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Gramster Rant: Contagious Christianity and the Dog Turd Chili
Everybody today says they want revival. Do they really? Because when you look at what actual historical revivals looked like, it wasn't flowery, it wasn't a wonderful everything's-better experience. It came with pushback, persecution, heartache, and trouble. And in recent years, plenty of good pastors, not even hard preachers, not Spurgeon or Whitfield or Luther types, just regular guys their congregations genuinely loved, have been run out of their churches for preaching the true gospel. It's not an easy position to be in when you really want to share the truth. There are the friends who won't come hear you speak anymore because you might go off about this or that. Be careful what you talk about, right?
Years back, Bill Hybels put out a book called Contagious Christianity, and the whole premise was: if people like us, they'll like our Jesus. That could not be further from the truth. People choose what they're going to be offended by. That's a personal decision, a personal opinion, and it's different for everybody. You can't pretend you're going to go out there and not offend anyone.
Here's the thing about Contagious Christianity: there's a lot in it that's actually pretty good. You start reading it and think, "well, that makes sense." We definitely want people to have good testimonies. We want them to be liked. We want them to have a word for somebody. But it's got enough falsehood mixed in that you need to know the difference. And the analogy that's been used for years and years is this: if you make a big pot of award-winning chili, and then you go out in the yard and grab a small dog turd and stir it in, forgive anyone eating right now, you're still going to eat the whole pot. Put the spoon down all you want, you're still going to eat it. It's less than two percent contamination, but that's contagious Christianity. There's enough falsehood in there to lead people into thinking that being faithful, sharing the Word, sticking to the Word of God, letting the Spirit speak through you (all technically good things) are really about you becoming a player on the stage. Instead, you're supposed to be in the background sharing what God does. The Spirit of God comes in and the Spirit of God is what's on the stage. The Word of God, the conviction of sin, the substitute who took the wrath you deserved on Himself, that's much different than "if they like us, they'll like our Jesus, and maybe they'll listen to us."
That man-focused mentality, "I want you to like me, so I'm going to appease you," may have in part led to a lot of the inappropriate relationships coming out of pulpits in recent years. It's so man-focused, and the focus becomes appeasement instead of truth, and pretty soon that's where sin creeps in. Being liked as a pastor is one of the most deceptive things in the world, because they only like you till they don't, and then they don't like you the moment they realize you're actually speaking truth.
So the advice for every pastor listening: stick to the gospel message. Tell the truth Jesus wants spoken, good, bad, and otherwise. Nobody's saying be needlessly harsh, bringing too much edge, offending people just because you didn't orate correctly, that's a mistake too, and everybody makes mistakes. But when you're in the groove, in the glide of the Spirit, giving out the truth you've studied and exegeted all week, God does stuff with it that you could never do yourself. And when He does, you know it wasn't because of you. And when people turn against you because of it, you know that's not about you either. You can't take it personally.
There's a story worth remembering here. Back on the radio in 2012, a comment got made about a celebrity thanking "his Lord and Savior," referring to a political figure, during an awards show, calling it blasphemous the next morning on air, since everybody was already talking about it. The calls came in fast: racist, out of line, owed an entire community an apology. Went back, listened to the air check, never said anything close to that. People can hear the exact same thing and walk away with completely different takeaways, and that happens constantly when you're sharing the gospel. So if that's going to happen no matter what you say, why not just go hard with the truth? Why not go all in?
Because people, like already established, are going to choose to take offense at whatever they want to take offense at. So if you're trying to appeal to a lost, unrepentant person, what exactly are you bargaining for? You're not going to get what you think, because no one is seeking God. You're trying to appeal to someone who isn't seeking Him in the first place. Romans 3:10-12 lays it out cold, and it's worth reading slow:
"As it is written, there is no righteous person, not even one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks out God. They all have turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. There is no one who does good, no, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; with their tongues they keep deceiving. The venom of asps is under their lips."
That's a stark, dark passage, hard to even take seriously sometimes given how casually it can get read, because it deserves weight. No one seeks God. God has to intervene on our behalf. He has to give us eyes to see and ears to hear. Even the fact that anyone can come to saving faith in Christ Jesus is itself a gift from God. So trying to appeal to someone who doesn't seek after God, after reading that, is an exercise in futility. It's not going to work.
