Welcome to the Dear Christianity podcast. I'm your host, Dale Westervelt. This is season one, episode two, and today we are looking at the idea that moral and spiritual progress is a synonym for Christian maturity. The fancy word that professional theologians use for the nature of Christian growth is sanctification, which means purification and holiness. So let's dive in.
The "Dear Christianity" podcast is built on three BIG ideas. Number one, contemporary Christianity is in crisis, which is not hyperbole when you consider that half of practicing Christians have left in the last 20 years. That's something that history books in the future will chronicle. I believe this is owing to the second big idea, that there's a widespread and fundamental misunderstanding about the essence of the Christian religion, which reduces it to a lifestyle.
And number three, I believe the remedy is for the church to pursue wisdom. Wisdom is comprised of two constituent parts, knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves. As I mentioned, this episode is about one of the aspects of the misunderstanding, the presumption that moral progress is equivalent to Christian growth and maturity.
Anthony Flew's Parable of the Invisible Gardener I want to begin with a parable of sorts. It was written or, to be precise, it was modified and popularized by the late Anthony Flew, philosopher who, for many decades, was one of the most famous atheists in the world. He taught at four British universities, including Oxford, published three dozen works on atheism, and at eighty one years old, he changed his mind. He believed in the theistic God and became a deist. Deists believe that a God created the universe and left it to spin on its own. In other words, there's no God that governs the universe in real time any longer. The parable that he popularized is called the Parable of the Invisible Gardener. And as the parable goes, two explorers are out in the middle of the wilderness, and they're exploring. They come to a wide open patch that in the center of it has a perfectly manicured garden. And one of the explorers says how extraordinary that anyone would come out here, set up this garden, and tend to it somehow, despite that it's so remote. The other one says he must be out of his mind. And so they decide that they can't continue along in their journey without settling the matter. So they set up a camp and they take turns sleeping. And after three nights, the skeptic says to the believer, What do you have to say for yourself? And the other explorer says, Well, no, I still think that there's an explorer, but you just can't see him. He's invisible. So they the parable goes, they jerry-rig an electric fence and bring in bloodhounds. And three days later, there's still no sighting and no evidence that the dogs or the fence had any effect. Still no gardener. The skeptic says What gives? The other explorer says, Well, I still think that there's an invisible gardener, but the gardener has no tactile capacities that would be bothered at all by the fence, and it has no aromatic essence or qualities that would alert the bloodhounds. And the skeptic explorer says, But I'm just wondering what remains of your initial assertion about the real existence of this gardener. In other words, I wonder what the difference is between this invisible, elusive, non tactile, non aromatic gardener and a gardener that exists purely in your own mind. And if that's the case, what's the difference between that gardener and no gardener at all? I use this illustration. Because I think it's a powerful example of what it means to hold on to an idea that could be groundless. I have a dear friend who, for a time, interviewed candidates for ordination in his denomination. During one particular interview, he read from the denomination's doctrinal statement about the nature of Christian growth and maturity. Quoting: "Christians having a new heart and a new spirit created in them are further sanctified, meaning made holy, really and personally by God's word and spirit dwelling in them. The dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified. And Christians are more and more quickened and strengthened in all saving graces to the practice of true holiness, without which no one shall see the Lord." In plain English, over time and through obedience with the Bible and the Holy Spirit, we progressively become holy. We become less able to have sinful or betraying thoughts and more able to be holy so that we can become more presentable to God in the end. He asked the candidate whether he knew of anyone for whom that was their experience. Not only was the answer no, the question itself had never even occurred to him. It never occurred to him whether that doctrine was attached to anything real or observable, let alone whether it was biblical and logical. Here's a handful of questions that I want to set down for your consideration. Questions Worth Pondering Consider the following. - Is moral progress what God asks and requires of Christians? - If it is, would the church look like it does today? - Would this many persons be put off or put out by Christians and Christianity--more now than anytime before? - Shouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the church would look better today than it did last year if this progressive view of moral and spiritual improvement were true, biblical, achievable? - Shouldn't it be reasonable that the church would look better than it did 10 years ago? Twenty years ago? - Do I see evidence in my own life that I'm less able to have betraying thoughts and more permanently prone to only have holy thoughts? - If I would perpetually be improving, morally, what would this do to my need for God and Christ and the Christian gospel? - What can we learn from the fact that the only persons Jesus chastised were moralists, not evildoers of any kind? Moralists. Pharisees. Paul railed on the Judaizers. Were Galatians The Only Churches Bewitched? He also wrote a scalding letter to the Galatian churches. Have you ever read this letter and wonder if it could be instructional--if it could be an emblem or a portrait of the contemporary church? He says they'd been bewitched, and then he says, having begun with the Spirit [and the gospel of Jesus Christ] are you now trying to attain your goal of righteousness through your own efforts? False teachers had come in to spy on the churches and make sure they were not preaching about freedom in Christ, that they were continuing to faithfully preach the law. 