Every person, every Christian, is to some degree a product of his environment. Byron Yawn’s concern is that Christians have been unwittingly and unduly influenced by the values and ideals of suburbia. Powerful gospel-centered Christianity has been replaced by impotent gospel-free suburbianity. Byron writes not as a sociologist but as a pastor, calling Christians to be shaped far more by the timeless Word of God and far less by the changing preferences of the suburbs. May every Christian heed this call!
Tim Challies
Christian blogger, pastor, and author
Suburbianity is one of the most refreshing and disturbing books I have read in quite a while. Refreshing because my friend Byron Yawn has managed to make the gospel even more attractive and alluring to me. Disturbing because he makes such a strong case for all the ways we tend to miss and “dis” the gospel by settling for much of what is accepted as conservative, Bible-believing Christianity. Byron doesn’t write as a cynic, but as a man who longs to see his own heart, his congregation, and our culture come more fully alive to the grace and truth of the real gospel. This is a book for believers and nonbelievers alike because everybody needs the gospel Byron highlights.
Scotty Smith
Pastor, Christ Community Church
author of Everyday Prayers and Restoring Broken Things
Suburbianity is about the life-giving recovery of the most important reality in the world—the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Found herein is delightful refreshment to the weary soul bombarded by tireless pop-evangelical trendiness. Pastor Byron Yawn delivers a welcome mix of pointed sobriety, self-criticizing humility, and yes, even some gut-busting humor. I hope Suburbianity will produce a multitude of wonderfully dissatisfied Christians who will insist that pastors unashamedly and explicitly preach Christ rather than moralism masquerading as the eternal gospel. Everyone should read this profoundly Christian book. For the glory of Christ in the churches!
Patrick Abendroth
Pastor, Omaha Bible Church
This is not a how-to or 12-step self-help book. Nor is it a book of character sketches from which to draw and apply life lessons in morality and ethics. If you have ever tried to bootstrap yourself into favor with God, read Suburbianity, and you’ll approach Scripture differently. Instead of seeing the Bible as a series of stories, you’ll discover the one story of Christ’s finished work of redemption. And it will transform you.
Perry Stahlman
Chairman of the elders, Community Bible Church
HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
All Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)
Cover by Dugan Design Group, Bloomington, Minnesota
Cover illustration © Pavlo Lutsan/Fotolia
SUBURBIANITY
Copyright © 2013 by Byron Forrest Yawn
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yawn, Byron Forrest.
Suburbianity / Byron Forrest Yawn.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7369-5041-1 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-5042-8 (eBook)
1. Christian life—United States. 2. Suburbanites—United States—Religious life. I. Title.
BV4501.3.Y39 2013
248.409173’3—dc23
2012026969
All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a non-transferable, non-exclusive, and non-commercial right to access and view this electronic publication and agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s and publisher’s rights is strictly prohibited.
To Jackie Stanford
A man without whom I would not be the man I am today
Thank you for showing me true friendship
Thank you for incessantly pushing all those you love to the gospel of grace
Thank you for the innumerable phone calls on Sunday afternoon
But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, in order that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God.
ACTS 20:24
Within the American suburbs, countless unsuspecting and well-intended Christians miss Jesus on a weekly basis, if not daily. We read books, hear sermons, participate in Bible studies, and attend conferences that never get around to the particulars of who Jesus is and why He did what He did. We mention Him in passing but fail to fall at His feet. We merely assume everyone knows the realities that distinguish Him from every other human who ever walked the earth and that make Him so much more than merely an example to follow. This means the majority of what we think is Christian is not. Without the crucified Savior, it is not Christianity. The gospel is a mere ticker running harmlessly beneath our Christian life. We assume it’s there and press on. We completely misunderstand the Christian life in the process of attempting to live it. The gospel is the Christian life. It is what allows us to live it.
