“If we allow our ideological enemies to tell us what we can and cannot say and what views we can and cannot have, we have taken our eyes off God.” Eric Metaxas
I’ve watched Eric Metaxas interviews online for years. His humour, honesty and diverse guests have long held my interest. Though he has written multiple best selling books it wasn’t until researching this article that I finally read one. His latest book Letter to the American Church is as timely as it is long overdue.
The city on a hill reference in the introduction held extra significance with the recent resignation here in Australia of the Essendon Football clubs CEO, just 24 hours after his appointment due to his association with a church by the same name. Why was his association an issue? Due to the churches uncompromising bible based belief held by Christians for generations.
According to Eric “Critical race theory, radical transgender and pro-abortion ideologies are all inescapably anti-God and anti-human”, and that’s just in the introduction.
Despite having been a writer for the veggietales, Eric’s book on The Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer brought him to the attention of a lot more people. Selling 1 million copies of a book is an achievement. Selling over 1 million copies of a 640 page book in 19 languages is even rarer.
The separation of church and state
How many more years or decades would slavery have continued if William Wilberforce had done what he was told by society and kept his faith private, staying silent about his belief that slavery was wrong?
I learned with interest while reading Letter to the American Church, “It was in 1954 that then Senator Lyndon Johnson introduced an amendment to the U.S. tax code prohibiting churches and any other nonprofit organizations from taking a public stand on political candidates. If anyone from a pulpit dared to endorse a candidate, that church’s tax exemption would be repealed.”.
It has given me even more respect for Pastors like Jack Hibbs, who during the last USA presidential election openly talked about what candidates and parties have historically stood for and what they claimed to support and then telling the audience to make an informed choice.
I respect those who like Eric are not only bold enough to say “To remain silent because some will call us names and criticise us is simply to be cowardly, and constitutes a simple failure to trust God.” but to also live it out. In the past 3 years many have cowered while others have been willing to risk income and relationships to stand up for the truth. The lead singer of Skillet, John Cooper is another who I’m thinking of writing on soon. He has dared the risk of being cancelled to not just sing the truth but speak it as well.
Children having their childhoods ripped away from them paid for by the tax payer is happening as much in America as it is in Australia. Eric’s latest book Letter to the American Church is applicable to many countries if not all.
The separation of church and state is keeping the state out of the church, it was never meant to be about keeping the church out of the state. I urge you to read both the 1934 Barmen Declaration and the 2009 Manhattan Declaration. How do the churches in your community match up to these declarations? How does your life match up to these declarations?
“When we speak out, we inevitably encourage others to speak out along with us, decreasing the price of speaking out. So there is no way to remain neutral in such situations. Either we help evil, or we fight evil. Either we speak and thereby help others to speak truth, or we cower in silence and thereby lead others to do the same.”
Is your faith running a marathon or on life support?
I kept thinking of the verse faith without works is dead while reading Eric’s book. “We cannot earn our way into God’s good graces by what we do as though our good works could themselves lift us into Heaven. Of course not. Nonetheless what we do shows what we actually believe”.
Talking about Adam and Eve covering themselves he writes “They do not ask God what to do, but do this themselves and do it quickly, before He is able to see them as they are.”. I don’t recall ever thinking of this story in this way before and for this fresh perspective I thank you Eric.
“We may see their actions in this as constituting the first “religious” act in history. Religion in the pejorative sense seems to think that we ourselves can do this or that, or cannot do this or that, and thereby earn our way back into God’s good graces by our behaviors. In religious actions, we seek to minimize the horrifying reality of our disobedience, and then cavalierly attempt to bridge the divide ourselves, as if that were possible.”
In later chapters he shares his perspective on evangelism and discipleship, toxic masculinity and perfect masculinity. Eric is swimming against the current after decades of the church being influenced by society rather than society by the church.
I nearly teared up while reading Eric’s recent recollection of being with a prominent American pastor who openly shared how proud he was not to have said anything so
controversial that he might in any way be “cancelled” or lose his opportunity to “preach the Gospel.”. It is just one of the examples he gives highlighting the similarities he sees between the German church of the 1930’s and the American church today.
At only 139 pages Letter to the American Church is an easy read in a day, or a couple of nights. It may have you thinking about its contents for much longer.
My closing question for you is, will you be a radically obedient follower of Jesus or are things of this world too important?
3 of Neville’s previous most read articles:
- Children are not Commodities
- What is your life worth?
- Would Jesus ban guns?