'You guys have fallen for it. Who has bewitched you?' Have we ever wondered whether this could be what we're seeing today in contemporary Christianity? Jesus' Sermon on the Mount Early in Jesus' public ministry, he went away from the crowds and his disciples came to him. And he spoke to them in what has become famously known as the Sermon on the Mount. It includes The Beatitudes, and Jesus' claim that he had not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. That's another question. What does it mean that Jesus came to fulfill the law? Is this attached to, 'you are no longer under law, but under grace?' I believe it is. What do you think? He makes the case that anger and lust are equivalent to murder and adultery--they offend the commandments--inner thoughts. And then he teaches them about turning the other cheek and loving their enemies. In the Beatitudes, Jesus says, Blessed are the poor in spirit. Those who are spiritually poor. Those who concede that they lack the resources of themselves to get to righteousness. He's not talking about economic poverty. He's talking about spiritual poverty. We know this because four Beatitudes later, he refers to hungering and thirsting after God's righteousness. For years, when I would read the Beatitudes, I didn't fully grasp it. I thought that Jesus was making references to several disparate types of person--the poor, those who mourn, people that are meek. But this is a sustained presentation. Blessed are the spiritually poor, for theirs is the kingdom. He goes on with the next one, blessed are those who mourn their spiritual poverty. Blessed are those who who mourn their inability to think and act according to righteousness. He didn't change the subject to start talking about mourners. And he says that those who mourn this condition will be comforted. Next, blessed are those who act in a manner that is genuine and consistent with their spiritual poverty and their mourning. In other words, blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who, in their dealings with other people, act with humility. In other words, blessed are those who don't wear a facade that they possess the resources to be righteous. They will inherit the earth. So, he has said, blessed are the poor in spirit, who mourn this condition, and who act consistent with this. All of these are necessary preconditions for hungering and thirsting after God's righteousness, the fourth beatitude. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after God's righteousness. How do we know it's God's? Because no one hungers and thirsts after something that's already in them, but something that they need, that they lack, and that's outside of them. The poor in spirit are those who hunger and thirst after God's righteousness, if they mourn this condition, and if it translates into meekness before others, they shall be satisfied. And then he goes on to talk about blessed are the merciful, those who are ready to forgive. They will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart who see themselves soberly and honestly. Blessed are the peacemakers. Jesus was the ultimate peacemaker. And blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, theirs is the kingdom. So, if the presumption that moral improvement is Christian maturity is part of the fundamental misunderstanding in contemporary Chritianity, what's the answer? The Mirror on the Wall of Romans 7 I believe the church should pursue wisdom. It has been said that the sum of all the wisdom is comprised of two parts, knowledge of God and knowledge of self. Neither can be had without having the other, as both lend clarity to the other. In other words, we know who God really is if we can see ourselves for who we really are, and vice versa. My favorite passage is in the seventh chapter of the Book of Romans. It's my favorite because when I read it, I see myself in Paul's description of his inner workings. It's also a reflection of the idea of wisdom being a clear-eyed understanding of our true self and God's true self. Here's what Paul says in this letter. Paul, the, person who persecuted Christians, then was converted on the road to Damascus. And he wrote more than half of the New Testament part of our Bible. He says in this letter, in chapter seven, that when I look at the perfection of God rendered, for instance, in the Ten Commandments, and when I compare my heart to God's perfection, I see a wide disparity. The law is spiritual, and I am unspiritual. To say that the law is spiritual means they're not just words and requirements. They are written on our heart, and when our heart encounters the law we hear that. It's loud in our inner being. I love that when Martin Luther talks about how we can know the difference between the law and the gospel, he says it's in how our heart hears them. The law is loud, it's disquieting, disturbing, unsettling. And the gospel is sweet and soft and sublime. Paul says, I am not able to be righteous. I'm just like who Jesus referred to in the first beatitude. I am spiritually poor. What I want to do, I don't do. What I don't want to do, those are the things I keep on doing. And I realize that there's a war going on inside of me--the old person - the new person, the old man - the new man, the flesh and the spirit. All of this makes me realize that I need to be rescued. Rhetorically, who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Christ Jesus. And then the beginning of chapter 8, there is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. This is my day to day life experience. This is another way of saying what I shared with you last time, that my favorite hymn is I Need Thee Every Hour by Annie Hawks. To be clear, what I'm not saying is that we don't grow or mature or change. I'm simply saying that it's counterproductive to think of this as moral progress. Spiritual progress. It's not just inaccurate, but it's counterproductive to deepening faith. Equating Christian maturity to moral progress unknowingly causes us to focus on ourselves rather than God and others, like in the greatest two commandments, love God, love your neighbor as yourself. But wisdom, knowledge of God, knowledge of self, makes us more fully human. It allows us to see others as the same or even higher than us. From Philippians chapter two: Each of you, Paul says, should have the same mind that Christ had, who, although he was God, it didn't play out in his dealings with others that equality with God was a thing that could be grasped. He made himself a servant. Wisdom grows in us faith, hope, and love. I'll close with a prayer, also from the Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Ephesian church. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him having the eyes of your hearts enlightened. That you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints. And what is the immeasurable greatness of His power towards us, according to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places. Amen. Bless you. LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE
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