Phillip Cary - Good News for Anxious Christians, Expanded Ed.: 10 Practical Things You Dont Have to Do

2010, 2022 by Phillip Cary

Published by Brazos Press
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.brazospress.com

Ebook edition created 2010

Repackaged edition published 2022

Ebook corrections 12.01.2015, 03.13.2017, 06.20.2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4934-3756-6

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007.

Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Italics applied in Scripture passages indicate emphasis added by the author.

Baker Publishing Group publications use paper produced from sustainable forestry practices and post-consumer waste whenever possible.

For my students,
who have taught me love for the gospel of Christ
by the way they have flourished in it

Contents

Or, How God Really Speaks Today

Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts

Or, How Obedience Is for Responsible Adults

Or, How Faith Seeks Wisdom

Or, How Love Seeks the Good

Or, How Thinking Welcomes Feeling

Or, How Virtues Make a Lasting Change in Us

Or, How God Vindicates the Afflicted

Or, How the Gospel Is Beautiful

Or, How Christian Faith Needs Christian Teaching

Preface

I suppose in some ways this book is a stealth attempt to preach the gospel, disguised as an attack on what I call the new evangelical theology. So let me give away what Im doing right at the beginning, so no one will be misled by the disguise and think the whole purpose of the book is negative.

Im trying to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to Christians. Id like us all to be free to rely on the gospel rather than put our trust in a bunch of supposedly practical ideas that are actually doing us harm. Some folks may find it odd when I say Christians need the gospel, but this is something I firmly believe. I dont think you just accept Christ once in life, and then move on to figure out how to make real changes in your life that transform you. Its hearing the gospel of Christ and receiving him in faith, over and over again, that makes the real transformation in our lives. We become new people in Christ by faith alone, not by our good works or efforts or even our attempts to let God work in our lives.

This is something I learned from Martin Luther, the great sixteenth-century theologian and Reformer. He emphasized that the good news of the gospel is that God has already decided to do something about our liveswhether we let him or not, whether we do anything about it or not, whether we believe it or not. He has sent his only Son to live and die for us, to be raised from the dead and sit at his right hand, all for our sakebut without us having any say in the matter. Thats really good news, and believing it is what makes all the difference in our lives. For it is Christ who redeems us, makes us new, and transforms us. Our practical efforts to transform ourselvesour good worksare just not relevant to this task. Our good works are for our neighbors and provide various outward disciplines that are needed to give order to our lives. The inward transformation of our hearts, however, happens not through anything we try to do but through faith in the gospel, because thats how we receive Christ. He is the one who really changes us.

The new evangelical theology, which I criticize at length in this book, is my name for a set of supposedly practical ideas about transforming your life that get in the way of believing the gospel. They are the result of a long history of trying to be practical in evangelical theology, which has now thoroughly adapted itself to consumer society. There are some interesting things to say about that history, but Im not going to try to say them in this book. Im just going to identify some key ideas that Ive been hearing from students and pastors and other Christians for many years, ideas that I think get in the way of hearing the gospel. Theyre ideas that promise practical transformation, but in real life they mainly have the effect of making people anxiousnot to mention encouraging self-deception, undermining their sense of moral responsibility, and weakening their faith in Christ.

As you may already suspect, Im going to be unsparing in my criticism of these ideas. Its not just that I think theyve got nothing going for them; I think they do real harm to peoples lives. So I want to do my best to free Christians from the burden of believing these ideas and trying to put them into practice. I want to convince you, first of all, that these ideas are not really biblical, despite the fact that they are often dressed up in biblical language. I figure once you realize that you dont have to accept these ideas as biblical, it will be much easier to see how harmful they are to your life.

So heres how it goes. To start with, in the introduction and the first four chapters I try to identify the core of what is distinctive about the new evangelical theology. This is essentially a set of interconnected techniques or ritual practices for making God real in your life, establishing a relationship with God, and so onas if all that kind of thing really depended on you . The techniques all have the characteristic that they turn you away from external things like the word of God, Christ in the flesh, and the life of the church, in order to seek God in your heart, your life, and your experience. Underneath a lot of talk about being personal with God, its a spirituality that actually leaves you alone with yourself.

Then in chapters 5 through 8, I tackle some bad ideas that are not unique to the new evangelical theology. Most of them are widespread in our culture, in one way or another, because they fit so neatly into the needs of consumer society. (One of them, the idea that youre supposed to make decisions based on your motivations, goes back a little further, to the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant.) But they are not purely secular ideas. You encounter them all the time in sermons and Bible studies and spiritual self-help books, so Ive included them on the list of practical ideas that make Christians anxious.

Finally, in the last two chapters I switch gears a bit and talk about preaching and teaching, and why the best way to change our lives is to hear Christ preached, learn who he is, and put our whole trust in him. The alternative not only leads away from Christian faith over time, but in the present it has the drawback that its really boring. Here I think is where pastors have been most seriously misled by the new evangelical theology. Of course they want to be practical, to change people and transform their lives, but they make the terrible mistake of thinking that the way to do this is to preach all about our lives, our experiences, and our heartsas if the only reason we came to church was to hear about ourselves . The secret about this, which would be really liberating for pastors to learn, is that hearing about ourselves rather than Christ all the time is dreary and disheartening. It doesnt do much to change our lives because fundamentally, its just not very interesting.

In all the chapters I start by targeting one of the ideas promoted by the new evangelical theology, but end up by turning to the word of God and looking at his commandments and promises, which is to say, the law and the gospel. I want to give readers a good sample of what I think is the alternative to the new evangelical theology; I hope it will remind them of the taste of good things they have known before and are hungry for still.