Tyler Jones, a church planter with Acts 29 down in Raleigh, has an interesting post up today on the Resurgence website called “The Poison of Quaint Moralism”; it’s addressed to his Southern context but has validity far beyond it. He writes,
The South has been poisoned, and the poison is “quaint moralism.” This poison has systematically infected tens of millions in the South and we are now in the midst of a moralistic pandemic. . . . Our churches are full of good-looking, upright, moral people. The tragic irony is that our goodness is our poison. A great many Southerners claim Christianity as their religion, mimicking righteousness on the surface while their hearts remain unchanged by the gospel of Jesus. I understand the gravity of that statement and do not make it hastily. Here in the South, the gospel has either been ignored or foolishly assumed. We have satiated our desire for God through quaint morality, allowing people to ignore their need for Jesus.
There is a common and deadly misconception that the church is supposed to produce people who live “good Christian lives.” This misconception spreads easily because it bears a strong superficial resemblance to the fruit of true holiness; but it just isn’t so. After all, it’s perfectly possible for most of us to be nice, moral people—good enough on the outside to make most folks happy, at any rate—in our own strength; and in this country with its Christian heritage, the world is perfectly happy to let you live a nice, moral life, as long as you are properly “tolerant”—which is to say, that you don’t do anything that makes anybody else uncomfortable. It’s a way of living that makes it easy for us to look at ourselves and think we’re doing just fine, and not realize how much we need God—while on the inside, our hearts remain closed to him. As C. S. Lewis said,
We must not suppose that if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world.
Moralistic religion is bloodless and powerless; it can affect behavior, but cannot touch the roots of sin in the heart. It directs our attention to ourselves and our own efforts, and thus away from God; it turns us away from grace and toward legalism, and thus waters the seeds of self-righteousness, arrogance and spiritual pride in our souls. The Devil is perfectly happy to make us moral, if only we will be moral to please ourselves (or other people) rather than God; what else, after all, was Jesus’ complaint against the Pharisees? Thus Michael Horton opens his book Christless Christianity with this story:
What would things look like if Satan really took control of a city? Over a half century ago, Presbyterian minister Donald Grey Barnhouse offered his own scenario in his weekly sermon that was also broadcast nationwide on CBS radio. Barnhouse speculated that if Satan took over Philadelphia, all of the bars would be closed, pornography banished, and pristine streets would be filled with tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing. The children would say, “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am,” and the churches would be full every Sunday . . . where Christ is not preached.
If Christ is preached, everything else follows. If Christ is not preached, nothing else matters.