Finding Our Way Home: Reclaiming the Kingdom in Post-Evangelical America

By Stan Moody

Have We Traded the Power of the Gospel for the American Dream? God is calling His children to live authentic, relevant lives, where the power of the Gospel, the peace, security, wisdom, direction, and joy of a life transformed, become a living witness to those around us. But what happens when we sometimes subtly, even unknowingly, exchange the truth of the Gospel for a pursuit of the American Dream? We like to dress up our desires with Bible verses and Christian sayings, but somewhere along the way, we find ourselves pursuing something other than God's Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. This book provides a wake-up call to devoted Christ-followers to return to the simplicity of the Good News, the saving, transforming power of God to change a life for eternity. Whether you fall on the political left or right, consider yourself conservative or liberal, focus more on grace or works, this book is written to both encourage and challenge you, to stir your soul and perhaps ruffle your feathers. In the end, this is a message that will point you towards spiritual renewal!

• Language: English
• Publisher: HigherLife Publishing
• Release date: Jul 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781954533127

Book preview

GROUND ZERO

LORD HELP ME! I’VE TRIED EVERYTHING ELSE

The first edition of this book, published in 1989 by Barbour Books, was accidentally overprinted by five thousand copies but eventually sold out. A remarkable number of people shared how the book touched their lives during difficult times, giving me needed encouragement and strength to go on during a very dark and difficult time in my own life.

Pursuit of the Kingdom of God

What I viewed with skepticism but longed to know for certain through the rough and tumble of my self-driven life was this: God’s ultimate purpose must be lived out daily in a state of uncertainty. Pursuit of the Kingdom of God being the baseline, I had to learn through experimentation and failure what commitment to Christ really means and then to put it into practice. The most difficult thing to accept was that God’s purpose is honored only as we become willing servants, a process that demands the shelving of our personal ambitions. Having been something of a self-imagined mover and shaker, it took me a long time to crash into surrender. I now struggle daily with how little I have progressed in that surrendering. On the other hand, the moment we begin to congratulate ourselves on our advancing humility, we have not yet begun to surrender, a condition commonly referred to as humble pride.

I can’t imitate Jesus, so I must trust Him, even when trusting means periods of inactivity, a condition that can overwhelm many of us with frantic frustration. As a reminder of the long view, I once had a plaque on my kitchen wall that read, "Be still and know that I am God. OK, I get it! You’re God, and I am not! Your Kingdom is alive and well, and all I want is to be an effective grain of sand in one brick that is part of the Kingdom, Lord! The conflict, however, was that I concurrently was mounting an offensive toward receiving the community’s or even the world’s coveted Lifetime Achievement Award. It went something like this, I suspect: Make me an effective grain of sand in one brick, Lord, but here’s where you need to use that brick!"

I Want to Be Somebody!

A friend once gave me a definition of sin that I never forgot: All sin goes back to ‘I want to be somebody.’ Most of us never get much beyond that desire, do we? The earthly record of Jesus does, however, provide us with a powerful benchmark by which we can understand what it truly means to follow. He willingly gave up the right to exist in the form of God, taking on the appearance of a human being, and becoming obedient to the point of death on a Roman cross (Phil. 2:6-8). Yet, as eternity’s physical example of servanthood and obedience, Jesus was anything but a wimp. He was a man’s man—a person with the courage to stand alone and love those who rejected Him, which was nearly everyone in the conservative religious community of that time. He demonstrated by personal example the binding relationship between service and humility. At the same time, He took only fleeting refuge in those who nurtured Him, knowing that their love was at best conditional, as is ours.

ALL SIN GOES BACK TO I WANT TO BE SOMEBODY.

His refuge was in the unseen God, His Father and ours, who was destined to abandon Him in His most vulnerable hour.

I recently stepped down as senior pastor of a former flagship downtown church in Bangor, Maine, Columbia Street Baptist Church, to spend time reflecting on what it means for individuals and a congregation truly to seek after God. Why did Jesus prioritize, at the expense even of our base needs and our relationships, a search for the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matt. 6:33)? Do we bring our secular skill sets into the Church and apply them to Kingdom work, or do we permit Kingdom work to hone those skills so that they become living witnesses to the dying world right outside our doors?

