“Spiritual… but not religious.”

SPIRITUAL 'spɪ.rɪtʃ(.əw).əl adjective. Dealing with immaterial things in the human spirit or soul.

2. Dealing with religion.

[Spirituality 'spɪr.ɪt.ʃəw.æl.ə.di noun.]

Many pagans like to describe themselves as spiritual. ’Cause they are: They believe in immaterial things, like the soul. Might even believe in other spirits; or God, whom they correctly recognize is spirit; Jn 4.24 or a spiritual afterlife. Or not: They only believe in spiritual forces, like good vibes or positivity, bad vibes or negativity, which can affect not just ourselves, but everyone around us.

Christians call ourselves spiritual too, ’cause we are. We have the Holy Spirit, who’s hopefully working on us—if we let him. We’re taught to pursue spirit, not flesh. Ro 8.5-6 We believe in God and angels and unclean spirits (like the devil) and that we’re part spirit. For the most part, we believe in the supernatural too.

Now, you can tell a pagan all this: “You’re spiritual? So’m I.” But there’s still a dividing line which they insist they won’t cross: They’re spiritual. But not religious. We Christians are religious, and they don’t wanna go there.

This’ll confuse many an Evangelical. ’Cause over the past six decades, many have got it into our heads we’re not religious. (And we might not be, but that’s another article.) When Evangelicals say “religion,” most of us mean dead religion, and we’re not that; we have a living relationship with Jesus, right?

I used to believe this rubbish too, so I’d tell pagans, same as most Evangelicals, “Oh, I don’t have a religion. I have a relationship.”

Which confused ’em. To a pagan, if you go to church—and we should!—you’re in an organized religion. You don’t get to determine, on your own, by yourself, what you do and don’t believe: Your church does. Your bishop, pastors, and elders do. They tell you what to think and believe and do. There are rules. There are mandatory rituals. You’re threatened with hell if you don’t do them.

Obviously they’ve never been to church (or if they have, it was kind of a cult), ’cause it doesn’t work that way at all. Yeah, the church has official doctrines, and if you wanna get into church leadership you gotta agree with the doctrines. But the regular members believe what they want, do as they want, and answer to nobody but the Holy Spirit; and they won’t even follow him half the time. Or most of the time. And there’s grace, or at least there had better be; we do have a proper understanding that good works don’t save us; nobody should be using hellfire to threaten one another.

Even so: Whenever we Evangelicals claim, “Oh I’m not religious,” pagans believe either we’re lying, and trying to trick ’em into joining our religion; or we’ve been brainwashed, and don’t realize just how far our religious leaders have their tentacles in us.

Likewise, “No, my church doesn’t work like that.” Pagans won’t believe this either: They’ve heard the horror stories… or, sadly, might’ve lived them. They “know better.”

The religion they prefer is one which permits them perfect freedom. Nobody tells them what to think, how to do things, how to be, where to go. Maybe God gets to; maybe their angels. Maybe they listen to their favorite gurus with fervent devotion, and do everything they’re told, same as any cult member. But to their minds, they can walk away whenever they like; they’re in control. They’re not sure they can maintain this level of control if they set foot in your church building. So no thank you. Organized religion isn’t for them.

Not all disorganized religion is the same.

I’ve heard Christians describe the “spiritual but not religious” as if they’re all the same—as if these pagans only dabble in religion, but have no strong beliefs. Or if they totally do have an organized religion, but like Evangelicals they’re in denial, because they redefined their vocabulary words.

As I explained in my article on eclecticism, humans don’t monolithically all believe the same things. We can lump people into categories, and even then they don’t all believe likewise. You gotta ask ’em on an individual basis.

But generally I find the “spiritual but not religious” fall into six groups.

FAKE CHRISTIANS. By all outside appearances, these appear to be Christians… but they just won’t affiliate themselves with any church. They’re going it alone. They call themselves Christian; they know Christian terms, and have Christian trappings. But in fact they’re incognito pagans—they only think they’re Christian. They have no Holy Spirit within them, and produce none of his fruit.

Nope; they’re not hypocrites; they’re not faking anything. They honestly do think they’re Christian. They have no idea they’re not, or have some idea but suppress those doubts as much as they can. They like Jesus; they just don’t follow him. They like the bible; they just never read it, don’t know it, and are easily tripped up with fake bible quotes. They don’t pray, or they assume their positive attitudes count as a form of prayer. And they certainly don’t go to church, ’cause they never wanna be told they’re wrong.

There’s more than one type of fake Christian. I just mentioned the positive sort, whose idea of Christianity is happy and uplifting and heavenly and friendly. Then there’s the negative sort. All the fears and paranoia of dark Christianity—and the reason they won’t go to church is they don’t trust any church, and think they’ve all been corrupted by Satan. Yours included. They might read the bible, but only to find proof texts for their conspiracy theories. They might pray, but largely they’re imprecatory prayers—“God, smite my foes” and all that. They’re more obviously fruitless than the positive Christianist: No grace, no love, lots of anger.

DEVOTEES. These folks have a religion. But they’re like Evangelicals who’re in denial about how their consistent practices are so a religion. They figure because they’re in no organized religion, they’re not religious. But of course they’re religious: Whatever beliefs they have, they believe in ’em devoutly. They’ll even try to convert you.

’Cause many pagans, though they refuse to join any particular church or religion, really wanna know the truth about the universe, the afterlife, God, and so forth. So they explore, study, learn… and believe. They find things to believe in, and are entirely sure they’re true. They’ll bet their lives (and afterlife) on it.

In any event, their minds are made up, and you’re not gonna convert them till they shake their beloved beliefs.

SEEKERS. And here’s the polar opposite of the devotees: These folks are totally open-minded. They don’t currently adhere to any religion. But if we present ’em with a good one, they’ll join.

