Unserious Atheism and Unserious Christianity

"Unserious atheism with its support of a sinful heart will ALWAYS trump unserious and unscriptural Christianity, because while both are silly, at least the former allows people to embrace the sin they enjoy."

More and more I hear good Christian people trying to motivate sinners from a human perspective to accept Christ and Christianity without much success. Scripture teaches we should acknowledge our fallen nature and in the light of our rebellion against a Holy God ask for and receive (repentance) forgiveness and acceptance by Christ. Scripture also teaches this can only be accomplished as God the Father draws us to Jesus Christ His son. (John 6:44).

What I hear so often, however, is that sinners should accept Christ and His free gift of salvation for various reasons all presented as something that as humans we should want. For example, I hear some say that we should accept Christ because we don't want to miss going to heaven. That is not the Gospel that is a sales pitch. One might as well be selling shoes, or a trip to Disney Land.

Selling heaven as the reason for accepting Christ is no different than telling people all they need to do to insure prosperity is to give more money to the church "because it works." The shallowness of this non-intellectual, mushy, thoughtless, presentation of Christianity will in the long run, in my opinion, convert more people to Atheism than it will to Christianity. In our culture we are taught to believe only in the "scientific" provable material Universe around us, not the someday, maybe, reward of an "unprovable" Heaven. To the unregenerate a Heaven someday is much less attractive than a new Cadillac is in the here and now. That's why so many are led astray by the prosperity "gospel."

What ever happened to Biblical idea that we should tell people they were made (not evolved) by a Holy God who, because of the rebellion of our first parents, has been rejected as imaginary and non-existent? That's what the Atheists would have us believe. The Bible says that if we tell people the truth of their rebellious nature, explaining to them how this has separated them from God, He will do all that is necessary to insure His chosen ones are with Him after death in the Heaven He has prepared. We can't "sell" or "convince" people of the idea they are doomed. Only the Holy God can do that. How did we move so far from the factual content of scripture that we now think we can "win souls" for Christ by our own efforts?

Why can't preachers just tell people the Truth of the Gospel and let God do what He is going to do?

My church preaches a form of salvation known generally as "decisional" regeneration. Church leadership believes men have the power and ability in and of themselves to choose, or not, to "accept" Christ as savior.

I have believed for several years now, after much study, this form of belief is flawed in that it does not recognize the Biblical declaration that mankind when born are born "dead in trespasses and sins." To my mind this statement from Scripture is clear, unambiguous, and leaves no wiggle room for the concept of an autonomous free will. My argument is that we choose all kinds of things but those choices are limited by the nature with which we are born and that nature is fallen or spiritually dead. I don't often appeal to science in my arguments but in this case genetics has proven we are what we are as a result of the DNA inherited from our parents regressively back to the first pair of man and woman. Therefore, our natures are derivative of Adam and Eve (if you believe Scripture, as I do) and God said they died spiritually the day they ate of the fruit forbidden to them. Therefore, it is pretty difficult for dead people to choose to something of which they are unaware or even argue coherently from Scripture that they have this capacity.

Scripture teaches than unless and until God "regenerates" our fallen natures we cannot hear, understand or choose to respond to Him.

Because of my beliefs I have found, and am going to begin studying, the writings of Cornelius VanTil. He is the late Westminster Theological Seminary professor who wrote about and taught  Presuppositional Apologetics. VanTil said:

This is, in the last analysis, the question as to what are one's ultimate presuppositions. When man became a sinner he made of himself instead of God the ultimate or final reference point. And it is precisely this presupposition, as it controls without exception all forms of non-Christian philosophy, that must be brought into question. ...In not challenging this basic presupposition with respect to himself as the final reference point in predication the natural man may accept the "theistic proofs" as fully valid. He may construct such proofs. He has constructed such proofs. But the god whose existence he proves to himself in this way is always a god that is always something other than the self-contained ontological trinity of Scripture. (Quote)

 Thinking about the construction of a god who is not God led me to the conclusion that if we are of the belief that we do in fact choose from an autonomous free-will to follow Christ, we have by a faulty world view, subordinated God in our thinking to something that is subject to our whims. It is this world view that asks questions of God such as, in the case of tragedy, "why me?," or in the case of doubt, "how can I know for certain I am born again."

The Sovereign God in whom I believe will not accept, any form of these kinds of questions from me. The only thing I can find in Scripture that even remotely relates to my questioning God are the verses about the Clay's inability to question the Potter. So, I enjoy His presence and rest in the knowledge that there is indeed a life after human death and I am "elected" to be in Heaven with Him and not in Hell when my time here is up.

I don't have to remember anything about "dates of salvation," or "dates of Baptism," all I have to remember while able,  is that even if Alzheimer's eventually eats my brain I am still secure and safe in the Palm of the Saviors hand. If anything should make those who believe a walk down the aisle and a memory jogger written in the front of a Bible is of little comfort if the mind is gone,  it should be that most horrible of brain-eating diseases Alzheimer's.

The good news of the Bible, (the Gospel) is that Christ will care for those the Father has given Him no matter what happens.