conversion

On Deconversion

March 18, 2021 by Dan Olinger 11 Comments

These days I’m noticing a lot of friends who are turning from the faith. These are people with apparent, even convincing previous commitments to Christianity who now welcome the label of unbelief.

I’ve been thinking about the phenomenon. Why so many? Why now?

One possibility, I suppose, is a culturally driven one–that the apparent increase in deconversions is an optical illusion, that there are no more today than there have been in the past. The illusion comes because most of my friends now have and use a personal publishing platform, and they live in a culture that encourages “authenticity” in the form of controversial public pronouncements and the consequent wave of affirmation, in the form of “likes,” from fellow travelers. In that environment, deconversions that in another time would have been kept relatively private are now out there for all the world to see.

Possible, I suppose. Though survey data seem to show that the number of professing evangelicals is indeed shrinking.

Another possibility is theologically driven. For those of us who find—with all due respect to our Arminian brothers and sisters—the Bible to be teaching that a genuine believer cannot finally be lost, the conclusion that someone who deconverts—and persists—was never genuinely a believer to begin with is pretty much unavoidable. And if that’s the case, what could explain all those false professions?

I offer a possibility.

For my increasingly lengthening lifetime, American evangelicalism has prioritized evangelism; it’s one of Bebbington’s four essentials of the movement. In a culture that values efficiency and effectiveness, after the model of Henry Ford, we want to make the process of evangelism fool-proof, so that any believer of any experience can successfully carry out the Great Commission. So we develop methods, and we teach them in little pamphlets in simple language. The Romans Road. The Wordless Book. Sunday school. And lots of others.

And Christian parents, who more than anything want their children to live without the noxiousness of sinful decisions and eventually to go to heaven, lay that simple process on their beloved ones from the earliest ages.

Now, at the age of 4 or 5, any child is going to follow the instructions of an authority figure that he loves and trusts, particularly if there’s no real cost to it.

“Do you want to burn in hell forever?”

“Well, um, no, I’d rather not.”

What sane person would answer any other way?

“Then you need to pray this prayer.”

“Um, okay.”

And the “Amen” is followed by the fervent statement, “You’ve asked Jesus into your heart! Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re not going to heaven!”

Scripture tells us that salvation is a divine work. The Spirit convicts of sin (Jn 16.8) and illumines the mind; the Father draws the convert to the Son (Jn 6.44). Unless God is acting on this convert, he’s not a convert at all.

Is it possible that we have a generation of people who grew up in Christian homes and made a “decision” that you’d have to be an idiot to say no to, but have never felt the convicting work of the Holy Spirit and the drawing (and keeping) power of the Father, the covenant-keeping God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? A generation that today sees professing “evangelicals” by the thousands engaging in behavior that they find deeply disgusting—most notably abusive sexual behavior, hypocrisy, lack of empathy, and the apotheoses of celebrities with prominent character flaws—and they say to themselves, and to their social circles, “Why am I associating with these people? What reason do I have to stay in a relationship to which I’ve never had any commitment beyond an intellectual one, and in my immature years at that?”

Of course it’s possible.

Maybe we should watch for evidence of God’s working in a young person before encouraging him to “pray the prayer.” Maybe we should show our devotion to carrying out the Great Commission by seeking genuine, not facile, conversions. Maybe we should be God’s servants, rather than his pushy facilitators, in this important work. Maybe we should be less frantic, less desperate, and more trusting and confident.

Good intentions don’t seem to be good enough.

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Simple Faith. Simple Grace, Part 5: Keeping It Going

March 15, 2021 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: The Basics | Part 2: The Way | Part 3: Keeping It Simple | Part 4: Working It Out

We’ve spent some time considering the simple truths of the gospel and the importance of keeping them simple—that is, promoting what the Bible actually says without adding any ideas of our own.