These are just the sort of pagans we Christians love to work with. ’Cause their minds are open. They’ll visit our churches. They’ll listen to what we have to say. They may not agree with everything, but that’s okay: If they hang out with us long enough, they’ll meet Jesus, and he’ll cinch the deal and make ’em Christian.

DIVORCÉS. They’re a form of seeker: They just left another religion. They used to be devotees—sometimes of their own ideas—but they realized it was all bogus, or it stopped working for them. so they quit. In some cases their gurus and leaders drove ’em away. Regardless, they’re still open to God and spirituality. They just haven’t found a new religion yet.

Like seekers, these are also the sort of pagans we Christians love to work with. Although if they just left one branch of Christianity, they’re gonna come with a lot of baggage—a lot of hurts we have to minister to. And they’ll still have a lot of misconceptions about God, held over from their previous religion—some of which they might be really fond of. Gotta be patient with them.

ANTICHRISTS. Regardless of their beliefs, when it comes to Christianity, they want nothing to do with it, and that’s firm. They had a terrible experience with it, or encountered really awful representatives of it. Frankly, they’d like to see it done away with.

Since I’m writing about the “spiritual but not religious,” I don’t mean the non-spiritual: I don’t mean nontheists and agnostics. They tend to be antichrists too; they often want to see all religion eliminated. But when a pagan is spiritual yet antichrist, it means they do believe in God or gods or spirits… just not Jesus of Nazareth, nor his followers. They don’t consider us valid. Antichrists will claim Jesus’s followers made everything up, and even that Jesus himself never existed. They’ll be open to everything but Christianity. Their minds are open to everything else, but not us. They’ll try anything else, so long as it’s not Christian.

APATHETIC. They sorta believe in God, gods, or spirits. But really, they figure there are way more important things in their life than religious beliefs. They don’t wanna explore these ideas any deeper. They figure they’re just fine as-is.

True, sometimes an apathetic pagan evolves into a seeker. When life gets rough or unmanageable, people might point ’em to religion, so they’ll dabble, and see whether it can help ’em any. And maybe nothing more than that: They’ll use meditation to relieve stress, but they won’t examine meditation to see whether it reveals anything more about God. They’ll believe in a higher power ’cause it helps them through their 12-step program, but they won’t try to get to know their higher power, ’cause the important thing is breaking their addiction. The goal is their own well-being. Nothing more.

Help them find their way.

As you can tell, some of the “spiritual but not religious” folks are open to what we have to say… and some not so much. Seekers and divorcés might listen. Devotees and fake Christians will try to instruct us. Antichrists will fight us. And apathetic folks won’t care. So if you wanna share Jesus with pagans, first figure out what stripe of pagan they are.

No, I’m not saying to skip resistant pagans, like the antichrists. God wants to save them too. I’m just warning you: They’re gonna fight us. It’s way harder to share Jesus with someone who hates Jesus. In many ways it’s even harder to share Jesus with the apathetic: They don’t care whether he loves them. And Jesus tells us we ordinarily shouldn’t waste our time and theirs: Once you tried, shake the dust off your feet against ’em. Mk 6.11

But sometimes pagans change camps. Fake Christians repent and become real Christians. Antichrists like Saul of Tarsus run into the living Christ and switch teams in a blink. Devotees realize they’re totally wrong and become divorcés. I don’t care what determinists tell you: Don’t ever write someone off. You never know what the Holy Spirit is doing to ’em.

So as you wait for the Spirit’s next instructions, be available. They may have no questions for you right now, and not even care to hear a thing you have to say. So make sure they know you’re a non-judgmental Christian, whom they can come to once they ever get curious. When the Spirit’s about to crack that walnut, he often turns to the people who made themselves available like that.

And by non-judgmental I really do mean non-judgmental. Don’t judge them! Don’t debate ’em. Don’t rebuke ’em. Don’t correct ’em. They’re not Christians; you have no business holding non-Christians to God’s standards. Not even God does that. Ro 2.14-16 You’re there to be Jesus to them, and Jesus didn’t come to condemn but save. Jn 3.17 When they wanna turn to Jesus, you’re there to point the way. Till then… well, point the way.

Memorize Galatians 5.22-23.

Whenever Christians talk about the Holy Spirit’s fruit, we typically quote Paul’s list of ’em in Galatians 5.22-23. And it’s not a bad idea to memorize this particular verse. Pick your favorite translation and put it in your brain; I’ll quote the original.

Galatians 5.22-23 THGNT

22 ὁ δὲ καρπὸς τοῦ πνεύματός ἐστιν ἀγάπη, χαρά, εἰρήνη, μακροθυμία, χρηστότης, ἀγαθωσύνη, πίστις,

23 πραΰτης, ἐγκράτεια· κατὰ τῶν τοιούτων οὐκ ἔστιν νόμος.

Oh okay; the King James Version.

Galatians 5.22-23 KJV

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

Anyway, this way we have a small inventory of fruit memorized. Comes in handy if there’s ever any question whether these things are fruit.

Defining the words.

Obviously whenever people quote this verse, it’s to list the fruits, and to define ’em. And for that, they bust out the dictionary—and if they have any sense, they bust out the Greek dictionary, since our English dictionaries only tell us how popular culture defines stuff.

I’ll quote Strong’s Greek Dictionary of the New Testament.

ἀγάπη/agápi, from ἀγαπάω/agapáo. Love, i.e. affection or benevolence; specially (plural) a love-feast—(feast of) charity(-ably), dear, love.

χαρά/hará, from χαίρω/haíro. Cheerfulness, i.e. calm delight—gladness. Or “greatly” (or “be exceeding”) “joy(-ful, -fully, -fulness, -ous).”