Contents
Introduction
1. Suburbianity: Lies, Myths, and Suburban Legends
Part 1: The Gospel
2. The Truth Hiding in the Wide Open
3. Breaking Out the Back Door
4. A Note to My Fellow Exegetes
Part 2: The Bible
5. Searching for the Moral of the Story
6. Rereading It All Over Again
Part 3: The Church
7. Hanging On Until Jesus Gets Back
8. The Church as Strategy
A Rejoinder
Notes
About the Publisher
Introduction
I am a product of the American suburbs. Imperceptibly and relentlessly, this ever-expanding ring of American progress lying between the urban center and rural boundaries of our metro areas has shaped all of my existence. What I see and know of life is almost exclusively defined by the values that arise from this corridor of American life. Happiness, success, contentment, marriage, family, money, and career have all been defined by the suburbs. My perception of reality is primarily suburban.
Generally, I’ve been raised to assume that the best life a person can know is measured by the square footage of a home that’s near the best conveniences and products America has to offer. It is, after all, the American dream. To strive for anything less than this is aimless (or nearly tragic.) Life is about being successful and settling down into suburban bliss. It’s what we do. In the strangest twist of American ideals, we strive throughout life to carve out a brief moment at the end to finally live. It’s a maddening circle of life.
Many Americans flee to the suburbs to escape severe urban contexts or stark rural ones. The suburbs are geographic and psychological buffer zones that offer safety from such things as violent crime and boredom. We have evaded urban influences that so easily jade the human psyche and threaten our preferred way of life. We drive in to work and out to live. The suburbs are safe.
Recently, more than one contentious Christian observer has noted the serious error in our logic. The suburbs are not safe at all. They are actually dangerous. We assumed that compared to the city, the suburbs are compatible with Christian ideals and less damaging to the human soul. We were wrong. In many real ways, the suburbs are far more hazardous than cities with higher crime rates. The suburbs are treacherous. Especially for Christians. The suburbs are possibly the hardest places on earth for the gospel to take hold. The true gospel, that is.
There is much about who I am as an American that is opposed to who I am as a Christian. Regardless of what I have believed, the best of American ideals are not fundamentally Christian. In many instances they are diametrically opposed to the essence of Christianity. You cannot blend the two and retain Christianity. You cannot confuse them and remain faithful. They are not the same.
I’ve come to realize over many years as a pastor in the suburbs that American ideals and Jesus’s teachings are locked in a constant battle for my devotion. Our hearts suffer the invariable upheaval of unrelenting coups. My Christian faith is forever being overthrown by my adoration of the American dream. I battle to pry the American part of me off of the Christian part of me. The suburbs wreak havoc on the Christian faith. They affect every essential aspect of Christianity, including how I understand the gospel, read my Bible, and view the church.
The American Dream Is Not the Issue
I want to make it clear from the beginning that I do not think America or its ideals are the problem with American Christians. Whether I live in the city or the suburbs is irrelevant in the greater scope of the gospel. The gospel transcends both. Besides, Christianity does not remove individuals from their particular contexts. Rather, it redeems people in those contexts and redeploys them as missionaries. From here the citizens-turned-missionaries are able to navigate the cultural nuances and speak truth into the contexts in which they live. This is not a rant against organized religion or American capitalism.
The American dream has proved a legitimate pursuit for innumerable hardworking American Christians. I do not begrudge them. They are not wrong in their pursuit of happiness. Many have been able to maintain a sincerity of faith while flying American flags on their porches. Nothing is inherently wrong with being wealthy or successful. Wealth and success do present challenges to a life of faith, but to assume that rejecting capitalism will remedy the problems in America is superficial at best. I’m not the least bit ashamed that I personally benefit from the many blessings this country provides. (I’m not giving up my iPhone.)
Rather, the problem with being Christians in America is that we tend to confuse one for the other. When we cannot differentiate between that which is of Christ and that which is of Uncle Sam, we have no way of knowing which we are worshipping.
