Council Grove Christian Church

September 10 in the year of our Lord 2025
 
Servants of God,
 

“One of the strongest factors associated with
 older teens keeping their faith as young adults was
having parents who talked about religion and spirituality at home…”
-Christian Smith
 
“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”
-Deuteronomy 6

 
Would you like to make a difference in the world around you? It just might be easier than you think. What if being a genuine change agent in our world was something available to average Christians in unremarkable families and ordinary churches?
 
A recent book by sociologist and researcher Christian Smith is entitled Why Religion Went Obsolete attempts to explain how faith in America became irrelevant for millions of people. It is not that religion (particularly Christianity) went away. Smith uses the illustration of electric type writers. They are still around and a few people for various reasons find them useful, but the vast majority of the population consider them a thing of the past not worth much attention. A couple of decades ago Smith coined the phrase “Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism” (MTD) as a descriptor of the predominant faith American teenagers held. They believed in a vague God whom they believed wanted some sort of decent behavior from them. This God should help them if they demanded, but leave them alone otherwise. One notion of God was as good as another as long as He helped when they demanded.
 
MTD has only grown since the turn of the 21^st century and now Americans in general have lost interest in a God who might have any authority over them. They see organized religion as a thing of the past. You may have noticed that the aftermath of recent mass shootings has included calls to disregard as irrelevant, any mention of “thoughts and prayers” for the victims and their loved ones. You will also notice that “friends” are often mentioned before “family” when speaking of those suffering the results of these horrible mass murders. All this indicates a culture that is drifting from the God of the Bible and the family as the vehicle for transmitting faith to the next generation. The notion of the acceptability of a sort of generalized spirituality where just about any belief is as good as another has won the day. For many Americans the worst thing a person can do is make a religious truth claim. “Judge not...” has replaced John 3:16.
 
How did this happen? How did our nation go from a people who generally held to the belief in a transcendent God who has revealed Himself as Creator, Savior and Judge in an infallible written communication—the Bible—to a generalized notion that one belief about life is just as good as another? The answer is that ordinary Christians in ordinary families and ordinary churches stopped teaching the Bible as if its teachings were true and binding upon human beings.
 
America has never been a perfect nation but it once was a nation greatly influenced by biblical truth. Parents, buttressed by the worship, teaching and fellowship of the church, passed their faith to their children through simple, daily Bible reading and prayer. Of course this occasioned answering children’s questions and discussing the reality of God with children.
 
Faith is most likely learned from the family. A loving parent with a Bible and a willingness to grow spiritually is the most likely source of faith formation in a child’s life. Children who are taught the paradigm of Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration (Consummation) will understand that God, in manifest love and mercy, offers a way for fallen humans to be restored to a peaceful relationship with God by trusting that Christ died as a substitute for sinful humans.  
Children who are taught that they are by nature alienated from God but can be brought back to God through the sacrificial death of Jesus can understand themselves and the world around them.
 
Of course it is true that churches must do all we can to reach out to children and adults who have not been reared in Christian homes. The good news of the gospel of Jesus is that hope is offered to everyone. Christians must never miss an opportunity to sound forth the hope and comfort of the gospel message. But Christians must never fall into mistaking a generic religious or spiritual belief for the biblical message of the gospel of Christ. Truth matters.
 
Humans who return to right relationship with God are new creatures. The old, self-absorbed notion that feelings trump facts gets discarded and a new, reverent exaltation of Jesus as savior and lord of all things can be proclaimed. Until American Christians return to relying on the truth of scripture and assume responsibility to live by faith before the face of God, we can expect more people to think religion (Christianity) is a thing of the past. Church houses will be regarded as spiritual museums and one belief system will be regarded as being as good as any other.
 
Christians who work and pray for the restoration of Christian marriage, godly families and Christ-exalting churches can influence our nation and our world. The question is: Will we?
 
Blessings,
 
Pastor John
Coram Deo