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God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams

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I think this is one of the best books I've read of serious Christian thought in the last few years. He teaches on ramifications of our po-mo thinking and also brings out clearly the way our consumer bent way of thinking has dictated the presentation of the gospel. Many times in ways we do not even see or sense...yet the 'consumer as king' mentality has not been challenged in the church and the believer feels at home sitting in judgement on eternal truths. An extremely worthwhile read,

This second in Well's trinity follows on the heels of "No Place For Truth." In it, Well's strongly presents evidence that Christianity is on the brink of caving into the pressures of a postmodern culture and world that it finds itself in.

As in the kings in the Divided Kingdom, many chose to compromise and/or align with the enemies or allies. We know how this turned out for the church. Will the church today heed prophecy such as Well's before it's too late?

Expressing the opinion that the church is being attacked both within and without to speak different messages with different words, Wells challenges the church to be the church; to say a different message which confronts and challenges the world to align itself with the world's Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.

In this sequel to the groundbreaking 1993 book entitled "No Place for Truth" (which is also strongly recommended), a professor from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary shows how evangelical churches have slowly but surely fallen for the values of postmodern society. Christian ministers in particular should pay close attention to Wells' thoughts, as he calls for a return to preaching God's holiness as an antidote to the church's compromised state.

I am reading this book as part of a course in basic theology, and it is very illuminating. I would highly recommend this book to anyone in the church who wants to tell about "the reason for the hope that lies within you..." It is not just for a few pastors and teachers to know theology; it is the opportunity of everyone in the church.

