The Real Problem

I work full-time encouraging churches to grow in a world where
there is a huge industry encouraging churches to grow and, generally
speaking, the Church is not growing

I could never have made a living in the first century. There was
no church growth industry in the first century. There were no Sunday
School growth conferences and no church growth consultants. And the church was
growing and growing rapidly.

This is not to disparage the industry of encouraging churches to
grow. It is my opinion that the church would be doing even worse if
it were not for those who serve in encouraging churches to grow.

But, it is my conviction that the great need of the hour is not
better methods or means or Sunday Schools or visitation programs or
Seeker Services. The problem does not fundamentally lie in methods
and means. The problem is the way we perceive God and the message of
the gospel. It is a cleverly disguised lie that I could say in any
Sunday School class in America and get everyone there nodding their
heads in agreement. I could stand in any pulpit in America and state
this lie and a house full of people would say Amen! It is a lie that
just sounds that good.

I heard it again last week in my own Sunday School class. And, as
always, a room full of people nodded in agreement. I didn't have the
strength to argue the point again. But, it has been haunting me all
week. I offer my response here. This is what was said.

"Well, I think there is doing what is right, and then there is
doing what feels good. I think we ought to do what is right."

A room full of people nodded in agreement. Yes, we should do what
is right; not what feels good. Everyone nodded their "amen." Did you? It just
sounds so good. It sounds so good to say we ought to choose what is
good for God over what is good for me.

Here is the problem with that statement. That statement has an
assumption behind it. The assumption is that we have a choice. We
can do what is right, or we can do what feels good. We can do what
is right, or we can do what leads to happiness. We can do what is
good for God, or we can do what is good for us, but we can't do
both. We should do what is good for God because, it is not all about
us. We don't matter. Our happiness doesn't matter. We should
sacrifice our happiness for obedience. We should choose obedience
over happiness.

Here is one I have heard a few times: God is more interested in
your holiness than your happiness. There is a problem here. Do you
see it?

So the choice comes down to choosing between two columns:

Column #1 Our way Unholiness Leads to our happiness Disappoints God

Column #2 God's way Holiness Leads to God's happiness We are not happy, but God is

This is not the gospel. This is the problem.

It is the problem for three reasons:

• We will never get all that excited about living it. We will
  always struggle with, as one old hymn has it, "plunge in today
  and be made complete." We will never plunge in because we don't
  believe it is good for us. We might stick our toe in the water.
  We might dabble at it. But we won't plunge in.


• We will never get that excited about telling about it.
  We
  won't really care whether our class doubles every two years or
  less. It won't bother us that the church does not grow because,
  well, it is kind of good news/ bad news anyway. Sure there are
  good points--we get to got to heaven when we die. But there are
  tough parts too--all that stuff of obedience and dedication and
  so on. We accept the message. We take the good with the bad. But
  we are not that excited about the spread of this message because
  we could certainly see why some would not accept it.


• It is not true. The gospel is not a gospel of good news and
  bad news. It is a gospel of good news, good news and more good
  news.

We will never get that excited about living it, and it will never
be that important that our class grows and our church grows until we
believe it is good news, good news and more good news. His commands
are not burdensome (1 John 5.3). God is a rewarder (Hebrews 11.6)

John Piper talks about this in a message called, "Let your
passion be single." He talks about the inner struggle of
growing up in a home where he knew that a passion for the glory of
God must be central. This was the only right way to think,
biblically. But, he had another passion. He wanted to be happy. The
pivotal day was when he realized these two joys come together. The
greatest pleasure is found in God, and there is no way to please God
except to delight in Him. He quotes Pascal:

"All men seek happiness," says Blaise
Pascal. "This is without exception. Whatever different means they
employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war,
and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with
different views. The will never takes the least step but to this
object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of
those who hang themselves." We believe Pascal is right. And, with
Pascal, we believe God purposefully designed us to pursue happiness.

Piper was the one who set my thinking straight on this matter, so
allow me to excerpt an additional quotes from him, found at
www.desiringgod.org

Christian Hedonism teaches that the
desire to be happy is God-given and should not be denied or resisted
but directed to God for satisfaction. Christian Hedonism does
not say that whatever you enjoy is good. It says that God
has shown you what is good and doing it ought to bring you joy
(Micah 6:8). And since doing the will of God ought to bring you joy,
the pursuit of joy is an essential part of all moral effort. If you
abandon the pursuit of joy (and thus refuse to be a Hedonist, as I
use the term), you cannot fulfill the will of God. Christian
Hedonism affirms that the godliest saints of every age have
discovered no contradiction in saying, on the one hand, "We are
being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be
slaughtered" (Romans 8:36), and on the other hand, "Rejoice in the
Lord always, and again I will say, Rejoice" (Philippians 4:4).
Christian Hedonism does not join the culture of self-gratification
that makes you a slave of your sinful impulses. Christian Hedonism
commands that we not be conformed to this age but that we be
transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2) so we can
delight to do the will of our Father in heaven. According to
Christian Hedonism joy in God is not optional icing on the cake of
Christianity. When you think it through, joy in God is an essential
part of saving faith.

