One of the most common criticisms of Christianity I hear is the charge that it is a religion rooted in fear, guilt, and shame. The basic idea is this: Christianity teaches you to feel as bad about yourself as possible and to be in constant fear of going to hell with the intended effect of making you so scared or ashamed that you don’t dare question or speak out about anything. The resulting fear and anxiety this causes among people makes them susceptible to emotional and psychological manipulation, which is evidenced by the countless stories of ministerial abuse. Being taught that you were born a sinner and that God is going to send you to hell if you don’t believe in Him is traumatic and the sooner you deconstruct this faith and leave this religion, the sooner you will finally feel free. You don’t need religion to be good enough. You are already good enough.
This objection can resonate especially strongly with people who grow up in or primarily interact with a more conservative strain of evangelicalism which takes care to emphasize the reality and gravity of sin—think old school fundamentalist Baptist types such as Steven Anderson or more Calvinistic-leaning evangelicals like Paul Washer or John MacArthur who draw heavily on the puritan influence.
The objection also plays well with people who grow up in church context with a heavy fixation on end times prophecy with the general view that the world is constantly getting worse and worse until Jesus will eventually come and rapture the church either before or during a terrible tribulation and you definitely don’t want to be left behind when He does. This was the dominant view among Southern Baptist churches during the 20th century and remains extremely common today in not only Baptist settings but non-denominational and charismatic churches as well. Because eschatology (theological term for the study of “last things”) probably deserves a stand alone treatment, I am going to mostly focus here on the angle of those whose perspective is mostly informed by a heavy emphasis on personal sin and guilt, especially in more reformed evangelical contexts.
It may surprise some people to hear that I actually agree that there can often be a harmful overemphasis on personal sin and guilt, especially in conservative Calvinistic circles. The reason that might surprise people is I am a staunch Calvinist myself, and many of the people who shaped my own Calvinistic views have a reputation for fire and brimstone preaching. After all, one of the key doctrines in Calvinism is known as total depravity.
To be clear, I do affirm total depravity and I am not shy about it. I also affirm both the reality and the justice of God’s wrath against sin. Moreover, and importantly, I also understand there is some context for why some more conservative evangelicals feel the need to place heavy emphasis on these truths. There exists an opposite tendency within modern evangelical Christianity to unjustly downplay the reality and severity of human sinfulness. This is especially common in churches who want to project a non-judgmental and welcoming image where the operating assumption is that people in general are already well aware of their own shortcomings and so they don’t need to hear about them. Preaching sin as a matter of personal moral iniquity with severe eternal consequences is a bad church growth strategy. Thus, it is best to downplay and minimize human sinfulness as much as possible. Sin is essentially defined as “brokenness” and its consequences are primarily talked about in terms of the negative effects it has on one’s life.
Conservative evangelicals rightly and justifiably want to stand against the temptation to minimize sin. We recognize that to downplay the reality and severity of our need for salvation is to also downplay the greatness of that salvation. Moreover, the scripture’s warnings of God’s judgement against sin are serious and solemn. That is a reality of the Christian faith. However, as is often the case, it is easy to get so focused on avoiding the proverbial ditch on one side of the road that you run straight into a ditch on the other side. This can and does happen. When this does happen, I think there are usually two basic failures at play. The first is a poor and lazy articulation of total depravity to begin with and the second is a failure to present it in proper perspective with respect to the rest of Christian theology.
Consider the following question: Is man inherently good or evil? My guess is most conservative evangelicals would answer evil without hesitation. But this presents a difficulty. If man is inherently evil, then how can a holy God become a man? What is a man doing exalted on the throne of heaven? If to be man is to be evil, then the incarnation is lost.
At this, some may be tempted to roll their eyes because anyone who is well acquainted with our theology knows that when we say things like “man is inherently evil” what we mean is that man has become evil by virtue of the fall and that we all inherit the effects of the fall from birth. Thus, it is true that man is born under the bondage of sin and death. But this is exactly my point: we can often be lazy in how we speak, assuming those around us know what we mean when what we mean is different from what we say.
