This is a longer post than usual and I'd encourage you to read it sometime when you can reflect more fully rather than rush through it...
One of the challenges I see in many places in society is what I'd call cultural Christianity. Cultural Christianity is when we are Christian by culture but not by actual commitment to Christ. Cultural Christianity is marked by a buy-in to some of the morals that Jesus taught: live good lives, go to worship once in a while, from time to time we might pray and even possibly read the bible. But cultural Christians are only Christians in the sense that they are not Muslim. There is no real depth or substance to their faith. Sadly in a partially Christian culture like ours there are many of them and some are even in our churches.
What does a cultural Christian look like?
These people are deficient in faith in a number of ways:
They are not Trinitarian
Cultural Christians are not trinitarian as in their minds Jesus, the Father and the Spirit are all one and the same. No distinction. Biblical teaching is that the Father and the Son are separate as is the Holy Spirit and each of them has their role to play in securing our salvation. In cultural Christianity, Jesus is just another name for God as is Allah or Krishna. The Cultural Christian's sense of Christ and his sacrifice is thin at best and their faith is nothing more than a thin veneer over common garden variety theism.
Theism is the vague belief in a single creator God, not the full robust substance of the Christian faith with a holy Father who gathers to himself children who are saved by the death and resurrection of the Son and are made alive by the power of the Holy Spirit.
They are not Spirit-filled
Paul would say they have a form of Godliness but deny it's power (2 Tim 3). They have the religious appearance of Christian faith but there is no life or power of the Holy Spirit in them. It's like a dead body has everything a living body has, except the spark of life. In the life of a Christian that spark is the Holy Spirit. Ultimately cultural Christians rely on themselves rather than God's power and strength and because of this, their spiritual lives lack any sort of real life, passion or depth.
They live for now instead of eternity
Cultural Christians are much more focused on the 70-80 years they might get in this life and profoundly unaware of the eternity that lies before them. They live life selfishly gathering resources for themselves and not storing up treasure for themselves in heaven. They live lives without any real sacrifice because they fail to see the rewards that lie in the life beyond this biological one. Paul reminds us that if the Christian hope is for this life only, we are to be pitied. Our hope is for a life to come in eternity with the God who saved us and those who belong to Jesus live with a well developed sense of eternity!
They have no passion or love for Christ
Whilst cultural Christians would claim a love for Christ they don't bear much evidence for it. They will have a boredom with the scriptures, they will not follow Jesus nor do the things he calls them to do. The major reason for this is that cultural Christians have been fooled into thinking that most people are actually good. This then means that they have a very poor sense of their sin, or of the depth of the sacrifice made to save them. Cultural Christians have no deep experience of grace, just an intellectual agreement to the truths of the scriptures and that is something the evil one has too...
Their faith is really about them and not the glory of God
Perhaps at it's core the Cultural Christian's faith is really all about them. Cultural Christians live in a world where they are the centre and God is there merely there as a service provider giving comfort, healing and help when needed. Their sense of service, sacrifice and selflessness are underdeveloped and unless they can get something out of it they see no purpose to it. Virtually every week I meet people who claim to follow Jesus, but who do nothing for him, or with him.
You might think I am being overly critical here - but the evidence is obvious. Thousands of people claim to follow Christ and yet when we seek biblical evidence of the fruit of salvation in their lives there is none. No sacrifice, no generosity, no fruit of the Spirit and Jesus reminds us that "by their fruit you will know them" And the church is full of fruitless people and Jesus warning is dire: fruitless branches are cut off and burned.
Why should we tackle cultural Christianity?
We should tackle it because people are being lost to God's kingdom. They have been lulled by the broader culture into believing they are saved, but if they are looked at from the eternal perspective of Scripture they are outside of the faith and that is a deep profound sadness. God desires all people to be saved and desires that none be lost. God's heart is that they would come to him and find life and life in abundance!
