Russell Moore has hard words for many Americans who claim the name of Christ:

But Jesus didn’t die for a Christian Coalition; he died for a church. And the church, across the ages, isn’t significant because of her size or influence. She is weak, helpless, and spattered in blood. He is faithful to us anyway.

If our churches are to survive, we must repudiate this Canaanite mammonocracy that so often speaks for us. But, beyond that, we must train up a new generation to see the gospel embedded in fidelity, a fidelity that is cruciform.

…

Sadly, many of our neighbors assume that when they hear the parade of cartoon characters we allow to speak for us, that they are hearing the gospel. They assume that when they see the giggling evangelist on the television screen, that they see Jesus. They assume that when they see the stadium political rallies to “take back America for Christ,” that they see Jesus. But Jesus isn’t there.

I don’t often share my spiritual insights, mostly because I have so few. But this came to me during my Bible reading today. For what it’s worth.

“Repentance” means turning your back on sin, and turning to God. This does not mean, as we imagine, a turning from adventurous living to conformist living. It means turning from a place where we feel safe, to the place where we are most afraid to go.

I’ve written before in this space about the Norwegian lay preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge. He was the founder of what some would call the “sect” I grew up in, our prophet and martyr, you might say. And yet, oddly, we rarely read anything he actually wrote. We concentrated on the Scriptures—and I like to think he’d have been pleased about that.

I’m also beginning to think it was, in certain ways, a good thing.

His opponents and critics accused him of being heterodox to Lutheran theology.

I’ll probably get in trouble for writing this, but I’ve been reading his works in the original Norwegian, and I’ve come to believe that, to some extent, his critics were correct.

I hasten to add that the error I think I see occurs in one of Hauge’s earliest books. It’s known that he mellowed his views in later years, and so I hope I may believe he amended his error (if I’ve understood him correctly). Continue reading A cautionary tale for the converted →