Oct
17
Application Driven
Filed Under Apologetics, Christian Living, The Church
David Wells has written four very poignant books (No Place For Truth, God in the Wasteland, Losing our Virtue, and Above All Earthly Powers) on the current state of the Evangelical Church. If you love deep philosophical reflection on culture and theology, you will find his works incredibly edifying. If you’re not into that kind of thing, you could still learn a good deal from Wells. One of his more profound reflections is on the growing trend for Evangelicals to value only application. By “application” he means 5 step programs to happier living, how the Bible can make your marriage happier, words of wisdom for Christian business men, and the sort. These things may not be altogether bad in and of themselves but Wells sees something deeper at work here. His conclusion, which I agree with, is that Evangelical Christians have lost the Biblical truth content that used to make up the core of our Christianity. Evangelicals simply have no time for doctrine anymore. Biblical doctrine is supposed to be the root from which the tree of Christian practice grows. Without Biblical truth at our core we are simply left with pragmatic to-do lists divorced from any kind of deep abiding relationship with our God. What is the answer? We need to challenge our inmost desires. Do we simply want to do life better or is there in us a deeper desire to know and be known by God? How we answer that question will either lead us to love the deep truths of Scripture or lead us to snack on soul junk food packaged in Evangelical fluff. I’ll conclude with a good quote from Wells:
“Being practical now substitutes for being theological, for there is little left to theology except practice. Stripped of doctrinal substance and rendered unreflective about and uncritical of the culture, theology now transforms ‘virtue’ into a set of everyday skills for finding success in a world of technology and affluence. Knowing how to be religious now means knowing how to ‘make it’ in a pragmatic world that is decidedly hostile to absolute principles and transcendent meaning and, in consequence, is driven to seek meaning only in self-fulfillment. The fuel for this new practical virtue comes not from the Bible but from the popularized nostrums of psychology, not from the older practices of self-examination and the pursuit of holiness but from the newer concerns for psychological wholeness and happiness in an age of affluence. It should not be hard to see that this new program has nothing in common with the old and that this drastically reduced theological vision has nothing to do with the task that has engaged the church for most of its life.”
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