What's Wrong With Christians Today?
In evangelical circles today, the spirit of the age is to celebrate the renaissance of open-mindedness and charity. The prevailing edict in public discourse is that we must avoid the opprobrium of having an unacceptable tone. After all, kindness is a Christian virtue we are reminded. Of course this is true. However, it is incomplete. Kindness is not the only Christian virtue.
Certainly kindness should naturally make one’s interactions with others more pleasant. Proverbs 16:24 reminds us: “Pleasant words are like a honeycomb.” As important as kindness is, kindness does not always make one or one’s views palatable. Some people will simply remain offended. Therein lies the problem.
While in some cases harshness may indeed be the result of cruel motives, many times harshness simply reflects the jarring reality of truth. This world does lie in the power of the evil one (1 John 5:19). Not every philosophy, not every thought, not every idea is good, noble, right, helpful or true. Some philosophies and ideas are wrong, some are foolish and misguided, some are impractical, others are downright evil. If stating a clear position makes one unloving, then logic fails because such an axiom is itself subject to its own condemnation.
The greatest threat Christians face today is not that we are too harsh. It is that we have become so milquetoast and deferential to cultural ideas that we no longer can state our convictions without first making a thousand different qualifications. We no longer sound like we have convictions. This is problematic to say the least. Charles Spurgeon put it this way in his day, and it is no less true in ours:
Everybody is getting to be so oily, so plastic, so untrue, that we need a race of hard-shells to teach us how to believe. Those old-fashioned people, who in former ages believed something, and thought the opposite of it to be false, were truer folk than the present time-servers.
I should like to ask the divines of the broad school whether any doctrine is worth a man’s dying for it. They would have to reply, “Well, of course, if a man had to go to the stake or change his opinions, the proper way would be to state them with much diffidence and to be extremely respectful to the opposite school.” But suppose he is required to deny the truth? “Well, there is much to be said on each side, and probably the negative may have a measure of truth in it as well as the positive. At any rate, it cannot be a prudent thing to incur the odium of being burned, and so it might be preferable to leave the matter an open question for the time being.”
Yes, and as these gentlemen always find it unpleasant to be unpopular, they soften down the hard threats of Scripture as to the world to come, and put a color upon every doctrine to which worldly-wise men object. The teachers of doubt are very doubtful teachers. A man must have something to hold to, or he will neither bless himself or others.
Don’t buy the lie that firm convictions and clear beliefs are somehow unbecoming of Christ. Don’t be afraid to stand.