The properly Christian view of man does not start with the fall. It starts with creation or, better yet, the agent of creation who is the true man—Jesus Christ, for it is in His image humanity is created. This means, by logical consequence, that sin is contrary to and in violation of the true nature of man. That is why it is self-destructive and its wages death. God is the author of life, we are created in His image, and yet we are subject to death on account of sin. This is also why we speak in terms of fallenness. To be fallen into sin implies we are fallen from righteousness. Evil is alien to man’s true self.
Of course, you would be hard pressed to find an evangelical preacher who would deny this, or who never speaks of man in terms of being the image of God. The point is if we heavily emphasize the reality and implications of our fallenness without a robust corresponding exposition of the glory that man is supposed to be, then we really do run the risk of creating a false impression that Christianity’s driving force is a sense of guilt. This can result in an implicit denial of the reality of salvation itself.
If anyone thinks I am sounding an alarm over a non-existent problem, I think my point is proven by Christians who walk around with guilty consciences and speak of themselves in terms of their depravity. Consider the following questions: Is there anything good in you? Are you totally depraved? Many conservative Christians would deny the former and affirm the latter. But this is an obvious error.
Total depravity means the totality of man (body, mind, will, affections, soul, etc) are corrupted by sin in such a way as to leave him incapable of responding properly in his own power to the things of God. But total depravity is our way of speaking about man in his unconverted state. It is not true of the one who has been born again.
To deny that there is good in us is to deny either that Christ is in us or that Christ is good. It is true that there is no good in us apart from Christ (for there is nothing good at all apart from Christ), but the Christian is not apart from Christ. Here again laziness in our expression of truth amounts to saying something false. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. That is a present tense reality. The deadness in sin spoken of in the second chapter of Ephesians is in the past tense. Continuing to judge yourself according to your sinfulness after God has declared you righteous is just as much a denial of the gospel as downplaying your need for salvation to begin with.
We tend to think that if we examine ourselves and find sinful attitudes, motives, and actions, that is who we “really” are. But if we are in Christ, then we have no basis for that way of thinking. The sin we find in our hearts and actions, which we will always be able to find as long as we remain in the weakness of our flesh, is dead and dying. The good in us, often existing right alongside the sin that grieves us, is alive and growing. You may be an infant in your new life, but you do in fact possess new life if you are in Christ.
The analogy I use is this: Consider a vast oak tree that has grown for many decades but has just recently died. It may take time to whither. It will take time to fall. It will take still more time to rot away. Or, perhaps more properly speaking, it will take labor and effort to chop it down and dispose of it. But it is dead. Now consider a tiny seed that has just sprouted. It may not even be visible above the ground yet. It will take time to grow, and it needs to be cared for so that it is not starved or smothered, but it is alive and growing. For a Christian, our sinful nature may be like that great oak tree and our new life like the tiny sapling, but which is more fundamentally real? According to which should we regard ourselves? I would argue we ought to regard ourselves according to that which is living, that which has a future.
None of this is to say we should not examine ourselves or actively fight against sinful desires. The fact that the new life is a present reality does not imply passivity on our part. Life is not inactive. We should be grieved when we commit sin. Our rejoicing over salvation should be informed by a sense of our great need of it. But the end result of all our examination and our contemplation of the gospel of Christ should be a clear conscience as the New Testament explicitly indicates in multiple places (1 Peter 3:15-16, Hebrews 10:19-23, etc.). It is not pride or self-righteousness to believe we have received grace and been made clean, provided we understand that we have been made clean not on account of our own righteousness but rather on account of the merit and mercy of Christ.
Regarding those who are outside of Christ, we ought to warn them of the logical end of their rejection of the author of life. But we are mere messengers, not judges, and our message is one of grace. Thus, it is best to regard unbelievers according to the grace that is available to them—the same grace we have received—regardless of whether they lay hold of it or not. It is best to consider them in light of the life they could have in Christ regardless of whether or not they attain it. After all, love “hopes all things.”
The orthodox Christian faith will never be acceptable to someone who is repulsed by the notion that they are a sinner or that God actually judges their sin. We do have to learn to see ourselves as beggars who are in need of mercy. But we also must press on to see ourselves as beggars who have received mercy. The animating force of the Christian life should be a positive vision of goodness, not fear or guilt. In short, the Christian’s view of himself and others should be marked by hope and optimism. If we can make that clear and actually model that in our lives and our churches, I believe it would go a long way towards answering the critics who claim Christianity is nothing more than fear-based psychological manipulation.
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