How do churches respond to the so-called vibe shift? (Photo: Fa Barboza via Unsplash)
People are coming back to spirituality in their search for meaning and purpose. Is this the beginning of a new-Christian era, or could we find a society even more individualistic, even more hardened against the unique claims of Jesus Christ?
That’s certainly a concern for Andrew Spencer, who argues in a TGC USA article that our “increasingly post-Christian society” is drawn not to Christ, nor necessarily to organised religion, but “to paganism and the paranormal.” Contrary to Dawkins et. al., Spencer acknowledges that creation points to “something greater beyond the material world,” exposing a “God-shaped hole in the human heart.” The vibe shift makes religion more intuitively plausible, as “general openness to supernaturalism makes Christianity seem less weird.” But less weird is a low bar; openness to the supernatural is not the same as openness to the unique claims of the Biblical Christ.
The human tendency to sin will cause us to try to fill such a God-shaped hole with anything other than the one true God in Christ. Spencer rightly identifies that where ancient paganism was communal, “contemporary paganism is generally privatized” and individualised. It democratises the “personalized cults mediated by shamans and sages, who… embodied “the rise of the autonomous individual” centuries before Christ was born.” Contemporary spirituality applies Western individualism, therapeutism, and consumerism to the spirit world. The key point is that if the individual chooses or even invents their own form of spirituality from the religious buffet spread before them, then they have not handed over authority and continue to rebel. People’s preferred Christs don’t exist. Only the Biblical one does. He was seen and testified to by eyewitnesses—Luke 1:1-4; 24:45-49; John 20:29-31; Acts 1:21-22; 2 Peter 1:16; 1 John 1:1-3. He, and he alone, is the way, the truth, and the life; no-one comes to the Father apart from him—John 14:6. We need to urge people to repent of their false beliefs, their false, unbiblical views of Christ, and come to the real one so they can be saved—saved even from their own misguided spirituality.
Of course we shouldn’t try to offend anyone or turn them away. But love does not require uncritical affirmation of people’s prejudices. We must continue to witness to the Christian faith, which locates authority not within but outside the self, in Christ, God incarnate, via his inspired word the Bible. The church testifies to this through her confessional statements, applied by the church’s ministers today. As Spencer says, “the individualistic nature of contemporary spiritualism” makes it “more important that Christians are well versed in the gospel and orthodox doctrine,” so we can “differentiat[e] Christianity from other forms of spirituality.”
This kind of cautious discernment will improve our evangelism, apologetics, and discipleship in the long run. It will improve our evangelism because it will help us call people to follow the true Jesus and repent of false ones. It will help our apologetics, both by distinguishing truth from falsehood, and by demonstrating integrity and credibility. We are more interested in seeking and speaking truth than in consequences. And we trust the Holy Spirit of God to create long-term, abiding results: deeply converted people who stand firm in and out of season.
The better we understand people, the better we can explain what it would mean for them to repent, even of their noble, socially and personally beneficial idols, and follow the real Jesus. The Holy Spirit can use our exhortations to bring people to true faith. Let’s pray and work to that end, for the honour of Christ and the salvation, by his grace, of many.
[This is Kamal’s third post in a series about the ‘vibe shift’ in Western culture. The first post discussed how people are abandoning atheistic hedonism. The second warned against equating the new search for meaning and purpose, and concomitant interest in religion, as an openness to the gospel.]