Looking for God. But not 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦.

Some years ago I was listening to a radio host talk about his doubts. He used to be a pastor, but more recently he’d come to doubt God even exists. Mainly—and understandably!—because of his utter lack of God-experiences. If God exists, shouldn’t his kids have God-experiences?

And he’s absolutely right. We should! But he hadn’t. More accurately, he’s entirely sure he hadn’t; whatever he’d seen thus far, hadn’t convinced him. He’d been Christian for years, yet was pretty sure he’d never heard God’s voice, never seen a legitimate miracle, never had any supernatural event in his life. And, he claimed, he wants these experiences, but thus far, nada.

It was a call-in type of show, so a caller responded, “What about the Pentecostals? They claim they have God-experiences all the time. Why not go there and see what happens?”

“Oh no,” said the host. “I’m not going there. I don’t wanna get into that whole scene.”

Lemme pause a moment and make clear: I’m Pentecostal, but no I’m not trying to rope you into visiting a Pentecostal church. Or visiting any particular church. You can experience God anywhere.

My point is how the radio host’s knee-jerk reaction was, “I’m not going there.” He claims he wants a God-experience; this caller said, “Here’s a place where Christians have God-experiences on the regular,” and the host’s reply was, “No, not there.” It’s about when people don‘t actually want God that badly.

There are pop songs where the singer claims he’d do all sorts of crazy things of his beloved. (Bruno Mars’s “Grenade” comes to mind…although it sounds less like risking his life for her, and more like violently killing himself over her. But enough about problematic pop songs.) Singers are willing to climb high mountains, swim deep seas, cross dry deserts, and battle legions of horny suitors for their beloved. But what’ll Christians do for salvation? Anything!… well, anything but go to that church.

Anything but go outside our comfort zones.

For pagans, that’d be us Christians.

I’ve met various pagans who were curious about God, although some admit they aren’t looking all that hard for him. Others claim they’re very interested, and are learning whatever they can about him. Others don’t care at all. It’s a spectrum.

I ask the curious and the interested whether they’ve ever had an actual God-experience. Some of ’em claim they have, and point to some profound “spiritual experience.” (Turns out nearly all of them are emotional experiences, ’cause they don’t know the difference between spiritual and emotional. But that was not the time for me to nitpick.) Others say, “No; I’m not even sure God does that sort of thing.”

“He does,” I tell them. “I go someplace where he shows up regularly.”

“You mean a church,” they respond, suspiciously.

“That too,” I say.

Nah. They’ll pass. Not interested. Because they don’t wanna go to church. They don’t want anything to do with religion. They like God, and might even want God… but they really don’t wanna deal with Christians, our institutions, and our expectations.

Sometimes for legitimate reasons; we’ve been awful. Sometimes not; they were told we’re awful… and it’s not like there’s no truth to those rumors. I grew up Christian, so I’ve seen firsthand how awful we can be. And of course I’m gonna insist we’re not all that way, and that’s gonna fall on deaf ears when a pagan is wholly prejudiced against Christians. They need to see we’re not that way, and that’s gonna take time, and a lot of active love on our part. But back to my point.

Christians, and our churches, make people uncomfortable. And if you can’t fathom this, imagine you’re them. Imagine you have questions about God. Imagine there’s this friendly weirdo you know; might be a coworker, or might be some stranger you met in a coffeehouse, and she claims she can get you all the God-answers you want, and all you gotta do is visit her cult. And no, the people there aren’t mean or controlling at all; they don’t want your money; they’re the nicest folks you’d ever meet! Wanna go check it out?

Swap “cult” for anything which pokes you in your own prejudices: Mosque. Ashram. Coven. Strip club. Maybe then you’ll realize that’s why it’s so hard to get ’em to visit. We’re not part of their comfort zone. Not in the slightest.

We need to bear this in mind when we invite pagans to our churches. If you’ve ever wondered why it’s like pulling teeth… well, there y’are.

This doesn’t stop once we’re Christian.

Once we’re in—once we’ve met Jesus, decided he’s Lord, joined a church, and started following him—we often find ourselves in whole new places where we claim we wanna follow God… but we just won’t follow him there. Plenty of people tell God, “This far; no further.”

And just as in evangelism, quite often the Holy Spirit honors our lines in the sand. Problem is, sometimes he doesn’t have a plan B. There’s only one route he intends to take us, and if we tell him no, he’s not taking us an alternate route; he’s gonna sit there and wait for us to step over that stumbling block. If we refuse… well, we’ve come to a dead stop. We stop. So he stops.

