No More Platform Faith

 

“We should be mirrors at a forty-five degree angle, so that when people look at us all they can see is God.” – Nicholas Piotrowski

USA Today took a nationwide survey asking non-Christians for three words that described Christians.  The three words that were most often mentioned were “judgmental,” “hypocrites,” and “gay-haters.”

Christians were once known for their love, their educational excellence, and their promotion of liberty.  They opened the first public hospitals.  Orphanages were a Christian invention.  Reforms made to prisons to insure welfare were as well.  However, today Christians are seen as “judgmental”, “hypocrites”, and “gay-haters.”

 

Can these critics be blamed, though?

 

We have dropped the bar.  In surveys of religious students in the public school system, Evangelical Christians have the lowest test scores in the country.  One reason for this is we believe since we work for another world that we do not need to advance in this one.  The exploration and glorification of God through the study of His work is rather dismal to most Christians these days. 

Another area which we have failed in is marriage.  More Christian couples experience divorce than any others.  Why?  We do not put a lot of effort into our relationships with family or friends.  The representation of marriage in the Bible differs extraordinarily than the modern interpretation.  The symbolism of Christ as the bridegroom and the Church as the bride has also been lost.  When our laziness defiles marriage, what are we saying about Christ and the Church to the world?

 

Morally Christians have taken the plunge.  Many Christians are only so in name and the best word to describe them is antinomianists.  There is a belief that because we are saved by grace we have been given free reigns to sin as we please.  Yet, “faith without deeds is dead,” and we are known not by our words, but by our love.

 

To carry out the Great Commission, we should first realize that our lives are for His glory and then see ourselves as ambassadors of Christ.  Knowledge of Ecclesiastical history will instruct its student of doctrine and truth, as well as providing protection from the heresies that many use to take advantage of our ignorance.

 

But most importantly, we should strive to be more like Christ and emulate his love.  His love, which is perfect, is the only restoring and redeeming love that can save a soul.

 

The world doesn’t need any more rock’n’roll stars.  The world doesn’t need any more televised evangelicals talking about material wealth and hedonistic faith.  They world doesn’t need any more people on a stage preaching knowledge that will simply sit in their heads.  They need love.  They need people to walk with them on this earth, without having their heads in the sky, in humility and in accountability.  They need people who will steer them towards safe waters.  They need people who will show them God in their actions instead of their Bibles.  No more jamming Scriptures down people’s throats—now we live it.  “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says.”  (James 1:22)

 

No more platform faith.  It’s time to get off the stage and back into the real world.

 

Now is the moment we make the choice.  There are only two options.  We either live for Christ as missionaries in the world, wherever it is he places us and serve with our lives, not just our jobs, or we are ministered to.  Loren Cunningham said it well when she said, “I believe that you are either a missionary or a mission-field. You’re either part of God’s answer or part of His problem.”

 

We’re at the crossroads… where do we go from here?