I expect that most suburban Christians are like me, struggling to tell the difference between what is generally American and what is actually Christian. Or what is vaguely spiritual and what is actually biblical. Or what is merely moral and what is specifically godly. This confusion is a central concern in this book. Making sense of it all is not as easy as you think. Consider the following statements.
The Bible is not a spiritual handbook.
Morality is not a Christian worldview.
Family values are not synonymous with Christianity.
Christianity is spiritual, but spirituality is not necessarily Christian.
Humanitarianism is not the chief aim of the church.
Christianity is not about being happy but does result in joy.
You cannot find God’s will for your life (in the popular sense) in the Bible.
Being a Christian is not about being a good person.
You will not have your best life in this existence.
God may not want you to be rich. He may want you to be poor.
Wealth is not a sign of God’s favor.
The church does not grow as a result of strategic planning.
Most contemporary Christian music isn’t.
Many Christian books aren’t.
You don’t need Jesus to be happy.
Struggling with sin is a normal part of the Christian life.
Moral or affluent people need the gospel just as much as immoral or poor people.
America has never been a Christian nation.
The rich young ruler would not have been saved if he had sold everything.
Suffering is a normal part of life and not something to be escaped.
Preaching from the Bible doesn’t ensure faithfulness to the Bible’s message.
Austere living is not a sign of spiritual devotion.
The gospel is not about escaping hell or getting to heaven.
Culturally relevant messages are often disconnected from the actual point of the Bible.
God did not save you because you have intrinsic value.
Preaching about a need for biblical preaching is not biblical preaching.
There is no essential difference between local and world missions.
Vegetables can’t sing.
You are not a better person for having become a Christian.
You should not pattern your life after Joseph, David, Daniel, or any other biblical character.
Jabez only wanted some land.
Church is not where you go to escape the influence of the world.
God does not love you more if you read your Bible and pray.
Sinners (even the worst you can imagine) are not your enemies.
Church attendance is not a sign of faithfulness to Christ.
A Christian president will not save our country or the world.
“Having devotions” is not an indicator of spiritual discipline.
A moral majority threatens the heart of Christianity.
The best thing you can do for morally upright people is assume they are lost.
Finding your purpose in life is not the most important thing you can do.
Placing your faith in your parents’ religion is damning.
Schooling choices are not signs of spirituality or good parenting.
Freedom of religion may not be good for Christianity.
“Christian movies” has become a punch line.
Atheists can be good people too.
The gospel and Christ are left out of many church services.
Principles for living taken from the Bible are often distortions of the Bible.
Legislating morality is not helpful.
Knowing the gospel is not evidence of believing it.
No one has been a Christian his entire life.
Abortion is not what’s wrong with America.
Jesus would be confused in many of our church services.
Christ is hard to find in most Christian bookstores.
Second Chronicles 7:14 has nothing to do with America.
Being angry at sinners for being sinners is not a sufficient evangelism strategy.
I realize several items on this list appear sacrilegious to many conservative Americans and many suburban Christians. The impulse to debate them or question my orthodoxy for formulating such a list is to be expected. (Just so you know, I am not politically, socially, or religiously liberal or progressive. I am a poster child for conservative evangelicalism.)
As others have said, fish have no idea what water is unless they have been on a dock, in a boat, or washed up on a shore. Once you’re forced out of your element, you realize what you’ve been swimming in. The gospel grabs suburbanites and drops them on the dock of objective truth. Then it tosses them back in the water. Through it they come to realize what they’ve been swimming in. This list can also have that kind of effect.
Obviously, my statements challenge closely held and passionately defended values of innumerable suburban Americans. Many of the items I included are essential to polite society. But they become problematic when they are mistaken as Christian. Truth be told, they are not. They are simply American.
The point of the list is obvious. Distinguishing between moral conservatism and biblical Christianity is nearly impossible for many who claim the name of Christ. As counterintuitive as my restatements may seem to many Christians, they are biblically accurate. That is, they can be defended from the Bible and are relatively easy to prove as true. You only need to open your Bible and start reading. I’ll expand on a few of them in order to prove my point.
