Christianity

We face a crisis that is also an opportunity: people who are spiritually hungry, relationally isolated, and tired of being suspicious tend to be more open to spiritual things than those who are overly distracted.

The more we seek to know Christ, the more we become like Christ. In fact, one practical way to know how fully we know Christ is to examine how fully we exhibit him to the world.

Last month, according to the Congolese military, a militant group attacked a Pentecostal church, killing at least 10 and wounding scores of others. Though incidents like this are hardly new, they rarely make the news. Many in the Western world simply don’t realize how prevalent Christianity and Christian persecution are outside of Europe and North America. Plus, the creeping influence of “the critical theory mood” leaves the impression that because Christianity has been so influential in Western history, Christians must always be villains and can never be victims.

This caricature of Christianity as a sort-of tribal faith of Westerners is flawed at the core.

Pew Research Center estimates that Christians could make up a minority of Americans by 2070. According to sociology professor Stephen Bullivant, a practicing Catholic who teaches in London and Sydney, there are three main reasons for this decline in religious commitment and the concomitant rise of the nonreligious: the Cold War, 9/11, and the internet.

The host of the popular faith-based Unbelievable? podcast says today's church must be able to explain why "Christianity is good" for society if the Christian faith is to flourish in the 21st century.

Salvation won’t arrive on Air Force One, and a perfect world won’t come through the ballot box. But a better world is possible if all our actions, political and otherwise, flow downstream from our Christian convictions, and not the other way around.

The percentage of Americans who consider themselves Christian may fall from 64 percent to under 50 percent by 2070 if current trends continue, according to a new Pew Research Center report. The percentage of people who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” may also top 40 percent, the report found.

In recent years, many Christians have either abandoned or deprioritized the notion of truth, elevating personal experience over what God has revealed about Himself and His world. Years ago, Chuck Colson warned in his book The Faith that Christians must not give up on the idea of truth nor downplay its importance, even in an attempt to gain a wider hearing. Christianity matters precisely because it is true. If it isn’t true, it doesn’t matter. Here’s Chuck:

Our hurting world desperately needs the gift of authentic Christianity. Lives being transformed every day by the living Lord Jesus are proof that God’s word is true and his grace is amazing. Unfortunately, many of us settle for a religion about Jesus when we could have an intimate relationship with him. To experience such a relationship daily, as Oswald Chambers reminds us, I must give up “my claim to my right to myself.” When I do, “The free committal of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the chance to impart to me the holiness of Jesus Christ.” When last did you make such a “free committal” of yourself to Jesus?

As I document in my latest book, The Coming Tsunami, our culture brands Christians as outdated, intolerant, oppressive, and dangerous on a level unprecedented in our nation’s history. As a result, it is imperative that you and I become the change we wish to see. We cannot give what we do not possess or lead others where we will not go. As I noted yesterday, our example as Spirit-empowered Christ-followers can attract our secular culture to the One who is transforming us by his love and grace. But if we are “conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2), why would the world want what we have?