Simple Answers to Vexed Questions

Simple answers to vexed questions are lovely things. They are also exceedingly rare.

Last week at the island, IC and I asked why so many young men we read about and know personally have “gone Reformed” or are thinking seriously about it. As someone who’s very satisfied with the scriptural faithfulness, consistency and durability of the teaching handed down to me by previous generations in my own tradition, I’m deeply curious what is drawing our youth toward a theological alternative characterized by determinism, allegory, abrogated promises and, yes, on the younger end, an increasingly undeniable tendency towards unabashed antisemitism.

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

It’s not that the old guys I’ve been reading and listening to for the last forty years got everything right, of course. It’s that as I’ve invested my own time and energy in repeatedly searching the scriptures, I came to the conclusion that they were closer than anybody else out there. Not perfect, but closer. The repairs needed are all in the upper stories; the foundation is pretty solid.

Unfortunately, as they say, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Not everybody uses my metrics.

As friends shared similar stories of young men making for the exits, it became increasingly evident there is no single reason kids change churches. Honesty and objectivity require we let those who have become discontented with Dispensational churches speak for themselves. I’m going to let one Reformed convert say his piece this morning, bearing in mind that his situation growing up may not resonate with you. It doesn’t with me, but perhaps it’s another piece of the puzzle, and not one we came up with in our island discussion.

What did we come up with? Well, COVID for one.

1/ Action Orientation

I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Dispensational evangelical churches dropped the ball in a big way during the lockdowns. One of the most appealing things about Reformed theology, especially to young men, is that it provides an outlet for their boundless energy and growing independence. They want to change the world, and Reformers offer them that very thing as a goal: to disciple the nations. During COVID, the nations locked down cooperative churches comforting ourselves with the words of Romans 13 while allowing their disgruntled minorities to gather publicly and riot with impunity. Our young men rightly said, “That’s not fair!”

Tired of sitting at home on Zoom, they looked around for anybody within the evangelical community who appeared to be actually doing something. Most or all of these were the leaders of Reformed churches.

2/ Simple Answers

Another piece of the puzzle? Simplicity. Reformed theology is dead simple. On the Calvinist side, the answer to every inquiry about causation is “God did it.” Simple. With regard to eschatology, one people of God all through history: Israel is the Church and the Church is Israel. Simple. With regard to Christ’s return and judgment of the world, a single coming and a single judgment. Simple. Concerning all those prophetic books at the end of the Old Testament that we don’t understand, just chuck ’em. They’re fulfilled allegorically in the Church, which means we probably have anything important we might find in them stated explicitly in the New Testament. Makes for a much smaller Bible. Simple. With regard to God’s dealings with man throughout history, no complex tactical changes over time. It’s all grace pretty much from beginning to end. Simple.

What young mind wouldn’t love a theological package the basics of which can be grasped in minutes rather than months and years?

3/ An Easy Scapegoat

A third piece of the puzzle? An easy scapegoat. Why is the West such a mess today? Young Reformers have decided it’s got to be those evil Jews. To be fair, evangelicals of the last few generations have not helped make much of a case for a balanced, biblical view of Israel that includes secular politicians with agendas, the “synagogue of Satan”, Messianic Jews and those who will one day form a believing Remnant. Perhaps we all crave simplicity and binary solutions.

Thus, it’s hardly surprising to find young Reformed males skewing Nationalist, much to the horror of their elders, who have no clue how to restrain them from the “evils” of so-called racist thinking. How could they? Their theology gives them no good, Christian answers to “the Jewish question”.

4/ Churches That Work

Here’s one we didn’t consider. A post entitled “The Doctrines of Grace Found Me” chronicles one man’s journey from Dispensational theology to Reformed Calvinism:

“At this point, I had to ask myself, if the allegedly horrible doctrines of Calvinism were the only substantive doctrinal difference between the Baptist churches I had come from, and the ones I now saw, how is it that they seemed to produce such a massive difference in church life?

Eventually, experience provided explanation. If God is sovereign over salvation, you don’t need gimmicks, games and goofiness to win and keep true disciples. If God sovereignly speaks through His Word, then the preacher’s job is to unleash the lion of the Word from its cage, not attempt his own circus tricks. If God is sovereign over His worship, then He gets to decide how we worship Him, and we follow those instructions to the letter. If God is sovereign over His people, then church leadership is responsible to mediate God’s authority through the Word, not assert its own. If God is sovereign over salvation, then we can expect that true conversion will bring abiding, persevering faith, and we should treat only those who persevere as true disciples — the rest we evangelise. In these and all kinds of other ways, I saw how the doctrines of grace affected church life.

Again, I was not drawn to the dizzying heights of the decrees of God, or of foreknowledge before the foundation of the world, or of the order of regeneration and faith. I still find these doctrines awesome to contemplate and difficult to comprehend. But I was wooed and won by God-centredness. The doctrine of a supreme and sovereign God seemed to produce churches that emphasised God’s gracious work, not man’s angsty attempts.

Appropriately then, I can say that I didn’t seek out the doctrines of grace. They found me.”

Okay, let’s think about that.

The Doctrines of Grace at Work

The man who wrote this post doesn’t push the more volatile aspects of Reformed theology online. He’s gracious, generally sound and often perceptive. Perhaps I understand why a little better after reading his reasons for leaving behind the Dispensational Baptists he grew up among. Turns out he was in a bad church, and he found himself a better one. It just happened to be Reformed.

As I read his entire piece, I found myself thinking that the differences in ecclesiastical practice and Christian living that David observed in moving from one tradition to another may have a lot less to do with Reformed theology or the Doctrines of Grace at Work than he thinks. Personally, I too believe God is sovereign over salvation, over his word, over worship and over his people just as he declares here, and I can say with confidence that most Dispensationalists do too. We just don’t define sovereignty as micromanagement at the atomic level.

Good Churches and Bad Churches

Interestingly, not a single quality that our writer identifies and says he enjoys in the churches of his current denomination is a Reformed distinctive, nor do all such qualities follow logically from Reformed teaching. This is especially true of Reformed evangelism, which can only be justified on the basis that Jesus commanded it. From a determinist theological perspective, it makes no sense. If God will save whom he will save and damn whom he will damn, nothing can change that, including and especially my “angsty attempts” at preaching the gospel.

Any local church of any tradition that takes seriously the headship of Christ over his church and the teaching of the New Testament may over time find itself characterized by discipleship, plurality of qualified leadership, families with teens that come to faith, faithful expository preaching, seriousness about living out the faith and an absence of gimmickry in evangelism. It simply depends on the individuals present and the degree to which their corporate and individual Christian walks are in harmony with the teaching of scripture.

In short, David’s problem is not with Dispensationalism, it’s with churches and churchgoers who fail to live out the implications of their faith. Those are bound to turn anyone off.