The Path Forward for Christianity

The Current Milieu

Welcome back to the Reformed Rant where I grapple with the most pressing theological, philosophical, and social issues of the day from a distinctly reformed Christian perspective.

Deconstructing Christianity

Identify Christianity as the “White Man’s Religion.”

Racist theology is deeply embedded in the DNA of white Christian churches, influencing even their theology on salvation, PRRI founder Robert Jones argues in a new book.

Slavery, race and biblical authority: Before we claim the Bible is ‘inerrant,’ let’s confess that we aren’t. An article that appeared in Baptist News Global that essentially questions biblical inerrancy and the historical-grammatical hermeneutic because they were used to support slavery.

Christianity is painted with the derogatory: white supremacy.

The nature and interpretation of Scripture is attacked due to issues related to slavery.

Deconstructing America

The Constitution is a document produced by men profoundly entrenched in white supremacy.

It was a document of slave owners, by slave owners, for slave owners.

We must tare it all down and start over.

Capitalism is a racist system constructed by white supremacists.

Both the church and the state are creations of white supremacists that had as their primary aim the oppression of African Americans and other non-whites. Both have to be destroyed and rebuilt with the new truth, the new morality, the new rule of righteousness which is equality of outcome for all people in all things.

The Remedy

Standpoint epistemology and reader-response criticism have overtaken many circles in our churches as tools that are being used to deconstruct both our church and our country.

Standpoint epistemology: a Marxist theory that suggests that people from an oppressed group have special access to knowledge not available to those from a privileged class.

This essentially is a way for jealous people who think they are oppressed to obtain some king of privilege of their own.

Reader-response criticism:

Interpreting the New Testament: Essays on Methods and Issues Reader-Centered Approaches

A text has unrealized meaning potential but requires a reader to actualize this potential meaning. Thus, the reader does not have, as has been traditionally thought and accepted, a passive role.

The Bible essentially becomes putty in the hands of the reader. It can mean whatever the reader wants it to mean.

This is why we have Christians, who for decades, have read themselves into every imaginable scenario in the text. And their pastors have just allowed this ignorance to prevail in the name of keeping the peace.

Sola Scriptura

The Westminster Confession of Faith Section 4

The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God. (2 Pet. 1:19, 21, 2 Tim. 3:16, 1 John 5:9, 1 Thess. 2:13)

2 Timothy 3:16–17 NASB95

16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

Where final authority is concerned: there can be only one.

The Gospel

Man was created with the faculties that enabled him to sin or to not sin.

Man sinned.

God’s wrath fell on man.

Man is now born only with the faculty to sin. He can no longer, in his natural condition, not sin.

Man is oppressed, sick, blind, and captive in his sin.

A relationship with God requires a righteous standing before God.

Jesus Christ lived a perfectly righteous life.

Jesus Christ died under the curse of God taking God’s wrath for unworthy sinners.

Man must repent of his hostility toward God and believe the gospel.

Christ takes our wrath and gives us his righteousness.

The Mission

Matthew 28:19–20 NASB95

19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Proclaim the gospel.

Baptize converts.

Make disciples.

The gospel is not utopia on Earth

The gospel is not, hey good news everybody, there will no longer be racism or any kind of injustice in the world.

Converts are not people who were racist capitalists but now have taken up the cause of the poor and the oppressed and fight oppression and racism at every turn.

Disciples are not people who give away all their privilege and denounce their whiteness, blackness, yellowness, ethnicity, or any physical traits they may possess.

The mission of the church is not to end racism any more than it is to end adultery or sex trafficking or even abortion.

The mission of the church is not to engage in political activism so that society may become a more noble and moral society.

The mission of the church is not to end poverty, privilege, or to achieve perfect economic equality in the culture.

Our denominations have utterly failed the churches.

They have failed to equip the saints in the most rudimentary ways:

Ephesians 4:11–13 NASB95

11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

Our churches are littered with false converts because our leaders do not screen wanna-be members nor do they discipline the obstinate.

Our Sermons very rarely speak truth into our hearts in a way that threatens and challenges us, calling us to a life of repentance and holiness.

Our SS teachers are inept and neglected resulting in SS lessons that accomplish nothing more than filling up our stomach with junk food and our time with junk lessons that are impotent in every way. In short they are physically and spiritually unhealthy.

If you want to understand what is wrong with Christianity in America and why this racial reconciliation, social justice movement with it’s Woke Cult mentality has turn our churches upside down on their heads, you don’t have to look any farther than the elders and pastors.