εἰρήνη/eiríni, probably from a primary verb εἴρω/eíro (to join). Peace (literally or figuratively); by implication, prosperity—one, peace, quietness, rest, + set at one again.

μακροθυμία/makrothymía, from the same as μακροθυμώς/makrothymós. Longanimity, i.e. (objectively) forbearance or (subjectively) fortitude—longsuffering, patience.

χρηστότης/hristótis, from χρηστός/hristós. Usefulness, i.e. morally, excellence (in character or demeanor)—gentleness, good(-ness), kindness.

ἀγαθωσύνη/agathosýni, from ἀγαθός/agathós. Goodness, i.e. virtue or beneficence—goodness.

πίστις/pístis, from πείθω/peítho. Persuasion, i.e. credence; moral conviction (of religious truth, or the truthfulness of God or a religious teacher), especially reliance upon Christ for salvation; abstractly, constancy in such profession; by extension, the system of religious (gospel) truth itself—assurance, belief, believe, faith, fidelity.

πραΰτης/praýtis, from πραΰς/praýs. Mildness, i.e. (by implication) humility—meekness.

ἐγκράτεια/enkráteia, from ἐγκρατής/enkratís. Self-control (especially continence)—temperance.

Other dictionaries will analyze these words in greater detail, and of course you can do a word study on each of ’em to see how the bible’s authors used these words.

Anyway these are some of the traits which should be obvious in a growing Christian. Having this verse memorized means we can more easily identify other Christians as growing… or not. But more importantly, we can identify whether we are growing… or not. It’ll remind us to be fruity.

Seeker-sensitivity: Being all things to all people.

SEEKER 'sik.ər noun. One who’s attempting to find religion: God, truth, peace, or self-justification.

 

SEEKER-SENSITIVE 'sik.ər 'sɛn.sə.dɪv adjective. Caring about seekers’ feelings, hangups, offenses, needs, or lack of familiarity; adapting one’s message in consideration.

2. Compromising one’s message to make it more appealing.

[Seeker-sensitivity 'sik.ər sɛn.sə'dɪv.ə.di noun.]

People are more apt to listen to you if you’re like them.

Yeah, I know there are exceptions to this rule. When I’ve been on missions trips, the locals are kinda curious about the novelty of American foreigners, and that’s why they’re more apt to listen to me a bit. But only till the novelty wears off.

One of the things American missionaries discovered in the 20th century (and it’s a little dumbfounding it took us so long to discover it, but it’s probably ’cause racism) is our missions either grow really slow, or don’t grow at all, whenever we don’t put locals in charge. The fastest-growing churches and denominations are run by natives, not foreigners.

Paul of Tarsus understood this, and when he went round the Roman Empire founding churches, he recognized the importance of adjusting himself to whatever culture he worked in. Still obeying God, of course. Yet he lived within the cultural expectations of the people he preached to. He didn’t want his obvious differences to get in the way of the gospel.

1 Corinthians 9.19-23 KWL

19 Having freedom in everything, I enslave myself. Because I could get many!

20 I become, to the Judeans, like a Judean. Because I could get Judeans!

I become, to Law-followers, like a Law-follower. Because I could get Law-followers!

21 I become, to Law-breakers, like a Law-breaker—

Not breaking God’s Law, but following Christ’s Law. Because I could get Law-breakers!

22 I become, to the weak, weak. Because I could get the weak!

I become, to whomever, whatever. Because however I could save some of them, I will.

23 I’ll do anything for the gospel, so I can be a part of it.

One of the other things American missionaries discovered in the 20th century… is the United States is also a foreign culture. No, this isn’t still because racism: If you grew up in popular Christian culture, you have a mindset which pagans aren’t all that familiar with, don’t understand… and sometimes find wholly offensive.

Ever took your pagan friends to church… only for that to be the week your pastor unexpectedly went off on a rant about the very issues which alienate your pagan friends? Might be politics, or social issues, or even football teams. Whatever it takes for pagans to have the knee-jerk response, “I’m never coming back here.”

Man alive, have I been there. Took months to coax ’em into the building; took all of three minutes to convince ’em hell sounds more fun.

So this is what seeker-sensitivity is about: Trying not to push people’s buttons. Trying not to alienate potential Christians. Trying to share the gospel, not our agendas. Trying to be kind to newcomers.

Thing is, look up “seeker-sensitive” on the internet, and just about all you’ll find are people who are totally against the practice. Why?

Bluntly, and a little crudely, it’s ’cause they’re a--holes.

Seeker-insensitivity.

Whether they got their attitude from dark Christians, or they never bothered to grow fruit and turned dark all on their own, a number of would-be Christian evangelists are not kind like our Lord is, and wants us to be. They feel the gospel has to be presented in terms of “my way God’s way or the highway,” and any lessening of its “righteousness” is compromise. The freedom in everything which Paul wrote about? 1Co 9.19 They feel that’s for them to enjoy, but God’s grace doesn’t extend to anyone else, so they’ll bash every sin which offends them and call that the gospel. It’s really not.

Thanks to them, too many Christians are afraid to adapt the gospel message to new environments. They’re too afraid we might change it, and then it’d no longer be the gospel, and heresy. They’re afraid we won’t create new Christians, but compromise-riddled heretics.

I understand the concern. But for the most part it’s totally invalid.

It’s because a lot of Christians don’t recognize there’s a vast difference between popular Christian culture, and God’s kingdom; there’s a wide difference between every Christian topic, and the gospel. One’s narrower than the other. The gospel is the good news that God’s kingdom has come near. Mk 1.15 It’s that God wants a relationship with us, wants to be our Father, and made it possible through Christ Jesus. It’s not our worship, our religious practices, our ministries and good deeds—you know, the stuff we do to further that relationship. The religion stuff might be incredibly useful to us, and potentially useful to others, but it’s adaptable. Sometimes it’s even disposable.

