Christian Theism vs. Christian Deism

Question: What attracts you to Christianity?

Seriously, take a minute and think through this as you open your Bibles to . Why are you attracted to Christianity? Why did you join (or are thinking of joining) a church? Why are you serving within the church? Why do you avoid serving within the church? When you think of Christianity and attempt to describe it, what comes to mind?

I want us to ask and answer this question: WHAT IS MEANINGFUL ABOUT CHRISTIANITY?

In truth, there are only two answers to select from:

1. Christianity is meaningful because it abides in God.

2. Christianity is meaningful because of what it offers outside of or from God.

Though the distinction made appears subtle, with a little deep examination we will see that a great chasm of difference exists between these two choices. Stated a little differently, we either pursue a Christ-centered Christianity or a Christ-less Christianity.

1. Christ-centered = Everything is moving towards Christ.

2. Christ-less = Everything is moving away from Christ.

Let me explain what I mean by this distinction. Christ-centered Christianity has the Lord at the center of its focus. Because God is the focus, life becomes an epic pursuit of seeing, knowing, and engaging God more clearly and sincerely. The Lord is the nucleus of our life; or, as Paul quoted in

, “For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.”

Acts 17:28 ESV

for “ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

Thus, Christ-centered Christianity aims to know, glorify, and enjoy God because its very life is owed to God’s nature and work. When we make Christ and His glory the center aspect of our life, we experience deep joy. John Piper summarized his understanding of the Bible’s instructions and promises in the following manner: “God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him.” (John Piper)

In the same vein, let’s take a look at the first three questions of the Shorter Catechism—these questions and answers are quite enlightening:

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?

o Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Q. 2. What rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him?

o The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.

Q. 3. What do the Scriptures principally teach?

o The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.

The generations before us clearly understood the crux of Christianity is God. To depart from God, His glory, and His word as the primary aim of our efforts equated into vanity and pursuing idolatry. However, today, the modern understanding of Christianity seems to be one that is primarily Christ-less or, at the very least, an illicit solicitation of God’s gifts while divorcing itself from the God it is married to!

Why is Christ-less Christianity so popular? Why is it rampant within the American church? Why do we pay lip-service to the centrality of God while, excruciatingly, giving ourselves over to the pursuit of blessings divorced from abiding in God’s presence and direct glorification of Him?

Christ-less Christianity is Popular for Two Reasons:

1. Our great needs in life;

2. Our great ignorance and confusion of our God and our life.

Christ-less Christianity is appealing because of our overwhelming needs:

1. We lack understanding: It offers the hope of knowledge and understanding about life

2. We lack emotional security: It offers the hope of emotional peace and stability in life

3. We lack a sound ethic: It offers the hope of being a good person through sound morality

4. We lack physical resources: It offers the hope of provision and care

5. We lack prosperity: It offers the hope of success and triumph over life

6. We lack meaningful relationships: It offers the hope of community and friendship

Such needs are real and are really overwhelming. Death, sickness, financial strain, relational difficulties, emotional instability, and scores of problems absolutely overwhelm EVERY person that has the breath of God within them. This reality propels us toward a solution. Our God offers the solution to our problem; however, many misunderstand the solution and, in turn, pervert the solution to the point that it becomes an additional problem. How so?

In truth, all of these desires find merit and fulfillment in Christ and His church; however, it is also possible for churches to push these things devoid of an intimate relationship with God. Instead of an intent focus on the Lord, we begin to focus on the things we get from God. Numerous church leaders who truly cared about helping others inadvertently took their eyes off of worshipping Jesus in order to utilize Jesus as a formulaic solution to the problems their congregations faced. Look at the following illustrations of this subtle substitution:

1. In order to “feel better” as we leave a worship service, we’ve changed the focus of the songs we sing from declarations of God’s nature, attributes, and work to how we feel and what we want. We are a people insanely obsessed with our emotional state far more than we are with God’s character—we would rather sing how we feel than praise God for who He is!

2. In order to help people with their relational problems, we’ve adopted psychoanalysis and extreme vocalization of the problem, the parties involved, our feelings, our assessment of others, and “what we think” instead of communication of, submission to, and accountability to God’s written instruction. Our expression matters more than God’s declaration.