God has to call and draw the sinner. That's been a common thread of the authentic gospel for many, many years. And He does it through the Word. That Word goes out in a lot of different ways. Even something as simple as a Gideon Bible sitting in a random hotel room can be used by God to reach somebody. And none of this is about offending people for the sake of offending. It's that you are lost and unrighteous and a sinner, that's what's offensive, and it's going to be offensive to a lost world no matter how gently it's delivered.
Making people like you first doesn't change a thing. What it does is leave you more heartbroken, because now you've got an affection for them that's deeper than it was before you even started proclaiming the Word of God to them. It's like the doctor-and-sick-person picture in Scripture: the gospel is for the sinner, not the righteous, the same way the doctor comes for the sick, not the healthy. And when you need surgery, the doctor brings the scalpel. He creates a wound that leads to your recovery and your restoration. The gospel works the same way. It strikes a wound in the soul, and that's when you realize you actually need the scalpel. Nobody wants it until they realize they need it.
American culture right now has an anti-scalpel posture built into it. We don't want to hear about the cut that has to happen to heal us. We don't want to be uncomfortable. So instead, we just add Jesus onto whatever void we're already carrying and ask Him to fill it, without ever asking why the void is there in the first place. It's there because God puts eternity on everybody's heart, and only Jesus Christ, through His redemptive work on the cross and His victory over death, hell, and the grave at the resurrection, can fill it.
Read Psalm 51 if you want to see a real portrait of brokenness. When you're in that broken state and come to the Savior, you start looking at other broken people who don't have Him, and your heart goes out to them. But if you try to share the gospel in a way engineered never to offend anybody, you strip out the scalpel that actually cuts the sin out of a life. That's the single biggest issue facing soft, tolerant American Christianity right now.
Salvaged by God Deep Dive: George Whitfield and the Cost of True Revival
To see what real revival actually costs, look at George Whitfield (spelled Whitefield, pronounced Whitfield, and if somebody mispronounces it, don't sweat it). He was one of the central faces of the Great Awakening in the 1700s, right on the heels of the Reformation. Like plenty of other preachers of his day, he started getting kicked out of pulpits and towns for preaching the authentic, true gospel instead of conforming to the itching ears of people who wanted to hear something different.
He's most remembered for a specific image: carrying a table out into the middle of a field, standing on top of it, and preaching. It was a different culture back then. A lot of people were out working the fields, and it took a lot of hands to do it, so Whitfield would ride out by horseback with a couple of companions, set the table down, do something like an all-call during people's lunch hour, and they'd gather around while he stood up there and preached the Word of God. A lot of the time it wasn't a "can't we all just get along" kind of message. It was very convicting of sin. And yet people were still drawn to it. God brought people to that table.
On the invitation to come to Christ:
Anybody candidating as a pastor right now ought to try opening their introductory sermon with Whitfield's opening line, and stand on a table while doing it:
"Come, all you liars, all you Pharisees, all you fornicators, adulterers, swearers, and blasphemers. Come to Christ, and He will take away all your filth. He will cleanse you from your pollution, and your sins shall be done away. Come, come, my guilty brethren; I beseech you, for Christ's sake and for your immortal soul's sake, come unto Christ."
Even Billy Graham didn't go quite that direction. But that's true, that's what it is. Real Christianity is, as R.C. Sproul put it, one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. The temptation, once we're saved and living this great life we actually do have real joy in, is to step outside of that and start trying to do things in our own strength, which the Bible warns about over and over and over again. That opening quote is a true revival statement, full stop.
On becoming a scandal:
So what about the people who think coming to Christ means the problems disappear, that life just gets easier from here on out? Whitfield again:
"If you're going to walk with Jesus Christ, you are going to be opposed. In our day, to be a true Christian is really to become a scandal."
And that's still true right now. Standing up for conviction, defending truth, defending innocent life, going against public opinion because conscience demands it, still turns people into scandals today the exact same way it did in Whitfield's day.
On self-righteousness:
Why is it so scandalous? Self-righteousness. Whitfield explains it directly:
"Those who trust in their own righteousness for conversion hide behind their own good works. This is the reason that self-righteous people are so angry with gospel preachers, because the gospel does not spare those who will not submit to the righteousness of Jesus Christ."
It's self-righteousness that gets in the way, whether it's coming from the secular world outside the church or from inside the church itself, because not everybody sitting in the pews has actually come to a saving knowledge of Jesus, even in a healthy congregation made up mostly of believers. That's when the attacks start, inside or outside the walls. And there's no point getting mad at those people, because they're not regenerate. They don't know any better yet.
