Recovering an Earthy Christianity

Location: Batavia, Fall 2020, a small town in Ohio. It felt like a throwback, with few masks in sight. The singers hailed from Clermont County, and the entire atmosphere was imbued with country music. Now, I'm not typically a fan of country music. My upbringing was steeped in rock, rap, and classical. However, last Saturday evening, I found myself unexpectedly captivated by it.

The music was raw, visceral, and deeply connected to the earth. It invoked sensations of smell and touch, the changing seasons, cherished traditions, and specific locations. Each song was about individuals and woven into a larger narrative set within a distinct context, a refreshing departure from contemporary worship music.

Contemporary Christian music (CCM) and modern worship often lack this grounded, earthy quality. Instead, they tend to be predominantly sentimental and ethereal, focusing heavily on the inner life, particularly emotions. CCM centers on the individual and their personal relationship with God, often prioritizing feelings over substance.

This critique of contemporary Christian music is common. As I reconsidered this idea, I listened to ten of the top fifty worship songs from the past few years. I intended to share some excerpts to illustrate my point, but they were dreadful. If you're curious, you can easily find and listen to them online. The music isn't just touchy-feely; it's excessively so, focusing more on eliciting feelings than on any meaningful depth or substance.

Some songs were akin to "Fuzzy Wuzzy was a God," dripping with the kind of sappy teenage heartache lyrics one might expect from a love ballad, only applied to our relationship with Jesus. Hence, it is characterized as "Jesus is my boyfriend" music.

Now, to be fair, not all of the lyrics were terrible. However, even the songs with passable lyrics were performed in a manner that aimed to evoke a sensational experience. You know the feeling—being at a concert where you or a friend gets swept up in the music, losing inhibitions and dancing despite lacking real skill. It's that kind of music designed to envelop you in an immersive experience, drawing you inward until you're lost in it. The end result is much the same as the lyrically deficient stuff. It's inward-focused, individual-centered, and entirely subjective.

Henry Van Til aptly remarked, "That culture is religion externalized." In other words, our religious beliefs manifest in our architecture, art, form of government, music, and so on. By examining a people's culture, you can glean insights into their religion.

As I listened to that country music on that Saturday and contrasted its earthiness with modern Christian music, I began to see our religion reflected in our culture. Much like its music, Modern Evangelical Christianity tends to prioritize the inner life or what it perceives as spiritual realities.

Physical existence—the life of the body and all its activities and productions—is often downplayed or outright ignored. What truly matters is deemed to be the spiritual realm—which is recasted as merely the stuff that happens inside you.

In low or non-Reformed churches, this manifests in emotive worship services and feel-good preaching that resemble little more than second-rate TED talks.

In Reformed churches, it often takes the form of abstract theological sermons that rarely touch on practical application. Many of us Presbyterians, it seems, are mere disembodied brains, disconnected from the physical world around us.

In fact, whenever a pastor begins to emphasize the practical application of doctrine and the importance of good works, he is invariably accused of preaching legalism.

"Pastor, we are saved by faith, not by works," they'll say, and so forth.

I know there are excellent teaching elders within RUF (Reformed University Fellowship), the college outreach of the PCA (Presbyterian Church in America). However, every time—without fail—that I've heard an RUF pastor preach or give a report at presbytery, they've claimed that their students' most significant struggles are rooted in perfectionism. Consequently, they preach ardently against legalism.

But let's reminisce about college, shall we? I remember it vividly. The sins I witnessed were laziness, various forms of sexual immorality, drinking, partying, and so on, and not solely among the pagans but also professed Christians. These are the common sins of youth, yet antinomianism—being against the law—is the prevalent issue of our day. Despite all this lawlessness, legalism remains their primary concern.

So, what's the underlying issue here? I'll return to blindness to lawlessness shortly, but first, let's address the broader picture.

Modern Christianity is increasingly exhibiting traits of Gnosticism, a false religion that plagued the church in the 2nd and 3rd centuries and periodically resurfaces. Gnostics believe that the physical realm, including matter, was created and governed by a lesser, evil god they called the demiurge, identifying the God of Abraham as this demiurge. Gnosticism views people as divine souls trapped in a physical world. The body is seen as a prison for the individual, and the created realm is a prison for the entire race. Salvation, therefore, entails escaping the limitations of the physical realm through esoteric knowledge and becoming pure spirit.

While no one explicitly claims that the Trinity is the demiurge, many other major tenets of Gnosticism are becoming increasingly prevalent in American Christianity. Specifically, there's a growing disregard for the body and physical things (including culture), emphasizing spiritual knowledge and experience.

However, this ideology is easily refuted by a straightforward reading of Genesis 1-2, which declares the goodness of creation, matter, plants, animals, and the human body. Mankind is created as a composite of body and spirit, affirmed by God as good. Therefore, the notion that matter is inherently evil is absurd, as the Bible asserts the opposite.

Now, let's examine this through the lens of Romans 6, as I believe Gnosticism is insidiously infiltrating the church, particularly the Reformed tradition, partially through our Puritan heritage.

