Spirit-Filled Verses, Carnal Christianity
How Evangelical Spirituality Fails Believers
Many years ago, in another life, I spent three and a half years as an evangelical Christian. I was a college student and a convert, not having been raised in a religious home. Ultimately, I abandoned my faith for a variety of reasons. One of those was that I just couldn’t seem to make it work.
Evangelicalism is a belief system, with components like faith, prayer, and submission. When applied as prescribed, the believer is promised spiritual joy and a peace that surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7). Sincere faith will allow the holy spirit to create a spiritual transformation from within, bringing the Christian out of the prisons of sin and carnality, and into the spirit of god.
I used to wonder whether I may have been able to experience that promise if I had stuck it out longer. Was there some component I was lacking, or some concept that was eluding me?
In the World But Not of It
According to evangelical theology, all Christians start as carnal believers. When we first accept Christ as our savior, our journey with god has just begun. We still feel much like we did before we were saved — seeking worldly goals and comforts. As we mature in faith and understanding, however, we are to be transformed into spirit-filled Christians, pursuing a closer relationship with god and losing our concern for the circumstances of our worldly lives.
The mature Christian is expected to live in the secular world but as an essentially spiritual being. We are to reject the values and ways of the world, such as egotism, materialism, and vice, and become instead ambassadors and instruments of god’s will on Earth. In return, god will not only fill us with joy and peace, but provide for our material and emotional needs.
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. — Matthew 6:33
Unfortunately, it doesn’t often work as advertised. We study the Bible and grow in understanding, but our faith remains largely at the carnal level. We are reluctant to share the gospel with others because we fear damage to our human relationships. Our tithes are limited by worldly desires or fear of want. We worry and fret over our problems because we don’t trust god’s care and leadership of our lives.
We can’t seem to free ourselves from our worldly desires and concerns. They have a vice grip on our psyches.
A Biblical Flood of Advice
A perusal of evangelical sermons, books, movies, and articles reveals just how many of these center on some form of advice about how to break this stranglehold. We are told, through a million thoughtful avenues, how to trust god, how to surrender to god, how to put god in the driver’s seat, how to build a faith of steel, how to become a prayer warrior, how to banish fear, how to defeat doubt, how to slay Satan’s sabotage, how to live like an apostle, how to let god out of the box, how to be a real disciple, and how to fill our heart with Jesus.
An entire genre and industry operates on telling us how to make it work.
In addition, we are exhorted by miraculous tales of Christians who took the plunge and actually reached the spirit-filled promise land. A young woman was dumped by her fiancé, but trusted that it was god’s will for her life. She later shared the gospel with a friend who accepted Christ and they ended up getting married! A father lost his job but believed on the Lord, giving his last $100 to the church. Then he got a phone call with a job offer for an even higher salary!
Finally, as a last resort, we are threatened. Carnal Christians are accused of laziness, worldliness, selfishness, inauthentic faith, and sometimes even a false salvation. Books, articles, and sermons using this tactic cite verses like For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it — Matthew 16:25, Do not love the world, or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. — 1 John 1:15, and Those controlled by the sinful nature, cannot please god — Romans 8:8.
Your Mileage May Vary
So there you are at a crossroads. You feel god calling you to a year-long commitment to a foreign mission. But that would require quitting your job and trusting god to not only provide for your family in your absence, but to provide you with an equivalent job or income upon your return. It would require you to trust god, let god out of the box, build a faith of steel, banish fear, and defeat doubt. You would have to take the plunge, follow Peter out of the boat, and walk over the water to Jesus (Matthew 14:29). You would have to actually live a story that would become one of those miraculous tales passed around to encourage other Christians.
Now lets be honest for a moment. How many reading this, in the same situation, would take that mission assignment? My guess is that a few might, but most would not, because their faith would be insufficient.
And because deep down, beneath all the advice, theology, and Bible stories, we know better.