The Bible is not a spiritual handbook. The Bible is not a loosely connected set of stories and principles that serve as the primary resource for spiritually minded people. Obviously, the Bible is a spiritual book and powerfully facilitates change, but it is not the guide for Christian spiritualists. You should not be turning to your Bible merely for a spiritual boost at the beginning of your day. To approach it primarily as a spiritual-life handbook is to nearly miss its point altogether. As Jesus explained to His followers, the Bible is the account of Him. The Bible is primarily the record and explanation of God’s promise, fulfilled in Christ.
Beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures (Luke 24:27).
Morality is not a Christian worldview. Innumerable religions and secular worldviews promote and establish morality in their followers. Morality is not an exclusively Christian viewpoint. Christianity may lead to morality, but it does not begin with it. According to Jesus, morality as a goal of religion is as damning as immorality. Jesus came confronting the blinding effects of moralism on his culture, not encouraging them. To confuse morality with Christianity ultimately distorts Christianity.
Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 6:1).
Family values are not synonymous with Christianity. Christianity certainly promotes the institution of the family, but a commitment to the defense and establishment of family values indicates nothing about one’s position in Christ. Christians are not the only ones who value family. Furthermore, Jesus made clear that a devotion to family and devotion to Him can be at odds.
If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple (Luke 14:26).
Christianity is spiritual, but spirituality is not necessarily Christian. Being a spiritual person does not make one a Christian. Nor does pursuing spiritual things under the banner of the Christian church. Human beings in general—even the unsaved—are spiritual because God created them that way. Spirituality is certainly a part of Christianity, but a commitment to spirituality (or spiritual formation, or spiritual growth) indicates nothing about one’s trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ. We cannot immediately assume “spiritual” equals “Christian.”
God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:24).
Humanitarianism is not the chief aim of the church. Currently, a new generation is pushing back against the former isolationist strategies of the suburban church. They point out the lack of compassion we have exhibited over the past 50 years. As a result, much is being made—and rightly so—about the need for humanitarianism and compassion in the church. However, humanitarianism is not the goal of the church. It is a means to the exaltation of the name of Christ through the proclamation of the gospel—which is the aim of the church. God the Father could have easily remedied hunger around the world without putting His Son to death. Jesus himself noted the central purpose of His incarnation and contrasted it with the same misunderstanding about humanitarianism in His own culture.
Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled (John 6:26).
Christianity is not about being happy but does result in joy. To reduce the Christian life to the attainment of personal happiness and domestic tranquility is to distort Christianity beyond recognition. In so doing, we blatantly read American ambitions into the Christian faith. This ignores reality. The suffering of this present existence touches everyone. Pain is an undeniable effect of the Fall. The Bible acknowledges suffering as a common human experience, but that conflicts with our naive interpretations of the Christian life.
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance (James 1:2-3).
You cannot find God’s will for your life (in the popular sense) in the Bible. The popular idea that a specific zone of existence is out there for each Christian and may be discovered through a series of principles extracted from loosely interpreted Bible passages is patently misleading. It is also purely American. It is true, given God’s sovereignty over all things, that God is in control of our lives and specific contexts. But to assume that the aim of the Christian life is to find one’s place of impact by reading Bible verses as if they were tea leaves is the product of raw American narcissism.
I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:1-2).
Being a Christian is not about being a good person. You do not need Jesus to be a good person. There are plenty of good people in our communities who have nothing at all to do with Christ. In reality, Christianity is about repenting of our confidence in our own goodness and fleeing to the righteous life of Christ.
There is none righteous, not even one;
There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks for God;
All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one (Romans 3:10-12).
You will not have your best life in this existence. This too is a common suburban Christian theme that has no real basis in Scripture. Given the presence of sin and its impartial effects, this goal is an impossibility for many faithful believers. Murder, cancer, crime, tragedy, and the like are all evidence of the earth’s desperate need for redemption. This trite Americanized message ignores the tragic contexts of many around the globe. The best still awaits those who love and long for Christ.
Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “all is vanity!” (Ecclesiastes 12:7-8).
God may not want you to be rich. He may want you to be poor. Poverty may be the context in which God places His children in order to accomplish His purposes in ways they cannot fully understand. The false gospel of health and wealth, combined with our own materialistic tendencies in the States, has coalesced into this monumental misunderstanding. As believers, our treasures are eternal. They are not temporal.
Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? (James 2:5).
Wealth is not a sign of God’s favor. The relative prosperity of individual people—which is determined by an all-wise God—indicates nothing about their eternal state or position before God. To think otherwise is to deny the Bible’s central message of redemption by grace.
The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried. In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus in his bosom (Luke 16:22-23).
Most contemporary Christian music isn’t. Who is being serenaded by those romantic themes emanating from the contemporary Christian stations? One’s lover? Jesus? It’s hard to tell, and so this genre is reduced to the level of inconsequence. This type of music seems mainly to serve as a cleaner version of secular love ballads. The notable absence of Christ’s central achievement in most of the lyrics makes them less than Christian but slightly more than secular.
But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world (Galatians 6:14).
Moral or affluent people need the gospel just as much as immoral or poor people. We seem to forget that the majority of Jesus’s audience was comprised of very decent people. He preached the gospel to the good and bad. We have an arrogant tendency to believe that those who live in a certain part of town, those who exist below a certain economic level, or those who are in a certain part of the world are in greater need of the gospel and more open to it. All are in need. Without the grace of God, none will come to know redemption. The affluent are as desperate as the desperate.
One of the criminals who were hanged there was hurling abuse at Him, saying, “Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!” (Luke 23:39).
America has never been a Christian nation. Religion, God, Judeo-Christian values, Christians, and freedom of religion are certainly undeniable parts of our heritage as Americans. Many Christians and Christian principles were involved in the founding of this country. But this has never been such a Christian nation that the church in America should aim to recover a lost heritage or seek to reconstruct a forgone utopia. Our citizenship is in heaven. Christianity is not a national religion. Every nation eventually meets its end in the rule of Christ on the earth.
The kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come; and who is able to stand?” (Revelation 6:15-17).
Austere living is not a sign of spiritual devotion. The current trend toward asceticism among young American Christians is more a reaction to capitalism than obedience to any particular command of Christ. This movement is a response to much larger socioeconomic circumstances in our society and around the world, and it has spilled over into the church. It has resulted in a rejection of church methodologies that suited the needs of hard-to-please market-driven American Christians. But we cannot assume measures of austerity represent a higher commitment to Jesus. If we do, we reduce devotion to Christ to a series of things to be done. When that happens, we measure godliness against the devotion of others and not the holiness of God.
These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence (Colossians 2:23).
Culturally relevant messages are often disconnected from the actual point of the Bible. Our demand for goods and services has resulted in a specific style of biblical instruction that is uniquely American. Sermons that offer immediately relevant principles are the product of preachers who choose to meet the demands of finicky consumer-minded parishioners rather than preach the truth. Just as we shop for bargains in our malls, we have come to expect the most applicable messages churches can offer in the least amount of time. This environment of supply and demand has forced many preachers to compromise biblical methods of interpretation in order to satisfy those who want truths that relate most directly to them. But the biblical message of the cross goes the opposite direction. It appears irrelevant (foolish) to the unrepentant. Biblical Christianity cares nothing for the comfort level of suburbanites.
The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18).
God did not save you because you have intrinsic value. This common sentiment among American evangelicals is proven illegitimate by the relentlessly unfavorable description of mankind found in the Bible. Salvation in the Christian sense is always described as being in spite of us. Our only contribution to our salvation was the need to be rescued from the wrath of a holy God.
You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:1-7).
You are not a better person for having become a Christian. Confessing the name of Christ is an admission of our failure as people. To believe in Christ is to disbelieve any good resides within us. Being Christian does not make us superior to the non-Christians in our culture. On the contrary, it is a public declaration to all those we come in contact with that we are unworthy yet saved by grace.