On climbing to heaven:
On trying to earn your own way to heaven through self-righteousness, Whitfield doesn't pull a single punch:
"What? Get to heaven on your own strength? Well, you might as well climb to the moon on a rope of sand."
It's the same idea as trying to sculpt something out of water, or empty the ocean with a teaspoon. Futile, futile, futile. It is the Word of God that convicts and converts, a work of the Holy Spirit through His Word, not a product of human effort.
On studying the Word:
So what's the practical next step, once you're converted and you know you can't climb that rope in your own strength? Whitfield's closing piece of advice:
"Study to know more and more, for the more you know Him, the more you will love Him."
That lines up exactly with the warnings about the last days: a coming famine of the Word, and love growing cold. Staying in God's Word is the food, the safeguard against both. Don't want to starve to death, you've got to eat. Don't want your faith to die away, you've got to study. It matches 2 Timothy 2:15 almost word for word, the umbrella verse behind gospel-centered ministry work everywhere:
"Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a worker who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth."
Some translations render it "do your best," others "work hard," others "study," but the end result of that diligence is the same: you handle God's Word properly and correctly. Stay in it, and everything else stops mattering so much. Kicked out of your pulpit, preaching from a table in an open field, none of it changes anything, because studying the Word is the rope to the moon that isn't made of sand. It's sure. It's perfect. It does the job.
The Real Cost of Revival
Keep in mind how brutal the old revivals genuinely were. Persecution was common, and a lot of it came from inside the church. There were churches Whitfield was allowed to preach in exactly one time before word got around and other congregations refused to have anything to do with him. Traditional Bible teachers of that era regularly got stripped of their livelihoods, kicked out of their churches, and often forced to leave the towns they lived in entirely. If you've ever been outcast for sharing truth with a little edge on it, you're in good company.
Across the 1700s into the 1800s, Whitfield crossed the Atlantic thirteen times, carrying the gospel from England to America. The last sermon he ever preached, he preached standing atop a large wooden barrel, and he passed away the very next morning. Anybody looking for a biography of the man, George Mueller's is a great one, with the orphanage in Bristol; D.L. Moody's is good; Charles Spurgeon's is good; but don't leave out George Whitfield. There are plenty of solid biographies out there. Look for one and be blessed by it.
It was a genuinely important stretch of history. The Reformation hit in the 1600s, and then this Great Awakening rolled through in the 1700s and changed life in the West for centuries to come, because people heard the true gospel, the raw gospel. And it's a hard gospel. It really is.
The Narrow Gate
Which brings everything back to Matthew 7:13-14:
"Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life, and there are few who find it."
Narrow, constricted, difficult, however a translation words it, the idea holds: you give up this life for the life to come, and there's plenty your flesh nature doesn't want to give up. God gives joy in other places along the way while you stand firm and preach. Practically speaking, the narrow way is just being faithful to the exact same thing for twenty years straight, even while where you live changes, where your provision comes from changes, the work itself never does. Standing firm on the truth of God's Word, which brings real joy, because of exactly what Whitfield said: liars, Pharisees, fornicators, adulterers, swearers, blasphemers, immortal and polluted souls, made clean.
That's a whisper of what it's like to be out in a field, working under the sun, hot, sweaty, dust in your eyes, tired, dirty, itching, and then being washed. That rejuvenated feeling, the second wind that lets you finish out the rest of the evening without falling down, is what it is. The road is hard, not because there are difficult hoops standing between here and heaven, but because the road itself is genuinely hard. Jesus goes with you on it and helps navigate so you don't drift off course, don't get distracted, don't get detoured. So instead of leading with "if they like us, they'll like our Jesus," rip the band-aid off. The road's hard. You're not going to have your best life now. The blessings of heaven aren't going to fall open on command. But the reward is great, because the reward is at the end of the road: Christ Himself, and eternal life with Him. That's the prize, and it's what makes the hard road worth it.
Final Thoughts
If speaking the truth has gotten you pushed out of a room, kicked off a stage, or quietly uninvited from something because people are worried about what you might say, that's not a sign something's gone wrong. That's the cost faithful preachers have paid since long before Whitfield ever climbed onto a table in an open field, and it's the exact same cost being paid right now.
It is well with you.