Posted on 06/01/2022 7:43:31 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
NASHVILLE — Moral and societal issues are worsening across the United States because Christians are becoming more “cultural” than “biblical," and the country is facing God’s judgment as a result, according to pastor and bestselling author Tony Evans.
“We've been more cultural Christians than biblical Christians,” Evans, the senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, told The Christian Post in a sit-down interview.
“Our identity is to be rooted in the Imago Dei, in the image of God. But we've gotten so ingrained in the thinking of the culture, that we wind up being parakeets to what the society is saying, rather than taking a solid, loving but clear stance on what God is saying,” he continued.
The 72-year-old founder and president of The Urban Alternative is the author of over 125 books, booklets and Bible studies. The first African American to earn a doctorate in theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, he recently released an updated version of his 2015 book, Oneness Embraced: A Kingdom Approach to Race, Reconciliation, and Justice.
“From womb to tomb, God identifies the person as a bearer of the image of God, so much so that James 3:9 says that you can't even curse a person because they are created in the image of God,” he said.
“The dignity of every human being has to be held in the highest standard less you insult God. And when you understand that, that is how God made us and that is how he wants us to relate, God is not colorblind, He's just not blinded by color. He recognizes and has created the uniquenesses of the cultures in which we are born and the ethnicities, but He never wants that to be the deciding factor for decision making in our lives.”
Evans explained that elevating anything — identity, race or national allegiance — above Christianity “is idolatry,” and “whenever that national allegiance causes you to have non-Christian perspectives, underneath the flag, then what you have done is you've created a national idol that God must resist, reject and judge.”
“I think one of the things we're facing now is the judgment on America because the failure of the Church to be the people of God that represents His Kingdom more than we represent the nation,” the pastor said.
God’s judgment is currently playing out, he said, as evidenced by the conflicts that seem unending in recent years. He cited 2 Chronicles 15:3-6, which reads, in part: “One nation was being crushed by another and one city by another, because God was troubling them with every kind of distress,” and Romans 1, which speaks of God removing Himself from those who remove themselves from Him.
“What we're seeing now is conflict, and the conflict is the judgment because God has been removed and the idolatry of culture, nationalism, and race has replaced God's primacy in our lives,” Evans said. “He's allowing a conflict until it gets so bad that we wake up and look up.”
“What God does is He lets things continually decline until we get desperate enough to return to His standard, and His standard is biblical unity,” the pastor continued. “God has one goal line and that's His kingdom, and His kingdom is His divine rule. And He wants to rule and overrule our ethnicity. He wants to rule and overrule our skin color. He wants to rule and overrule our human relationships when they get in the way of His divine standard. So there must be a radical return to biblical truth, biblical standards and biblical unity.”
He explained that whenever God sees disunity, “He keeps Himself away because He can't be Himself because of His unified nature.”
“So we’re actually praying, preaching and having worship services while telling God He's not invited, because of our illegitimate disunity, which means we just wasted our time,” he said.
The answer, Evans said, is reconciliation and unity, and that’s something the Church desperately needs. He encouraged Christians to act as “bridge builders” and foster relationships with those across the racial and cultural lines “without compromising the essentials of the faith.”
“From God's throne comes righteousness and justice. Righteousness is the standard of right and wrong that is established by God. Justice is the equitable application of God's moral law applied in society. So one is vertical obedience, and the other is a horizontal relationship. And whenever you have the vertical and horizontal you can have the cross.” Evans contended.
“The way you know you're being serious about the conflicts in the culture is that you are visibly and verbally involved in reconciling things that have been historically divided. If all we're doing is discussion, discussing our division and not creating the windshield of reconciliation, because we're living in the rearview mirror of our past history, we will not be moving where God is moving. And if we're not moving where God is moving, we're moving by ourselves.”
Evans shared his thoughts on some of the other issues plaguing the church, including the exodus of young people from the Church. A recent study found that Generation Z, born in the late 1990s and early 2000s, is now the least religious generation yet, with 34% of them identifying as religiously unaffiliated.
To combat this trend, the father-of-four said “we must speak in the language that people are listening to today,” and for the younger generation, social media and technology will be a driving force in communication. He stressed the importance of “relationship and relevancy” when it comes to getting young people involved in church.
“I think we need to amp up how you can use that to share your faith, because now you're being relevant to the communicative mechanisms that are relevant in the culture, but then it must be combined with relationship,” he explained. “Because their generation is so relationally driven, we want to provide points of connectivity … they're so engaged in improving things in the in the culture, this gives them a tool they can use to make a difference while they're sharing their faith.”
Evans also issued a challenge to pastors and church leaders as scandals within the ministry continue to arise and reports reveal that just 37% of pastors have a biblical worldview.
“I want to challenge them to stay tethered to the Word and their relationship to the Lord as their primary goal, because ministry can become a God within itself; it can become your idol,” the Winning Your Spiritual Battles author said.
