Just a Few Thoughts

Christianity in America is not well. There is evidence that its condition is more critical than most realize, or maybe want to admit. Every day, the Church is becoming more like the world, a world that we are to try to change to be more like the church.

We have ceased to be the "light" and "salt" that we are suppose to be. We strive to try and cope in the midst of personal, moral, and financial turmoil.

So the question comes, "How now can we live"?

In 1980, a few months before John Lennon's death, a public opinion poll asked an interesting question: "Would you say that you have been 'born again' or have had a 'born again experience', that is a turning point in your life when you committed yourself to Christ?"

A "yes" response was given by 34 percent of those polled, which would amount to about 50 million Americans at that time.

George Gallup was asked why our society isn't any better than it is, when so many claim to have been born again. Part of his response was, "There is a huge gap between mere belief, and real conviction and practice."

In 1980, religion appeared to be characterized more by "mere belief" than by "real conviction and practice". Not much has changed in the years from then to now (2011). If anything, it is worse!

One of my favorite writers is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was arrested by the Nazis and sent to a prison camp for his famous comments about "cheap grace":
"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
It is under the influence of this kind of 'grace' that the world has been made 'Christian', but at the cost of secularizing the Christian religion as never before. the Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world, and as the world, being no different from the world; in fact being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship has freed me from that.


Tolerance has become a prized virtue in contemporary society. Nobody wants to be considered intolerant so many of us let others express their opinions while we maintain a non-commital neutrality.

Luke 9:23, 62 (KJV)
23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. 62 And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.