Christianity Without a Lord

Earlier this year, I attended a large Christian event that left me strangely unsettled.

Jesus was thanked. God was mentioned. There were smiles, applause, emotional speeches, and endless talk about impact. But something felt profoundly absent. Holiness was barely spoken of. Sin was almost entirely missing. Christ’s atoning sacrifice felt assumed rather than treasured. There was little reverence, little weight, little call toward repentance, obedience, sanctification, or the fear of God. What I mostly walked away with was the uncomfortable feeling that we had become very impressed with ourselves.

And the more I thought about it afterward, the more it connected with another growing sorrow of mine: professing Christians increasingly speaking about the world in categories Scripture itself would not recognize.

Different symptoms. Same disease.

There are two pebbles in my shoe that I cannot seem to shake. They are coarse and irritating, and they follow me everywhere lately. They sit in the back of my mind while I work, while I pray, while I scroll, while I sit in church. One of them is relatively fresh. The other has been growing for years. But I finally realized they are connected at the root.

They are both symptoms of a Christianity detached from Christian epistemology.

That may sound overly academic, but the idea itself is simple: many Christians still claim Christ while no longer thinking Christianly. We have Christian vocabulary without Christian categories. We say Jesus is Lord while reserving entire portions of our worldview from His authority.

And nowhere is this more obvious than in the modern obsession with the autonomous self.

We live in a culture that no longer believes man is fallen, only constrained. The problem is never sin; it is always systems, structures, oppression, trauma, lack of affirmation, lack of resources, lack of education, or insufficient self-expression. Humanity constantly searches for the final lever that will usher in paradise if we would only pull it hard enough.

Maybe the answer is political revolution.

Maybe it is better policy.

Maybe it is wealth redistribution.

Maybe it is affirmation.

Maybe it is technology.

Maybe it is therapy.

Maybe it is medication.

Maybe it is education.

Maybe it is sexual liberation.

Maybe it is destroying the “wrong people.”

Maybe it is finally letting everyone become their “true self.”

But underneath all of it lies the same ancient lie from the garden:

God is holding out on you.

His order cannot be trusted.

His boundaries are the problem.

You should decide good and evil for yourself.

And we have been swallowing that lie ever since.

The modern world calls this freedom. Scripture calls it rebellion.

The terrifying thing is not merely that the culture believes this. The terrifying thing is how many Christians now interpret reality through these same assumptions while still speaking fluent Christianese. We have absorbed the world’s anthropology while carefully (or not so carefully) placing Christian branding on top of it.

And here is the crux of the sorrow for me: if Christ is Lord, then He is Lord over all. Not merely over our church attendance. Not merely over our private spirituality. Not merely over the parts of Scripture that cost us nothing socially. He is Lord over our understanding of justice, sex, morality, identity, authority, purpose, truth, government, sin, forgiveness, and even what it means to be human.

A genuinely Christian worldview begins with God, not man.

It begins with the reality that God created all things and therefore defines all things. He determines what something is, what it is for, and what is good for it. Creation has meaning because creation has an author.

A butter knife can function as a screwdriver for a little while. But misuse eventually damages both the tool and the thing it touches.

Human beings are no different.

God is holy. Christians say this phrase often, but I am no longer convinced we understand what we are saying. Holiness does not merely mean “good” in some vague sentimental sense. It means utterly perfect, utterly righteous, utterly set apart. God never errs. Never compromises. Never sins. Never bends to corruption. His ways are good because He Himself is the standard of goodness.

Which means sin is not a minor mistake or an unfortunate imperfection. It is cosmic treason. It is rebellion against the Author of existence itself. We were created for communion with God and instead attempted to seize His throne for ourselves.

And we are still doing it.

This is why so much modern Christianity feels hollow to me. We want the language of grace without the reality of guilt. We want mercy without holiness. We want affirmation without repentance. We want the benefits of Christ without bowing before His authority.

The self has become the great idol of our age.

And idols always blind us.

So I watch professing Christians defend things Scripture explicitly condemns because modern moral instincts feel more compassionate than God’s commands. I watch Christians talk about identity as though the self is something discovered internally rather than received from the Creator. I watch believers speak as though envy is justice, partiality is righteousness, sexual autonomy is liberation, and self-expression is sacred.

And I do not say this from a place of superiority. That is precisely the point.

The killer is inside the house.

The rebellion is not merely “out there” in culture somewhere. The treason runs through me too. I am just as capable of fashioning God into my own image. I am just as capable of wanting a Christianity that comforts me without crucifying me.

That is why the absence of holiness in Christian spaces unsettles me so deeply. Because when the holiness of God disappears, the glory of man rushes in to fill the vacuum.

If we lose sight of the weight of sin, then the cross becomes little more than inspirational imagery. If we lose sight of God’s transcendence, Christianity slowly collapses into therapeutic self-esteem with worship music behind it. If we lose sight of the fear of the Lord, then the church eventually becomes incapable of speaking prophetically to the world because it has already adopted the world’s assumptions.

Wisdom is not merely possessing information. Wisdom is living in alignment with reality as God defines it.

So what should we call it when Christians possess Bibles, Christian language, Christian institutions, Christian aesthetics, and even Christian emotions while fundamentally reasoning about reality like secular modernity?

Perhaps the problem is not merely lack of biblical knowledge, though that is certainly part of it.

Perhaps the deeper issue is that we no longer truly believe God gets to define reality at all.