“And when ministry becomes your idol, God is in the background, and when God is in the background, you become vulnerable,” he continued. “So I would say keep that dynamic to God's Word and God's person as a promise in your life, and then have people around you who can speak into you with authority. Don't be an isolated Lone Ranger, because like a salmon swimming upstream, a bear can pick you off if you’re isolated. So you want to make sure that you're in relationships that can be sustainable, and that can be authoritative in your life.”
But though times can seem bleak, Evans emphasized that “we can still have hope,” because one of two things is happening: God is allowing chaos because He's setting things up for His return, or, if He's not returning on the short term, He’s doing a “divine reset and reshaping culture, because He's been marginalized too long.”
“He's upsetting the applecart until we get back in line with Him so that He can do something new,” Evans added. “Either way, we're going to be better off.”
For a second I was surprised that the democrat governor of Wisconsin would say such a thing.
...the conflict is the judgment because God has been removed and the idolatry of culture, nationalism, and race has replaced God's primacy in our lives,” Evans said.
Nationalism? Huh?
Yeah Nationalism is also a source of idolatry and pride too. Anything that gets ahead of God for primacy is what he’s saying.
“Our identity is to be rooted in the Imago Dei, in the image of God. But we’ve gotten so ingrained in the thinking of the culture, that we wind up being parakeets to what the society is saying, rather than taking a solid, loving but clear stance on what God is saying,”
He’s not wrong.
Western nationalism that’s not rooted Judeo Christian principles is not a good thing, and that’s what happened in World War I and World War II.
European nations that were once united under the banner of Christiandom engaged in barbarism against each other that never occurred in previous European wars when Christianity was more prominent.
I’m Jewish, and I thoroughly support Christian nationalism in Western nations. But Hitler and Stalin were also nationalistic. So just because nationalism is now being demonized by Globalists, doesn’t mean that nationalism can’t be corrupted by evil leaders.
However, He did warn us. In effect judged before it happened.
Man bows to man rather than God. Man bows to mass media, to liberal values like constant abortion, the disintegration of the family and gay rights. As the substitute for the voice of God, man speaks through the TV, at the university, through Hollywood and the arts, through every facet and faucet of culture.
The golden calf is modern culture. And now it’s a fattened holy cow. I say grind it up for hamburger. Keep what is proper from the secular world but avoid the rest. The rest being a form of paganism that devours itself and the host. Judeo-Christian values have been a blessing. Be grateful, be watchful, be on guard... be the vigilant soldier that that protects our heritage and all the miraculous good that has come from it. It has been passed down to us because it works and is a blessing.
All the things listed in Romans 1:24-32 are not the cause for men being turned over to depraved minds but the outward symptoms of depravity, the fruit of being turned over to a depraved mind.
There are certainly kick in the door bold apostasies but I reckon the sneaky sneaky false gospel that holds that “good people” go to heaven (a precursor of many roads to God) has caused vast harm among many once Bible believing congregations and not just put people to sleep concerning the urgency of the true Gospel but further set many up to come under judgment for refusing to retain the knowledge of the Lord as per Romans 1.
Actually, the kick in the door bold apostasies follow on the heels of the sneaky sneaky ones.
Something to consider if you find your congregation now looks the other way on the likes of homosexuality or abortion the way many have unrighteously winked at divorce. ... Never mind if there’s advocacy for these.
Yep. Supposedly Christian countries warring on each other in the name of nationalism. That’s idolatry
Thank you both for your thoughtful replies.
Christians are weak and stupid, too. They have been losing their country for six decades.
In Corinth, to be important was to have power, influence, wealth, popularity, honor, charisma, and such. In Corinth, we find Christians bringing these cultural attributes into the church.
Paul first addresses the divisions [denominations] that had formed. “Come worship with us, we have a very important person as our leader.” Paul, Peter, Apollos did not found these denominations but the members formed the denominations as they brought their cultural attitude of wanting to follow someone famous. Paul destroys the idea of denominations by saying, “Was Paul crucified for your sins?” Meaning that whoever founds a denomination must be the savior of its members.
Another clue of culture seeping in was the man who was sleeping with his step-mother. The church proclaimed this as a “plus.” (to the Corinthian culture) “Hey! Come, be a Christian with us! We aren’t that much different.”
In America, will it be the Cross or will it be the culture? The culture of “wokeness” is infesting many denominations already; this blog cites many articles to support that view.
As you study 1 Corinthians, view the problems that arise as a choice between “the Cross or culture.”
If you place yourself into the mind of an important person in Corinth, then consider that what is most important to you (that person) is not important to Christians — they serve others, they don’t seek to be important, they aren’t sex perverts, they even work with their hands — you can understand why Christianity was considered to be “foolishness.”
“Don’t be an isolated Lone Ranger, because like a salmon swimming upstream, a bear can pick you off if you’re isolated. So you want to make sure that you’re in relationships that can be sustainable, and that can be authoritative in your life.”
