Flirtting with Jesus. . .

It was Voddie Bauckam who coined the statement:  “The modern church is producing passionate people with empty heads who love the Jesus they don’t know very well.”  If you do not know him (RIP), take a gander at Issues, Etc. or do the radical thing and Google him.  A Reformed Baptist who died too young, he was critical of critical race theory and fought for a larger Christian worldview.  He did not mince words.  His statement quoted above is brutally honest.  Americans profess a passion for a Jesus they simply do not know very well at all.  It is less a love story than flirtation.  It points to the problem of a Christianity without any doctrinal foundation in the Scriptures.

For a good long time we have been told by the experts that all this doctrinal talk is turning people off of Jesus -- the ones who claim belief and those new to Christianity.  Too much doctrinal talk will be the death of mission and will kill the Church in the long run.  At least that is what they said.  To one degree or another every denomination has had similar voices proclaim a similar sentiment and it has led to a profound rejection of doctrinal truth in favor of feelings, passion for, and admiration of Jesus.  I am not sure you can call it faith when they do not know who Jesus is or what Jesus came to accomplish.  I am not sure you can call it faith when Jesus becomes the proof text for every political and social cause that Scripture itself warns against.  But that is where things are.

For Lutherans who have insisted it is enough (satis est) for unity, there is the great temptation to reduce enough into as little as possible and so to dispense with the doctrinal certainty, moral consensus, and Biblical norm that has always accompanied orthodox Christianity.  The rationale is simple -- numbers.  How many more people can we claim by minimizing what needs to be known or believed in order to be Christian.  We can disagree about so many things and still supposedly claim to be united in faith and love for the Lord.  The problem is that you cannot know the Lord you are supposed to be in love with and reject the doctrinal witness of Scripture and the consensus of faith and creed that represents a clear line of demarcation of what is Christian and what is not.  I only wish that we knew this today.

The erosion of the doctrinal and Scriptural knowledge of our beliefs and the reason for the doctrines we confess has left Christianity weak and vulnerable.  Even the word has become meaningless -- what does Christian even mean anymore?  Even historical and dogmatic definitions that once defined denominations have been diluted by the diversity that either ignores or redefines the creedal and doctrinal confessions that once defined them and identified them to each other and to the world.  Passion for what people imagine to be Christianity or even Lutheranism does not replace knowledge and information.  If Lutherans have been accused of being without passion or emotion, at least historically we have been clear about what it is we believe, teach, and confess and how what we believe, teach, and confess is rooted in Scripture and normed by it.  However, many Lutheran groups and individuals have long ago set aside this doctrinal consensus for cultural relevance and popularity.  So it would seem that not just those on the lunatic fringe of Christianity have replaced informed belief with flirtation and passion.  There are many who would insist that Jesus is more attractive minus all the doctrinal baggage but who is Jesus without the Scriptures and the eternal truths He revealed?  He is not a man but merely an idea -- perhaps an idea who might inspire but not a Savior who can redeem.