Recently I've been giving a lot of thought to the traditional way through which we are ushered into the Christian faith. I don't intend to get into huge theological issues here, I mainly want to talk about the methodology of becoming a believer. For instance when I was about 8 or 9 years of age, as a result of a conversation about a member of our church who had recently passed away; my father led me in the sinners prayer. We sat down on a log in the backwoods of Northeastern Pennsylvania and I repeated the words after him and I was for all intents and purposes considered a Christian at that point. I wasn't baptized until much later, so perhaps some would not consider me a full fledged member until then, but I think most would agree that my eternal destiny was decided at that moment.
Now generally, although I know of some exceptions, regardless of what brand of Evangelical Christianity you identify with now whether it be Baptist, Pentecostal, Charismatic etc.. This is how you began, a short formula, a declaration of intent, a series of words that conferred upon you the immediate status of being a member of the Family of God. This methodology is used in Christian evangelism the world over and is popular in large part I think because it fits the motif of the gospel message being simple. Jesus died for us and all we need or can do is make a verbal statement accepting that fact. This secures for us a place in heaven where we will live eternally, period of discussion. This inherent simplicity of the gospel makes it easily packaged and unpackaged in the hopes of reaching as large demographic as possible. I'm not going into a lot of detail or exploring a lot of background information here purposely because I assume most of my readers will understand, perhaps even better than I what I am referencing.
Now here is the good part, the part where most people will think they know where I am going with this and either check out or are still with me. So I will come clean and say I am not a big fan of the sinners prayer, I know that sets me apart from normative Christianity and perhaps raises red flags about me in some people's eyes, but the good thing is I'm kind of used to that. I don't really fit in that well with normative Christianity, I disagree with a great deal of it and some of it downright embarrasses me.
However, and this is a big however because regardless of how much I disagree with Christianity I haven't abandoned it.
So I disagree with Christians on this issue, so what? What else is new? Everyone disagrees, why should this disagreement matter? It matters to me because it is a well recognized problem within the church and I have talked to pastors who testify to the pews being filled with insincere believers. . . Believers who profess faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ, but when it comes down to brass tacks can't seem to be bothered to so anything much about it.
And that is something to be concerned about.
To be continued.
