Hey Jude

I am not ashamed to say that I liked the movie Hairspray. It's really true: you can't stop the beat. It feels good to sell back those cursed textbooks.

I've been doing a lot of thinking today. Rethinking actually. Rethinking what I've been fed all my life in church. Now, I'm not talking about truth. I'm not saying that I've been rethinking every piece of good, Biblical doctrine that I've ever heard (although I do think it's wise to examine your beliefs to make sure you understand them). But I've been taking some long hard looks at the slices of folk theology that lines the walls of the churches of evangelicalism today. By "folk theology" I mean the traditions of men that have been souped up to look like the commandments of God. They are tacitly accepted as the Christian cultural norm. Examples would be like what it means to take the Lord's name in vain or whether a building or place can be made holy. Or here's a good one: is church tradition a bad thing? Protestants have been so anti-tradition for centuries ever since God rescued us from the darkness of Catholicism but is it really a bad thing? I believe that liturgy and creedal confessions, when utilized correctly, can be excellent and powerful methods of instruction. I'd like to see a good, Biblical Protestant liturgy. And if it doesn't happen soon, I'll just have to write it myself!

And another thing. Jude 21 tells us to keep ourselves in the love of God. For a stupidly long time I thought that verse meant that I was to somehow make sure that I never fell out of the range of God's love. But that never made any sense to me. As a Calvinist, I wondered how I could ever outrun or unearn God's love (since I never earned it in the first place and since God's love was first big enough to save me). So I tossed the verse aside as a bone, as something I simply was not mature enough to digest yet. But recently, through the preaching of one Charles Haddon Spurgeon, I've learned that it meant for me to make sure that I kept my love for God. It meant that I am to always seek to learn more, to keep warm my devotions, to keep pure my emotions and to keep bright my expectations.

Perhaps as a body, by and large, the evangelical church has missed this. We have not kept ourselves in the love of God. I understand that this verse must be narrowed down to a personal duty, but each of us personally is responsible for lackluster service to the Lord. I'm sorry to critique my own brethren but I think my boiling point has been tapped. Evangelicalism is fast becoming a political movement, stuffed with a prosperity gospel and a bottomless appetite for entertainment. The old guideposts of discernment and knowledge have been discarded for the more attractive fashion of being relevant to a pagan culture. It has become a white American religion and it has never been more comfortable with itself than today. Granted, there are many in evangelicalism who have not compromised the Biblical mandates and are daily seeking to remain in the love of God. But those faithful watch dogs are powerless to stop the bleeding.

Every arena in which the church has been failing, I think, can be traced back to its love for God. The heresy of the Emerging Church, however noble their initial ambitions may have been, is rooted in a distortion of truth. And here is where love comes in. As Spurgeon puts it: "Love God and you will not love false doctrine. Keep the heart of the church right and her head will not go far wrong. Let her abide in the love of Jesus and she will abide in the truth." Evangelicalism's slow surrender to missing the point is killing us softly. As Spurgeon says, "in dull, decaying churches, errors spread like ivy on the crumbling walls of an old abbey."

As it is an individual duty, I think the best way to recover and keep ourselves in the love of God is to daily seek more and more of the love of God. Never spend a day without seeking out the Master's voice. Don't leave your room to meet people head on until you have first met God head on. The church in all her beauty will one day be presented before the Father. We should have no doubt of that. But while we're on this side of heaven, we should be diligent to keep ourselves in the love of God, tossing aside error and distraction so that we can carry out our main purpose: to bring the Gospel of God to the unbelieving world.