That shouldn’t be difficult to do, but historically it seems to be. In our walk with God, we’ve all had differing experiences—

Our culture brings us to the text with different presuppositions, many of them unrecognized, which flavor our understanding of it.
Our experience of God’s grace is not exactly like anyone else’s; we have a unique set of experiences, including high and low points, that give us sometimes unique insights into what a given passage has come to mean to us experientially.
Our personalities bias us to understand a given text differently from someone with a different set of biases.

Add to this the fact, recently considered here, that everybody is at least a little bit right and a little bit wrong, and you have a recipe for theological disagreement about very simple, but very important, biblical teaching.

A case in point—

More than 30 years ago now John MacArthur published The Gospel According to Jesus, arguing against “easy believism,” fruitless Christianity. Sounds as though there wouldn’t be anything controversial about that. But the book took the evangelical world by storm, eliciting multiple responses and counter-responses. MacArthur was arguing not merely that a convert’s life should change, but that if the “convert” hadn’t knowingly embraced the complete lordship of Jesus Christ at the time of his conversion, he wasn’t really a convert.

MacArthur wasn’t the first to argue this position. Walter Chantry had argued similarly nearly 20 years earlier in his book Today’s Gospel: Authentic or Synthetic?, and Arthur W. Pink had discussed a similar concept back in the late 1940s.

Anyway, books started flying. In his 1989 work Absolutely Free!, Zane Hodges argued against MacArthur’s position, as did his Dallas Seminary colleague Charles Ryrie the same year (So Great Salvation). In an even more provocative book, Charles Swindoll, soon to become the president of Dallas Seminary, added to the fire with Grace Awakening in 1990. Don’t add to the list, they argued; keep it simple.

MacArthur doubled down with The Gospel According to the Apostles and then The Gospel According to Paul.

And evangelical seminary classes around the world went to battle. Lots of discussions about the conflicting views, in classes, in the hallways, over meals, and in what few coffee shops there were at time.

I’d like to suggest that the views are both a little bit right, and they’re both a little bit wrong.

I think MacArthur did what a lot of us do—he read some sanctification back into justification, as exemplified by our point about believing the virgin birth. In that narrow sense, he added to the list.

On the other hand, he’s obviously right that Christ’s followers don’t deny or ignore his lordship. They know his voice, and they follow him—not perfectly, of course, but aspirationally.

So no, the little child doesn’t need to “sign on” to the absolute lordship of Christ when he expresses sorrow for his sins and believes that Jesus, strong and kind, will save him. But if that child comes to me as a college student, whose life has not changed, and asks me for help with assurance of salvation, I’m not going to give him list of verses on assurance; I’m going to point him to the warning passages in Scripture—Hebrews would be a great place to start—and I’m going to challenge the authenticity of his faith. If you’re not hearing his voice, what basis do you have for thinking that you’re his sheep?

Simple faith. Simple grace.

And then, certain growth in Christ, by that same grace, to the glory of God.

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Simple Faith, Simple Grace, Part 2: The Way

March 4, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: The Basics

In the previous post we let Paul define the gospel:

Christ died for our sins,
- Certainly.
And he rose again,
- Certainly.
And all this was planned.

Simple enough.

Now, what does this have to do with us? Why is it gospel—good news? To us?

This death, Paul tells us, was “for our sins” (1Co 15.3). It was about us—about dealing with the problem we ourselves had caused. We’ve sinned—broken the cosmos, including ourselves—and we’re now in deep trouble—

We’re defective models of the original design, so we’ll never work right (Ro 3.23).
And we’ve broken the world we live in, so it will never work right, either (Ro 8.22).

As the wisest man who ever lived once wrote, this is a recipe for frustration (Ec 1.14).

But it gets worse.

Since sin violates God’s nature, he’s justly angry with us, and the relationship we were designed to have with him is impossible. We cannot love and serve him—now or forever.

Deep trouble, indeed.

But, as Paul has told us, God himself—the angry party—has taken action to solve our problem (Ro 5.8). In the person of Christ, God the Son, he has paid “for our sins.”

That’s really good news.

All this raises another question, of course.

How do we appropriate Christ’s work for us? What causes his death to be applied to the debt of our sins?