For Christianists, those people who pursue popular Christian culture but not so much Christ himself, their culture is the gospel, is God’s kingdom. They don’t recognize it as our pathetic human substitute for the real thing. They worry if we compromise their culture, we’ve compromised the gospel. That’s why they’re willing to tear entire churches apart over stupid little things like music style, bible translations, and the color they painted their Fellowship Hall.

I’ve heard a number of ’em claim not only should we not make cultural adaptations to reach pagans: We should double down. We should get even more traditional and hardcore and old-timey. ’Cause pagans won’t respect a watered-down “gospel”: They want all the differences and otherworldiness and old-fashioned trappings. They’re rejecting their culture to embrace Jesus; they don’t want him new and modern and relevant, but ancient and medieval and alien. And if they want to abandon today’s secular culture, why on earth are we trying to make Christianity speak to it?

One Catholic pundit in particular claims this is why more people are turning Catholic: They want these old traditions. Thing is, when you look at the stats, you find he doesn’t really understand what’s going on. Yes, people are turning Catholic because they yearn for tradition. But the people turning Catholic are Protestants turning Catholic. Not pagans. We’re talking about Christians who want to try a new religious tradition, not people with no religious tradition who want to adopt one.

And if you know any Catholic missionaries, you’ll know they’re totally seeker-sensitive. They’re trying to make Catholic tradition relevant to today’s pagans, as well as curious Protestants. But they’re not actually trying to seek and save the found. Neither should we be.

Drop the Christianese.

So if we’re gonna share Jesus with pagans, the first thing we gotta do is eliminate all the vocabulary words they won’t understand. Stop trying to sound like a Christian, and start trying to sound like them.

No, you don’t have to start using their profanities. Nor their slang; you’ll sound ridiculous. (’Cause they sound ridiculous, but they’re clueless.) You just have to drop all the Christianese, the terms we Christians casually fling around which aren’t familiar to newbies or pagans. In fact I’ve found a lot of Christians aren’t sure what they mean either. They’ve been guessing all this time. So eliminate the guess work. Unfamiliar terms get in the way, so learn familiar ones.

Yeah, Christianists act like this is heresy. I’ve watched ’em lose their tiny minds when I use common English instead of the words redemption or atonement or transubstantiation. Usually ’cause once they learn what these words actually mean, it turns out they don’t really believe in them! Turns out they’re the heretics. Whoops.

Other times, I kinda see where they’re coming from. One particular megachurch tries to avoid the words cross and sin and surrender and repent in their literature and website. Wait, aren’t these concepts central to salvation? Humans are sinners; Jesus defeated sin? Sin darned well better be on a real Christian’s website. Otherwise there’s no gospel in that church.

But sin is a Christianese word. Seriously. Pagans don’t use the word! Not that they don’t totally know what wrongdoing is; not that they don’t know God forbids certain things. They certainly forbid certain things. But ask your average pagan, and they’ll think sin means “evil,” not “violating God’s command.” Your average evangelist doesn’t bother to define it either; they just assume everyone already knows what sin is. So when they fling the word around, pagans misinterpret it: To them, “All have sinned” means “All are evil,” and they can’t believe that. And that’s not what we’re trying to teach anyway. (Well, I’m not. I don’t know about certain dark evangelists.)

You see the problem. So the responsible thing to do, believe it or not, is to not use the Christianese word sin. Instead:

• God told humanity what he expects of us.
• People either don’t know his expectations—or in extreme cases deliberately violate them, just to show him their contempt.
• God offers to forgive us everything, and help us reform ourselves.
• God wants to create a kingdom of such followers, and live in love and harmony with us forever.

Didn’t use sin in any of that gospel presentation. Didn’t need to. And yet some Christians will insist I just taught heresy, because I didn’t use their favorite word—or because I defined it correctly, and they’re convinced it doesn’t really mean that..

Stop using proof texts.

And if they can’t handle dropping Christianese, they especially get outraged when I tell ’em to drop the proof texts.

Most evangelists, when they preach Jesus, quote the scriptures like crazy. As we should. But for some reason they tack on the bible reference to every single quote.

“For all have sinned—Romans 3.23—and the wages of sin is death—Romans 6.23—but Christ has taken our sins and nailed them to the cross—Colossians 2.14—and so we’ve died to sin—Romans 6.10.”

Yeah, that’s some good proof-texting. Now, are any of the pagans you’re preaching at, gonna get out their bibles and look up any of those references? Are they gonna remember those references? Do they even have a bible?

See, pagans don’t care about the bible. Haven’t learned to care about it. To them, it’s a book. “The Good Book,” but still a book. They might own a copy, but they don’t know where it is, any more than I know where my copy of The Book of Mormon is. They already assume all the stuff we’re preaching comes out of the bible—even though sometimes it doesn’t. I once heard some pagan on a radio show express great surprise that the apostles aren’t called “St. Paul,” “St. John,” or “St. James” in the bible. Clearly he never read it, and that’s to be expected.

But for the most part, pagans don’t want to hear us quote a book. Even The Good Book. They wanna know what we’ve experienced. What’s Jesus done for you lately? And what might he do for me?

See, to us Christians, the scriptures might be living and active, He 4.12 but pagans haven’t experienced this power firsthand. To them, the bible’s just another ancient book written by dead brown guys, translated into old-timey English by dead white guys, over-quoted by overbearing old farts. We Christians respect the bible; they don’t. Before this attitude changes, they gotta meet Jesus.

Again, critics are horrified by this idea. Proclaiming the gospel without bible references? It can’t be done. It shouldn’t be done. It can’t be anything but heresy.

