We’re really struggling in our Bible study to appreciate the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan. In it, the author gives a list of traits that characterize in his opinion “lukewarm Christians” and then follows this list with the assertion that “lukewarm Christians are not Christians. We will not see them in Heaven.” (pg 81). The problem with this is that the list of characteristics of lukewarm Christians are so general that they apply to pretty much everyone to some degree. Mr. Chan even says this himself, stating “each of us has lukewarm elements and practices in our life.”* If every Christian is lukewarm to some degree, is anyone really saved? Should Christians worry about their salvation?
*This link [http://riversidedrivebaptistmaine.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/crazy-love-book-review.pdf] does a great job of examining the problems in the book, so if you’re interested in further exploring the issues raised by the book, I’d encourage you to take a look. Also, you can look at the comments to the last entry.
The book gave me two conflicting reactions. The first is my delight in a good argument. I like getting ready for a good debate, almost as much as I like wrestling through the logical issues of this book and proving my point. As much as I enjoy this process and I think it is important to understand the logic behind faith, beating your opponent into submission is not always the best (or most Christian) perspective.
But my second reaction was trying to get at the heart of the book. I think the author had great intentions with the book and the more I explored the book, the more I saw this dissonance between good intentions and difficult sections, some of which seem quite judgmental. Mr. Chan has noble character and great intentions. He wants people to be inspired to grow as Christians and transform themselves to a world-changing faith. But somehow when our Bible study read this book, many of us did not feel inspired at all. What was the problem?
I’d like to illustrate the solution with what I consider the best lesson I’ve learned from marriage. My wife struggled with serious procrastination problems while in school, and it was beginning to impact her coursework. I wanted to help my wife grow as a person. At first I tried what seemed logical: to show her why she should change, point out the disastrous consequences of the course she was heading, and hope that the fear of the consequences would make her realize she needed to change.
This didn’t go over too well. It was because I was going about it the wrong way. Rather than being driven by fear of consequences, she told me that she wanted me to inspire her. That would help her grow into a better person. She likes hearing stories of people who have accomplished the goals she wants to accomplish. For instance, we both want to get into better shape. For me, the secret for getting into better shape is finding something to distract me while I’m torturing my body with this concept of exercise. It’s why I listen to audiobooks while I run or play sports. However, she’s different. She likes the inspirational stories of people who worked themselves into shape, and that excites her to go exercise.
When we want others to grow as people, it’s easy to fall into the ‘fear’ trap. It’s natural for us to try to convince people to change their behavior by showing them the dangers of their behavior. The problem is that this doesn’t work. Making people afraid of the consequences of their bad behavior does not change how they behave. It just makes the problem worse.
Being a social psychologist, it was probably a bad thing for me to miss something that is so clearly shown by psychological research. Many studies show that fear appeals aren’t effective. People don’t change their behavior when they’re confronted with the dangers of their behavior. They change their behavior when shown more positive examples. For instance, ads showing the health risks of smoking don’t help reduce smoking (surprising, but true). Showing the good effects of not smoking turns out to be much more effective.
This is why Mr. Chan’s assertion that lukewarm Christians are not going to heaven does not seem to be the best approach. Focusing on fear appeals causes negative feelings in the audience. These negative feelings cause people to tend to respond to these fear appeals in two ways. They either internalize the guilt, saying that “I’m a bad person because I do X.” Or they attack the message and messenger. They find holes in the message or they find flaws in the messenger, accusing him or her of being a hypocrite.
Christians fall into this trap too. I’ve heard innumerable times where Christians appeal to others to follow Christ by focusing on the consequences of failing to follow God. They focus on hell and on judgment. No one I know has become a Christian because of someone telling them they will go to hell. Those I know who have come to believe in Christianity have come because of the positive attributes of God. God’s love and mercy draw us to him, not the fear of his judgment.
I believe this gets to the heart of Mr. Chan’s intention in this chapter of Crazy Love. He earnestly wants people to own their faith and to get out of the comfort zone of a complacent and wealthy church and actually change the world. This is a good goal! I want it too. But the best approach is not making threats of not making it to heaven, which cause harm and sow seeds to doubt among the Christian community. The better way is to inspire us to become greater Christians is by showing great examples of faith.
It’s interesting because the last part of Crazy Love gives a lot of great examples of people who are living dynamic lives transformed by their faith. They inspire me to be a better person. They make me want to do something great for God. It was just that it was hard to get to that part of the book after having to consider whether or not the author thought I was going to hell.
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