I actually wonder why many people attend church and profess to be Christians when they are asked questions pertaining to what a Christian ought to believe they can not supply the correct response.
Attending a church is not a GET OUT OF HELL card. Life is not a game. There are no REWARD POINTS and a FREE PASS like getting a free cup of coffee after buying 10 cups, or whatever reward program people are addicted to these days. There is no working one’s way into eternal life. Pretending to believe and imitate Christ. So few actually read the Holy Bible. So few are Bible-fluent and literate and can accurately say what a certain passage, verse, or doctrine means. There is a great lack of discernment and living as a light unto the world so that when we are viewed folks see the Father in us and glorify Him. Few are a peculiar and separate people from the world. Most are indistinguishable from the world in speech, beliefs, and actions. The fruit they bear.
A Christian ought not to be confused as to when life begins in the womb, transgenderism human sexuality, or matters of morality, or that socialism is the path to take for a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. There should be no confusion about these and every other matter a person is confronted with in this life as everything and anything that can happen to anyone in the present can be found within the Word of God and discerned well and wisely if desiring to understand.
It is tragic this is the current weak and confused condition of what passes for the Church.
Is it any wonder America, the Western nations, and the world are in the present state?
We need to earnestly, fervently humble ourselves and repent. Pray for individual repentance and individual revival leading to a larger TRUE repentance and TRUE revival. For that is the only way to any improvement in America and in the world.
Improvement only truly comes when people turn to God. Truly believe and truly live as God’s people.
An individual saying “I believe”, wearing a jewelry cross around one’s neck, and showing up at a church for a Sunday morning service does not make one a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, a child of God.
Nor does saying one has a Biblical worldview when it is clear they do not understand what a Biblical worldview is as they lack familiarity and understanding of the contents of God’s Word.
Only 6% of Americans Have a Biblical Worldview
Church Leaders Abandon Biblical Worldview
“Shocking” Survey Finds Only 51% of Evangelical Pastors Hold a Biblical Worldview
Bridging The Divide Of Christians Who Don’t Have A Biblical Worldview
‘Profoundly Disturbing’: Survey Finds Only 2 Percent of Millennials Have Biblical Worldview
it’s time for true individual repentance, humility, turning from the world, having politics and nationalism and the things of this world take precedence, hold priority, and time to stop lying that is not the case. Time to preach the Word, the whole sound Word omitting nothing, adding nothing, not attempting to rewrite the Holy Bible, the God-breathed words leading to true understanding and eternal life to fit the times or make one feel good.
The Holy Bible is very clear, and very easy to discern, and understand. It’s a matter of submitting, believing, and living it out. Pertaining to every major and important doctrine. Pertaining to the core beliefs and principles. Making no excuses. Failing to discern wisely — for even a child can read the Bible and discern, and understand what is necessary and required.
As Jesus said, unless a person has the faith of a child they will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
What passes for a Christian in America, Christianity in America and the West does not resemble at all what we are plainly, clearly, simply taught and instructed in the Word of God.
Bowing to God. Not reducing or defining God according to personal worldly terms but rising up to what God truly is and falling prone, trembling before the throne of God, while boldly going before the throne, faithfully.
Seems at odds and difficult, impossible even perhaps, but it is not.
Get away from and past self and look to Jesus. Get past self and away from self and the noise, the lunacy, the confusion and blaring lies and onslaught of the world and see the Lord. See God. See the Holy Spirit — in every word on every page within the inerrant infallible living Word of God.
Continue loving the world, straddling the fence, being indistinguishable from the world — lukewarm and see what happens.
It will not be joyous or precious or delightful.
Sacrifice, submission, suffering, persecution, and appearing odd, different, and peculiar are all part and parcel of being a true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. The world should hate you, not accept you, or find you indistinguishable from themselves.
Read on…
Ken Pullen, A CROOKED PATH, Monday, August 28th, 2023
Church Attendees Believe… What?!
August 24, 2023
Reprinted from The Washington Stand
It is not hard to claim, from one’s own experience, that we live in strange and confusing times. But on occasion, you get demonstrable proof that we do. In June 2023, Family Research Council conducted a national survey of approximately 1,000 adults who attend church at least once a month, asking them questions on a range of social issues.