It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. Yet for this reason I found mercy, in order that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life (1 Timothy 1:15-16).
You should not pattern your life after Joseph, David, Daniel, or any other biblical character. People are not divine just because they appear in the Bible. They are just as human and fallen as we are. In some cases, their lives are more tragic and disgraceful. In every case, their lives prove the universal need for the life of another—Christ. To bind ourselves to the pattern of their lives or to create a system of principles to live by from their stories is only a respectable form of moralism. To approach the biblical figures in this manner is to miss the real story of the Bible.
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).
Church is not where you go to escape the influence of the world. In keeping with Christ’s commission, the world should fear the influence of the church. The church’s slogan is not “Escape and evade until Jesus returns.”
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:19-20).
God does not love you more if you read your Bible and pray. God cannot love you any more or less than He already does in Christ. Bible reading and prayer are means through which the Spirit connects our souls to God’s astounding love. They are not conditions of His mercy.
There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).
Sinners (even the worst you can imagine) are not your enemies. Before God, the most immoral people in our societies are no more unworthy than we are. They are not beyond God’s love, and they are not a threat to the advancement of the gospel. They are our mission field.
I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either (Luke 6:27-29).
A Christian president will not save our country or the world. We should give up this pipe dream if we are ever to depend on Christ and hope solely in Him. The gospel impacts a culture soul by soul, not by the legislation of morality.
God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:9-11).
The best thing you can do for morally upright people is assume they are lost. To immediately assume someone is regenerated or converted in order to observe a certain level of decency and decorum is to ignore what the gospel communicates about humanity—even about the most civilized people. We cannot assume “good” means “Christian.”
When Jesus heard this, He said to him, “One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me” (Luke 18:22).
Finding your purpose in life is not the most important thing you can do. Christians’ first priority is to commit their lives to God’s glory. The purpose He may have for them is a matter of His righteous will. To assume that God’s greatest concern is to reveal our purpose in life is to greatly diminish the person and nature of God as revealed in the Bible. It also greatly inflates our importance in the eternal scheme of things. In many instances, such ideas are merely code for discontented suburbanites.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the great and foremost commandment (Matthew 22:37-38).
Freedom of religion may not be good for Christianity. The absence of persecution or cost for bearing the name of Christ usually results in a complacency among the covenant community.
Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life; but make them known to your sons and your grandsons (Deuteronomy 4:9).
Abortion is not what’s wrong with America. Abortion, a vile and heinous evil that should be opposed at every opportunity by those who claim the name of Christ, is a symptom of the real problem with humanity—sin. Abortion is not the root of the problem. We should keep in mind that Jesus pressed the definition of evil to levels that condemn us all as murderers.
The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick;
Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9).
We’ll stop there. All of this raises one essential question explored in this book: How much of what we have assumed to be Christian out here in the suburbs actually is? Can we ever really know? What if much of what we’ve assumed to be Christian is not even close to the real thing? What if the majority of our practice is only a unique blend of American values and vague spirituality sprinkled with Christian verbiage? What if the above list is much longer than we imagine?
As it is, I’m convinced a great deal of what we believe to be Christian in the suburbs actually isn’t. This is not a unique dilemma. We should not be surprised by the challenge presented by cultural assimilation. Christians in every culture struggle to make a proper separation between things cultural and Christian. America is no exception.
Within the American suburbs, countless unsuspecting and well-intended Christians mistake any number of suburban myths (including those I’ve listed) for Christianity. On a weekly basis, if not daily, we miss the point about Jesus. We read books, hear sermons, listen to music, participate in Bible studies, and attend conferences that never get around to the particulars of real Christianity. The realities that distinguish Jesus from every other human who ever walked the earth and make Him more than an example to follow often go unnoticed. Much of what we assume to be Christian in our everyday experience here in America has no real connection to Christianity at all. Our popular Christianity in the American suburbs is largely a synthetic version of the real thing.