So then, Christian living is not a choice between what is good
for me and what is good for God. It is a choice between what is bad
for me and God and what is good for me and God. God's ways are always good for me in
the long run. God is a rewarder. We must believe that He is a
rewarder or we will never come near to Him. We must come to love the
Christian life, or we will never come to live the Christian life.
You cannot be holy and grumpy. Our holy, boss, Lord God commanded us
to delight in Him. He commanded us to rejoice in Him. There is no
obedience to God except there is obedience to the command of God to
rejoice.

Hebrews 11.6 spells this out. "And without faith it is
impossible to please God." The question is, faith in what? Faith
that God exists? No. The demons do that, and tremble. What is it
that the demons don't believe about God? They don't believe He is a
rewarder. Here is the rest of the verse, "because anyone who comes
to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who
earnestly seek him." Hebrews 11:6 [NIV]

The disciples were corrected by Jesus at the point.

And if anyone gives even a cup of cold
water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell
you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward." Matthew 10:42
[NIV]


"I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or
brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me
and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this
present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and
fields--and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal
life. Mark 10:29-30 [NIV]

Some would argue that the reward is incidental and that if we
were really spiritual we would not do things for the reward. I agree
with Piper, (again), that this not a the Christian position:

Christian hedonism aims to replace a
Kantian morality with a biblical one. Immanuel Kant, the German
philosopher who died in 1804, was the most powerful exponent of the
notion that the moral value of an act decreases as we aim to derive
any benefit from it. Acts are good if the doer is "disinterested."
We should do the good because it is good. Any motivation to seek joy
or reward corrupts the act. Cynically, perhaps, but not without
warrant, the novelist Ayn Rand captured the spirit of Kant's ethic:

An action is moral, said Kant, only
if one has no desire to perform it, but performs it out of a
sense of duty and derives no benefit from it of any sort,
neither material nor spiritual. A benefit destroys the moral
value of an action. (Thus if one has no desire to be evil, one
cannot be good; if one has, one can.)

Against this Kantian morality (which
has passed as Christian for too long!), we must herald the
unabashedly hedonistic biblical morality. Jonathan Edwards, who died
when Kant was 34, expressed it like this in one of his early
resolutions: "Resolved, To endeavor to obtain for myself as much
happiness in the other world as I possibly can, with all the power,
might, vigor, and vehemence, yea violence, I am capable of, or can
bring myself to exert, in any way that can be thought of."

C. S. Lewis put it like this in a
letter to Sheldon Vanauken: "It is a Christian
duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can."

Well, I could go on an on, but this article is getting a bit
long. Here is the summary: it is always in our best interest to live
the Christian life. Following God is always good for me in the long
run. I pray because it is good for me. I serve because it is good
for me. I forgive because it is good for me. I seek to dedicate
myself completely to God because it is good for me. Yes, it is good
for God as well. Let your passion be single. It is one single
passion to please God and create a life that is good for me.

With good news like that, it drives me batty that churches can be
indifferent about spreading that message. A properly understood
gospel compels us to spread it. Paul said, "I am compelled to
preach." 1 Cor 9.16. Good news compels us to tell. When you feel
like, "This is such great news! It is good news, good news and more
good news. It is the best way to live and the only way to die!" you
want the message to spread and spread rapidly.

I close with one more quote from Piper:

God is most glorified in us when we
are most satisfied in him.

We all make a god out of what we take
the most pleasure in. Christian Hedonists want to make God their God
by seeking after the greatest pleasure—pleasure in him.

By Christian Hedonism, we do not mean
that our happiness is the highest good. We mean that pursuing the
highest good will always result in our greatest happiness in the
end. We should pursue this happiness, and pursue it with all our
might. The desire to be happy is a proper motive for every good
deed, and if you abandon the pursuit of your own joy you cannot
love man or please God.

All John Piper quotes from
www.desiringgod.org I suggest you click on the link that says
"essential Piper." Start with the sermon on "Let your passion be
single." Enjoy. Really. Enjoy.

By the way, this is a central part of the message of the
Disciplemaking Teachers Conference. I'd love to come to your church
and present it.