I remind Christians of this, and for some reason this surprises them. What’d they think “Stop” meant? “Stop and go another direction”? Often yeah, that’s what we naïvely thought. But all these other directions are merely side trips. Inevitably we come right back to the original stumbling block.

“Stop just this one thing”? For God, our entire lives are holistic. He’s Lord of all, not Lord over just the religious parts. He doesn’t make exceptions for just this one thing. We may only want him to be Lord over spiritual things, like the happy thoughts we have when we sing worship songs, and the sense of self-fulfillment we get from agreeing with Christian memes. But God refuses to be Lord over only a segment of us… especially such an insignificant segment. He must be rule all, or nothing. If that means our happy thoughts are on their own, so be it.

Every real relationship, especially close ones, pushes us out of our comfort zones. Couples gotta learn how to put up with one another’s quirks and irritating habits. Sometimes they gotta drag one another away from their respective comfort zones, and ask, “Do this one thing, just for me.” Sometimes they gotta ride out a crisis together. Sometimes—God forbid, but sometimes—they gotta go through trauma, and learn to support one another instead of pushing one another away… and not all of ’em successfully do.

I’m not saying they need to seek suffering in order to forcibly (and artificially) strengthen their relationships: Unlike God, they can rarely control the outcome. Trials will come on their own. But when they do, “This far; no further” won’t just put your relationship in a holding pattern while your partner tries to figure out a different direction. In nearly every relationship, “No further” kills the relationship. You’re done.

Thankfully God isn’t like that! He’s not abandoning us when we balk. He’s kinder than that. But in any other relationship, “no further” is a deal-breaker. God, in comparison, patiently waits us out. He’s always willing to pick up where we left off, once we repent. But we still gotta follow the Spirit over that stumbling block: When he tells us, “Do this one thing, just for me,” it really does need to be done. For our sake. That’s why God brought us there to begin with.

So when we have doubts, and God says, “Do this, and it’ll help you deal with them,” and our response is, “I’m not going there,” we shouldn’t be surprised when our Christian growth comes to full stop. Nor when, the absence of Christian growth, our doubts grow instead. It’s easy to see this coming. It’s harder to just follow the Spirit. But that’s what we gotta do.

Same as the pagan who has to take that initial leap of faith—who has to put aside their discomfort and false expectations, because God is more important than any of that.

When God tells us no.

If you ever browse books on prayer, you’ll notice most of them are about being successful at prayer: Prayers that work. Prayers that get heard. Prayers which’ll definitely reach God’s ears. How to be persistent at it, and thereby get what we want. How to have the proper prayer attitude, so God’ll be pleased with us and give us what I want. How to pray as God would want, and therefore get us what we ask for. Yada yada yada.

What makes prayer “successful”? Clearly, getting all our wishes granted.

Of course we won’t always admit this. We’ll try to make our answers sound less greedy, more spiritual, less self-centered. “Um… A successful prayer gets us closer to God.” Yeah, nice try Bubba. Closer to God for why? So now that he knows us, he’ll grant all our wishes.

Look, I already pointed out it’s okay to ask God for anything. The Lord’s Prayer entirely consists of prayer requests, and Jesus tells us to pray like that, so clearly God’s not gonna be offended when we tell him we want stuff from him.

But let’s be honest for once: As far as every Christian is concerned, successful prayer gets results. We ask God for miracles, money, quick fixes to big problems, autonomous fruit of the Spirit, power and influence, and maybe daily bread. God grants all our requests, we get what we want, we give him all the credit (’cause apparently that’s all the payback God needs, and thus we restore our karmic balance), and that’s how prayer works.

Thus we have Christians who arrogantly expect everything we pray for, to just happen. We named it; we claimed it; God’s gotta cough it up, because he promised he’d give us whatever we ask for in Jesus’s name. And he wants us to live successful, prosperous, territory-expanding lives. And he gave us his power to call forth the things that are not, as though they were. Ro 4.17

Now lemme be blunt: God is not your genie.

Nearly all the name-it-claim-it Christians do not have the ultimate goal of growing faith and glorifying God. Their goal is to enrich themselves, and justify their comforts on the grounds God wants us to be comfortable. Their relationship with God is distorted into a senile grandpa who wants to spoil the kids, or a Santa Claus who’ll give us everything on our Christmas lists. It’s entirely based on how God benefits me, ’cause I am the center of this universe.