The true gospel message has gone missing in the suburban church. Our citizenship in heaven has been misplaced by our citizenship in the States. If anything, the heart of our faith is a mere ticker running harmlessly beneath our Christian life. We assume it’s there and press on to more relevant matters. We completely misunderstand the Christian life in the process of attempting to live it.
But the gospel is everything. It is the Christian life. It is the central focus of the church. It is not something we occasionally tag onto the end of sermons or tip our hat to in the beginning of our “spiritual journey.” Its essential message—Jesus Christ, Lamb of God and risen Savior—is who we are and all that we are about. It is what makes the church the church wherever it happens to be. It is what protects us from the formidable idolatry of the suburbs.
The Before and After
Much of the modern church seems removed from the simplicity of its rustic beginnings. The two scenes often have barely a semblance. If you lay their core messages on top of each other, they don’t line up. Simply take the Bible at face value and then look around at what’s happening. You’ll see it. Something has changed in 2000 years since Jesus rose from the dead. We seem to be living in one of those rumor games in which a fact is passed around a circle from ear to ear until it makes it back around to the original source. By the time Christianity got back around to us, it was completely different from the message that was delivered on the streets of Jerusalem. Our message sounds like a television commercial for some superfluous product. It’s more of a marketing strategy than an announcement about God’s grace.
Remember the first Christian sermon and how desperate with truth it was? The air of the newborn church was thick with confidence, conviction, and power. Peter, the clumsy and blustery apostle known for misspeaking and being pretentious, found a stump and set off a bomb. When he finished, there was but one unavoidable conclusion—Jesus came to save us from who we are and the resulting consequences.
Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!” (Acts 2:37-40).
The way the modern suburban church confronts the culture looks nothing like this. Our message has commercial appeal but is generally unable to address man’s real need. Peter’s sermon was a warning. He stood on the air hose of his culture until it was gasping for the fresh air of the gospel. Repentance was the logical conclusion of what he proclaimed. The modern church preaches a gospel that is a respecter of persons.
We are so very dissimilar from the first preachers. Some might dismiss my vision as a pipe dream by arguing the inevitability of such slippage. “That was then. This is now. That was a unique moment, and those people had just put the Son of God to death.” This is the very disconnect I’m intending to point out. This great divide between their experience and ours is not merely the result of the passing of time. Rather, it’s a consequence of our failure to apprehend the gospel. The church is still the church. They were on the streets of the community beseeching the world to bow at the feet of the gracious Lamb of God. Until we identify with those early ambassadors, we’ll struggle to be who we are.
Their moment in Jerusalem and our moment in the suburbs are not as far removed as we think. We are that same old mob, albeit well-dressed and affluent. Same Savior. Same sinners. Same need. Same consequences. Same message. Same grace. Same stump. Right now this raw vision of church is buried under layers of confusion that have formed over time and distance. What we have is a strange subculture of Christianity complete with its own dialect, products, and vision of life. The present moment is so very strange and so very far removed from our commencement. Modernity has swallowed the church whole and left only the bones behind. Our connection to the gospel mission of the true church can put the meat back on.
And the Forces of Modernity Shall Not Prevail Against It
All you need to do is step back for a moment and pay attention to what’s being said and done within popular Christianity. A gaping divide separates the ancient faith described in the Bible from the church in the suburbs. What’s left is a strange alteration. The misrepresentation is beyond prevalent. What is this thing we call Christianity in America? Is it real? Is it what we are supposed to believe? Who really knows? It surrounds us. We are the fish. Believe me when I tell you, whether you see it or not, you’re imbibing it on a constant basis. It’s right there under your life and worship, passing for authentic Christianity. It’s a thousand worn-out clichés.
Consider contemporary Christian radio for a moment. No doubt you’ve preset a few of your dials to your local contemporary Christian stations. A sad and tattered promotion for churches shows up on the radio in every city in America. We’ve all heard it. It goes something like this.