing to be content with our circumstances; it is quite another to be content with our character. The first type of contentment is encouraged by scripture, the second warned against. One of the vital keys to an authentic and flourishing Christian life is learning to differentiate between the two and deal with the fallen human tendency to reverse them.

Most honest believers, if pressed, will admit that they have a propensity to be comfortable with their faults and distinctly uncomfortable with the difficult things they must face in life. This is part and parcel of the “old man” within us. Our flesh constantly seeks to excuse our character flaws while simultaneously complaining about every seemingly unfavorable condition in our day to day existence. In a distinct irony many of the latter are a result of the former. We are naturally self-indulgent and comfort-seeking and when we give in to these two temptations the result is often bad circumstances that stem directly from doing so. This, among other things, is the reason why there is a clear biblical imperative not to make an idol out of either indulgence or comfort.

The reverse irony in this state of affairs is that the by-product of seeking both to improve our Christian character and learn to live with our circumstances is the reality of one helping the other. As we grow in the discipline of virtues like kindness, faithfulness and self-control we may start to resolve some of the bad situations that came about before we possessed these things in increasing measure. For instance, if our lack of kindness made us some enemies in this life becoming more sincerely kind to those enemies might win them over as friends.

Something else to remember about the “circumstantial” side of the equation is that difficult problems in life can, themselves, be character builders if we approach them with the right attitude. Patience is one of the most vital qualities of godliness. We learn patience by bearing, through the grace of God, unpleasant situations. The truth is that even the best application of other aspects of a maturing character will not remove every hard circumstance we must endure on this side of Heaven. When we cannot change an external condition (or, in the case of something like illness, an internal one) we have no good choice but to use it as a springboard to becoming more patient in long-suffering, in imitation of our Lord. At the same time the advent of patience in our character is a primary way, along with learning to share our burdens with Christ, in which we learn to be truly content with whatever difficulties we face in life.

It might be said that the primary reason, God does not  always remove the thorns in His children’s sides in this world is for the purpose of making us all better, more Christ-like people in every sense. It is in the crucible of our difficult circumstances that He does much of the sanctifying work in us, work that is absolutely essential in both preparing us for eternity with Him and helping others to know Him that they might be with us in that eternity. So in the quest to be content with our circumstances, but not our character, we are properly ordering our lives not only for ourselves but ultimately also for the benefit of those around us.

Copyright 2015 by Shea Oakley
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Recently I have become more aware of how much of my discretionary time is being spent wrapped up in the man-made instrumentality we call the Internet. Simultaneously I’ve noticed that my time spent doing things like getting outdoors has been shrinking. While there is not exactly an inverse proportion here I have little doubt that a major contributor to my spending less time experiencing God’s direct creation, the natural world, has been my deepening involvement with virtual “reality”.

The real world has a beauty and a sublimity with which the virtual electronic world of the 21st Century cannot even begin to compete. Why is it, then, that so many Westerners, including those who call themselves followers of Christ, seem to be abandoning that real world to hunch in front of smart phone screens? The answer may well be that we in the West have inquired an insatiable appetite for what is immediately gratifying over what is truly gratifying. At the same time our felt need to be in control of all things may be rearing its ugly head.

Over the years I have written much about the culture of instant gratification and I do not want to beat the proverbial dead horse. That said, the trend away from finding our satisfaction in the ways that most of the human race throughout history has found it has a direct bearing on the question at hand. Pre-moderns had to learn to enjoy the world they were given, to “suck the marrow” out of human experience by patiently mining the world as it actually was rather than the world they might, like us, have wanted it to be. There were also fewer distractions in years past and those distractions were not nearly as glittery as today’s computer screens. The diversions of an earlier era were seen for what they were, diversions. I believe that most people knew the kinds of activities that really counted; a face to face conversation with a friend, an outing on a glorious autumn day, the learning of a skill that involved something more physically involving than punching keys on a keyboard. All these things: building a physically proximate friendship, being fully attuned to nature, or becoming a craftsman were all activities that required time, patience, and effort. Neither these things themselves or the benefits of full involvement in them came quickly and easily.

By contrast pale virtual imitations of these things are all readily available today at the click of a “mouse”. Social media provides the one-step removed relationships, computer “Wallpaper” with images of the natural world outside are plentiful, and we can vicariously experience a plethora of creative human enterprise on literally millions of uploaded videos.

Besides the seemingly perfect, if unhealthy, melding of the fallen human desire for immediate electronic gratification with what is instantly available online there is also our lust for control to take into consideration. We feel like we have the power to experience life in any way and at any time we want to when we are “surfing” the Net. At the least it is an apparently harmless way to escape the vigor’s of living in the real world for a few minutes or, for many of us, a few hours. What we see and how we see it is something we think we control in virtual reality whereas real reality isn’t quite so subject to our willful manipulation (It also isn’t nearly as likely to lead us into a sort of “virtual reality addiction”, which too much time online can do.)