Yet evangelism without the bible references is precisely what we see in the bible. Chapter and verse numbers weren’t invented yet, so when they quoted bible, the most they could tell you was “In the prophets” or “According to Isaiah” or “It is written”—and a lot of times they didn’t bother and just started quoting. For that matter, in Acts, the apostles had to share Jesus without a New Testament—they were still writing it!—and couldn’t quote the gospels, nor their fellow apostles’ letters, nor Jesus’s revelation to John.

Even then, quoting the Old Testament only worked on fellow Jews. Gentiles weren’t familiar with it, didn’t respect it (like our present day), and Paul had to resort to quoting Greek poets. Ac 17.28 I’m not kidding. He quoted pagans. It’s as if I tried to share Jesus by quoting Mohandas Gandhi. Which I have in fact done.

Yes, I also quote bible. Lots of bible. Directly and indirectly. I’d better be consistent with the scriptures. But I don’t throw in the addresses. To a pagan, a scripture address means, “I’m quoting an old book; I have no personal experience with this,” and so forth. And they’re not gonna look it up.

To Christianists, the bible is part of the gospel. The very first thing I should be teaching these pagans is to respect the bible as God’s word. ’Cause it’s our foundation for everything we believe about Jesus. If I don’t make that crystal clear to them, it’s like I’ve denied the scriptures.

Okay, first of all our foundation for what we believe about Jesus, is Jesus. 1Co 3.11 The scriptures speak about him, Jn 5.39 but if he’s not valid, the scriptures aren’t valid. Pagans understand this. Christians, particularly those who inadvertently worship their bibles, forget it, and need to be reminded of it.

So our priority isn’t bible, but Jesus. We need pagans to meet Jesus, get to know Jesus, get to follow Jesus—and then they’ll wanna crack those bibles and learn as much as they can from them. Too many people already love their bibles but don’t love Jesus. Turns ’em rotten. Let’s not make more of them.

Don’t drop Jesus!

Thus far I’ve discussed false compromise. Now let’s deal with the real thing.

Every so often I’ll meet spineless Christians who can’t share Jesus without caving in. Sometimes they know this, which is why they never bother to share Jesus. Other times they plow right ahead… but preach a gospel with all the uncomfortable bits edited out. “Come to Jesus and he’ll solve all your problems,” is usually the form this takes. They never warn people that Christianity presents its own set of problems, like fighting our selfishness, struggling with righteousness, dealing with doubt, pushback from antichrists, and evading the devil’s booby-traps. Christianity isn’t easy; it’s hard. But it’s true.

Those who preach Christianity is so easy: Too often they’re avoiding the hard parts themselves. They don’t fight their selfishness, nor struggle with righteousness. They practice cheap grace. That’s their version of the gospel: God forgives all, so believe in him and you won’t have to go to hell. And won’t have to change anything else. Just your beliefs. Which is easy; you can psyche yourself into believing anything you want.

Of course, presented with one of the not-so-easy concepts, some of these folks fold like a defective lawn chair. “You don’t really believe God throws people into hell, do you?” makes ’em sputter, “Uh… yes? But even so, he’s really really nice.” And they try to make hell sound not all that nasty; that it’ll be cold and dark instead of hot and stinky; that very, very few people will go there; that people in hell will be burnt up instead of suffering forever (which, to be fair, is debatable); or that hell is temporary, and after a bit God’ll let everybody into heaven. However they weasel away from the idea, it’s because the peer pressure got to them, and they don’t want God to appear unfriendly, unfair, intolerant, unpopular, or punitive.

Most of the time it’s the individual Christian who lacks a spine. But I’ve run into churches who lack one too: They don’t like the idea of hell. (Hey, I don’t blame ’em; anyone who loves the idea of hell is seriously twisted.) But while there’s nothing wrong with de-emphasizing it, ’cause it’s not a central idea of the gospel, they don’t just de-emphasize it. They deny it. They claim it’s not there, or not so bad. They also wind up ignoring Jesus’s every warning to stay away from it.

There are Christians who are more liberal than the scriptures, and Christians who are more conservative. I’ve met all sorts. They teach the beliefs they like, instead of the gospel of Christ Jesus.

Technically none of this is seeker-sensitivity. True seeker-sensitivity is about being kind to the seeker: If a truth makes ’em uncomfortable, tell it as kindly as we can. But tell it. Tactfully. Carefully. Lovingly. Graciously.

Fake seeker-sensitivity isn’t about kindness. It’s about avoiding our own discomfort. It’s about sucking up to the seeker, telling ’em whatever they want to hear, doing whatever it takes to turn ’em to Jesus. Of course, if we’ve not presented him accurately, are they really turning to Jesus?

The Jesus of spineless Christians is a spineless Jesus. One who’d never have defeated sin and death; he’d have worshiped the devil Lk 4.5-8 and spared himself a crucifixion. Not that the Jesus of graceless Christians is any better: Full of wrath, absent of love.

So as you can tell, I advocate for true seeker-sensitivity. We need to present Jesus like Paul did: Whatever facilitates sharing the true Jesus with others, let’s do. Whatever makes people balk, or run away, let’s handle carefully. And everything else—the cultural differences, our individual practices, our church’s favorite emphases, the popular buzzwords, the junk—let’s set aside. That’s not the gospel. First things first.

The bargain with God.

Probably the most common form of prayer is the bargain with God. It takes the form of, “God, if you do this for me, I’ll [something I may do; no guarantees though].”

We fill in the blank with all sorts of things. We promise we’ll reform our behavior: We’ll stop sinning, start some religious practice—or do one of ’em more regularly, be more charitable, perform some act of penance, or pathetically that we’ll even believe in God. ’Cause we don’t really, and this bargain with God is, to completely confound metaphors, our Hail Mary pass.

I’ve heard a lot of Christians dismiss, mock, or discourage the bargain with God. They believe it encourages the wrong attitude about prayer: Prayer’s about putting God’s will before ours. Not about working out an exchange of goods and services.