This data holds much insight into the modern American church. In what follows, I will highlight and then briefly comment on four of the most surprising finds of the survey. It is at this point that I urge you to buckle up because the data is about to get bumpy.
First, 30% prefer capitalism over socialism.
In distressing terms, this finding shows us that the church is slouching toward socialism. What a travesty!
At a basic level, churches are not educating people about the goodness of the free market. Although God gave mankind work to do even prior to the Fall (Genesis 2:15), our churches do not articulate the dignity of work. Although stealing and coveting what our neighbor has are serious sins (Exodus 20:15, 17), few challenge these common socialist commitments. Although Scripture does not present being rich as evil and instead warns against the love of money (1 Timothy 6:6-10, 17-19), our culture targets the rich. Although investment and stewardship are presented in positive terms (Matthew 25:14-30), churchgoers fall prey to a mindset that exalts collectivism, regulation, and the nanny state.
In failing to outline a biblical theology of the free market (which is begging to be preached!), pastors render their hearers soft targets for socialism. Instead of teaching people to work, help, and build, it preaches a false gospel that — like the devil himself — honors those who steal, kill, and destroy. In such a climate, we need churches that teach the dignity of work, the rightness of personal possessions, the blessedness of appropriate financial flourishing, and the need for sound stewardship. We need, to be more succinct, serious worldview formation.
Second, only 52% believe life begins at fertilization.
This simply does not do justice to basic Bible teaching. God knew us in our mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13). From the very start, we were fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). Tragically, it seems that many churchgoers don’t know how to connect the dots here. If life doesn’t begin at fertilization, when does it begin? When does a supposedly non-human being become a human being? Although the Word is clear, I sense that many professing Christians live in confusion on these counts.
To address this issue, we need churches that teach a pro-life ethic unequivocally. Abortion is the killing of an innocent person. As those given life in the Spirit by God, true believers cannot fail to celebrate the life given to all people. In general, we are not a people who love death; we are the people who love life. Are our churches making such an ethic clear? Are they boldly teaching people to value life, love children, and care for babies? Shockingly, I fear many are not.
Third, just 52% believe that the Bible is clear and decisive on the moral status of transgenderism.
You cannot get much clearer than what Scripture says. God has made every person either male or female (Genesis 1:27). There are not many options; there are, in fact, just two sexes. In the old covenant law, cross-dressing is an “abomination” to God (Deuteronomy 22:5). We’re not bound by this law, but it still instructs us, showing us that our bodily presentation matters greatly to God.
The same principle is found in the new covenant. Writing to a church that found itself in a deeply pagan culture, the apostle Paul taught that men are not to look like women, for the longer hair of women is a clear marker of distinctive womanly beauty (1 Corinthians 11:14-15). The point is simple: the way we present our God-given sex matters to God, and should matter for us. There is no freedom in the Bible for believers to embrace androgyny, let alone “transition” to a different identity altogether.
Does sin confuse and corrupt us? Yes. Do people who suffer from gender confusion deserve our compassion? Also yes. But giving God glory in the body as a man or a woman is not a small matter. It is a key part of discipleship to Christ. We thus cannot be unclear about transgenderism; we have to make clear that God calls us to embrace our God-given sex for his glory and our flourishing. The fact that only about half of churchgoers understand these matters is troubling.
Fourth, 56.6% claim they have a biblical worldview.
In the simplest terms, this is not a heartening number. Yet, even as we cite this troubling response, we cannot fail to note the following two responses from a healthy majority of respondents:
- 70% want their church to provide additional worldview training on life
- 68% want their church to provide additional worldview training on sexuality
If pastors feel like they need a mandate to teach truth, here it is. Churchgoers know they need worldview help. They want worldview help. Those appointed by Almighty God to provide it to them are pastors. Pastors do not make things up as they go; they follow the ultimate truth-teller, the unsurpassed worldview-builder, the Son of God. He did not skate lightly over the earth’s crust; when his ministry began, he cracked like thunder, speaking truth that was, as the English used to say, chased in silver, and carved in stone.
By the power of God’s grace, let the church and her shepherds emulate him. Let us bring many into the piercing clarity and healing balm of the Word and gospel. Let us form a biblical worldview in our people. All around us is sinking sand, but on Christ the solid rock, the true church stands. So, roaming devil notwithstanding, it always will.
Owen Strachan is Senior Fellow for FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview.
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