These are a series of lessons adapted from Jonathan Fisk’s book, Broken. All are encouraged buy Broken to get the full content in the book.
Christian Punks are Posers
Punk Rock John was a good kid. He played in a punk rock band and worshiped with punk rock style. He was a good kid. He didn’t just go to church, but he was a Christian, on fire and unafraid to step out of the box for Jesus.
He was a good kid. He played in a Christian band. He hung out with Christian friends. He lived the Christian life. He worked hard to bring people to Jesus. He struggled after God’s will for his life. He had time for prayer. He had time to play his guitar. He mixed the two together and sang out songs of praise to his heart’s content.
Then he met a missionary. It all started innocently enough. He was online, the way he often was, surfing the punk rock forums in search of a few new chord progressions. He clicked a link. It took him to a punk rock site. There was a demonic symbol in the corner and an attractive young woman with blue hair on the sidebar … No biggie. He’d been to these sites before. This was the punk rock world.
He was about to click back when something else caught his eye. It wasn’t the young woman or the paraphernalia but some words. They were words he didn’t like. They angered him and made him click the link: “Christian Punks Are Posers”
It was written by the missionary. She had written it with passion and zeal. But it was the wrong mission. The missionary said Christian punk rock was a lie. True punk rock was anti-authority, anti-prejudice, anti-conformity, anti-establishment, and anti-Christian! What was more, the missionary said, Christians were all idiots living in a total delusion about reality. They didn’t just deny science; they based all their decisions on feelings and blindness.
He wanted his heart to break over how wrong the missionary was. But what scared him more than anything ever had, what terrified him till his pulse quickened, was that his heart wasn’t breaking the way it should have. He wasn’t feeling the way he was supposed to feel. Instead, he was thinking what he wasn’t supposed to think: the missionary made sense. The missionary sounded right.
He quickly turned off the computer. He got out his Bible, and he tried to pray. It was always hard to pray because the emotions never came easily. That’s why he needed music–for the emotions. He tried to pray, but the feelings didn’t come. “God, are You there?” he asked.
It wasn’t long before he was back on the same site, reading more. It was as a light had dawned on his darkened world. He started posting in the forum, asking questions, looking for guidance. He learned a lot in the next few months.
He wanted to stop. He wanted to find something to tell him that what he was reading was wrong. So he went and talked to his youth pastor. “I think I’m becoming an atheist,” he confessed in the eerily warm stuffiness of the office, sweat beading uncomfortably under his arms. The couch had always felt so welcoming and hip, but now it felt too large. He was sinking in it. He wished he could sink in it–and hide. “I found all these arguments on the Internet. They make sense. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to be an atheist. I used to be on fire. What happened? I don’t understand.”
“Is there sin you’ve been hiding?” the youth pastor asked.
“No!” he immediately said. He felt guilty saying no, even though he couldn’t think of a good reason for it. Maybe he did have hidden sin. “I just need answers,” he said, shoving the thought out of his mind. “I learned that Christmas is just Roman sun worship and that our church body is sexist. I don’t know what to think or feel.”
“I understand,” the youth pastor said. “There are many of Satan’s messengers out there. They will promote all sorts of worldly ideas to plant doubts in you. You just can’t trust them.”
“But how can I know that? How do I even know that God is there?”
“Just look at the world. How could it exist without God?”
“I don’t know: Evolution?”
“Listen, God loves you. He wants you to have a good life full of purpose and meaning. Trust me. Just pray about it. God will give you the answer you need.”
“But I have prayed.”
“Pray more. God loves you. He will answer.” But … God … didn’t … answer.
He was still a good kid, but now he was an atheist. He got rid of his Christian T-shirts and deleted his Christian punk rock MP3s. It took him a while, but he eventually told his parents. They took it hard. He understood. But they were deceived. They believed in faith, but faith didn’t have answers. Science had answers. Now he had answers too. And he had a new community that supported him, accepted him as himself, without insisting he conform to their standards.
“But weren’t you on fire for Jesus?”
“I thought I was. But it was just a show. It was just make-believe.”
He was a good kid. But his faith in Christianity was BROKEN.
– Did John’s new group honestly accept him “without insisting he conform to their standards”?
Read John 5:37-40 and John 14:16-24
– Where should the youth pastor have pointed Punk Rock John for answers?
Read 1 Timothy 3:14-15
– How did the youth pastor fail Punk Rock John as being a called representative of Christ’s Church?
Dirty Crow Tricks
Read Matthew 13:3-9
One of the darkest secrets of Christianity in America is that we are losing our kids. We hide it with light shows and Christian dance video games, but it’s true, and it is nothing new. It has been happening for more than 50 years. It is happening right now.