True. But the whole putting-God’s-will-first idea? That’s something devout believers know and practice. The bargain-with-God idea? We find it more among pagans, unbelievers, not-yet-believers, and newbies. (And the desperate, who revert back to this old behavior whenever doubt overwhelms ’em.) When we’re talking mature Christians, of course I’m gonna discourage them from trying to cut deals with the Almighty, ’cause we’re supposed to be tighter with him than that.

But when we’re talking newbies, I don’t mind when they bargain with God. And y’know, God doesn’t mind if they bargain with him either. Sometimes he actually accepts their deals.

No, really. It’s in the bible.

Genesis 28.20-22 KWL

20 Jacob vowed a vow, saying, “God, if you’re with me on the way I’m going,

you’ll give me bread to eat and clothes to wear, 21 and I’ll return in peace to my father’s house.

LORD, be God to me.

22 This stone, which I set up as a marker, is God’s house.

Everything you give me, I tithe you a tenth of it.”

God actually went along with that one. He watched over Jacob, despite the trickery of his uncle/father-in-law Laban, and despite some of Jacob’s own trickery. Jacob did eventually return to Canaan in peace.

1 Samuel 1.11 KWL

Hanna vowed a vow, saying, “LORD of War, if you see me,

see your maidservant’s affliction. Remember me. Don’t forget your maidservant.

Give your maidservant offspring, a man,

and I give him to the LORD all the days of his life.

A razor will never go upon his head.”

God went along with that one too. Hanna’s offspring was the prophet Samuel, and his mother dedicated him to God. Hence the whole no-razor thing; those under a Nazirite vow of holiness never cut their hair. Nu 6.5 Samuel was even sent to live at tabernacle, where he first heard God’s voice.

Judges 11.30-31 KWL

30 Jefta vowed a vow to the LORD. He said, “If you give answers to prayer,

give the sons of Ammon into my hand.

31 My offering will be whatever goes out the door of my house to meet me on my return,

in peace after battling the sons of Ammon.

It’s for the LORD; it goes up in the fire.”

And God did indeed help Jefta defeat the Ammonites. Unfortunately Jefta’s story has a nasty ending. See, the first thing out of Jefta’s house—the thing which Jefta promised to go up in the fire—was his only daughter. Jg 11.34

Yeah, are we sure this was part of the bargain?

Jefta’s first, understandable response was to freak out. Jg 11.35 Because while he knew he couldn’t break his vows to God, Nu 30.2 he didn’t know God well enough to know human sacrifice opened up a huge exception to his promise: God forbade that! Dt 18.10 But all the pagan gods permitted human sacrifice, so Jefta assumed why wouldn’t the real God?

So he gave his daughter two months to mourn, then “did to her as he vowed.” Jg 11.34-39 Which lots of Christians much prefer to imagine was send her to live as some kind of pre-Christianity nun, but they had no such things back then. So… eww. Just eww.

Because of the horrible outcome of the Jefta story, there are plenty of Christians who insist there’s no such thing as a bargain with God. Jefta thought God gave him victory because of his vow, but this is a case of the post hoc ergo propter hoc error: Just because one event follows another, it doesn’t mean one’s a cause and the other’s an effect. God was gonna let Jefta defeat the Ammonites anyway. He didn’t have to vow to burn the first thing out of his door. Arguably he might’ve just been showing off, just to demonstrate how devout he was.

Anyway, these Christians get downright deterministic: The Almighty’s gonna do what the Almighty’s gonna do. Making promises isn’t gonna sway him one way or the other, once his mind’s made up. So if our promises are irrelevant, they’re therefore invalid. So what if I promised God I’d go to church if he’d heal my kid? He was gonna heal my kid either way. To hell with church.

Sounds all reasonable and logical… till we get to the rotten fruit.

Look, obviously God has his own ideas and plans in a lot of situations. Sometimes, especially when we’re following Jesus, we’re gonna want the same things he does, and pray for the same outcomes he wants. Even when we’re not following Jesus, sometimes we’re gonna coincidentally want the same things: Pagans don’t want their neighbors to throw noisy orgies every weekend, any more than God does, though for different reasons. Sometimes the bargain with God isn’t necessary, ’cause we’re on the very same page: He wants what we want.

But the main reason people decide, after the fact, that the bargain with God is invalid: They wanna weasel out of the bargain. At that point, they’re perfectly happy when some know-it-all Christian proclaims, “God doesn’t make such deals.” He doesn’t? Great!—it lets ’em off the hook. They don’t have to follow through with their end of the bargain. Heck, some of ’em will quickly jump from “God doesn’t make such deals” to “There’s no God out there to make such deals with.”

The fact is, if God appears to come through in any bargain, we’re on the hook for it. ’Cause we promised God, “If you… then I’ll,” and it doesn’t matter whether he did it specifically for us or not: We promised we would. God holds us to our promises. Don’t make ’em if you won’t follow through with them.

If you don’t really believe there’s a God out there to make such promises to, that’s a whole separate issue. The whole no-atheists-in-foxholes, “If you’re there, God, get me out of this!” situation is a pretty common move of desperation. But be honest with yourself: Did God legitimately come through for you? Did you actually get what you prayed for? You did? Then do a little more investigating. You’ve got some evidence for a real God; it makes sense to find out more. Denial might be convenient, but it’s stupid.

God’s motive: Faith.

The bargain with God isn’t an invalid form of prayer. Immature? Sure. But sometimes we’re immature. And God is willing to meet us where we are.

That’s the point. That’s why God sometimes takes us up on these deals: We don’t know him. We don’t know any better. We doubt he’s there. We don’t know the difference between God’s love and reciprocity: We think we gotta pay him back; that if he does us a favor, we owe him one. And when we do know better, but we’re desperate, we wonder whether offering God something, anything, might just tip the scales in our favor.

