A Missing Topic in Much of Popular Christianity: Repentance from Sin
by Jeff Lindsay
A
few years ago I tuned in to a televised sermon from a highly
acclaimed pastor leading one of the nation's largest mega-churches.
The pastor talked a lot about faith, but not the kind I'm used to
hearing about.
In
my opinion, that morning he wasn't preaching faith in the Savior
(which I know he preaches sometimes), but faith in yourself. Not just
faith in yourself, but also faith in other mortals, helping them to
look past their problems and see that they can do great things if
only they will believe in — you guessed it — themselves.
I
agree that we should encourage others and be positive, but that's
about all there was to this sermon. Without the foundation of true
faith in Christ and repentance of our sins to follow Him, none of us
will come anywhere close to realizing our potential.
The
broadcast looked and sounded like a typical motivational speaker for
corporate America, but given to a huge audience (about 44,000 people
in the stadium that used to house the Houston Rockets).
Mega-churches draw such large crowds because they make you feel so good.
It
could have been Anthony Robbins or some other feel-good and
believe-in-yourself cheerleader raking in megabucks for an hour or
two of inspirational froth. Not that delusional, greed-based froth
doesn't have an important place in religion.
I
missed the first couple of minutes, so there might have been some
heavy references to Jesus and the Bible before I tuned in, but during
more than 20 minutes of preaching I can only remember one such
reference.
The
popular pastor told people that having faith in others is like what
Jesus did with Peter. He said that when Jesus met Peter, Peter was
rough and used foul language (?). But Jesus looked past all that and
believed in Peter, and told Peter that he had the talent, the skills,
and the personality (?) to be a great disciple, and through this
encouragement, Peter was able to go on and become great —
presumably by believing in himself.
I
got out my LDS printing of the Bible and thumbed through the Topical
Guide trying to find references to personality, believing in
yourself, and Peter's foul language, but I guess we Mormons are using
one of those Bibles with a lot of stuff subtracted from it.
I
get the feeling that the financial pressures that mega-churches face
— just think of the air conditioning costs for such a large
church — might have a profound effect on what gets preached.
Sadly, I think this is the problem we find in some corners of modern
Christianity. A core element of the Gospel has always been that man
must repent. We must have faith in Christ and repent of our sins and
follow Him.
Repentance
would be a more common message if only it didn’t inevitably
lead to recognizing that some things are sins. Sin, that’s the
sticking point. Opposing it is rarely good for popularity or profits.
To
actually preach repentance, one must denounce sin. Not abstract sin,
not the sins of other people, but our own sins, personal sins, even
our favorite ones. Ouch. Repentance hurts. In fact, it begins with
pain, the pain that tells us we are not right with God and have done
something wrong that we are responsible for. Not what the masses
want, I’m afraid.
Yes,
repentance involves pain, and good preaching and a true Christian
ministry can and sometimes should induce genuine pain in the hearts
of the hearers, especially when they are engaging in serious sin, as
Jacob found in Jacob 2 in the Book of Mormon. Such preaching makes
people uncomfortable because we all have sin.
Kudos
to those churches and religions that boldly teach repentance.
However, in my experience in the northern Midwest especially, as
conservative and religious a place as that is, it seemed rare to find
a preacher teaching his or her people that it's a serious sin to live
together before marriage, for example.
It's
easy to find preachers who are totally cool with that and can meet
with and counsel young people for months as they plan their marriage
without ever telling them to repent and begin on a stronger
foundation by not shacking up first. Pastoral silence on this topic
is not blessing the lives of the people.
Have
faith in Christ, repent and be baptized. It's the basic message of
Christianity. And one that still needs to be restored in many
quarters.
We
also need to do a better job of emphasizing this message in some LDS
quarters. It's too often that we have sacrament sermons that are also
contaminated with pop psychology and feel-good fluff off the Internet
rather than being rooted in scripture, where the call to repent is
one of the most repeated messages of all.
You'll
get plenty of calls to repent from the leaders of the Church,
especially in General Conference, but how are we doing in our own
circles of responsibility? Are we helping our families and those we
are responsible for to understand the need to repent and the dangers
of sin? True faith in Christ leads to repentance, something we can't
afford to stop teaching.
Of
course, the first place to begin is in our own lives as we examine
our relationship to God and our daily need to be led out of
temptation, to be delivered from the evil around us and in our lives,
and to draw closer to the Savior through faith in him and regular
repentance.
Jeff Lindsay has been defending the Church on the Internet since 1994, when he launched his
LDSFAQ website under JeffLindsay.com. He has also long been blogging about LDS matters on
the blog Mormanity (mormanity.blogspot.com). Jeff is a longtime resident of Appleton,
Wisconsin, who recently moved to Shanghai, China, with his wife, Kendra.
He works for an Asian corporation as head of intellectual property. Jeff and Kendra are the parents of 4 boys, 3 married and the the youngest on a mission.
He is a former innovation and IP consultant, a former professor, and former Corporate Patent
Strategist and Senior Research Fellow for a multinational corporation.
Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins and Mukund Karanjikar are authors of the book Conquering
Innovation Fatigue (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
Jeff has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University and is a registered US
patent agent. He has more than 100 granted US patents and is author of numerous publications.
Jeff's hobbies include photography, amateur magic, writing, and Mandarin Chinese.