3. In order to help others fit into our “church body” we’ve: 1) dumbed down biblical preaching; 2) we no longer exercise church discipline; & 3) we gear everything we do towards fun and enjoyment rather than the worship of God. We are a people obsessed with pleasure instead of the worship and glorification of God.

Look, I don’t think we do this because we want to be evil, I think we do this because we are inherently evil. Our inherent evil is the result of the fall—and no one lives this life unaffected from the fall. The church leaders who turned their churches into venues of self-expression, pleasure factories, and spiritual daycare centers most-likely did so out of a desire to help and not hurt. However, whenever the focus of the church shifts—even subtly—from the Lord to anything else, the consequences are huge.

A church comprised of several couples living in broken marriages can easily transition the message of the gospel from Jesus is magnificent, to Jesus fixes marriages, to Jesus fixes marriage in the following ways, to here’s how you can be like Jesus, to here’s how you can fix your marriage. Ever so subtly the message of the church transitioned from the glory of God to practical “how-to” steps for a better… whatever.

A church filled with great musicians and immensely creative individuals can ever so subtly shift from the direct worship of God into outright heresy. We started singing orthodox theology to the best of our musical ability, then we started changing a few lines and adding a few licks, then we wrote new music based upon Scripture, then we wrote new music based upon how the sermon or the old music made us feel, then we started writing new music based upon our thoughts, then we started writing new music based upon the viewpoints of the world. Over a period of time we’ve moved from artistic expression of truth (a very good thing), to artistic expression of self (very shallow), to artistic expression of contradictory confessions (a very evil thing).

How? How does this happen? How do we move away from sound faith to a weak faith, and from a weak faith to a useless faith. I believe the apostle Paul gives us the answer in when he shows us His aim compared to the aim of others,

1 Corinthians 2:1–5 ESV

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

“And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

Three things about Paul’s ambition in serving God by preaching to others:

1. Paul had conviction about what to do = “For I decided to know nothing among you”

2. Paul had a clear message = “Jesus Christ and him crucified”

3. Paul had a clear goal = “so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

The theologian Leon Morris summarizes these three things in the following: “Preaching the gospel is not delivering edifying discourses, beautifully put together. It is bearing witness to what God has done in Christ for our salvation.”(Leon Morris) [1]

The truth is this, the Great Commission () was issued to all of us. As believers, God commands us all to be proclaimers of His glorious love and work. However, many of us have fallen into the trap of letting the “professionals” glorify Christ—this is sin! It is the testimony of God that matters, not the arrangement and the beautification of the words we use to describe God.

When we submit ourselves to viewing Christianity—especially our life within the corporate body of Christ—in the manner that Paul did, we find a Christianity that is deeply refreshing and satisfying.

I am not opposed to the wondrous blessings and gifts God gives to us; rather, I am opposed to us exalting our blessings above God. The basis of the Corinthian correspondence is just this.

Look, the church at Corinth was about as messed up as any church you could think of to compare it to today. Let’s briefly familiarize ourselves with the problems Paul had to address within this church throughout the book of Corinthians.

Problems Within the Corinthian Church:

1. They divided over the skill of the preachers and who they were baptized by (1:10-17)

2. They boasted of themselves (1:26-31)

3. They argued over maturity and wisdom (ch. 2)

4. They were incredibly immature (3:1-4)

5. They misunderstood how maturity happens (3:5-16)

6. They were ignorant of true wisdom (3:18-23)

7. They were proud and unfaithful to sound instruction (ch. 4)

8. They were immoral and undisciplined (ch. 5)

9. They were contentious and defrauding each other (ch. 6)

10. They misunderstood marriage (ch. 7)

11. They misunderstood their dietary freedom (ch. 8)

12. They were engaging in idolatry (ch. 10)

13. They misunderstood gender roles (ch. 11)

14. They misunderstood the gifts of the Spirit (ch. 12-14)

15. They misunderstood the gospel (ch. 15)

The Corinthian church does not have a few problems, this church is loaded with problems!

So, what’s the solution? There is much Paul must address within this church, but notice that he begins and ends with the gospel!

Paul firmly instructs in both his opening and at his closing (ch. 15) that the church’s foundation is the message of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

Going back to the two problems we face that cause us to remove Christ from our center and to replace Him with His gifts:

1) We see that we are in need AND… 2) WE SEE THAT WE ARE IGNORANT. The solution to our ignorance, according to Paul, is a refamiliarization with the gospel.