There are several places in the Scripture where the answer is given. In many of those places someone asks that very question upon hearing of Christ’s death, and the responses are strikingly similar and simple—

³⁷Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” ³⁸Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him” (Ac 2.37-39).
“¹⁹Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, ²⁰so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Ac 3.19-20).
“⁴³All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Ac 10.43).
“³⁸Let it be known to you therefore, my brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you; ³⁹by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses” (Ac 13.38-39).
“³⁰Then he brought them outside and said, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ ³¹They answered, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household’ ” (Ac 16.30-31).
“⁴Paul said, ‘John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus’ “ (Ac 19.4).

And in other passages we’re told that people responded to the gospel in specific ways that were effective:

“¹²But when they believed Philip, who was proclaiming the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women” (Ac 8.12).
“¹²When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was astonished at the teaching about the Lord” (Ac 13.12).
“¹²Many of them therefore believed, including not a few Greek women and men of high standing” (Ac 17.12).

So what’s called for in our response to this good news?

Repent
Believe

Repentance is turning from your sin. Faith is turning to Christ. They’re both one action, the action of turning. You say, “I don’t want my sin anymore; I want Christ instead.” And in your mind, your heart, you turn.

We call that turn conversion. One simple act.

Simple faith. Simple grace.

There’s much more to be said, ironically, about the simplicity of the gospel. More next time.

Part 3: Keeping It Simple | Part 4: Working It Out | Part 5: Keeping It Going

Photo by Todd Trapani on Unsplash

Simple Faith, Simple Grace, Part 1: The Basics

March 1, 2021 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

It’s important, every so often, to revisit the basics, to go back to first principles.

These days I’m working on something that has me thinking about how to communicate the gospel, and the basics of the Christian life, to those for whom it is a brand-new concept.

It was a long time ago—about 60 years, in fact—when the gospel was new to me. Over the years I’ve learned a lot about the gospel and about its effects and outcomes. I’ve also had the privilege of teaching Bible and theology in several widely different cultures. Time and experience tend to fill your mind with lots of related and derived concepts, to the point that you need to remind yourself to just go back to the beginning and think about the topic simply, as if for the first time. The first time I heard it, as a five- or six-year-old boy, it was simple enough for me to understand and believe.

Paul defines the gospel for us in 1Corinthians 15.3b-4—

that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, ⁴and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

A lot of people read this as signifying that the gospel has 3 parts: death, burial, and resurrection. But that’s a misimpression that derives from the place where we stop reading—and where I stopped quoting. There’s more in verse 5—

… and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

As you know, Paul continues in the next verses to name a good many other witnesses of Christ’s post-resurrection appearances.

Death, burial, resurrection, witnesses.

Is the fact that there were eyewitnesses a part of the gospel? Does it have four parts?

Well, you’ve probably noticed that a phrase appears twice in this passage:

according to the scriptures

If you look at the passage closely, you’ll notice that it’s a pair of couplets:

that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,
- and that he was buried,
and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures
- and that he appeared.

What’s the point of his appearances? They demonstrate that he rose.

What’s the point, then, of his burial? It demonstrates that he died.

So what’s the gospel?

Two points:

He died for our sins. Certainly.
He rose from the dead. Certainly.

And a corollary:

This was predicted. Planned.

That, my friends, is the gospel. God made it simple so that the least of these his brethren could understand it. I was able to understand it as a pre-school child with no previous Christian training. The history of missions tells us that in every culture in the world, in every kingdom, tribe, tongue, and nation, the gospel can be understood and received.

God is not the God of the elite—although the elite are welcome, if they will not count on their elititude.

God is the God of all who will come. And his Good News can be understood and embraced by them all.

So we’ve defined the gospel. But now we face another question:

Why is it good news? What do Christ’s death and resurrection have to do with us?

We’ll survey the biblical data on that in the next post.

Part 2: The Way | Part 3: Keeping It Simple | Part 4: Working It Out | Part 5: Keeping It Going

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