Refuting false gods

Erwin Lutzer, 83, is pastor emeritus of the Moody Church in Chicago, where he served as senior pastor for 36 years. His incisive sermons are still heard regularly on Christian radio stations, and he’s written more than 20 books. His latest, The Eclipse of God, chronicles modern culture’s attempts to redefine God and calls Christians to return to the God of the Bible, prayer, and repentance. Here are edited excerpts of our conversation.

Your book’s title refers to the moon of radical secularism obscuring the light of God. God is still merciful and just, redeemer and judge, but Americans no longer see Him as such. What made you write this book now? I was motivated by an article in The Economist that said God is becoming more liberal: He is beginning to approve of same-sex marriage. It said almost nobody believes in the “smitey Almighty” of the Old Testament. In other words, the God we used to believe in is irrelevant. What I do in the book is to help people understand where this eclipse of God, this darkness, came from, and why we have to get back to the Biblical concept of God and not the gods of popular culture.

What does this “eclipse” look like in many of our U.S. churches? In America today, even among evangelicals, God has been domesticated. He’s been brought down and made much more sin-friendly. Americans don’t mind saying that they believe in “God” as long as they can choose the god in whom they believe. And oftentimes this god turns out to be their own consciousness.

How do you think those evangelicals perceive God today? I think in today’s churches we find ourselves in the presence of a God who exists for us, not a God whom we need to fear. We have essentially said that in the New Testament era, it is safe to sin because we live under grace and not under law. It’s an overemphasis on the love of God, which needs to be preached, but where’s the wrath of God? There are two doctrines that destroy the church: the essential goodness of man and the endless tolerance of a nonjudgmental God. I think in some instances, those doctrines have come into the evangelical church, and when they have, the essence of the gospel is lost.

When did the modern church start this drift toward the views of popular culture? The drift began in Europe during the Enlightenment when it was believed that reason apart from revelation could bring us all that we needed to know. The Enlightenment was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it gave people the opportunity to think outside the box. On the other hand, it gave people the confidence that reason alone is all that we need. In the 40 years that I’ve been ministering, we have drifted toward a non-Biblical view of God, with some churches accepting same-sex marriage and un-Biblical views of race. The church has to decide if we should interpret the Bible through the lens of culture, or critique the culture through the lens of the Bible. We have to teach this generation that love and truth are not enemies. We need to hold those together, and sometimes the most loving thing is to tell people some very hard things.

Your book calls out pastors such as Andy Stanley, who said we need to “unhitch” our faith from the Old Testament and hosted a controversial LGBTQ conference at his church. Do you consider high-profile pastors who promote liberal theology as “compassion” to be outliers or a significant problem in evangelicalism? We have to understand that we have to be loving, but we also have to be truthful. In the evangelical church, compassion oftentimes becomes a substitute for truth, and it’s possible to be compassionate to un-Biblical activities and lifestyles. I named some people, but I don’t do that unless I feel I’m being completely fair, because I fear standing before the Lord and having to explain why I criticized other Christians with only fragments of information. I would say somebody like Andy Stanley, with a large church and online and TV followers, certainly appeals to younger pastors. So the influence of these pastors is much larger than simply their individual churches.

Many churches have moved away from expository Bible teaching and hymns. How do you think that affects the growth of Christians? I do believe there’s a difference between hymnody and music that has gravitas and much of the modern music. Our churches have often conceded to the culture, in my humble opinion, in ways that have been unhelpful, by trying to popularize the gospel through songs and so forth that lack gravitas. Most wise churches, I think, try to blend the gravitas with some more-contemporary music, because there are some wonderful contemporary hymns and music.

Is it encouraging or distracting when non-Christians—or practical atheists, as you say, like Richard Dawkins and Jordan Peterson—talk about the value of “cultural Christianity”? I think that cultural Christianity is good because it gives a culture cohesion, consensus, and common values. The negative side is that people think they are Christians, but they are only cultural Christians. They may go to church, they may believe the Bible, sort of—and therefore they are being misled. I think cultural Christianity ultimately falls apart unless we get back to a Biblical view of the gospel and a Biblical view of God because only that can provide the basis for a common Christian culture.

Your book notes that the source of truth has shifted from external to man to what each person believes is true. Is there a parallel there with the shift in society’s laws? If you don’t have truth in the public square, justice can become whatever people want it to be. You can have “environmental justice,” the Green New Deal. You can have “marriage justice,” which is same-sex marriage. You can have “economic justice,” which is socialism. Laws cannot exist apart from God, just like water cannot rise above its source. So everybody can have their own view of justice, unless we get back to the transcendent truth that is based on the revelation of God.

You recommend Christians form small groups, pray, and encourage one another. Do you foresee the growth of smaller churches or even underground churches? We are very naïve if we think that certain movements can’t shut churches down. If we drift toward a nation without God, without our heritage, we could very easily move into a totalitarian society. A society in which we have freedom of speech on the books but also lawsuits and other ways to force churches out of business. Then we are going to have to think about meeting in small groups and smaller churches. I’m not sure that we’re there yet, but we certainly seem to be on the way.