Gospels of Sin Management: Chapter 2

Well, it certainly needs to be said that Christians are forgiven. And it needs to be said that forgiveness does not depend on being perfect. But is that really what the slogan (Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven) communicates?
Unfortunately, it is not. What the slogan really conveys is that forgiveness alone is what Christianity is all about, what is genuinely essential to it.
It says that you can have a faith in Christ that brings forgiveness, while in every other respect your life is no different from that of others who have no faith in Christ at all.

Dallas continues with his pet peeve of theological bumper stickers. His growing point is that our ideas about our faith are important and will influence our behavior. When I think of that bumper sticker, to me it sounds apologetic or defensive – “just because my life doesn’t look any different than yours doesn’t mean I’m not a Christian.” Whatever your opinion of the slogan, I don’t believe it’s a particularly helpful idea for the aspiring disciple of Christ.

Many others are angry with such a view of being Christian because to them it seems irresponsible. They contemptuously refer to it as “cheap grace” or “fire insurance”… but to be quite frank, grace is cheap from the point of view of those who need it. That is why attacks on “cheap grace” never make much difference. To try to rule out unheroic Christianity by making grace expensive will only add to confusion about matters of vast importance. And if a fire is likely, it would not be a mark of wisdom to forgo insurance that really is available.

This was a beautifully made point. Those that recognize that there needs to be a change in a born again person can still be equally wrong on the other side of the spectrum. Dallas suggests that the problem with Christianity may be more of a systemic one – our view of what the gospel is – rather than an issue of how many hoops someone has to jump through upon accepting it.

No one need worry about our getting the best of God in some bargain with him, or that we might somehow succeed in using him for our purposes. Anyone who thinks this is a problem has seriously underestimated the intelligence and agility of our Father in the heavens. He will not be tricked or cheated. Any arrangement God has estabilished will be right for him and right for us. We can count on it.

It’s funny how we can entertain completely ridiculous thoughts when we don’t examine them. How patronizing must it be to God that we should ever feel the need to protect him from being taken advantage of!

The real question, I think, is whether God would establish a bar code type of arrangement at all. It is we who are in danger: in danger of missing the fullness of life offered to us.

This needs to be clear. If there is more available to being a Christian than going to heaven when you die, it is our loss if we fail to find it.

What must be emphasized in all of this is the difference between trusting Christ, the real person Jesus, with all that that naturally involves, versus trusting some arrangement for sin-remission set up through him – trusting only his role as guilt remover. To trust the real person Jesus is to have confidence in him in every dimension of our real life, to believe that he is right about and adequate to every thing.

This is also touching at the heart of the issue. When we say we trust God for our salvation, are we really trusting Jesus as the lord of our life or are we just trusting an abstract thought of Him saving us from our sins?

The gospel, or “good news,” on this [the Left] view, was that God himself stood behind liberation, equality, and community; that Jesus died to promote them, or at least for lack of them; and that he “lives on” in all efforts and tendencies favoring them. For the theological left, simply this became the message of Christ.

On the left side of the theological spectrum, we see a strong de-emphasis on the supernatural in favor of the practical. Jesus came to release the prisoner, but I believe He is far more interested in our character development than our earthly comfort (as Pastor noted today). He has compassion for those suffering on earth, but life is but a vapor in light of eternity.

The American dream is that “people can do or be what they want if they just go ahead and do it.” Desire becomes sacred, and whatever thwarts desire is evil or sin. We have from the Christian left, after all, just another gospel of sin management, but one whose substance is provided by Western (American) social and political ideals of human existence in a secular world.

This is one problem when fighting for liberation – it makes an idol out of the desire for freedom, even if what is desired is contrary to the ordinances of God. In the end, the left is also a gospel of sin management.

To reiterate, that irrelevance to life stems from the very content of those “gospels”: from what they state, what they are about. They concern sin guilt or structural evils (social sins) and what to do about them. That is all. That real life goes on without them is a natural consequence of this.

Willard begins to pose the question of whether the results we see in today’s Christianity are not in spite of our efforts, but precisely because of the gospel we are presenting. If you make the gospel just about getting to heaven, or for fighting for equality (without emphasis on a supernatural personal relationship with Jesus), it is simply logical that this gospel will have little effect on our everyday life.

Right at the heart of this alienation lies the absence of Jesus the teacher from our lives. Strangely, we seem prepared to learn how to live from almost anyone but him. [By listening to the voices of the world instead of Jesus] we lose any sense of the difference between information and wisdom, and act accordingly.

If we don’t think Jesus has the best wisdom for how to live, how could we possibly put our trust for our eternal destiny in such a person?

We do not seriously consider Jesus as our teacher on how to live, hence we cannot think of ourselves, in our moment-to-moment existence, as his students or disciples.

This is Willard’s conclusion of the discipleship problem: The gospel that is often shared has little relevance to our everyday life. Therefore, we don’t look to Jesus to be our teacher and so we do not become his disciple.

We are flooded with what I have called “gospels of sin management,” in one form or another, while Jesus’ invitation to eternal life now – right in the midst of work, business, and profession – remains for the most part ignored and unspoken.

There is more to life in Christ than just sin management. We can enter eternal abundant life right now.

A saying among management experts today is “Your system is perfectly designed to yield the result you are getting.”

Willard summarizes his point again by drawing on a popular saying. The gospel we present is perfectly designed to save the kind of converts we’re receiving.

Study Questions:

What is the gospel to you? Is it that Jesus died so that you can go to heaven? Is it that Jesus came to promote a new equality that we should fight for? Is it the new availability to enter the Kingdom of God?

How does your current view of the gospel compare to what was presented to you growing up?