Has American Christianity Failed? With Rev. Bryan Wolfmueller

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And welcome to another edition of Engaging Truth. I'm your host, Pastor John. With us on the program today, we have Brian Wolf Miller. Reverend Brian Wolf. Miller is the senior pastor of St. Paul Lutheran in Austin, Texas, and he's also the author of a book entitled, Has American Christianity Failed? Welcome to the program, Brian. Oh, thank you, John. Great, great to be with you. So when we, uh, hear the, the title of a book like that, I mean, that's just like this hanging curve ball right in front of us. Has American Christianity failed? In what way has it, if it has? Yeah, it's a great question. We know Jesus doesn't fail the church because Jesus doesn't fail. The church will not fail. Jesus gives us this great promise that the, that he, he will build his church. I think I, in fact, I think there's so much comfort in that word.

My, I will build my church. I'm like, Whoa, we belong to Jesus. I mean, we, we sit here and think , I'm not sure if Jesus would claim us . It's like when the kids get in trouble, I'd say to my wife, Look what your kids did. But Jesus says, I'll build my church. The gates of hell will not prevail against her. In other words, not even will the church be able to withstand the devil's attacks, but the church will prevail against the king of the devil. So this is a beautiful promise so that, so Jesus doesn't fail, the church doesn't fail. But I do think that when we look at the strains, the theological, um, tunes, uh, or, or, or streams that exist in America and American Christianity, that they have failed and in a specific way, they, they, I mean, there's, I think there's multiple ways that they've failed.

But I think that American Christianity has failed to deliver the full weight of the condemning law of God, the full weight and burden of our own failures and mistakes and the wrath of God that we deserve. And so the, I think the, that American Christianity, as it's been shaped through the years and through the generations, has failed to, uh, to bring the fullness of what the Lord would have us rejoice in, in the scriptures. And so, um, the book exists to contrast what I understand is American Christianity with, with how the scriptures deliver Jesus to us and his kindness and his open heaven, and his promises and his gifts and, and all the goodness that he wants us, us to have. So the church that Jesus is building is not quite the same as the local congregation on the corner. Then the big view versus the small view.

That's true, that's true. Although I hope that the, the church on the corner is part of it. But we remember that the, that, um, Jesus, uh, would be found in our midst. He, he promises I'll never leave you or forsake you. He's with us. But he's there in some specific ways. I mean, we know that Jesus is everywhere. He feels heaven, but he's, he comes to dwell with us in, in His word, He comes to dwell with us also in, in the things that he's instituted in, in the gift of baptism and the gift of the Lord. Supper. That's one of the major failings of American Christianity, is that it fails to see Jesus in, uh, what in the church we call the sacraments, like baptism in the Lord supper, it sees only itself there. It doesn't see, it doesn't see Christ there. So, um, so we wanna, we wanna go back to the scriptures and say, Well, who who is this God and, and who are we in relation to him?

And what is he doing for us? And I think kind of going back to the basics and asking some of those questions reveals some really wonderful truths. Well, you talk about, um, uh, our identity and, uh, the full weight of the law versus, uh, the identity that we have as, as God's forgiven people. And let's, let's talk about that a little bit, about what it looks like when, uh, Christ Church on Earth is working exceptionally well. Well, there's a great line in that Martin Luther gives us, uh, in, in, uh, he's, he had some essays on the basics of the Christian faith. The large catechism, especially, I'm thinking about, and this would be in the, in the 15 hundreds, he says that God has arranged the church. So then in it, we daily receive nothing. And I remember I was, I was reading this to, to my elder one time, and they said, Well, that's not right.

Pastor , we daily. But Luther goes on. He says, We daily receive nothing but the forgiveness of sins. And so the entire church is arranged by God so that we would know that our sins are forgiven. So that knowledge, I mean, there's a knowledge that first we are sinners. That's the, that's the first thing that we have to know. Cuz if we're not sinners, then the forgiveness of sins means nothing. Like Jesus says, if you're, if you're not sick, you don't need a doctor, everybody's sick. But if you don't know it, you don't know that you need that, you need help. So the first thing is to know that we're sinners. That's what the law does. It reveals the guilt of sin. And then to know that there is a savior of sinners, that there is a rescuer of those who deserve God's anger. And that that savior is Jesus Christ says, I came not to be served, but to serve and give my life as a ransom for sinners.