It’s not that the miraculous stories we hear aren’t true, it’s because they are “miraculous” — rare exceptions that are far from the expected norm. If these stories were normal and usual we would not think of them as “miraculous.” They would be ordinary, just the way things worked for believers, and thus not even remarkable enough to recount.
The norm is that god does not hold up his end of the bargain. Instead of receiving divine help, we find ourselves a continent away trying to deal with debt, foreclosure, and kids without health insurance back home.
But this is not god’s fault or god’s failure. It’s all ours. Somehow, we just weren’t doing it right. There are a myriad of reasons why god does not answer our prayers or come through for us like we are taught to expect.
Our foreign missionary may be told that the calling he felt was not from god after all, but merely his own desire for a break from tensions in his marriage. Or maybe this hardship is part of god’s plan to teach his wife some kind of lesson in her Christian journey. Or maybe god is testing them both, or putting them through trials of fire to further purify their faith. Or maybe their faith ultimately faltered, because if they had the faith of a mustard seed, they could move mountains (Matthew 17:20). Or maybe god still intends to answer his missionary’s prayers — sometime. It’s just that when god answers prayers, it’s on his time, and his time is perfect. Or maybe his prayers lacked the faith required for god to say yes.
A Simpler Explanation
From subsequent experience as an outsider, I notice two main ways evangelicals handle their inability to detach from carnality. Younger evangelicals take the system completely to heart, beating themselves black and blue over their failures and insufficient faith. Older evangelicals seem to accept their defeat. They rationalize that yes, we disappoint god. We don’t share the gospel very often. Our prayers often lack faith. We fret over our problems instead of just giving them over to god. And we cover our ears to calls for mission service. But that’s okay. God forgives us. You don’t have to be perfect to get into heaven.
As an agnostic, I take a wider view, outside the theological bubble. What I see is not failure, but abuse. I see a god and a theology that makes impossible demands of people, sets them up for failure, then trains them to blame themselves for failing. I see a father who shows his children again and again and again how they disappoint him and how lucky they are that he doesn’t kick them out of the house.
I became an evangelical Christian because of the promise of joy and spiritual peace. Instead I got a millstone of obligation, failure, confusion, and guilt.
When I dropped that millstone, I felt lightness and relief. Yes, I still had all the burdens of life, but now at least I didn’t have to feel guilty and like a failure for fretting over them. And I could end the civil war between my spiritual and secular selves. I accepted that I was created with instincts necessary to survive in this material realm, and that these were neither evil not the enemy. Finally I could put down my sword and stop all the fighting.
I now pursue a more limited and accessible spiritual path, which I found in Galatians 5:22–23 — But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. These goals are more compatible with the world I live in, and they are what I strive for.
The System is a Trap
It’s not that spiritual peace and detachment from the world are impossible or don’t exist. I do believe we can commune with a higher consciousness, what Christians calls “god,” and experience an amazing spiritual transformation. But if we were to consult the true professionals in this endeavor — the monks and nuns in the monasteries and convents who have been practicing it for centuries — they would tell us that the evangelical system has it wrong. They would say that the first step towards detachment from the secular world is to physically get as far away from it as possible, and stay there your whole life.
Because it is metaphysically impossible to be in the secular world and not be of it.
This is why monasteries were established centuries ago. They remove us from the secular attachments, distractions, and obligations that prevent spiritual focus. Expecting people to attain a monastic level of spirituality while also meeting their obligations in secular society is a recipe for failure. I would also call it abusive.
The stories of the victims of this system are not told in the sermons, testimonies, and articles that fuel it. They are coming out, however, in an exploding new non-fiction genre — deconversion. Former pastors, missionaries, ministers, and ordinary parishioners are telling the normal tales — the unkept promises, imaginative excuses, and blame gaming of an impossible theology. For them as for me, the evangelical spiritual system was a trap in which victory lay not in success but in escape.
I no longer wonder whether I could have stuck it out and gotten it to work. Though my escape was decades ago, I still feel victorious.
