Why do evangelicals try so desperately to court the world’s favor?

Churches plan their worship services to cater to the “unchurched.” Christian performers ape every worldly fad in music and entertainment. Preachers fear that the offense of the gospel might turn someone against them, so they deliberately omit the parts of the message the world might not like.

Evangelicalism has been hijacked by legions of carnal spin doctors, who are desperately trying to convince the world that the church can be just as inclusive, pluralistic, and broad-minded as the most politically correct worldling.

The quest for the world’s approval is nothing less than spiritual harlotry. In fact, that is precisely the imagery the apostle James used to describe it. He wrote, “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4).

There is and always has been a fundamental, irreconcilable incompatibility between the church and the world. Christian thought is out of harmony with all the world’s philosophies. Genuine faith in Christ entails a denial of every worldly value. Biblical truth contradicts all the world’s religions. Christianity itself is therefore antithetical to virtually everything this world admires.

Why the World Hates

Jesus told His disciples, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you” (John 15:18–19).

Notice that our Lord considered it a given that the world would despise the church. Far from teaching His disciples to try to win the world’s favor by reinventing the gospel to suit worldly preferences, Jesus expressly warned that the quest for worldly accolades is a characteristic of false prophets: “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way” (Luke 6:26).

He further explained, “The world . . . hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil” (John 7:7). In other words, the world’s contempt for Christianity stems from moral, not intellectual, motives: “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed” (John 3:19–20). That is why no matter how dramatically worldly opinion might vary, Christian truth will never be popular with unbelievers.

Yet in virtually every era of church history, there have been professing Christians who think they can win the world by catering to its tastes. Such an approach has always been to the detriment of the gospel message. The church has only made a significant impact on the world when the people of God have stood firm, refused to compromise, and boldly proclaimed the truth—despite the world’s hostility. When Christians have shrunk away from confronting popular worldly delusions with unpopular biblical truths, the church has lost its influence and blended into the world. Both Scripture and history attest to that fact.

The Christian message simply cannot be twisted to conform to the vicissitudes of worldly opinion. Biblical truth is fixed and constant, not subject to change or adaptation. Worldly opinion, on the other hand, is in constant flux. The various fads and philosophies that dominate the world change radically and regularly from generation to generation. The only thing that remains constant is the world’s hatred of Christ and His gospel.

In all likelihood, the world will not long embrace whatever ideology is in vogue this year. If the pattern of history is any indicator, by the time our great-grandchildren become adults, popular opinion will be dominated by a completely new system of belief and a whole different set of values. Tomorrow’s generation will renounce all of today’s fads and philosophies. But one thing will remain unchanged: Until the Lord Himself returns and establishes His kingdom on earth, whatever ideology gains popularity in the world will be as hostile to biblical truth as all its predecessors have been.

A Recent Battle

Consider the record of the past century, for example. A hundred years ago, the church was beset by modernism. Modernism was a worldview based on the notion that only science could explain reality. The modernist, in effect, began with the presupposition that nothing supernatural is real.

It ought to have been instantly obvious that modernism and Christianity were incompatible at the most fundamental level. If nothing supernatural is real, then much of the Bible is untrue and has no authority; the incarnation of Christ is a myth (nullifying Christ’s authority as well); and all the supernatural elements of Christianity, including God Himself, must be utterly redefined in naturalistic terms. Modernism was anti-Christian at its core.

Nonetheless, at the beginning of the twentieth century many in the visible church were convinced that modernism and Christianity could and should be reconciled. They insisted that if the church did not keep in step with the times, Christianity would not survive the twentieth century. The church would become increasingly irrelevant to modern people, they said, and soon it would die. So they devised a “social gospel” devoid of the true gospel of salvation.

Of course, biblical Christianity survived the twentieth century just fine. Wherever Christians remained committed to the truthfulness and authority of Scripture, the church flourished. But ironically, those churches and denominations that embraced modernism became increasingly irrelevant—they practically died out before the century was over. Many grandiose but nearly empty stone buildings offer mute testimony to the deadliness of compromise with modernism.

But modernism is now regarded as yesterday’s way of thinking. It was a fad that came and went like withering grass (Isaiah 40:8). The dominant worldview in secular and academic circles today is postmodernism. This contemporary foe and its assault on biblical truth will be our focus next time.

(Adapted from Why One Way?)