When David F. Wells published No Place for Truth he promised to follow up his critique with a more positive proclamation, which he adumbrates in God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, c. 1994). (He reneges a bit on the "positive" promise, however, opting to set forth a more modest "perspective" for such proclamation. As we all know, it's easier to pick things apart than to weave them together! So this is more a continuation of the first volume than a blueprint for construction.) The volume, as the title portends, resumes Wells' cultural critique of "modernity;" he believes Western Christian culture has been swept aside by powerful secular torrents. Traditional values and "timeless truths" have simply faded from prominence, if not slipped from memory.
Renewing his distinction between "modernization" and "modernity," Wells grants the material comforts of the former while condemning the spiritual poverty of the latter. Clinging like barnacles to better nutrition and transportation have come fractured families and suicidal adolescents. At the heart of the crisis lies "the central issue with which Our Time must now reckon: the loss of its center" (p. 14). "At its starkest," Wells says, "it is the transition from Mozart to Guns n' Roses, from Aquinas to infomercials, from Milton to gangsta rap. We may now have everything, but none of it means anything anymore" (p. 14). In the midst of this cultural upheaval, the Christian Church has lost its footing. Particularly, Wells holds, evangelicalism has lost its theological foundation, seeking "cultural acceptability by emptying itself of serious thought, serious theology, serious worship, and serious practice in the larger culture" (p. 27). To get along, evangelicals have sanded off the edges and softened the texture of their faith, making it easier to recruit converts, easier to attract devotees of entertaining self-help talks and rhythmic concerts. In the midst of all their apparent "success," evangelicals have lost touch with God.
Instead they have pursued alternatives to God, worldly idols of various sorts. Our hearts, Scripture declares, forever fabricate idols--things we construct and control, giving us the illusion of security. One of the idols "made in America" is the worldly church which substitutes self-esteem for divine worship and promotional programs for godly disciplines. Ultimately, "The choices now are sharp and clear. Which of these two competing and antagonistic loves will hold the evangelical heart: love for God or love for the world?" (p. 223). American clerics, attuned to the emergent consumer culture, have reduced the Gospel to marketable potions targeted for "felt needs."
Thus, Wells says, evangelists such as George Whitefield and "populist" movements such as the Methodists took advantage of this nation's propensity for popular sovereignty. The most successful revivalists, including Charles G. Finney and Dwight L. Moody, appealed to those anti-intellectual biases in their hearers which encouraged superficial preaching and faith.
Today those biases, Wells argues, sustain much of the "church-growth" movement. Find what most people want to hear; say it with enthusiasm and skill; grow a mega-church. Forget (or ignore) the more probing biblical passages which might present barriers to potential members. Emphasize unconditional love rather than obedience. Always endeavor to provide a therapeutic message for hurting hearts. Do whatever attracts crowds. Market the message. Wells' ire for George Barna and his followers finds few limits as he indicts the popular "success" models for church growth. What so angers him is what he perceives as the sidelining of God from the entire evangelical enterprise.
If God truly IS, His followers should focus on Him, not on themselves as recipients of His benefits. If God truly IS, what we know of Him comes from Him, not from our own minds. From Kant to Richard Rorty, those thinkers most responsible for shaping the "modern mind" have increasingly restricted knowledge to whatever we construct in our own minds. The ultimately autonomous self spawned by the Enlightenment facilely seeks to construct and indwell his or her own world.
Rejecting the worldliness intrinsic to modernity, Wells insists we must recover a commitment to objective truth, rightly apprehending what's real. We must dive into deep waters to find truth. As P.T. Forsyth said, "The lazy cry of simplicity is a great danger" (p. 118). We must escape the mental drift of what Wells dubs our "cliche culture," looking up to a God who's there, a God who's holy, not a soft shrink who seeks to ease our anxieties.
Today's evangelicals are slipping down the rut of 19th century liberalism, evading the clear biblical emphasis on the holiness of God. "Holiness," Wells says, "is what defines God's character most fundamentally, and a vision of this holiness should inspire his people and evoke their worship, sustain their character, fuel their passion for truth, and encourage persistence in efforts to do his will and call on his name in petitionary prayer" (p. 136).
Admittedly a holy God doesn't fit easily into a therapeutic gospel. Nor does he meet the stipulations of those who insist God is a soft-hearted "daddy" who could never discipline or damn those who defy Him. But Wells insists we must recover a reverence for a Holy God. Only God's holiness rightly reveals the enormity of sin. And only the enormity of sin rightly requires the atoning work of Christ, providing our salvation.
Wells' concern for evangelicalism narrows, toward the end of this treatise, to a concern for "the coming generation" of its leaders. He carefully studies some sociological surveys of seminarians, attending the most solidly evangelical seminaries such as Asbury, Fuller, and Talbot. Though these future ministers cling to some traditional affirmations, such as original sin, most of them seem to have embraced "a vision of self as individually discovered or created" rather than one "fallen, perverse, and corrupt" (p. 199). Their vision of ministry seems calculated to enable people to discover their self-identity, to enhance their self-esteem. (A recent treatise on youth ministry, incidentally, shows that parents most want youth pastors to help their kids feel good about themselves.) Many of them come from troubled families, and, having learned how to help the helpless, "They continue to serve as co-dependent rescuers in their professional capacity in the church, typically fashioning their ministry in terms of counseling" (p. 203). Thus the church is turned into a hospital for the "needy" rather than an army of recruits training for battle.
While Wells sympathizes with the seminarians he helps educate, he grows discouraged considering the prospects for churches under their ministry. The church, he thinks, needs theologically-astute leaders, ready to proclaim the traditional truths of the Christian Faith, seriously intent on doing God's will rather than pandering to the multifaceted "needs" of the populace. Like Wells' first treatise, this book challenges one to think seriously about the issues Wells raises. He has a refreshing willingness to challenge the "success syndrome" which pervades much of evangelicalism. He does, however, suffer from what seems to me the tunnel-vision typical of Reformed theologians, rejecting all which fails to meet certain cerebral categories. It's a book to read and ponder, not a recipe for fully engaging us in the task to which we're called.

The primary concern of God in the Wasteland is the influence modernism and modernity has had on the Christian Church as a whole. Wells, a theology professor, offers a look at the trend of mega-church building, its emphasis on marketing, and its effects on theology. He discusses how the philosophies of Christianity, postmodernism, and New Age spiritualism have reacted to modernism and its perhaps prematurely called death - the end of the "Enlightenment project." In the wake of the centuries old endeavor, a progression towards the ideal of man, the effects are still felt in the church. Christians are faced with re-establishing their relationship with God after distancing themselves for those centuries.

There are two methods of modernism that the Church has incorporated: marketing and giving the people what they want. This results from an attitude shared with capitalism: the people are consumers. This, consequently, makes God the product and the Church the salesman. The terms are irreligious, but as Wells point out, they are used by those practicing a church growth doctrine. The exemplar of this doctrine is George Barna, who applies business models to churches to make them grow. He states that pastors would do better to have a Master of Business Administration degree, rather than a Master of Divinity. Modern pastors need "gifts" of delegation, confidence, interaction, decision-making, visibility, practicality, accountability, and discernment. Barna suggests the power of visual realization, envisioning the large church and making it happen. The greatest controversy is over his idea of adapting the product to the customer's needs. Another advocate of a more `pragmatic' approach to church building is David Macavran, who published Understanding Church Growth and established the American Institute for Church Growth in the 1970's. Macavran used psychology, marketing, and behavio9ral health research for his theories. Theology was conspicuously missing.

