2 - The Problem We Must Name

You can’t treat what you won’t diagnose. That’s true in medicine, and it’s true in the life of faith.

So before we can move toward something better, we have to be honest about what we’re looking at. We have to name, without flinching, what has gone wrong in large swaths of American Christianity, and then, harder still, we have to be willing to name where it has gone wrong in us.

The diagnosis is cultural Christianity.

What It Looks Like on a Monday

Walk into most churches on a Sunday morning and you’ll find people who can recite correct doctrines, sing meaningful songs, and affirm the right beliefs without hesitation. Ask if they’re Christians and you’ll get an immediate yes. Ask if Jesus is Lord and they’ll be offended you raised the question.

But then watch how those same people live Monday through Saturday. Watch where the money goes. Watch how they respond to inconvenience. Watch how they treat people who disagree with them, or what they do when no one is watching.

And often, not always, but far too often, you’ll find lives that are functionally indistinguishable from their non-Christian neighbors. Same pursuit of comfort. Same anxiety about status and money. Same tribalism. Same quickness to anger, slowness to forgive. Just with a Christian veneer painted over it.

That’s cultural Christianity. And before we look at anyone else through that lens, we need to sit with what Jesus himself said about it.

What Jesus Said

In Matthew 7, in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus delivers one of the most sobering warnings anywhere in Scripture:

“Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, do many mighty works in your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you.’”

These aren’t atheists. These are people who called him Lord, who were involved in what looked like ministry, who would have looked like model Christians from every visible angle. And Jesus says: I never knew you. Despite all of it. No actual relationship there.

This should stop us cold. Not to terrify us into paralysis, but to make us ask seriously: is my faith real? Not ‘is it sincere’, because sincerity and reality aren’t the same thing. But real. Transformative. The kind Jesus actually recognizes.

The Many Faces of the Counterfeit

Cultural Christianity isn’t one thing. It shows up in different forms, and one of them is probably more personally tempting to you than the others.

One version treats Christianity primarily as emotional therapy. God is there to make you feel better, give you purpose, help you through hard times. Jesus becomes a life coach more than a Lord. The problem isn’t that comfort is bad. It’s that when comfort becomes the goal, Christianity ends up existing to serve us rather than calling us to die to ourselves.

Another version reduces Christianity to a behavioral framework, family values, good citizenship, opposing the right sins, usually the ones you’re not personally tempted by. The Pharisees perfected this version. Impeccable on the outside, dead on the inside.

A third makes Christianity primarily about group identity. We’re the good guys. They’re the bad guys. Christianity becomes a team you’re on rather than a Person you’re following. This one is especially dangerous because it can coexist with solid theology. You can be a theological precisionist and still be more concerned with winning arguments than displaying Christlike character.

There’s also the version that treats salvation like a one-time transaction. You prayed the prayer, got baptized, you’re in. Heaven is secured and everything else is optional. But grace without transformation isn’t cheap grace. It’s no grace at all.

And then there’s the one that surprises people: impeccable doctrine with a cold, loveless heart. The demons believe and tremble. Right belief that produces no right living is dead orthodoxy, and it is not saving faith.

Why This Matters

When Christianity is reduced to a cultural identity, when people who claim Christ live indistinguishably from the world, we make the gospel look powerless. We confirm every cynic’s suspicion that religion is just self-deception with better music.

Jesus said the world would know we’re his disciples by our love. He said we’d be the light of the world, the salt of the earth. But when our lives look no different, when our love doesn’t extend beyond our own tribe, what are we actually showing?

The world isn’t waiting for more people who call themselves Christians. The world is desperate for people who actually look like Christ.

The Harder Question

Before we address cultural Christianity in anyone else, we have to have the courage to ask: where does it exist in me?

Maybe it’s your bank account. You affirm everything belongs to God, but live like it’s all yours. Maybe it’s your relationships. You talk about loving your enemies but there are people you’ve written off. Maybe it’s your calendar. God is your priority in theory, but not on your schedule. Maybe it’s your politics. Your tribe has shaped your values more than Scripture has.

Jesus warned about trying to remove the speck from someone else’s eye while ignoring the log in your own. So before anything else, the question has to be: Lord, is it I?

Before reading the next post: which of those versions of cultural Christianity felt most personally familiar? That sense of recognition is usually a signal worth following.