Mixed views on his statements. Smart bears will smack into a grouping of Salmon knowing that his or her chances for snaring a salmon from schools of fish will be higher than trying for the loner fish, thus wasting effort and energy when he misses.
A loner Christian pastor “Might” be more vulnerable to Satanic attack or going off orthodox message but many times in Judaio-Christian history we find that loner Elijah or Christian evangelist who God used to bring Christ to a region never before reached, having only the Spirit and his own talents as resources. Such people weren’t always “alone” but they tended to be small groups that sewed the word so that others watered and reaped harvests. These people WERE answerable to the ecclesiatical authorities that sent them out.
When the Lutheran Church is flying the rainbow banner...
Because some sins are so popular these days we just have to overlook them.
“Christians are weak and stupid, too.”
“weak and stupid”? Not in my half-century of experience.
“Passive” is FAR more the accurate descriptor.
“They have been losing the country for six decades” because for four of them they couldn’t imagine it happening, could not see that some of the gathering storm clouds were coming to stay; not to pass.
I remember being a kid and hearing talk mocking those few culturally-aware Christians as “seeing a demon behind every bush.” Fewer of these mockers talk out loud, anymore.
It’s been in the last twenty years that more Christians have awakened to the stark realities of the cultural enemies this country faces, and made the connection back to that old Dragon that is the Enemy of us all.
Another dynamic is the widespread embrace of an 18th century eschatology proclaiming that Jesus could show up at any moment to whisk the church away, and that he’s going to do so BEFORE things get intolerably ugly. That idea fosters a great sense of “We don’t need to care ALL that much,” where the future pain posture of this nation is concerned; WAY too many Christians just believe they have a “Get Out Of Tribulation Free” card, so they don’t need to be concerned with what comes next. In their minds, that whole “Left Behind” thing is for OTHER people who probably deserve it, because they don’t come to church. It’s like, “We tried and tried to tell them, but whatcha gonna do?” So they kinda wash their hands of it mentally even before the actual events take place.
Now, is that the right way to think? No.
Does Jesus think that way? No.
But it’s a reality that, broadly, the church doesn’t look as much like Jesus as it ought to; it doesn’t talk as much like him as it ought to, and it doesn’t act like him as much as it ought to.
And that drives to the heart of this entire topic: Jesus would NOT be sitting back passively permitting this country to go to Hell in a handbasket, he’d be speaking out.
But, looks at Jesus’ manner of addressing the Roman occupation of Judea during his lifetime: he wasn’t a political firebrand decrying Rome, he preached The Kingdom because that message is more vital to the human soul, AND because preaching The Kingdom organically and simultaneously speaks to all of the political questions.
So, too, in this present hour, the church thinks there’s a choice to make concerning how much time and energy to devote to politicking, and preaching. But the reality is that preaching Christ organically and simultaneously addresses all of the political issues of the hour; copious application of the gospel cures all political problems from the roots up. There was some real revival going on in the early 1970’s, but that moment wasn’t sustained. Again, I think a general notion that the country was just gonna be fine lulled Christianity into a false sense of complacency just when an increase in proclamation of the gospel would have yielded a generation versed in righteousness instead of one versed in cultural rot.
This man is brilliant. I have never heard a bad sermon out of him, and I listen often—he is on the Christian radio station near Baltimore most evenings.
Dr. Evans is honored, but even so, his wisdom for our culture does not reach enough Americans, in my opinion. May God bring his words to wider, higher and deeper audiences.
By nationalism in this context, I think he means that being an American is conflated in many people’s minds with being a patriot because your great-great-granddaddy fought in one of our nation’s wars, and identifying as Christian because your grandma went to church.
But it is as he says, for too many Americans, a Christian identity no longer springs from understanding the teachings, repentance and baptism, church attendance or studying the Word, but has become merely cultural—rather than a surrendered conscience and heart for Jesus, and knowledge of the Word.
This nation was overwhelmingly Christian at its founding, and for many early American homes, a Bible was the only reading material. Thomas Jefferson was on the school board of DC schools while he was President, and the only books he selected to be taught were the Bible and a scripturally-sound hymnal.
Now it’s been 60 years since prayer in schools has been not just outlawed, but also that Christians are subject to persecution for factually connecting the founding principles of our Constitution to Christian values.
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. . . . They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator who is forever praised.—Romans 1:21-25
Thank you. I appreciate your thoughtful and well written reply. You of course, are more correct. But I think we are thinking the same thing, with my response being the more red-meat anger inducing sound bite/hot take call to arms look at things. While yours is the rational, well thought out answer with great supporting evidence.
Some really smart people can be both of those. But not all Christians are that way.
The real Jesus braided a whip out of cords and whipped the moneylenders out of the temple with it. He called even his disciples unbelieving and perverse (Luke 9:41), frustrated by their lack of understanding while he, the Son of God, was standing right before them to teach them.
Some terms I might use are: complacent, naïve, arrogant, avoidant, uneducated (in the Word), shallow.
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