Typical Evangelical Sermon

I’ve just finished listening to a sermon by Erwin Lutzer, at the  Word Of Life Florida Conference Center (January 28, 2018: “How to Die for the Glory of God”). It concerned our attitude towards our own death.

I won’t attempt to transcribe it, or outline it. But I do want to say something about it, as it seems to me to be emblematic of evangelical sermons written today. It contains the chief elements necessary for a sermon to be “evangelical.”

These are:

• Placing ultimate value on an individual’s grace
• God is Supreme
• Call to circle the wagons
• Reliance on cliche
• Showing the divide between the Saved and the Damned, the Christian and the...well, damned, using biblical evidence picked, chosen among many verses leaving out any that might show another viewpoint.

Jesus is supremely valuable, says Lutzer. He says, “My death is my win [my emphasis].” To live is Christ, to die is gain. --Philippians 1:21 The evangelical sees death as a win...his win. There is so much of a kind of capitalism of the spirit that it leaves Jesus’ teaching to love another as oneself completely out of it all. We seem, in the evangelical church, to be concerned with our own saving grace, and less for those in the world.

And let me take a moment and speak about how the typical pastor will trot out commonly held information that is simply not true. It has been recognised for a long time that John could not have written the Gospel of John. It is too late a book. Also, it is written in such a way that a common laborer living within the confines of Palestine, in Galilee, certainly would not have written it. It also happens to be anonymously written. All the gospels are anonymous. Why trot out these unproven--unproved, and unprovable--claims? It just makes the entire evangelical Church look false and cultish.

God is supreme...except when He isn’t. Our deaths, Lutzer says, should be seen as God given, and along the timeline of God. Don’t commit suicide and muck of God’s plan. That’s putting a period where there should be a comma (another cliche). Yet he also holds out the possibility of suicide as being within God’s plan...leave it all to God. Here Lutzer probably understands that there are listeners here  that know someone who has died from their own hand. He wishes to give some comfort. But his reasoning is such that he is awash in inconsistencies and contradictions. Is God telling someone to commit suicide or not? Does someone go to Hell after a suicide? Is suicide of Satan...or is everything of God’s choice? How about this: just admit you don’t know anything and that this is all speculation. But that would be honest and plain.

And to evidence the devastation of mankind as a kind of glory to be lauded and appreciated is to go beyond the pale. Lutzer cities Cyprian of Carthage as someone who recognized that our suffering is but an opportunity to praise God. Here [I’ve simply copied from Wikipedia], Cyprian has written:

"This trial, that now the bowels, relaxed into a constant flux, discharge the bodily strength; that a fire originated in the marrow ferments into wounds of the fauces; that the intestines are shaken with a continual vomiting; that the eyes are on fire with the injected blood; that in some cases the feet or some parts of the limbs are taken off by the contagion of diseased putrefaction; that from the weakness arising by the maiming and loss of the body, either the gait is enfeebled, or the hearing is obstructed, or the sight darkened;—is profitable as a proof of faith. What a grandeur of spirit it is to struggle with all the powers of an unshaken mind against so many onsets of devastation and death! what sublimity, to stand erect amid the desolation of the human race, and not to lie prostrate with those who have no hope in God; but rather to rejoice, and to embrace the benefit of the occasion; that in thus bravely showing forth our faith, and by suffering endured, going forward to Christ by the narrow way that Christ trod, we may receive the reward of His life and faith according to His own judgment!" [7]

This is reason to thank God? I see a reason to chastise God, but not to become chummy with Him in adoration.

Circling the wagons is a phrase I use to describe how evangelicals need to stick together for purposes of outreach to the sinning population as well as for forming a cohesive unit to defy the outer world. This can be seen in off-handed comments such as Mr Lutzer gave regarding the Bible and how smartphone Bibles do not qualify. He later disparaged how people with smartphones can even locate the grave of celebrities. Message conveyed: Keep it simple, stupid! Do things the old way...you know...the conservative way, the Republican way. (I may be overreaching there, but he also made a comment about a certain Chicago politician--Lutzer was in the Moody Church in Chicago for some time--who once made a comment about hoping he wasn’t being too clear. Was this Obama? Certainly it was a Chicago Democrat.)

When you do not want to seriously investigate a matter, seriously dig deep into questions that human beings have asked themselves from time immemorial, you depend on cliche. These cliches (“Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt”; death treated as a mere decision one made that leads to Heaven--and what is Heaven, Mr. Lutzer? Somewhere where people need an event coordinator--or Hell, and we all know what Hell is, yes?) give us a hand-hold to something I suppose, but it isn’t much. There is no question without an answer. No doubts are left hanging in the air. Those who disagree with this type of cultish thought are dismissed with a joke, or pityingly since they are to be burned in the fire of eternal torture.

And that leads to the final, ever-popular Heaven and Hell. Mostly Hell, but Lutzer likes to imagine a Heaven that is so active, that it seems to resemble one of those old age gated communities with event coordinators and there is just too much stuff for any one person to do (guffaw, guffaw). And Hell of course is deserved, since those people didn’t exercise their God-given brains to decide to follow Jesus. You see that? They have to decide, use their brains. This might cause a thinking person to wonder what happens to people who don’t have thinking brains, or brains adequate for the decision. I guess they just burn in Hell. And what about that decision these evangelicals make? Can it be unmade? Nope. That pastor who happens to sexually harass women, or men, or kids...they get that ticket too. You know who doesn’t get it? Catholics. Because, as Lutzer erroneously states, they depend on the sacraments to be saved. Wrong. But Lutzer has obviously never bothered to even ask a Catholic who knows about such things what the Church truly teaches. I would direct him here. Or, better, anyone can read for themselves directly from the Catechism. They make it pretty easy to find out what is and is not taught within the Catholic Church. There is no excuse for such errors as Lutzer makes, other than laziness or prejudice.

I won’t detail the Catholic argument, but I will say that it makes a lot of sense. And the protestant argument seems to me to have a lot of holes. But we cannot argue the point within the Evangelical Church; we have to adhere to the talking points and spit out the doctrine. Even if it doesn’t make sense; even if it goes against verses within the Bible (see 1 John; see...Oh, here (from the citation above):

"Are you saved?" asks the Fundamentalist. The Catholic should reply: "As the Bible says, I am already saved (Rom. 8:24, Eph. 2:5–8), but I’m also being saved (1 Cor. 1:18, 2 Cor. 2:15, Phil. 2:12), and I have the hope that I will be saved (Rom. 5:9–10, 1 Cor. 3:12–15). Like the apostle Paul I am working out my salvation in fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12), with hopeful confidence in the promises of Christ (Rom. 5:2, 2 Tim. 2:11–13)."