John calls these kinds of people liars. They lie about their fellowship with God (1 John 1:6), they lie about their following Jesus (1 John 2:6) and they lie about their love for fellow man (1 John 4:20). And most seriously of all by not giving sin the serious rap it has in God's eyes, they call God a liar (1 John 1:10)
The sadness is that most do not do this out of any sense of malicious or sinful intent. They have simply been allowed, by poor, un-biblical preaching, undisciplined leadership and cultural apathy to think that Christian faith is simply praying a prayer asking Jesus to forgive your sin and then we're in. Sure that kind of prayer is part of our response to the grace of Jesus, but neglecting to call people to sacrifice their lives, carry their crosses and follow Jesus to the place of death has created a church that is flabby, inactive, apathetic and not fighting the war against evil to bring in Jesus kingdom.
We've called people to believe in Jesus but we've not taught them to follow him.
We've called people to believe in Jesus but we've not taught them to follow him.
If I could ask a few personal questions for a moment: when last did you share enough of the Gospel with a non-believer that they could have made a decision for Jesus? How well are you doing at loving the poor, serving your neighbour and fighting for justice. As I look at my own life I can see how affected I am by this fake faith. The last two years have been a real wake up call for me personally and more than ever before I want to please Christ with all my life, because He is worth it! In cultural Christianity Jesus is a peripheral part of life, but not the centre, source and sustainer of life. The Bible counsels us to give up everything to find the treasure that is Jesus whilst cultural Christianity tells us we can give up nothing and still claim to belong to him.
How do we tackle cultural Christianity?
I'd like to put to you four things we should do to stem the influence of Cultural Christianity.
Pray
Pray against the apathy, self-righteousness and arrogance in your own heart and then pray for others. Pray for godly leaders who will raise up disciples for Christ. Pray for those who preach and teach the flock, that they would be faithful to the witness of scripture and that they would boldly proclaim all the council of God to Jesus glory! Pray against the work of the evil one who would blind our eyes to the riches of the glory of God in Christ and would instead get us to glory in the things that the world has to offer (2 Cor 4:4) Pray that you would be a faithful witness to those in your life who do not have Christ and that you would disciple those under your care to a maturing relationship following him.
Preach Christ and Christ crucified
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:23 We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Keep talking about Jesus. Cultural Christians will do one of two things. Some, sadly will get tired of all this "Jesus and sin stuff" and move to other churches where they will not hear so much of it. They will instead seek a comfortable "faith" that lulls them in their apathy - we're warned about this in 2 Tim 4:3 where some will find teachers who say what they want to hear. Someone once commented that many people have received just enough of the Christian faith to be inoculated against a full commitment to Jesus.
But if we keep proclaiming Jesus some will repent and find saving faith through the regenerative work of the Spirit to Christ's glory and the Father's joy. They will hear leaders, teachers and preachers speaking of the Glory of God in Jesus. They will hear hear of Jesus great sacrifice to pay for our sin. They will hear of his immeasurable grace in the face of the horror of their failure and they will be convicted by the Holy Spirit to repent and seek Christ and they will be saved.
Never, ever get tired of talking about Jesus!
Speak out against all sin: religiousness and irreligiousness
We must tackle both religious sin and irreligious sin. It's easy to pick out irreligious sin and religious people love to do it. But we've got to speak out against religiousness too. In fact you will find that Jesus harshest criticism comes to those who are religious leaders. They have all the external trappings of religion but their hearts are far from God.
If we're going to pick sides (and we should) lets pick Jesus' side and remind people that all sin is an affront to a holy God and that Jesus died to save us from both religious obedience, and irreligious rebellion and that all sin can be covered by God's grace. Christ will forgive us all our sins and cleans us from all our unrighteousness ( John 1:9)
The greatest error we make is when we think that because people are in the church and even serving in the church that they belong to Jesus. Right from the beginning Jesus has to remind us that there will be those who claim his Lordship but do not belong to him (Matt 7:21-22) Don't assume everyone is saved.
Live by example
Perhaps one of the greatest tools we have is our obedience to Christ through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. As we follow Jesus, and love him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, as we sacrifice for him and his glory, people around us will be spurred on and encouraged to follow him.
There is something profoundly attractive in those who are sold out for Jesus. We saw it in Acts, the church grew fast because people heard Jesus preached, the religious and irreligious where called to repentance and the lives of the early church where so compellingly powerful that daily God was adding to their number.
That is what Jesus calls us to do. To live for him and to get others to do the same!
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