INTRO: Soft Evangelicalism has been made reference to, and refuted by some prominent leaders recently and I absolutely love it. The church needs more of it.
Whether you call the people evan-jellyfish or refer to the totality of the movement as big Eva, it is evident that a small group of Christians in the United States are perceiving serious issues within this modern era of pop-culture Christianity and are beginning another exodus. Soft evangelical persuasions are fading, like any errant, ridiculous, and nonsensical ideas do over the course of time. The flaws are built into the system, and when the system is thoroughly worked out, those flaws come to ultimately condemn it to a gruesome demise. This working out often takes time and can, if started in an unhealthy spiritual environment, can take multiple life-times to eradicate. Not only this, but we know that we as people in a fallen world cannot fully grasp the level of deception possible within those who are already taken by this mindset. Thus, it needs to be stated once again that this will take a powerful move of the Spirit of God to open the eyes of His people once again and guide us so completely, so that we truly don’t rest in our own understanding, but in all our ways actually acknowledge him in all that we do and plan.
What is this version of Christianity that I clearly have a distain for? Yes, it is the property gospel, but it is also those Christians who have recognized the foolishness of that and have begun to adopt a pseudo-prosperity gospel that likes to hold onto harmful understandings of God’s will for our life now, but without the money-back guarantee that some of the previous false teachers have espoused over the last 100yrs or so. It is the social “justice” Christians that have completely built upon man’s philosophical musings and satanic systems while rejecting God’s law as the only epistemological foundation for our moral convictions. But, more than all of this, it is the ivory-tower conservative intellects that have enticed the vast majority of biblical, well-meaning Christians and tricked them into a false notion of meaty teaching. Instead they have really been uncovered as an emasculated, weak and sissified Christianity that know’s it’s bible well-enough, but hasn’t experience what John Calvin describes as “doctrine is rightly received when it takes possession of the entire soul and finds a dwelling place and shelter in the most intimate affections of the heart.” A Little Book On The Christian Life
Doctrine changes us, and as many of these teachers in their towers would teach us this, we have found these last two years to reveal the limitations of their biblical exhortations. The capitulation and rendering to caesar what it not caesar’s, but what belongs to God has made evident where their affections lie. I don’t speak of specifics, because I genuinely think that all of us can think of an example.
Why say this?
In order to take to take our stands and be biblical men and women of God that leave no room for compromise, we need to recognize these leaders and reject it as either false or impotent which will inevitably leads to falsehood. Be on the lookout for a weak Christianity that doesn’t cost anything. A Christianity that demands nothing, costs nothing, and promises heaven may be in danger of not being able to deliver on the latter.
What we must do in our local communities is declare the Word of God like the apostles did. That is the only way we change the world through the Spirits power. The frontal assault on the darkness all around us will be met with resistance. The resistance may be accusations of hatred, a false gospel, a false word, but as long as we stand where our fathers have before us… We will be in good standing. This is how the early church changed everything. A recognition of God above all authority is where we take our stand and we will not nuance it. We will not nuance the power of Christ. We will declare salvation from no other. We will call sinners to repentance without qualification.
Comments