Judgment Day for "Me-ology," Revisited

My recently relocated colleague Greg Goebel raises the legitimate question of formulaic evangelicalism's culpability in the current crisis of faith. Several years ago, I wrote "Judgment Day for 'Me-ology,'" a critique of theological revisionism and its emphasis on the autonomy of the individual. Although it got considerable attention around the web at the time, it is not currently available online, so I reprint it here in its entirety.

Theological revisionism would rob the Christian faith of its uniqueness in many ways. The most obvious are those which get the most attention: the confession of Jesus Christ as the one and only Savior of the world, the authority of the Scriptures in matters of faith and life, and the traditional teachings on human sexuality. But there is another aspect of the faith which is undermined by revisionism which doesn't receive as much notice, but may rank right alongside the Person of Christ himself as the most important.

The Church is, first and foremost, the Body of Christ, a community of faith, living in covenant with God, all members living out that covenant faithfully through mutual accountability to one another. The idea of the Church being a collection of individual believers is an innovation borne of the radical individualism of some of the later Reformers and carried to its logical extreme with the advent of Enlightenment-era rationalism. Today, revisionists are playing out the tragic end game of this error. Eschewing the mutual accountability of the covenant community, they indulge their own individual passions in vainglorious pursuits of "new truth." Although they carefully couch their language in traditional-sounding terms such as "the trajectory of Scripture" and "the intent of Jesus and the Holy Spirit," the end result is an accommodation to the popular culture that is naive and utterly devoid of theological and intellectual depth.

Betraying their own futile attempt to co-opt the traditional language of the faith, revisionists never seem to tire of using three particular words: I, me, and my. From their perspective, individual conclusions trump 2,000 years of community consensus. When revisionists speak, for instance, about the "emotional" issue of homosexuality, they love to invoke tear-jerking sentiments through such statements as "I am hurting for our church." While this may come across to the casual listener as an expression of selfless concern for the whole Body of Christ, a careful analysis reveals a more selfish motivation.

Revisionists believe that, on issues such as homosexuality, the Church has been "wrong" for 2,000 years. But when they try to impose their opinion on the community, they are met with resistance and rebuke. The Church simply cannot abandon a 2,000-year consensus based on one person's individual conclusions. When it rejects such individual overtures, it is merely acting the way a covenant community should act, holding one of its own accountable when that one strays into error, hoping that, through love, that person may be restored to the fellowship.

To revisionists who care nothing for the overall good of the community but only for their advancement within it, the Church's loving rebuke is taken as a personal insult. Rather than receiving it in the same loving spirit it was intended, revisionists break down and pout, saying, "I am hurting for our church," meaning, "My feelings are hurt because my church won't accept me." Such emotionalism tugs at the heart strings of the rest of the community, causing some of weaker faith to question the Church's motives, rather than recognize such cynical manipulation for what it truly is. Therein lies the real danger of revisionism. It undermines the covenental nature of the Church by exploiting the emotions of individual members.

"Theology" is too kind a word for what revisionists are engaged in. A more appropriate term is "me-ology." They have fallen victim to a dangerous deception and now seek to draw the rest of the Church of Jesus Christ into the same deadly web. They will fail, of course, because the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church. But pity the poor revisionists who scorn the community's loving rebuke. Their Judgment Day draws nigh.

In one response, a reader asked if the same might also be true for contemporary evangelicalism, particularly as expressed in contemporary "praise choruses" which exalt the sentimental emotions of the individual instead of a holy and righteous God. I answered his question in the affirmative. Evangelicalism, in its present form, is every bit as individualistic as the more obviously errant theological revisionism.

I use the term "revisionism," as opposed to "liberalism" because the latter term is far too broad. Contemporary American evangelicalism is every bit as much a product of the naturalistic theology borne of Enlightenment rationalism. In other words, evangelicalism is, or at least has become, simply a more palatable form of theological liberalism if "liberalism" is to mean any form of theology which elevates the autonomy of the individual over the authority of the Church.