The bargain with God means he’s dealing with a person who lacks knowledge and faith. He interacts with these people anyway because he wants to grow their knowledge and faith. He knows answering their prayers will get them to take him seriously, even follow him. In the long run it’ll have a positive outcome. And he’s not gonna be so hung up on “what’s proper” to deny such people. (Besides, who gets to decide what’s proper anyway?)

Hence when we bargain with God, we need to be sincere in what we offer. Too often people tell God, “If you… then I’ll,” but have no follow-through. They might totally mean it in the moment, but they’re flaky. And God knows whether we’re the type of people who will, no matter how ridiculous it might look, how humiliated we might feel, do as we promised. If our promise is likely to bring us into a relationship with him, of course he’ll take us up on those deals. God’s no fool. He knows a good deal when he sees it.

In some cases, we’re not sincere but God still takes us up on our bargains. And then—because we’re not allowed to break our oaths to God Nu 30.2 —lets us suffer the consequences of oath-breaking. Not because God wants us to suffer, but to make us realize a promise is a serious thing. For those people who have a superficial relationship with God, this wakes ’em up: God isn’t to be trifled with.

Maturity: When God stops making deals.

Keep following God, and you’ll invariably find we reach a point where we can’t bargain with him anymore.

About 15 years ago I was really in a bind. I asked God’s help out of it, and in good ol’ desperation I found myself trying to bargain with him a little. “If you do this for me,” I told him, trying to think of anything to bargain with, “then I’ll….”

“You’ll do it anyway,” said the Holy Spirit.

I stopped. Went through a mental inventory, which took a while: Everything I could think of to offer, was stuff I ought to do regardless.

• Give something up? I should give it up regardless.
• Pray more? I should pray more regardless.
• Praise more? Ditto.
• Give more charity? Also ditto.

Went through everything I could think of, and gradually realized I was screwed. I got nothing.

And as any mature Christian could tell you: Well duh. We’re supposed to surrender everything to God when we first became Christians. We don’t have anything left to bargain with: It’s all surrendered! If we have any bargaining chip, it means we’re inappropriately clinging to something we have no business saving. Gotta give it up too.

When we look back upon our old bargains with God, we’ll often laugh about how immature these bargains were: The stuff we offered him, already belonged to him! Everything was a gift from God; anything that wasn’t, needed to go. And in the End, everything goes into the fire. 1Co 3.10-15 What’s from God, survives. What’s not… well, if we’re still clinging to it, I suppose we’ll stay in the fire with it.

So after a certain point of Christian maturity, the bargain with God can’t work. We’re beyond that. Which is just as well.

By this point, we oughta have way more faith in God to answer prayer. We oughta be way better at hearing him. We shouldn’t have to resort to desperate behavior so often. Okay, sometimes there will be slip-ups, like mine. But we can easily slip right back into place once God snaps us out of our panic. No bargaining necessary.

Pagans and heathens and nonchristians; oh my!

PAGAN 'peɪ.gən adjective. Holding religious beliefs other than those of the main world religions. A non-Christian.

2. A neopagan: Adherent of a recent religious movement which incorporates beliefs or rituals from pre-Christian Europe and North America.

[Paganism 'peɪ.gən.ɪz.əm noun.]

 

HEATHEN 'hi.ðən adjective. Pagan.

2. Uncultured, inappropriate.

Pagan is a Christian word, from the Latin paganus, meaning one who lives in the country, as opposed to one who lives in the city. Ancient Christians figured we live in the “city of God,” his kingdom… and pagans live outside, so let’s invite them in. It was their shorthand way of saying nonchristian. It’s mine too.

I know; a number of people have appropriated the word to mean their religions. The neopagan movement started in the mid-1800s, when British and American mystics started to revive occult religion; and once again in the 1960s and ’70s, when nature religions did likewise. These would be the maguses, practitioners of magick (with a -k), Wiccans, druids, shamans, nonchristian faith healers, followers of various nature gods, and folks who brought back worship of the ancient Egyptian or Norse or Greco-Roman gods. Largely it’s a backlash to Christianity: They felt we suppressed the pre-Christian nature religions of their ancestors, and wanted to dabble in that, have a little fun, and really bug their parents. Certainly some of ’em take these religions way more seriously than that, ’cause they found something there which was seriously lacking in their lives. But neopagan religions don’t look as much like the ancient pagan religions as neopagans imagine—and ancient pagans never called themselves pagans, ’cause like I said, it’s a Christian word. And when they get annoyed with us for using “pagan” generically, it’s because they forget they swiped our word.

Christians use “pagan” to refer to nonchristians in general. Technically it refers to people with no organized religion. Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and even neopagans, are organized religions—even though their organizational structure might be extremely messy. Whereas a true pagan isn’t affiliated with any religious group at all, and has no intention of joining any. They’re not religious.

This is not to say pagans have no religious beliefs. Most of ’em totally do; I’ll get to that. But they don’t believe in organized religion: They might visit a church for a wedding or funeral, or because it’s a neat-looking building, but otherwise won’t go to any religious gathering, ’cause they don’t wanna join anything. They wanna be in charge of what they believe, and how they practice it—whether they pray or not, whether they read scriptures or not, what they think about the universe, gods, or the One God. Or what they don’t think: Some of ’em are comfortable with the idea of not knowing anything, and are happy to let it remain a great mystery.

As for the word heathen: It’s always been a more derogatory word for uncivilized people (“What have you little heathens done to my kitchen?” after the kids leave behind a giant mess) and true, some pagans totally are heathens. But I generally don’t use it. Let’s be nice.

What pagans believe.