Path to the Kingdom of God

A Middle-Class Con Job

We of the great American evangelical experiment have lost our way in the pursuit of the cross by way of the American Dream. It is a middle-class con job that views job security and financial comfort as God’s blessing on a faithful people. Then that blessing must be defended against a liberal plot to remove God from our public life. Where that leaves the balance of folks mired in survival seems quite the opposite of scripturally based Kingdom values. Failure to achieve the American Dream of prosperity and success must then be the mark of God’s displeasure, were we to follow the prosperity gospel to its logical conclusion.

We know better than that, don’t we, believer?

God’s Kingdom has, for me, become synonymous with the person and work of Jesus. Where Jesus is, there you will find the Kingdom; where the Kingdom is, there you will find Jesus. Look for Jesus in an earthly kingdom constructed by religious patriots, and you won’t find Him. Look for Him outside the church camp, however, and there He will be! Hebrews 13:12:

Therefore, Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate. So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come.

God’s Kingdom is not nor ever will be of this world.

We sinful creatures can conjure infinite strategies for getting God’s work done for Him without divine intervention, becoming prime, indispensable agents in a flexible Divine Plan of our own imagination.

But What Do I Know?

I’m just a guy trying to understand the simplest of concepts—how to be in this world but not be of it; how to follow Jesus but still put food on the table and pay my bills tomorrow; what it means truly to confess the Lordship of Christ. We serious followers of Christ need something far more compelling than hit-and-run evangelism to keep us motivated. We need an acute sense of the Kingdom of God as a present, dynamic, victorious reality in the life of the believer. Otherwise, we are just treading water, waiting for God’s next move.

WE NEED AN ACUTE SENSE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD AS A PRESENT, DYNAMIC, VICTORIOUS REALITY IN THE LIFE OF THE BELIEVER.

Maybe you have noticed: Jesus consistently avoided being branded by slick ad campaigns to win more converts. He seemed to have more converts than He could handle at times. He rejected every attempt by His disciples or family to market Him, with the notable exception of His Jewish mom who pushed Him into the task of turning water into wine at a wedding. What He wanted and still wants from us was to be seen, heard, and known as God.

If you don’t make allowances for the presence of Jesus and the Kingdom here and now, you may as well throw out with the trash the Sermon on the Mount of Matthew 5-7. If Jesus is really present, however, God’s Kingdom is already conquering the nations, including America, even while we of the saved-and-proud-of-it crowd are straining and competing to heap spiritual credit on ourselves.

Take hope! We who confess Jesus Christ as Lord are agents of God’s glory and His plan, for no other reason than that we are loved by Him and are part of His emerging family. Mystifyingly, we are being transformed into the image of Christ, propelling us toward love of neighbor, especially when that neighbor is an enemy.

Holding onto hope, I attempt here to deal with subjects strangely absent from our Christian discussion. These are serious subjects, many of which I would rather—for the sake of my own pride—leave unaddressed. But you will recognize yourself in my experiences, and when you do, you will take comfort in discovering and connecting with a kindred spirit.

Living Life on Higher Ground

My wife has chosen my epitaph, which in itself raises a lot of issues, but I like it. It’s a quote from Robert Frost: "I had a lover’s quarrel with the world! It is my hope to bring that lover’s quarrel" to your consciousness in this effort. You must feel the anguish, the joy, and the brokenness by which I seek to reach you and encourage you in your Christian walk.

God is patiently awaiting your return to genuine fellowship with Him. He waits to shower you with the blessings of His love on higher ground than success, financial security, and robust health, even as you struggle with survival in this unraveling world.

The way back will be painful and much slower than you expect. It will try your patience and your willingness beyond endurance. It will demand deprogramming from habits and beliefs you didn’t even know you had.

You won’t have to do it alone. God will send you all the support you need from that cloud of witnesses that has gone before, from the mighty hosts of Heaven, and from His children whom He has placed in your path. Trust Him and begin. The Kingdom of God is a dynamic and victorious presence in this world. To come to understand that is the difference between living and just treading water in the sanctuary.

CHAPTER ONE

WHAT ON EARTH IS AN AMERICAN EVANGELICAL?

THE SHORT ANSWER is that an American Evangelical is a hybrid Christian, straddling the legalism of trying to appease God through obedience to His Old Testament covenant and living in the liberty of the New Testament covenant of God’s unmerited grace through Jesus Christ. For the hybrid Christian, locked into rules, regulations, public morality, fear of rejection, and the physical calendar as the measure of God’s grace and timing in human history, the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) are beyond reach.