Worse than that, it’s not just happening to kids. It’s happening to college students and senior citizens. It’s happening to emerging adults and those going through midlife crisis. Christians are losing faith. Christians are falling away. Christians once on fire are burning out.
Jesus knew about this problem. He once told a parable about it. He said the Christian faith was like seeds being planted. Many people would believe in Him, but for too many, their faith would then die. The cares and trials of this world would overwhelm them and choke them. Although they once sprang up with joy and grew like they could never grow enough, their roots would suddenly find themselves trying to creep through a layer of bedrock. They would be thirsty, but no one would give them a glass of water. They would wither. They would die. Their faith in Christianity would be BROKEN.
The story about Punk Rock John is not unique, and according to Jesus’ parable of the sower, there’s more going on than we first see. Not only do the cares and trials of this life present a real threat to Christianity, but the devil also plays a role in undermining the Christian life. Long before the roots of faith dry up under persecution or the dangers of American culture choke faith to death like a weed, the devil has first achieved victory with his primary strategy–his most essential tactic. Like a dirty crow, he has swept in from above, stealing and snatching the source of faith. The devil’s primary goal is to make the Christian forget about the Sower’s seed.
Read 2 Timothy 3:6-8
– What led astray those who were weak in the faith? (vs. 6)
– Long before the devil ever breaks the faith of well-meaning Christians with his lies, with what must he first deceive them as if it were genuine Christianity?
Famished
Our world has always been insane. Yet, there is something doubly ruinous about our wild Western civilization of the 21st century. A perfect cultural storm shreds the spiritual landscape of the United States. It blows on the winds of a growing ignorance of history and Scripture. It drips with the dew of an insatiable appetite for entertainment and leisure. It billows on the clouds of a mounting desperation for success–even as civilization slips into streamlined decline. Into this chaos, the remnant of the Church of Jesus Christ stumbles.
It’s true: the Church still has buildings, storefronts, radio stations, and TV broadcasts. But at the same time, she seems a little strung out. She’s the young woman who tries so hard to be “with it.” She tries too hard to convince everyone that she belongs that she makes everyone who talks to her feel uncomfortable. Her lipstick is too red, and the low-cut bodice doesn’t flatter her body type. The way she dances even embarrasses her friends, especially when she’s left alone with the wrong guys.
Sure, the Church hasn’t died and gone away as the atheists predicted, but neither has she achieved wild success the way many of her own leaders had prophesied. Evangelism didn’t explode. Mission wasn’t multiplied. New technology did not complete the “Great Commission.” The Church didn’t change the world. Even worse, the world every day grows more content to keep going on its merry way, ignoring the Church’s best dancing.
To make matters worse, the world has changed the Church–and not for the better! Her expensive new hairstyle looks forced, and her refusal to face the music is beginning to appear manic. Meanwhile, good Christian people like Punk Rock John find themselves overtired, frustrated, and confused. They’ve changed clothes so many times and taken the next step over and over. They had the end of the world predicted so many times that they’re no longer sure why they came to the party as a Christian at all. Didn’t it have something to do with Jesus?
The perfect storm of our hyper-cultural age is still only the one foil the devil is using to attack the faith. It’s the same foil the youth pastor (unwittingly) taught to Punk Rock John as if it were God’s own gospel truth. It’s the same foil countless well-meaning Christian pastors preach and Christian people try a little harder to believe every single week. It is the lie that God wants you to find Him somewhere other than then where He has promised to be: in His Word and Sacraments.
The most common answer to these various struggles happening to the Church is “Rely on yourself,” or “We need to fix it!”
Read Matthew 13:3-9
– Discuss how Jesus’ parable warns us about such answers.
Read Amos 8:11-14
– What are people really starving for?
Punk Rock John and countless other American Christians aren’t getting real answers. They get the immediately satisfying fix of a warmed-over, squishy-spiritual sermon of “rely on yourself” done up with enough lipstick to keep them coming back. After all, there’s no one else to dance with anyway. But this junk-food Christianity is leaving people spiritually famished, even though, at first, it satisfies their itching ears.
That’s why many Christians are losing faith. They give up on dancing with the Church because the Christianity (which is more of a caricature of Christianity) she is preaching is BROKEN. That is why our children are leaving the Church and heading to the after-party somewhere else. A bent version of Christianity can no longer give them a Jesus worth believing. That is how you risk losing your faith. A superficial spirituality filled with answers that direct you to yourself instead of Jesus Christ and where He has promised to be for you is a hollowed-out, caricature of Christianity.
Galatians 1:6-8:
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and, instead, are following a different gospel–not that there is another gospel. To be sure, there are some who are troubling you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that person be condemned!
