Where the Christian Finds His Identity

I witnessed a conversation on social media the other day that I believe sums up much of the current state of the American church’s public witness. Rather than show a screenshot of this conversation and embarrass this person, who is not a public figure, I’ll give a general summation of the exchange:

Person 1: [Popular Reformed media personality] is one of the greatest theologians ever and [an insulting name for Arminians] have nobody of that caliber.

Person 2: I thought [two of the Reformed personality’s three most famous books] were not that great.

Person 1: I haven’t read those, but your opinion on them is subjective.

If you look beyond the ridiculousness of declaring someone to be one of the best theologians ever without having read his best-known books, “Person 1” is actually behaving exactly as the Christian media industry has primed him to behave. These days, trying to find a popular pastor or theologian who doesn’t present the faith as a perpetual, knock-down, drag-out battle over secondary and tertiary doctrinal matters—when they’re not making the faith about political battles—is a near impossible task. Even among the mainstream “life application” genre, it’s hard to find personalities that, once you look at their daily public conduct, aren’t hard-pushing some secondary agenda as primary. It’s not difficult to find generic platitudes from these personalities about how the believer is to find his identity in Christ, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find nationally recognized minsters who, day in and day out, make sure to publicly give Jesus more attention than they give to other matters.

“Reformed theology is proper Christology!” some will protest, and in this I agree, but I have to break something to them: It’s still secondary and tertiary doctrine, and presenting yourself as a public pastor or theologian while making the majority of your public persona about battling, and even belittling, Christians who disagree with you on these matters—far more than it’s about sharing the four points of the gospel and your personal experience with Jesus—is one of our generation’s ways of engaging in needless controversies and disputes about the law (Titus 3:9). Note that I didn’t say that these discussions aren’t worthwhile, but centering your public identity on intra-church doctrinal and political battles that aren’t putting people’s souls at risk is a form of idolatry. I think there’s a lot of leeway to be given here; there are real intra-church battles that rise to the soteriological level. How could I not give that leeway when so much of my writing is dedicated to battling the increasing presence of genuine white-nationalist thought within the Reformed church? But the doctrine of effectual calling is not one of these things (nor is the political outrage du jour). In this, the majority of American Christianity’s messaging on the celebrity pastor/theologian level is idolatrous, at least on the unpolished, social media level.

I’m a pretty hardcore Particular Baptist. That’s a very niche demographic, which happens to be well-populated by doctrinal and political idolaters. Despite this, I believe that one day I will dwell in the perpetual light of God alongside Christians who believed all sorts of things that I wholeheartedly disagree with, and with whom I have no problem debating the particulars, including Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians. For this, the idolaters in my own sphere of Christianity will accuse me of theological liberalism and dismissing “the false gospel of Rome,” though I’ve had many respectful debates with those believers about how wrong I think their doctrine is.

I don’t really care what the idolaters in my camp think, because most of them spend their days dragging the gospel through the mud with their unseemly behavior, stemming from their clear inability to give Christ primacy in their lives. In daily praxis, I have more in common with many Catholics than I do with them.