The Puritans placed considerable emphasis on the heart, often referred to as "heart religion." Though a very late Puritan, Ryle encapsulated this emphasis well, stating: "The heart is the main thing in true religion... It is the hinge and turning point in the condition of a man's soul. If the heart is alive to God and quickened by the Spirit, the man is a living Christian. If the heart is dead without the Spirit, the man is dead before God."

While this emphasis on the heart is commendable, it can be distorted to elevate the "heart" (the inner subjective spiritual experience) above all else. Scripture, however, never does this. It consistently connects the inner life to the outer life, faith to works, the new birth to the newness of life, the gospel to law, and heart religion to bodily religion.

Let's take a brisk walk through Romans 6 and explore this...

Paul begins by posing a rhetorical question in verse 1: "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?" Having just expounded upon the doctrine of justification by faith in the preceding chapters, he anticipates a common objection.

If our standing with God is solely based on faith in the finished work of Jesus and not earned through personal merit, wouldn't this lack of pressure to perform lead believers to indulge even more in sin? If God's grace in saving sinners magnifies His glory, shouldn't we sin more to increase His glory?

People often raise these sorts of absurd objections and hypotheticals to mock God's truth. Why? Because we're inclined to find ways to preserve our pride and excuse our sins.

But Paul doesn't entertain such foolishness. In verse 2, he emphatically declares, "May it never be!" The notion that sin would persist, let alone increase, in the lives of believers due to God's grace is repugnant to him.

The gospel, far from encouraging sin, has the opposite effect on the redeemed. Paul explains that through our union with Christ, symbolized by baptism, we have died to sin and been raised to newness of life. We are no longer enslaved to sin; we are now alive to God in Christ Jesus.

John Calvin succinctly captures Paul's argument, stating, "If we are dead to sin, freed from its mastery, how absurd it is to suppose that we can continue to live under its dominion?"

Our union with Christ fundamentally alters our relationship with sin:

• We receive a new nature that leads to a radical departure from the power and love of sin.

• Sin no longer dominates us; it no longer dictates our actions.

• We develop new desires and will engage in warfare against our sinful inclinations.

• Being alive to God in Christ Jesus means that we will walk in newness of life.

However, sin is not eradicated entirely; what theologians call "remaining corruption," “indwelling sin," or "surviving sin" remains.

As the Westminster Confession of Faith explains:

6.5 This corruption of nature, during this life, does remain in those that are regenerated; and although it be, through Christ, pardoned, and mortified; yet both itself, and all the motions thereof, are truly and properly sin.

13.3 In which war, although the remaining corruption, for a time, may much prevail; yet, through the continual supply of strength from the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, the regenerate part does overcome; and so, the saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

So, while the regenerative work of Christ demolishes the structure of sin, remnants of that structure may still trip us up. Nevertheless, amidst the ruins, a new structure of holiness is being erected in the lives of believers.

Paul continues his argument in Romans 6:12-14, urging believers not to let sin reign in their mortal bodies, thereby obeying its lusts. Instead, he encourages them to present themselves to God as those alive from the dead and their members as instruments of righteousness. This highlights the connection between our inward spiritual reality—our union with Christ—and our outward physical reality—what we do with our bodies.

Formerly, sin was our master, and we served it with our bodies, yielding to evil desires. But through Christ, sin's dominion over us has been broken. Now, we are to offer ourselves to God, utilizing our bodies as instruments of righteousness.

Our union with Christ acts like a seed planted within us, bearing fruit in the form of righteous deeds performed by our bodies. Our tongues proclaim truth, our eyes appreciate the beauty of creation, and our hands engage in honest labor to provide for ourselves and others.

This stands in stark contrast to Gnosticism, which denigrates the body. Here, the body is affirmed as good and produces and brings forth more goodness into the world.

Heart religion inevitably leads to body religion. The Puritans understood this, emphasizing the necessity of good works and contributing to cultivating a holy culture. Unfortunately, this emphasis has been distorted, reducing the importance of good works and exalting the inner world above all else. This distortion has had detrimental effects on American Christianity and society as a whole.

This distortion also leads to blindness to lawlessness. Paul emphasizes in Romans 6:15-19 that presenting ourselves as slaves to sin leads to further lawlessness. Gnosticism's low view of the body results in antinomianism—a rejection of the law—because it seeks to alleviate sin's shame by denying the body's goodness or the law itself.

We must reclaim body religion while holding onto heart religion to counter this trend. We must embrace the physical realm and the created order, becoming more grounded and earthy. As Spurgeon aptly noted, grace does not make us unearthly but unworldly.

Many young people are drawn to traditions, bodily disciplines, and connections to the physical world offered by Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and figures like Jordan Peterson. To become more earthy as a church, we can emphasize the following:

1. Doctrine of Household: Encourage productivity in the home through family discipleship, side businesses, and Christian hospitality.

2. Doctrine of Vocation: View jobs as ministries and opportunities to glorify God and serve others.

3. Doctrine of Place: We should recognize the significance of our specific locations in God's plan and seek to honor Him in those places.

4. Co-op Existing Programs and Third Places: Be salt and light by engaging with existing community establishments like coffee shops, gyms, and sports programs.

5. Start Local Businesses: Launch businesses in the community that operate according to biblical principles, contributing to job creation and cultural shaping.

This isn’t a formula. It’s a beginning.