Paul says he, Paul wrote to Timothy, he says, Even though I'm the chief of sinners, Christ died for me. Uh, and um, I remember when I was one time, I, when I was a young man, and I was just thinking about this story this week, I must have been 19. And I was backpacking around Israel and, uh, my wife, then my girlfriend, Carrie and I were writing letters back and forth, and I would always put a big Bible verse and on the back of the letters, So I don't know, maybe people would see it and be encouraged. And I wrote that verse on the back of the envelope that Paul wrote to Timothy. He said, Uh, Christ died for me. Christ died for sinners of whom I am the foremost. And Carrie got the envelope and said, Oh, what did he do? . But the, this is the truth that the Lord reveals to us, that, that even though we are sinners deserving his anger and wrath, he died for us to forgive our sins.

And this is, this is something that we need desperately to hear. Even so, you know, there's a thing that sometimes we, we think in the church, well, you know, it's the believer and the people outside the church to hear that good news. But we Christians need to hear it over and over and over. Uh, we, we need to rejoice in it. So, so many churches in America, they preach Jesus to the believer and they preach Moses to the believer. I remember that in, in my old evangelical days when I was at, in the Southern Baptist Church and going to Calvary Chapel. And this is how it was, you know, the, the unbeliever gets the kindness of God in Christ. But now, once you're in, now you gotta get serious and you gotta follow God's instructions. And you gotta, you gotta keep the law. And here's the 10 plans for being a better whatever.

Well, okay, it's true that we should show forth the love of God in our lives. But there is not a moment when I don't need the mercy of God. There's not an instant in my life when I don't need the forgiveness of my sins. There's never a time that I can do it by my own strength, by my own efforts. And, and just as Paul says to the Galatians, again, with mercy, we continue with mercy. We end with mercy. Jesus is the alpha and the Omega. And so much of American Christianity is one author is called it christless. Christianity is, I guess is just ity. is that it, it, it, it re it robs the comfort of the forgiveness of sins and the kindness of God from the Christian. And that's horrible. So that people, uh, many people think, Well, okay, Jesus saved me, but now it's up to me to, to make up for it.

It's up to me to cover the gap. Uh, it's up to me to pay Jesus back for what he's given, as if the gospel was a bribe. Look, look what Jesus has done for you. And now what are you gonna do for him? This is the strings attached. No, it's a gift. That's what the grace of God means. So that Christ comes to us all on his own while we're still His enemies. And he scoops us up in his hands and he says, Now you are mine. Now you belong to me. Now you are the object of my love and affection. And he carries us all the way along, all the way home rejoicing. And, and this, the central point of Christianity that God is for and us, that the free grace of God is manifest in Christ. And that that's what carries us all the way through this troubled life to the, to the joys of eternal life that is so often missing from Christian preaching and to the detriment and enslavement and, and loss of comfort to the Lord's people, which Jesus so desperately wants us to know and taste that goodness of His.

He, he calls it the little Moses that lives in our heart, but ah, no, not Moses. The little monk that lives in our heart. So there's a part of every single one of us that wants to be acceptable to God on our own terms, or pleasing to God by our own efforts. We're stand before God on Judgment Day by our own deeds. We're, we're building a case for our goodness. Or even probably now more people are found building a case for their own value or their own meaning, or whatever we're, and it's, and we're addicted to this self-justification. And the result is that we either think that we've done it well enough and we're proud of what we've done. Wow. Look at what a good person I am, or something like that. Or we despair and we think there's no hope for me. Look at how bad I am.

The only way off of that pendulum of pride and despair is the gospel. And that is the promise that all of our sins are forgiven for the sake of Christ. So the gospel comes and it destroys our pride says, You look, if if you were good enough to please God, then this whole death on the cross is unnecessary. You deserve God's wrath. And when you, when we see Jesus suffering on the cross, we realize how bad we are cuz we, He's, he's suffering what we deserve. So that humbles us. Then it, it also then lifts us out of despair because at the same moment, when the Lord shows us what we deserve, he also shows us what he's given so that we don't get what we deserve. So that the death of Jesus is the punishment from God. That should be ours, but the Son of God is taking it in our place so that the Lord can deliver us His to us as kindness and as love.

