Trinity and Humanity

In a recent survey, 72% of people ages 18-29 defined themselves as “more spiritual than religious.” I want to make the case that this is not necessarily a bad thing.

This statistic comes from an interesting article link over at GenMin Connection. In that post Anthony Mullins links to an article about a survey by LifeWay Research that shows that the majority of people in their 20’s (about 60%-70%) do not read the Bible, go to church regularly, or pray with others.

As a principle of life I am very much in favor of reading the Bible, going to church, and praying with others. However, I am even more in favor of doing all these things in the knowledge of who you are as the adopted child of the Father in Jesus Christ.

The problem with religion is that it is always about appeasement, not adoption. In broad terms, there are two forms of this:

1. You must appease God by doing good works and following the rules.

2. Jesus appeased God for you and now you must do your part to appease God by believing that Jesus really exists.

I know I’m over simplifying, but I’ve also been a pastor long enough to know what’s going on in the minds of a lot of religious people.

I think about this issue in terms of my own kids. If my kids are going to read the Bible and think it’s talking about an angry God who wants to burn them up, but will relent if they say the sinner’s prayer, then I would truly rather them just skip the Bible reading for today. Their fallen human nature, just like mine and yours, is already susceptible enough to Satan’s lies about the Father – why reinforce it by reading the Bible incorrectly? If they’re going to go to church and hear their 1,000th sermon about “7 points on how to live the good life now” and not hear anything about their adoption into the life of the Father, Son, and Spirit, then I’d rather them go play golf.

I know I run the risk of sounding harsh and judgmental when I critique American Christianity in this way, but I truly have reached a point where this is my basic attitude about our current form of Christianity:

All these folks are my brothers and sisters in Christ and I know they, like me, are doing the best they can with what they know. But the vast majority of Christians in American do not believe or share the good news of Jesus as the Vicarious Man who shares the things of God with humanity and things of humanity with God (Rom. 5:18, Eph. 2:15, Heb. 2:11-13, St. Athanasius in Against the Arians, 3.39; 4.7).

I’d put it this way: I want my kids to grow up to believe in their adoption as children of the Father in the humanity of his Son Jesus. I want them to read the Bible from this belief and go to a church that preaches this truth. But if that doesn’t happen, then my second choice for them is that they would be spiritual and not religious. I’d rather them not get caught up in running on the religious hamster wheel of modern American Christianity.

That’s why I don’t think this “spirituality” thing is all bad and I’m not surprised that most twenty-somethings don’t want to have much to do with the Bible or the Church. I think the Holy Spirit is keeping them away from the Church, shielding them from our legalism and false doctrine, until such time as the reformation he has started among us has reached  a stage where we are truly ready to preach the good news of how the faith of Jesus Christ  has made humanity right with the Father and made us all the Father’s children forever (Gal. 2:20, Eph. 1:5, Col. 1:19-20).

~ Jonathan Stepp