The gospel is a person. That person is Christ Jesus!

New Hope, this is what you can say to everyone you come in contact with. This is the good news we all need to here. What is the “good news” or the gospel of Jesus Christ?

JESUS DIED IN OUR PLACE AND ROSE TO GIVE US LIFE IN HIM.

The life we receive from Christ is of no small value, for it is the means by which we fellowship with the Lord. And it is this concept that brings me to my overarching point for the day, and this is what makes the Lord truly amazing.

OUR GOD LIVES AND INTERACTS WITH HUMANITY. It is this foundational belief that separates a theist from a deist. The difference is worth noting.

Deism Defined: “Deism is the belief in a God who made the world but who never interrupts its operations with supernatural events. It is a theism minus miracles. God does not interfere with his creation. Rather, he designed it to run independent of him by immutable (unchangeable) natural laws. In nature, he has also provided all that his creatures need to live.”[2]

As Christian theists, we believe that God—YHWH—created humanity, equips humanity, interacts with humanity, influences humanity, and directs humanity in accordance to His will. God’s will is that we worship and enjoy Him. We strive for the presence of God, not His presents—these inherently come from within His presence.

The implications of such affirmations are significant. Let’s take a moment and conceptualize the difference between a deist and a theist.

Deism looks at the world as a box God created.

· God built the box.

· He filled the box.

· He placed within the box everything required for life.

· Lastly, He stepped away from the box to go do His own thing.

· Deism, at its core, is a “spiritualized” souped-up form of humanism. What do I mean?

Norman Geisler identified five basic assumptions of those holding to a form of humanism:

1. “Nontheism is common to all forms of secular humanism. Many humanists deny the existence of God altogether, but all deny the need for a Creator of the world. Thus, secular humanists join in opposing all theistic religion.

2. Naturalism is essential to humanism, following from the denial of theism. Everything in the universe must be explainable in terms of natural laws alone.

3. Evolution is the secular humanist’s way to explain origins. Either the universe and living things originated by means of the intervention of a supernatural Creator, or they evolved by purely naturalistic means. Nontheists thus have no choice but to defend evolution.

4. Ethical relativism unites secular humanists, for they have a distaste for absolutes. There are no God-given moral values; humanity decides its own values. These standards are subject to change and relative to different situations. Since there is no absolute basis for values in God, there are no absolute values to be received from God.

5. Human self-sufficiency is a central tenet. Not all secular humanists are utopian, but all believe human beings can solve their own problems without divine help. Not all believe the race is immortal, but all hold that humanity’s survival depends on personal behavior and responsibility. Not all believe that science and technology are the means of saving humankind, but all do believe human reason and secular education are the only hope if the race is to endure.”[3]

The five summary-points Geisler extrapolates are strikingly simple to understand and refute (or affirm depending upon one’s beliefs). How I wish the church was free from the permeation of these faulty beliefs, but we are not.

Secular humanism has worked its way into the very fabric of the American mindset, and it is so intricately woven within the fabric of the American church’s practical theology that it has caused us to wander from our Lord in ignorance.

You see, many “Christians” have forsaken the Lord as their focus and, instead, have turned to a form of Christianity that is deistic—and even humanistic—at its core.

A Christianity that is theistic looks to God for God. It desires to interact, abide, and savor the presence of the Lord.

A deistic form of Christianity looks to the things of God for secrets, tricks, life-hacks, and guidance in order to self-integrate the principles taught.

A deistic form of Christianity looks to the things of God for secrets, tricks, life-hacks, and guidance in order to self-integrate the principles taught.

To make the distinction more clearly: Theism looks to God while deism looks for the knowledge and strategies given to us by God.

On the other hand, humanism rejects God outright and attempts to fix humanity exclusively through humanity.

Christian deism (if there is such a thing) is the fundamental concept that God made the world and left it up to us to fix it, live within it, and strive to make the most of it.

Christian deists live life completely devoid of the Spirit’s power—well almost. We say almost because, as a theist, I argue it is impossible to live life completely devoid of God’s power.

Christian-deism is the pursuit of a better life at the cost of neglecting the one who gives life.

The Corinthian church tentatively could be called Christian deists.