As believers we know we are called to reject the ethos of both instant gratification and self-centered control over our lives. This knowledge, however, does not seem to be translating into a Christian counterculture that rejects the world’s growing obsession with the Internet. As with our television viewing habits I suspect the amount of time many believers spend online (as well as what we view there) probably does not greatly differ from our neighbors. I must admit that this has too often been the case in my own life.

So what is the answer?

It may be as simple as praying for the will to turn the laptop, tablet or smartphone off as a spiritual discipline. There are days when most of us do not have a real need to be online for any reason. At the very least one weekend day each week can be cleared of all interaction with virtual reality. Sunday seems like an obvious choice for a “Sabbath-rest” from the Net. We might find it refreshing (though perhaps not immediately so) to spend that time being in the same room with our friends or taking a hike through a nearby forest, or learning any one of a hundred useful skills. Being that it is Sunday we might also consider spending a bit more time worshipping, corporately or individually, the God of True Reality (capitalization very intentional.)

This one-day a week fasting from our online obsessions is, however, only a start if we really want to become reacquainted with what is actually important in life. It is likely that further “self-deprivation” will be required to make virtual reality secondary to True Reality. Once we go on in this endeavor, though, I think the seeming self-deprivation will pay-off in much more satisfying lives, ones that intentionally honor the God of our lives. Certainly this is a holy goal. It is also a necessary one if we do not want to spend our days in less than worthy electronic pursuits which will never truly satisfy the requirements of what it means to be both Christian and human.

Copyright 2015 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

To love God out of desire rather than necessity is one of the greatest goals of the Christian life. We tend to love Him because of what He can do for us rather than for who He is. It is no doubt true that an authentic kind of love can be ascribed to someone who meets our greatest needs and desires, but the most transcendent devotion is that which comes from recognizing that the person in question is worthy of adoration quite apart from any good thing we derive from them.

The closest analogy in human love would be the man who so falls in love with a woman that even if she were forever unattainable by him he would love her still. This is the kind of love that gives thanks that such a woman exists at all, no matter to whom she ultimately belongs in a temporal sense. Such devotion is exceedingly rare among human beings. This is especially true today when the spirit of “what have you done for me lately” so often seems to undergird the rickety foundation of contemporary romance.

Of course this kind of love is also rare among those who profess to love God with all their “heart, soul, mind and strength” as well, so we believers need to think twice before getting on our moral high-horse. Very few saints have reached the place where they can honestly say that they love God for Himself alone. All of us come to God as beggars in need of that which we do not deserve. This is the state of every person who cries out to God for salvation through His Son. Every one of us initially falls in love with our Lord for the same reason: His incredible kindness in loving us enough to save us from ourselves. This is the starting point for every Christian and it is nothing to be ashamed of. We are all profoundly needy and it is on this neediness, and the divine response to it, that our initial love is naturally based.

However this cannot remain the only basis of our adoration. As we truly mature in the faith and grow in the knowledge of God we cannot help but begin to love Him for another, greater reason. In time the devoted child of God begins to see the sublime beauty of the divine character and a new kind of regard for Him grows in our deepest hearts. This is the devotion that comes from realizing that His attributes make Him the proper object of our affection in and of themselves. We start to love God not for what He has done for us but solely for Who He is.

This is not a natural love but a supernatural one. It is not open to those who have not already experienced what C.S. Lewis called the “need-love” we earlier described. It appears that one must have the Holy Spirit dwelling within before any “disinterested” love based on sheer appreciation of the divine nature can be generated. It comes not just with time but with a steady discipline of worship and adoration that puts us in touch with the Being of God on a deeper level than just thanksgiving for His favor in our lives. It ultimately involves the dawning of thankfulness that this God of perfect beauty, of every kind, exists…even if He were not to ever grant us one more blessing.

If this seems difficult to imagine it is simply because we have not yet attained to the level of maturity and knowledge mentioned earlier. Some believers may, in fact, rarely experience it this side of Heaven. It might also be true that it is a love not very often known even by those “ancient Christians” who have been hard after their Lord for a lifetime.

Either way it is still a goal worth pursuing because loving God for who He is, not just what He does, is something He deserves in the deepest sense and for no other reason than who He is.

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

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“No man can do properly what he is called upon to do in this life unless he can learn to forget his ego and act as an instrument of God.”    W. H. Auden

Allowing God to fill the throne in our hearts that our fallen nature screams should be occupied by us is the fundamental battle of both initial salvation and ongoing sanctification. This desire for self-rule is the primary result of Adam and Eve’s decision to eat of the fruit prohibited to them by God. At that moment they, and we, joined the Enemy of our souls in his own rebellion and acquired a nature at times not unlike his. Instead of being perfectly focused on our Creator, and thus transformed more and more into His image, our race instead acquired an all-consuming ego. This obsession with ourselves has causes us to try to find in self-rule what can only be had when God is the One at the very center of our lives. This does not necessarily drop away from us at the point of our conversion. Until He occupies the throne of our hearts we will know the pain and destruction that is caused when love for God is trumped by love for ourselves.