That, that when God looks down on us, he smiles, He doesn't, doesn't frown or rage, but he delights in us. He loves us. He even likes us. This is the, the good news of the gospel in Christ. And that is the only way out of this, of this trap of the, of the false doctrine that clings to our sinful flesh. And that, that, that, um, absolving, forgiving, cleansing, adopting, covering, freeing preaching of the blood of Jesus for synergy. So what is American Christianity? If I could pin it down? I think, you know, we wanna say it's a certain denomination or church or something like this, but there, the history, theological history of the church in the United States has been a blending of four main ideas. Um, we can identify 'em as in theological terms, as decision is pietism rational, sorry, uh, mysticism and enthusiasm. But I would summarize it like this.

My Christian life starts with me. I make a decision for Christ. I receive Jesus. It's all about the choice. That's the vitalistic, uh, um, uh, history of the United States comes, it's kind of a, it's it's free will theology entering into Calvinism. It's all the big mix of the second great awaken. It starts with me. It continues with me. That's pietism. That's the idea that the most important thing is my growth and works. And I find assurance by my life of self-improvement. The, the third strain is mysticism. And that is that I find, um, intimacy with God on the inside. I feel moved by God. I'm, I hear from God inside of me, the still small voice, a lot of American Christianity. The worship is there to move me so that I feel the presence of God on the inside. And enthusiasm is a way of summarizing the whole thing.

It doesn't just mean excited technically. It means that I'm looking to the word on the inside rather than the word on the outside. So that the realm of theological activity is inside of me rather than outside of me. This leads to American Christianity, looking at things like baptism and the Lord supper, which have traditionally in the church been understood to at least deliver God's grace to us. They say, No, no, it can't. It's gonna be a work cause it's outside of me. And so, um, so those four strains of the theological strains have led to, um, a rejection of the external word. And it, it reduces everything to the experience that's happening inside of me. And it's dangerous because while the Lord does work inside of us, he works from the outside in. He brings the confidence of his word to us so that I can know, uh, things for sure, apart from my feelings.

Our feelings are notoriously, uh, untrustworthy and variable. And so it's wonderful that the Lord, um, gives, He gives us the truth before we know it, before we believe it, before we feel it. And so we can rely on that truth and find assurance and confidence on the ex in the external word before it even becomes the internal word. So the four identifying themes or trends in American Christianity are all based on errors or misunderstandings. And they take our focus off of Christ and his word. The Bible, uh, takes our focus off that and makes it all internal, uh, our own motivations and feelings. So let's, uh, let's draw a line between the errors and the, the mistake and direction of, of some, uh, Christian thought and let's focus it now towards, uh, the Lutheran Confessions. What, what's different about that direction? Yeah, sure. I, I think that, so my own story was I was baptized in the E L C or lca, the liberal Lutheran church, progressive side of that Lutheran church, especially during high school and college.

While I still had a toe in the Lutheran church, I, I was really, uh, informed and influenced by the non-denominational movement and the Southern Baptist Church. My wife and I met in a campus ministry at the Southern Baptist Church. Uh, we were going to Calvary Chapel and involved in, uh, the teaching there. That's where I was cutting my theological teeth. Uh, having those, uh, Bible studies and theological studies over there and, and how that shaped my own heart and my own mind and my own theological thinking was particularly informative because it was about the, the surrender of the Christian to God. Have I surrendered? Have I given up? Have I handed over? Have I accepted Jesus completely? And the the result was, well, we talked about this pendulum of pride and despair. This was, this was the result I've got hanging around, even in my study here, a bunch of the journals that I had at that time, I would travel around and I'd write down my thoughts.

