The Greatest Threat to Christianity - What Do We Do?

How then do we overcome this shallowness? John Macarthur offers his opinion:

”I am absolutely 100% convinced that the weakness of the church in America, the superficiality of the church, the shallowness of the church, the hypocrisy of the church is directly related to the absence of any cost or any price to be paid to be a Christian. If you don’t have to pay a price, heh, just jump on the bandwagon. If persecution came to America, you would see a very different kind of Christianity. A whole lot of people who are really good to talk about Jesus won’t be talking about Jesus any more. Who profess to know Jesus and to be part of the church, they will stop talking very fast if the price was as high as it is for some people.”

Obviously, no one should be advocating persecution for persecutions sake, but there is some truth here. We don’t have to work at it; neither do we seem to really want to work at it.

He offers some things we can do to increase our discernment. I commend the entire article to you but in summary he recommends:

Desire it – Proverbs 2:2-5. If you desire only health, wealth and comfort then you will not be spiritually discerning. Ask God to change your desires.

Pray for it – 1 Kings 3:9, James 1:5, Phil. 1:9-10. You will not be a spiritually discerning person without the power of the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:11-16) Ask God for wisdom and discernment.

Learn from others – 1 Corinthians 12:10. Discerning truth and error is a spiritual gift in the church today. There are those gifted by God revealing the false teachers. Learn from what they teach and write. The local church is important in finding, and sharing, this gift.

Study God’s Word – 2 Timothy 2:15, Acts 17:11. You could do all the above and still not be spiritually discerning if you don’t diligently study His Word. In His Word is the only place you will find the truth to discern. As the Bereans we have to compare the message we receive with the Scripture. This will take maximum effort and work but it is what we are called to do to bring honor to God.

Implicit in these recommendations is a desire to support churches that practice discernment. Churches that have a high view of God, a high view of Scripture, a high view of theology and a high view of church. Churches that preach doctrine from the Word in a way that magnifies Christ and edifies the church. Churches that are serious about worship.

Next week: Final thoughts

You can find all the posts in this series here.