This is particularly true when Christians who are little surrendered to God’s rule try to find and pursue a vocational goal in their lives. We call a divine summons to a life-ministry our “calling.” Hearing and responding to such a calling is impossible when self-generated goals connected to our egos hold center-stage in our hearts. Knowing God’s calling and surrendering to His will for our lives go hand and hand. God may use people who are only partially surrendered to Him in various ways, but He will not bring them to the fullness of His good purpose for their lives, to their full part in His plan, until they progress in giving themselves completely to Him. The Bible tells us that we will find God when we seek Him with all our hearts. This is also true as far as finding his specific calling for our individual lives.

On more than one occasion a believer has found himself pursuing a possible career in “full-time ministry” only to find he is crashing against a vocational brick wall. Beyond that circumstances may almost seem to conspire to destroy a promising new job, whether secular or sacred. This results in a very crestfallen (and oft times depressed) Christian. Then, in retrospect, it becomes apparent that the problem was in choosing to do something the person decided to do rather than God. We may try to put a spiritual spin on self-direction in the vocational realm but if we are not where He wants us to be, in the center of His will, we will remain frustrated and confused about what is our purpose in life.

The surrender of the ego and its replacement with the rule of the Lord through His Spirit must be the greatest priority in our spiritual lives. But how do we facilitate this replacement? There are no easy formulas here. The very heartaches that result from listening to an “Imperial Self’ and acting in the mode of Adam and Eve can bring us to a point of surrender. C.S. Lewis once called pain “God’s megaphone to a deaf world.” and God does use self-inflicted pain to bring us to our senses and give us a strong desire to finally give in to His complete rule over our lives. Coming to better know the goodness of our Lord, over time, is another motivator for relinquishing control of every aspect of our lives. Sincere and consistent prayer for help in surrendering is also a strong tool in pursuing the entire sanctification of our lives to our God.

Ultimately, though, we must allow Him to work His own will within us and bring us to the blessed place of complete submission. We can choose to cooperate or obstruct this process. The ego is strong in us and we must decide whether we will serve ourselves to our own hurt or instead serve the One who loves us perfectly.

Copyright by Shea Oakley

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Ecumenism has long been a dirty word among conservative Evangelicals in the United States. It brings to mind images of the World Council of Churches telling us that the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection never happened, but that we should all be happily united anyway. This kind of “unity” will always be rejected by Bible-believing Christians and rightfully so. However we also have the tendency to throw the spiritual babe out with the bathwater and one place that Evangelicals have been guilty of this is in rejecting unity out of hand. The fact is our Lord prayed that His people would be united. What is needed is ecumenism within orthodoxy. The confessing churches in America should move towards becoming the confessing Church.

Allegedly the biggest issue that prevents this from happening is the inability to corporately determine what is meant by “orthodoxy.” I submit that this is a smoke screen for the real issue. The Bible itself tells us that the basic, unchanging cornerstone of right doctrine is the full divinity and full humanity of Christ, His death on our behalf, His resurrection and the full atonement for our sins that results from that death and resurrection. It might be said that beyond this are only details. Often the real reason behind runaway denominationalism is the pride of men, not the Spirit of God.

According to the World Christian Encyclopedia there are more than 8000 Protestant denominations in existence today. This reality points out perhaps the greatest failure of the Reformation. While the Apostle Paul told us that believers would, indeed must, disagree to determine what actions are right in the eyes of God it is very doubtful that he had the creation of thousands of separate denominations in mind. The Body of Christ in America is rent with division at a time when genuine Christian unity is desperately needed to stand up to the forces of darkness that are on the march in our national life.

Unfortunately we live in a country in which the philosophy of radical individualism has become so deified as to co-opt even the Bride of Christ. Today it is as if the word “Ecumenism” almost carries the same connotation as the word “Communism” once did in some churches. There always seem to be a myriad of very debatable (and often minor) points being used to justify the continued existence of a multitude of Evangelical bodies. Real humility requires us to be very careful that our expressed opinions do not lead to unnecessary division, but how often is that kind of spirit being encouraged from American pulpits at the beginning of the 21^st Century? Is this the kind of Protestantism that the reformers had in mind 500 years ago? Yes, they broke from a corrupt and monolithic brand of Roman Catholicism, but this kind of fragmentation could not have been a result they desired.

I knew a man who told me that he once had prayed against the persecution of the Church in this nation but lately had begun to pray for it. His reasoning was that such tribulation was the only thing that would unify Christians here. This may have been an overstatement but perhaps not much of one. At the very least we need to pray against divisiveness for the sake of divisiveness and begin to challenge conventional wisdom regarding denominationalism. This can only begin with repentance from factionalism across denominational lines and an embrace of Ecumenism within orthodoxy. Only this kind of repentance will reverse the trend towards radical individualism hiding behind the defense of truth. It is a fact that the gates of Hell will never prevail against the true historic Church but if we who make up the Church in America forever reject the call for a desperately needed unity, we may wake up one day to find that the World, the Flesh, and the Devil have won a terrible victory against us. And we will have only ourselves to blame.