Rather than striving to know and enjoy God, the church at Corinth bragged about the wisdom of those who taught and baptized them, were arrogantly immoral, proudly argued their “gifting” was better than others, indulged in wanton pleasure, and rejected unity in worship. Christianity was a means to an end that did not end in Christ but in self-gratification. This, my friends, is what drives Christian deism. Christian theism—which Paul adhered to—is far different.

The Christian theist understands that his or her life is on a trajectory towards a greater realization of the presence of God—which is our sanctification. Every day—every moment—of our life is intended to serve as an opportunity for you and I to develop a deeper relationship with the Lord. This continues all the way to our death, then the blinders are finally removed, and we grab another gear in our relationship with and glorification of the Lord. This is what Paul tells us in when he says,

1 Corinthians 13:9–12 ESV

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

“9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

His point is both simple and clear. At this exact moment we do know Christ; however, we do not fully know Him. But… one day we WILL know the Lord. Though looking at the Lord fills like we are peering at Him through a dark distorted piece of glass, one day we will see Him face-to-face. This fact implies that we are on an ever-clarifying venture to see and know our Lord at a deeper, more precise, and intimate manner.

This brings us to where we are today as both individuals and as a church—what makes Christianity attractive to us? When God commands us to examine ourselves, we must understand that the examination is intended to help us identify who or what we pursue and serve. It is easy to give lip-service to the Lord, but it is far more difficult to give our life-service to the Lord!

It is uncommonly easy for us to live as Christian deists. Think about it… We get up late, rush out the door, work all day, and come home. When we come home the madness truly begins. We’ve got to take care of the house, get the kids to and back from sports/clubs, and figure out what to eat. Then, we try to watch a couple of shows or a game, talk with the wife, and, finally, we get to call it a night. When the weekend comes we try to cram all the “fun” or projects we are able to schedule in. Lastly, if we feel like it, we go to church and hope to hear something encouraging and useful. This is the life of the “average” church member. What’s missing?

We don’t see any room for God! If we do, God is squirreled away to only 15-30 minutes that we can find for Him in our mornings or evenings. The rest of the day (and week) we will, probably, ignore Him or remain clueless of Him. When we do read we want to find tips to apply and tactics to use.

Even the word application is a deistic word! Think about it… go read your Bible and go to church so you can figure out what to apply to your life or to fix. Where is the relationship in that?

You don’t talk to a romantic interest and then try to APPLY your conversation. Absolutely not! Instead, you hang on every word and look forward to the next time you get to talk to him or her. When he says, “I missed you”, you immediately respond with “I missed you too!”. When she leans in for a kiss, you press into her. When he takes your hand, you respond by clutching his. When she says, “I want something sweet”, you respond by taking her to the Dairy Queen. Nobody takes the phrase “I want something sweet” and says, “let me go and determine how to apply that”! You “DO” because “DOING” is a natural response within a dynamic and active relationship.

Far too many “Christians” ignore the relationship with God for a study about God only to ignore what they learn. Far too many “Christians” read the word of God only to depart and attempt to fix themselves. We read to know God, so we can interact with God, this allows us to glorify God, and, thus, produces great joy and satisfaction within us that endures for all of eternity. Why do we substitute God for His things?

A deist wants God’s stuff.

A theist wants God.

Which one are you?

Question: What if you realize you’ve been going after God’s things instead of God?

Let me invite you into a relationship with the Lord. Right where you are at, call out to Jesus in a prayer and ask Him to give you the life that He promises to give you. Confess your sinful rebellions and ask Him to forgive you.

Then…

Get a bible and begin your daily interaction with God. As you read and learn about Him, you will find your heart, your soul, your mind craves Him. The word of God will serve as a lamp for your feet. It will show you how to walk with Him.

Saying, “Jesus I believe in you”, yet refusing to walk after Him to know Him through His word, through prayer, and through praise is not belief but rejection. I can’t give you assurance of your relationship with Him—only the Holy Spirit can do that. As we learn to love the Lord by actively communicating with Him through His word, we hear the Spirit of God testify to our souls that we are His. This is the assurance we ALL crave.

If you have just begun a relationship with Christ, or are about to begin one, I would love to speak with you about this after the service.

Let’s pray together.

END

[1] Leon Morris, 1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 7, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 56.

[2] Norman L. Geisler, “Deism,” Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 189.

[3] Norman L. Geisler, “Humanism, Secular,” Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 342.