So those people who are wealthy and comfortable and problem-free, figure God’s happy with them and they needn’t apply any more effort to their relationship. They’ll gleefully call him a mighty God. The rest of us, who still have struggles and suffering… wonder what’s wrong with this system. And one of four things follow:

1. We figure we’re the problem. We prayed wrong. Or we sin too much, or haven’t confessed everything, and thus alienated God. Or we don’t have enough faith; let’s believe even harder! Or we’re short on good karma; let’s do a bunch of good works and get back in God’s favor. Or maybe we’re not even saved; maybe God isn’t gonna save us.
2. We figure God turned off the miracles. He doesn’t answer prayer anymore. He left. All he left behind is the bible; read that and be ye warmed and filled. Jm 2.16 KJV
3. We figure God’s the problem. And if God won’t come through for us, f--- him; we quit. (Happens more often than you’d think.)
4. We still don’t get it… but we don’t really care enough to investigate, and like the trappings of Christianity too much to just quit. So we go through the motions, claim we believe but really don’t, put our faith in other things, and go Christianist.

All these wrong ideas are based on the assumption that too many Christians don’t honestly consider: God can, and does, tell people no. He’s not ignoring us; he’s not denying us; he’s not punishing us; he’s simply saying, “You don’t know what you’re asking” Mk 10.38 —same as Jesus told two of his students when he told them no.

Yep. God’s not a mathematical formula that, once you figure him out, you can get the answers you like. Our relationship isn’t a contractual quid pro quo, where we do for him, and he’s therefore gotta do for us. He’s a sentient being with free will, and as the wisest being, he knows best. He says “no” for good reason. If we can’t accept that, we’re presuming we’re the wisest person in our relationship… and that’d be stupid.

Learn to trust his no.

It’s actually not true that most of God’s prayer answers are “no.” We humans just tend to focus so much on the “no” answers, we forget how frequently God tells us yes. Imagine a child whose parents took her to the Disney store and bought her every princess tchotchke imaginable… yet because they won’t let her stay up past her bedtime to play with them, her day’s just ruined. That’d be us. We get so fixated on the “no” answers, it colors the way we look at God’s infinite generosity.

Simple fix to the problem: Start keeping track of your prayer requests. Mark down God’s answers. Notice how few “no” answers God actually gives you.

And notice how often these “no” answers are actually “not yet.” I get a lot of those. I get ’em every time I pray for Jesus to return. I know it’ll become yes eventually; it’s inevitable. But God’s response is “Not now,” and I want it to be now. You know, like the kid with the princess toys.

So why not now? Well, God doesn’t have to tell us. Sometimes he will; sometimes he won’t. If the answer will do us any good, he’ll tell; if it doesn’t, he won’t. You might notice, in Job, how we know the entire backstory: The devil dared the LORD to let it smite Job, and the LORD said okay… and poor Job didn’t know what hit him, nor why. Come to think of it, Job would’ve been pissed had God explained it: “Well y’see, Job, the devil and I had this bet…” I sure wouldn’t have appreciated it—even though God has every right to take back my property, my family, my health, and my life, if he so chooses. And Job needed a reminder of that fact, which is why God answered, “Can you do what I can?”—and this truth shut Job up.

When we’re miserable, no answer God gives us is really gonna comfort us. That’s why sometimes God won’t bother with answers. They don’t help. We just need comfort. And faith. We need to remember God knows best.

He doesn’t tell us no because he wants to frustrate his kids, and deprive us. Just the opposite. Mt 7.9-11 He has far better in mind for us—but we don’t see it right now. We can’t see how the consequences of our smallest actions might affect or influence people for billions of years, from this age to the next. We may not even care about such things; we think of ’em as hypothetical realities, and we’re only looking at what’s right here and right now. But to God, these “hypothetical realities” are realities, ’cause he’s infinite and is already there. In order to bring us from here to there, he’s gotta bring out the best in both us and everyone else. If we can’t fathom this, there’s really no point in God giving us any answer: We’ll just flail about in confusion and anger, nitpick his decision (kinda like we already do), and wallow in self-pity.

Look, I don’t like God’s “no” answers any more than you. Deep down I probably still foolishly think I know better. God’s “no” is a reminder I don’t. He does. There are infinitely good reasons why I follow him, and not vice-versa. And if I’m gonna follow him, I need to accept a “no” from time to time and be okay with it. So I try. So should we all.

“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.