Christian Atheism

The American Evangelical, it might be said, is at core a Christian atheist – trusting Jesus Christ as Savior (Thank you very much, Sir) but living in serious doubt of God’s sovereign power and the role of the Holy Spirit as guide. This is a faith that demands little of its followers except a pledge known as the Sinner’s Prayer, recited in some distant past and allowing us now to plunge into a busy church as a shallow alternative to unmasking ourselves.

It is likely the core belief of essentially all evangelical leaders and pastors that the primary responsibility of the Christian is to bring other souls to Christ. While no one can deny the effectiveness of the external call by God through the sharing of the gospel message, American Evangelicals have largely sidelined the Holy Spirit as the sole revealer of the beauty and holiness of God, leading to the divine internal call to turn away from sin and self toward faith in Christ.

As a result, American evangelical churches are clogged with the many saved but few discipled. They are proud of their attractiveness to random seekers of God not quite saved enough to trust His sovereign power over sin and death through Christ.

By Way of Example

The Apostle Paul comes on the scene in the 1st Century as Saul of Tarsus, a rising young star in the religious right of Israel. After his miraculous conversion through the internal call of the Holy Spirit, Paul has this to say in Galatians 2:20-21 about the legitimacy of that conversion:

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.

WE HAVE SURRENDERED BELIEF IN GOD’S ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY AND POWER TO BELIEF IN AN AMERICAN CULTURE GONE MAD WITH ITS OWN ILL-PERCEIVED EXCEPTIONALISM.

While there was room in the life of Saul of Tarsus to hate, attack, imprison, and kill folks who professed a radical faith in Christ, Saul of Tarsus died on the way to Damascus, Syria, and was resurrected as the Apostle Paul. The average white American Evangelical is stuck somewhere between Saul of Tarsus and the Apostle Paul, attempting to appease an angry God with rules, regulations, and feasance to the Republican Party. We have surrendered belief in God’s absolute authority and power over politics, religion, personal life, nations, and over Christ’s Church to belief in an American culture gone mad with its own ill-perceived exceptionalism.

Saul of Tarsus was unable to grasp the worldview presented by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) that turns human nature on its head – love of neighbor, especially when that neighbor is perceived to be an enemy; release of the prisoner of sin and death, and, one might project, the prisoner of corrupt criminal justice; adultery not restricted to the act but extended to the thought. As I watched the Jan. 6, 2021 assault of the U.S. Capitol building in protest against the defeat of the 45th President of the United States with its Christian banners and crosses, I saw Saul of Tarsus on full display.

How Do We Get Out of the Wacky World of the Saved-and-Proud-of-It?

The Christ of the Gospel calls us to something repugnant to our natures called crucifixion of self – the purging of the self-life, the ground and root of all sin and separation from fellowship with God. None of us wants that kind of life, do we? Who wants to be stuck at the bottom of public opinion polls, belonging to a small group of extremist Christians consumed with working out (their) salvation (together) with fear and trembling, trusting that it is indeed God who is at work (through them) to will and to work for His good pleasure (Phil. 2:12-13)? Such a life is a step backward from the self-esteem we have all worked so hard to develop.

That, however, is exactly where we have to be if the gospel is going to offer hope to a world dying in the futility of its own wisdom.

Can you imagine a faith walk that has no fear of government, no matter how corrupt it has become, and sees every hiccup, bad or good, as a reminder to the Christian that he or she is a citizen, not primarily of America, but of an eternal Kingdom that will long survive even the collapse of America? This would certainly put us in a different light among our neighbors, would it not? Certainly it would invite the ire of the God Bless America crowd, professing Christians or not!

Where Do We Go from Here?

With the exception of an about-face, I fail to have a clear answer as to the path from here, as it is my belief that American Evangelicals have distinguished themselves biblically as lemmings running over the edge of redemptive history to the joy of all skeptics. The path forward promised by our Lord was to begin with an obscure gate opening to a way so narrow and so long as to be the lesser-desired option for all of human nature (Matt. 7:13-14). What a thrill it is to know that Jesus took the long view of transformation! What sadness it is that we prefer the more comfortable and immediate way.

That lesser-desired path is the one that has always been staring us in the face – returning to an attitude of joyful repentance, placing absolute