Four Signs of a Formulaic Christianity

Christianity, like any other religion, has its formulas. I am not talking about the basic foundation of the church on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is not a formula. That is a fact. I am talking about the ways in which Christians strive for right answers or formulas to apply, myself included. Religion is a seductive siren. She promises all sorts of answers to the unanswerable. Religion offers a way out of wrestling with God.

And wrestling with God will happen if you are trying to follow Him carefully. I am going to tackle the four formulas most often promoted. And my issue with these is not that they lack any truth. A grain of truth or even several grains inhabit these systems that the church hands down to ill-equipped believers.

Formulaic Prayer:

Different denominations do it differently, but the idea is the same. If you pray, God is way up in Heaven ticking off the giant list with a check or an x. Yes to this one; no to that one; make them wait on this one. Because of this very primitive and limited view of prayer, many go prayerless.

The Bible depicts prayer in a variety of different modes, each of them requiring a great deal of the participants. The Old Testament prophets constructed formal arguments as they interceded with God against the captivity of their people. The disciples spent hours in prayer and worship, seeking the presence of the Holy Spirit. Hannah wept and moaned for a child so deeply that the priest thought she was drunk. And even Jesus sweat blood as He surrendered to God’s will and the horror of the cross that awaited Him.

Prayer is a battle, a dirge, a shout of victory. Sometimes it is a burden that is too hard to bear. Sometimes it is just showing up every day and seeking the Lord in a quiet place. But the path between prayer and the effect it has is not a simple direct line. Sometimes we get a quick answer. Sometimes the answer we are seeking will cost us our lives.

The Good Behavior Formula:

Some come into Christianity with the idea that their good behavior will be rewarded. While it is true that obeying the Ten Commandments is a good way to avoid lots of trouble, this isn’t the covenant that Christianity is based on. That is actually a pretty pagan way of looking at things. If we obey the laws, then God can’t be mad at us. Or if I am a good person, I will be protected from tribulations. This isn’t how grace works. This is a transactional religion.

I know so many people who have abandoned their Christianity because cancer knocked on their door. Or financial problems haunt them. Perhaps they become victims of crime. The response of a shallow and religious Christian will be fury that God failed to uphold His part of the bargain. After all, like children who ate all their dinner for the desired dessert, they did their part.

The Christians who stay the course, however, come to understand that trouble knocks on everyone’s door. Religion doesn’t protect you against the trial and reproofs of life. But Jesus holds your hand, or in some cases, carries you through the valley of the shadow of death. I think of Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednigo. They still went into the fiery furnace. But Jesus went in there with them and they escaped without so much as a sunburn.

Cheap Grace Christianity:

Grace gets you off the hook. This one is a hard one. I saw recently a survey on Twitter asking if grace meant that you could sin all you wanted and then God would forgive you. A third of the responses asserted that this was definitely true. A dark shadow fell over my heart when I read that. Reducing the Gospel to a formula to apply like cortisone cream to the rash of sin is the doctrine of fools.

How many of us Christians have sailed ignorantly to our doom because we forgot or never knew that grace was bought with a cost. The wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is death. I repeat that because while at the end of all things, we may be welcomed into Heaven by the skin of our teeth, but rest assured, our sins will leave a legacy of death in our families and communities.  Jude 1:4 deals with this:

 For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Most of the time I see sin justified these days is in the realm of sexuality. I can’t help but read this verse as saying that to use grace as a cover for sexual sin is to deny God. But truthfully, the ways we sin are endless, many of them visible only to ourselves and to God.

Rules-based Christianity:

The last formula that I often see within religious Christianity is the opposite of cheap grace. I save this one for last because it is the kind of religion that Jesus railed against. The Pharisees lacked compassion and so do many people who subscribe to Christianity as a religion. Last week I spoke with four women who have suffered terrible abuse from broken bones to public humiliation at the hands of their husbands. In all four cases, the husbands had the support of their priest and pastor. After all, they made a good show of wanting to carry on with the marriage. They pretended repentance in front of the church and enacted vengeance at home.

Why is this allowed? God hates divorce the pastors proclaim from the pulpit. We need to follow the rules no matter what. Maybe so. But He hates domestic violence worse. Jesus sought out the hurting and the abused. He lifted sinners from their self-made pits. He fed the multitudes. Christianity as a formula will never work because of the “sinners need not enter here” signs. Christianity as a commitment to follow Jesus wherever He leads is risky. It involves surrender. The funny thing about authentic Christianity is that it works from the inside out. Religion tries to change us from the outside in.

I know a Jesus who healed people on the Sabbath. That is the one I want to follow. He loves people more than man’s interpretation of rules. He loves people more than institutions like marriage. He sets captives and adulteresses about to get stoned free.

True religion is keeping oneself unstained from the world and caring for the widow and the orphan says James. If this is so, then religion is a pretty narrow lane. So if we are doing neither, then no matter how many committees we belong to and how many church socials we attend, we may be confused as to what Jesus’ call on our lives really are. Here is the secret that soldiers in the faith would have us know. Following Jesus costs us everything and yet what we give up is as nothing for the life in Christ that we gain.

Relational Faith: Building Trust With God

As an Amazon affiliate, I receive a small commission off purchases at no cost to you.