True, some pagans hold no religious beliefs; they’re nontheist. Ironically, some of ’em get mighty religious about their nontheism, and feel they simply have to bash God and organized religion at every opportunity. Others are agnostic, and functionally act as though they’re atheist… till they’re in a jam and have to pray to some higher power to get ’em out of this.

The rest have generic beliefs about God which are derived from their wider culture. If you’re surrounded by Christians, your pagan beliefs are gonna resemble Christian ones. If you’re surrounded by Hindus, you’re gonna sound more like a Hindu; if Buddhists, more Buddhist; if Jews, more Jewish; and so forth. Stands to reason.

In the United States, pagans tend to look like irreligious Evangelicals. So much so, many of ’em even think they are Christian, but of course they’re not: They won’t go to church, won’t believe what the churches teach anyway, won’t read or believe the bible, and see no reason to change their beliefs or behavior.

Back in 2002, I spelled out pagan beliefs for my theology students like so.

• THERE’S A GOD. They might believe all sorts of things about him, and certainly a lot of it will be projection. Depending on how they like to imagine him (and how many ideas they’re borrowed from either Christians or Hindus), he might be the unconscious sum of everything in the universe, or a heavenly Mother; whatever floats their boat.
• JESUS IS GOD’S SON. A great moral teacher. A nice guy. Gives great advice. Not God though. Buddha is also God’s son; as is Muhammad, Confucius, Mohandas Gandhi, and pretty much every significant religious leader. (So long that pagans like them. If they don’t like L. Ron Hubbard, he’s not God’s son.)
• THE HOLY SPIRIT IS GOD’S POWER. The holy spirit, lowercase, isn’t a person but a force, like the Force in Star Wars, but without a dark side. An “it,” not a “he.”
• GOD LOVES EVERYBODY. Unless we’re mean. Mean people suck.
• GOD WANTS PEOPLE TO BE NICE. Pagans believe all religions essentially teach this, so it’s all anyone need do: Be nice. (Unless you’re dealing with mean people. Then you can be mean right back to them. Help karma out.)
• DEATH MEANS WE GO TO HEAVEN. And become angels! Again, exceptions are made for mean people. Fr’instance Adolf Hitler definitely went somewhere bad. But if we’re nice, or if enough people love us (or at least the majority doesn’t hate us), we’re probably off to heaven. Of course, many pagans believe in reincarnation, so for them death means we’re reborn as something nice.
• ORGANIZED RELIGION IS UNNECESSARY. Disorganized, eclectic religion will do them just fine. All that matters is the pagan holds a few spiritual beliefs which make ’em feel good, and do things from time to time which make ’em feel spiritual (i.e. good). It’ll all work out in the end. ’Cause God loves everybody!

You might notice, and I gotta emphasize, pagans are particularly self-centered about their beliefs: God wants them to be happy and fulfilled. God only involves himself in their lives when they seek happiness and fulfillment. But to be fair, a whole lot of Christians are mighty self-centered too.

Christianist pagans.

As I said, some pagans think they’re Christian. ’Cause they like Jesus. They’ll quote bible—not consistently, but when it suits them. Some of ’em will even attend church, and may even get involved—although they certainly don’t feel obligated to believe anything the church teaches, or follow their interpretations of Jesus. You know, like when politicians go to a church hoping to recruit helpers or voters.

I call any belief system which prefers the trappings of Christianity, over Christ Jesus himself, Christianism. But sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Denton, in their book Soul Searching, call this belief system moralistic therapeutic deism. (MTD for short.) It’s moral ’cause it defines good and evil for itself, and emphasizes good. Therapeutic ’cause it feels good. And deist, ’cause it believes in a God who’s impersonal and not all that involved in humanity. Smith and Denton sum up MTD’s beliefs thus.

1. A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

Smith and Denton were the principal investigators in the 2003-05 National Study of Youth and Religion. They concluded

a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that it is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but has rather substantially morphed into Christianity’s misbegotten stepcousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. Smith and Denton 262

No, they’re not claiming all irreligious Christians are pagans, not Christians. Neither am I about Christianists. Smith and Denton’s rather valid concern is that, rather than Christianity, a lot of Christian churches are instead teaching MTD. As a result, the kids they raise aren’t always gonna be Christian.

I know from personal experience they’re quite right. A lot of kids in my high school youth group weren’t raised Christian. Their parents expected our youth pastors to take care of the religion parts. As if two hours of Christian instruction a week is gonna put a dent in an unconvicted, irreligious lifestyle. Consequently as soon as we moved out of the house, a lot of us threw away our Christian masks and became the pagans we always secretly were.

And y’know, some parents honestly don’t care. Just so long that we’re good people. ’Cause they’re pagans too, and everybody goes to heaven.

Prechristians?

At one church I went to, a new fad began where we called pagans “prechristians.” We decided we were gonna be optimistic: These people will become Christian someday! They’re not lost; they’re pre-found.

There’s a fine line between optimistic and delusional, and I don’t feel like crossing it today. I hope these people get found; always do. Till then, they’re pagans.

The dividing line between Christian and pagan is simple. We Christians do follow Jesus as our Lord, do expect God to save us from death despite our sin, and do recognize God expects a level of obedience, devotion, worship, and prayer from his people. (Even though we might suck at it.) We aren’t in charge of fashioning our own religions from scratch, and cherry-picking our beliefs to suit and appease ourselves. We follow Jesus, and let his Holy Spirit show each individual how to follow him best.

Tons of Americans firmly believe the central goal of life is the pursuit of happiness. Christians included. They’re wrong, and believing so will only distort our Christianity and turn us into the same selfish jerks we find everywhere. It makes our Christianity impotent. It bears less, or no, fruit. But it’s not necessarily paganism. It’s only paganism when we no longer follow Jesus because our warm fuzzy feelings tell us different.

Following Jesus makes all the difference.