The Tragedy of Evangelicalism for Those Who Enter Reformed Churches from Their Ranks

 The true tragedy of Evangelicalism and its lack of teaching a full worldview to those who grow up within it is not necessarily that people grow up in it unaware of how much of their lives had been wrecked by not knowing all sorts of biblical things they needed to know. The real tragedy instead is that coupled with the lack of having been taught a full worldview, evangelicals often assume they already have the standards they need to discern what is Christian and what is not, what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false. 

In other words, the real tragedy is the assumption of understanding the whole of Christianity when only a part of it has been taught. This is the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It is the tendency for all humans to assume that when they have been given some knowledge of an area of study, when they do not realize the vastness and complexity of the field, they tend to assume that they have a sufficient understanding of that field enough to make all sorts of judgments based upon that now assumed expertise. We see this in college courses where students may take something like Philosophy 101 and suddenly think that they are experts in the field of philosophy, or when seminary students take Greek 101, all of a sudden, they are biblical scholars (which is why you will often hear the statement that a first-year Greek class has enough Greek to be dangerous now).

Even though this can be true of any field (think about how we're all doctors in our own minds because we have so much medical information available to us) it is most true of religion due to arguments given by certain philosophers in the Enlightenment arguing that religion cannot be evaluated empirically but only experientially. We have an assumption that religious opinions can neither be confirmed nor contradicted. Postmodernity has assumed this argument in its general feeling that religion is personal and cannot be judged by anyone outside of oneself. To do so is arrogant because it lifts one's experience over another's. 

What this means for evangelicals is that the little knowledge that has been given to them is assumed to be sufficient to judge any other teaching that comes their way. The problem is that Evangelicalism does not teach a full worldview and what this ultimately means is that where it does not teach a Christian worldview, the culture's worldview remains intact and even syncretized with Evangelicalism. What this further entails is that evangelicals are believing and practicing things that the wicked world practices because they were never taught that these things are not consistent with a Christian worldview.

Now, that is not yet the tragedy. Anyone can recover from being taught falsely. The problem is that many have come to believe that they do not need to be retaught and instead use their culture's beliefs, which they believe are consistent with Christianity, to judge everything that now comes down to them from the pulpit of Reformed churches that are teaching a full Christian worldview. in other words, they have standardized many of their previous beliefs and practices and have made them the measure of anything they hear from now on.

Because they have already come to believe that what they know and practice is Christianity itself, everything else will be pulled through the grid of that insufficient, and often syncretized, worldview. What often happens then is a conflict takes place between the evangelicals and the Reformed churches into which they enter because what they are now being taught is contrary to what they had already thought to be good and true. Some will realize they had not been taught the full counsel of God and avoid this trap. Many others, however, will either cause dust ups in the church or just leave quietly. Either way, these latter two groups will not tolerate the fuller worldview that contradicts their previous one.

The tragedy, therefore, is that Evangelicalism, by teaching people that what they're hearing is Christianity, causes people to believe that they know what Christianity does and should teach, and by doing so, closes them off from being open to a fuller Christian worldview.

The worldview of Christianity that they were taught is normative to them. The worldview of Christianity that they were not taught, and runs counter to things they have already adopted as good or true, sounds crazy to them. It's extreme. It's radical. It sounds like a cult. No one wants to be a part of a crazy cult. They want the normal Christianity with which they are familiar or imagined as ideal based on their present understanding that makes them feel safe. They assume that there is a safety in numbers, so if most evangelicals do or do not believe something, it must be safe to assume that they've landed on the right position. Likewise, many of our reformed churches even are recovering evangelical churches and have themselves not come fully to a Christian worldview. It is thought that there is safety in those numbers as well. 

Instead, I would suggest that evangelicals start with the assumption that they do not understand Christianity rather than with the assumption that they basically have gotten it. This will help with learning new things that may sound crazy if one already assumes the absoluteness of its opposite. In fact, I would suggest that we all do this regardless of how much you think you already know. We are all under God's Word. It is God who grants understanding of it and He does so through the teachers of the church; but those teachers themselves must approach it with fear and trembling. It is no plaything with which he feed our egos. If it says, "Jump," we should say, How high?" not, "I've never heard it tell me to jump before so I think that's nuts and won't do it." 

We are all recovering from a worldview that runs contrary to God's Word and are often unaware of it. The worst thing one can do is dig his heels in before honestly and openly hearing out Christian teachers who are also seeking to believe and present a fuller biblical worldview in their ministries. 

In this regard, even though we often view Evangelicalism as a steppingstone to further growth, it is often a stumbling block instead, and this is the tragedy of those who are brought up in it. It prevents people from being teachable, and tragically, they are often unaware that the previous evangelicalism that had trapped them in false beliefs is still doing so even when the movement has been left behind.

I've often argued that this is really the only way to be a heretic. Most of us believe heretical ideas in our early Christian life simply because we weren't corrected until later concerning them. The heretic, however, is not merely one who believes heresy but rather one who refuses to be corrected in his heresy. In fact, church discipline is only done upon those who are unteachable. They refuse to acknowledge and repent of their sin but if they had been open to the church's teaching about that sin there would be no church discipline needed. We might then say that being unteachable is the only unpardonable sin, as if the Pharisees had been teachable to the Spirit of God they would not have blasphemed Christ. To be unteachable to God's Word through God's church is, therefore, the one sin that Christians should fear the most. It hardened Pharaoh's heart, caused Judas to betray Christ, and has brought about the damnation of Popes. 

So this is a lament, I guess, for the evangelicals caught in the trap of the Evangelicalism that did not provide the needed worldview to create Christian standards of discernment but rather only the illusion that no further or contrary standards are necessary. May God turn all of our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh and open the eyes of the blind that we might truly see the light of His glory in all things. And may He do away with the stumbling block of partial-Christianity and replace it with the fullness of His whole counsel.