And it's a chronicle of pride and despair and a lack of, of assurance. Uh, we knew something was wrong in that teaching. We knew it wasn't matching up the scripture. My then girlfriend Carrie and I were figuring this stuff out, but we didn't know where to go. So we went and visited all of the different churches we were in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I, I think we just went to just about every church we could. We'd tried to talk to the pastor, get literature read on what the church taught, and we ended up in a catechism class in a Lutheran church, Missouri Senate congregation. And we thought, Well, let's see what this guy has to say. No way are we gonna be Lutheran. But the pastor so brilliantly, wonderfully, would answer all of our questions by opening the scriptures and said to us, Look, we need to read the Bible with the simplicity and faith of a six year old child.

In other words, if the Lord says it, then we believe it, and then we do our best to try to figure out what it means. But we believe what he says. So if Jesus says, This is my body in, in the Lord's supper, for example, we say, Okay, okay, I don't quite get it, but alright. Or if he says, Be baptized and have your sins washed away, we say, Oh, okay. And then we try to understand it later. But we, we believe what the scriptures say. That's where we find our competence. And, and we found in the, the Lutheran Church, I, I think it's so wonderfully described by St. Paul as the simplicity of Christ, that Jesus is here blessing, forgiving, uh, delivering and giving us this confidence in His word. And it's very simple. It's very clean. It's, uh, it embraces the, the history of the church while not recognizing it as an authority over the scriptures.

It recognizes the sufficiency of the scriptures, but it also sees how the Lord works in the sacraments. And so people from the Protestant tradition see how the Lutherans seem so old and so sacramental people from the Catholic tradition, see, look at the Lutherans so centered on the scripture and the sole authority of the scripture. And, and it seems like it's right in between, but it's, it's, I don't think it's right in between. It's just, it's just standing there that the Lutheran Church is just like trying to be anyways. Like Mary just sitting at the feet of Jesus and saying amen to what Jesus says. And the result is the, the result is a truth that's not just true from the scriptures, but the result is a truth that really delivers comfort. It really delivers consolation and peace and assurance unlike anything else in any other Christian tradition.

So I think that the Lutheran Church, um, I think it interprets the Bible rightly, but the result is not just that, hey, this is right, the result is, hey, this is wonderful. And that's been my experience. And I, I think it's, it's been my experience as a Lutheran pastor, as people tell me, Pastor, I've never, I've never felt more at peace with the thought that God loves me is I have when I learned the catechism and I learned the, the, the Lutheran Church and I came into the Lutheran Church. And that's, that I think is why I ended up writing the book. Because I wanted people to know that comfort. I mean, you know, we're so tempted to think, well, you know, I, I hear that God loves me, but he kind of has to cuz he's God. Uh, but I'm, I'm pretty sure he's probably upset about that.

No, no, he truly loves us. He truly delights in us. He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how shall he not also together with him also give us all things. And to, to know this is true about that what God says of us is true. That we're sinners. That what God says of himself is true. That he is the savior of sinners. To live in this confidence, to die in this confidence. Uh, there's nothing more beautiful or wonderful than that. So Brian, you've, uh, told us about the, uh, God's promises and how, how God, uh, has earned for us our own forgiveness and our salvation. We receive that as a gift. And that's all, uh, spelled out in your book. Uh, has American Christianity Fail. Tell our listeners how they can find a copy of your, uh, writing.

I it should be anywhere where books are sold online, at least a Concordia Publishing House published@cph.org. You can find it on Amazon, uh, or any of the online books as well. Or you can probably break into my house and steal a couple extra copies if you wanna do that as well. So, uh, grab me and I'll sign it for you on before you leave. So that's an option. And there's a couple other books too. I just finished writing a book maybe a year and a half ago on Martin Luther's Theology, The Martyrs that's, uh, available. Another one, um, um, Marty's Faith and a Faithless World, some other, So you can find all that stuff on the website, which is wolf mueller dot coo. So it's w o l f m u e l l e r dot c I couldn't afford the m . Uh, but that's there.

And there's a bunch of free books to download also. So that'll, that'll be fun to check out for people. Well, we'll point people to that, uh, website as well. And for our listeners, I'd encourage you to check out our, uh, radio programs website as well, e l m houston.org. And there you can find information about us, ways to donate to ways to mail and, uh, ask us questions. Also, uh, past programming is available on that website as well. So Brian, once again, thank you for, uh, sharing your message with us and pointing others' eyes to Jesus. Join us again real soon for another edition of Engaging Truth. Goodbye.

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