Giving the people what they want prompts the question what should the Church compromise? As modernism dominates in society at large, or the reactionary postmodernism or New Age spiritualism among segments of society, the Church may embrace the influence in order to attract members of society. Teachings on God's transcendence, holiness, providence are taught much less than it once was. Condemnation of sin, emphasizing God's judgment, and the reality of Hell are minimized as these do not appeal to the consumer as sovereign, another philosophy some modern churches share with capitalism, along with ideas finding legitimacy and value in the marketplace. Instead a multi-media presentation is made to self-interest. Wells writes of this environment, "It is here that entertainment and worship are not merely interspersed but often indistinguishable. And it is here, where life should be receiving its most serious and sustained analysis, that tons of literature and countless hours of television and radio programming are being produced that contain nothing more than the sorts of empty clichés and hollow comforts that are available everywhere else in the modernized world ... at this very moment, evangelicalism has bought cultural acceptability by emptying itself of serious thought, serious theology, serious worship, and serious practice in the larger culture" (27).

Modernization within the church has fostered two approaches: the therapeutic and the managerial. The therapeutic approach sees sin as a sickness, and the right technique is available in the marketplace to heal people. The manifestation of this is the support group. The managerial approach looks for efficient techniques for happiness.

Another way modernism may affect the Church, though not by purposeful program, but by a pervasive philosophy in society, is the elevation of the individual, beyond the appeal to consumer or patient. Modernism replaced God with self. Philosophers such as Kant, Nietzsche, Rority, and Fish not only put self on the throne as legislator and arbiter of truth and justice, but elevate the self to become creator of reality. They bring into question whether there is an external reality, which brings into doubt any external God to whose image the self should conform. "Thus thwarted in their effort to find meaning outside themselves, moderns have sought to relocate all reality internally, detached from any fixed moral norms" (94).

Wells recognizes effects of modernism in general, but we can spot them within the Church too. One effect is the attitude and language of victimhood. "This spiral into pervasive victimhood... marks a corresponding erosion of personal responsibility, and suggests that genuine moral discourse about what is right and wrong, irrespective of private interests, is increasingly less possible. Contemporary culture has so diminished our moral capacity, so robbed us of a concern to act responsibly, that we tend to resent moral demands from without or simply to dismiss them out of hand" (135).

The appeal to self-interest, the adaptation of the Church, the emphasis of certain socially accepted traits of God and a suppression or denial of the unpopular traits, all elevate the value of self while diminishing the values of God. God becomes weightless. "...what was once objective in God's being, what once stood over against the sinner, is either being lost or transformed into something we discover first and foremost in ourselves in such a way that God's immanence is typically psychologized. ...A God with whom we are on such easy terms and whose reality is little different from our own - a God who is merely there to satisfy our needs - has no real authority to compel and will soon bore us" (92-93). This passage, the last line especially, is a bleak prophecy that appears to be taking place now.

In "God in the Wasteland..." David Wells continues the examination of the decline of evangelicalism he began in "No Place for Truth" taking it to such a depth of content and analysis that there is no doubt in my mind that we are in trouble. Modernity (or Post-modernity depending on your view) has infiltrated the church to such a degree that we are more worldly than not. Dr. Wells calls us to let God "weigh heavily" on us and the Church. He calls us to be turn away from the worldliness that we have adopted and turn toward God. Only then can we truly be the Church, an alternate culture in a decaying world. There is so much to this argument that it would be hard to even scratch the surface in this review. I can only urge you to read and consider Dr. Wells' observations and how you need to respond to the crisis at hand. In addition to his penetrating observations Dr. Wells also includes the raw data from a study of two groups of seminarians eleven years apart and their responses to a battery of questions designed to assess their world-view. This fascinating book is a must read for all those concerned with the state of the Church.

I was amazed at the depth of this book. Chapter after chapter Wells was able to pin point weaknesses and compromises being made daily in our churches. This book is not just a for pastors and clergy, its a laity book that takes the reader into areas of church life that will make or break Christianity.

This is an outstanding book about what is happening in today's churches. It explains why so many Christians are being born-again but so few disciples are being made. It is a book that is right on the mark and a must-read for anyone who is in church leadership.