The Ineffective Church - Part 1

“Evangelicals.”  “Born-Again Christians.”  We seem to be everywhere.  The term, “mega-church” didn’t exist ten years ago.  Now huge churches seem to be popping up in big cities everywhere.  Depending on the survey you choose to believe, there are between 70,000,000 and 100,000,000 Americans who classify themselves as “evangelical,” or “born-again.”  With such a large portion of our country apparently similar, the big question should be, “Why is the Christian church so completely ineffective – not only in influencing our society, but simply in ensuring that those within the church remain faithful to the values we claim to hold. 

 

In this muli-part series I’m going to address what I believe to be major errors that cause the Christian church to be so ineffective.  Once again, these commentaries are aimed directly at Christians themselves.  The errors I will address build on each other and have reached such a crescendo that they dilute everything that the church does. 

 

The “errors” I will discuss touch on aspects of what I call, “Evangelical Correctness.”  I am taking direct aim at issues that many, if not most, in the evangelical world will consider basic fundamentals of faith – but none of which have any basis in historical, orthodox Christianity.  Some, no doubt, will accuse me of heresy.  Before you criticize, though, I ask that you ask yourself if your objection is really as biblical as you think it is, or if your reaction is mostly emotional because I have tipped a “sacred cow,” to which you might have attributed too much importance.

 

The first “error” – Simplistic, juvenile interpretations of English translations of the Bible.  Orthodox Christianity places supremacy on the Bible as the Word of God.  What Christians refer to as the “Old Testament” are the Jewish Scriptures (the law, prophets & poetry) and have never been questioned by the church fathers.  It wasn’t until late in the fourth century A. D. (no, I will not use the secular “C. E.” on this blog) that agreement was reached as to which books to include in what we now refer to as the “New Testament.”     The doctrine of biblical inerrancy is called, “Verbal plenary inspiration.”  Orthodox Christian doctrine states that all of Scripture, the 66 books that make up the Old and New Testaments were fully inspired by God in the original languages.  It’s the original languages part where we in the American church really blow it.  Once we start translating the Bible into other languages we have to be very careful about misinterpretation.  Those misinterpretations can cause significant doctrinal errors to creep in simply because the language into which Scripture is interpreted is not as precise as the original.  The Bible also had significant cultural and historical nuances to the original audience that are necessarily missing upon translation.  Thus great care must be taken to ensure that doctrines are based upon the original meaning of a particular passage in its intended context to the original hearers. 

 

One simple example of this error is the translation of, “world” or “earth” in the New Testament.  The original Greek words used can mean, “entire known world,” “the Roman world,” “the ungodly system of society,” “all of creation,” or “a single country,” among others.  This means that all the verses that talk about the “world” can have significantly different meaning.  Perhaps better known is the fact that when we see the word “love” in the New Testament the original word could be one of three words in Greek.  Another example is the word “life” in the New Testament, which can be at least one of two words in Greek – “bios” meaning living, breathing life, from which we get the word “biology,” and “psuche,” meaning the essence of life, the seat of emotional being, from which we get the term “psychology.”  Thus when Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” (John 15:13 ESV) it is significant that the original word is “psuche” not “bios.”  Laying down your “bios” for someone else is a one-time event.  You do it, you die, it’s over.  Laying down your “psuche” is a continual denial of self for others – it is a lifelong commitment to selflessness. 

 

The above examples don’t even touch upon nuances of word order and vernacular that can have great impact on what a passage meant to the original hearers or readers.  We put huge stock in our contemporary English translations, and for good reason.  Most of them took many biblical scholars many years to translate properly, and often with extensive linguistic notes that we rarely bother to read.  We also forget that the interpreters also had their own doctrinal biases which may or may not reflect upon their work. 

 

Why is this interpretation so important?  I believe the simplistic interpretations of Scripture account for significant theological errors which have the American church mired in doctrinal confusion. 

 

Next – Part 2:  Dispensational freewill theology and the marketing of the Gospel.