Each generation of Christians is faced with challenges. There is a morass of articles listing out the “21 Challenges Facing the 21st Century Church,” proclaiming the “The Biggest Issue Facing the Church Today,” or enumerating the “11 Challenges Facing the Western Church in 2025.” Some articles tend to be geared towards demographics changes. Others towards congregational challenges like a lack of biblical literacy. And still others focus on sociopolitical issues.
I have always found it fruitful to think about the challenges that we as the Church face today. We look to Church history to see how prior believers have addressed political, cultural, and ecclesial crises. Where Christians have faltered drastically, we see inauthenticity. We even question their salvation when it comes to truly erroneous social and theological errors. But where Christians succeeded, we celebrate them as we celebrate the stories of Job, Mary, or the woman at the well. (In Eastern traditions, the woman is named Photini.)
Reflecting on the challenges we face today is a large part of what Paul meant when he wrote to the Corinthian church. To them, he wrote: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” (2 Corinthians 13:5)
A Faith Unexamined
During his final days, that great Greek philosopher Socrates was put on trial in Athens for corrupting the youth. He is said to have uttered these words to the court: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It was examination which killed Socrates. But for believers, it is examination which saves us from a certain kind of death. It is that kind of death that great theologians like Jonathan Edwards die when their readers find that they were slave owners. It is that kind of death which leaders like Ravi Zacharias die when their sexual sins of abuse come to light.
We are not saved by works, lest anyone boast (Ephesians 2:9). But as Christ said, we are to be known by our fruits (Matthew 7:16). This does not mean we are to be morally perfect. But we are called to self-reflect, or as Paul said, to test ourselves. An unexamined faith is a blind and dangerous faith.
Naming Issues or Discerning Our Challenges?
But how then should we proceed to think about the major challenges facing the Church today? Is it to name the specific issues that puzzle, confront, or confuse Christians? There is some worth to this. But aren’t we all quite aware of the specific issues that we face today?
I am more interested in the challenges surrounding these issues. To draw a quick analogy, what was the major sin of Sodom and Gomorrah? Many say it was that the group of men raped Lot’s daughters, but that since they wanted to rape the angels, the major sin of Sodom was homosexuality. But as the prophet Ezekiel tells us, “this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy” (16:49). The rape of Lot’s daughters, and the rapacious lust of the men were but expressions of Sodom’s inhospitality.
Christianity’s Contemporary Challenges
Now that we have given context to our mode of reflection, let us begin.
1. Falsely Defining the World
Growing up, I realized I was quite different from my Christian peers. Others were raised very tightly within the Church. They went to Sunday school every day, went to Christian academies, or were homeschooled on Christian curricula. I went to public school, worked secular jobs, and graduated from a secular university.
The core difference I saw between myself and other Christians who grew up always within the Church was how we understood the world. Those removed from the world tend to falsely define it. They see it as irreversibly antagonistic. The world is completely impure, devoid of any ounce of God’s goodness or redemptive promise.
As a result, Christians sheltered by Christian institutions view non-Christians condescendingly as morally inept. This anthropological pessimism (a theological term for having a negative view of human nature) leads ironically to a strong spirit of pride. Some of these Christians view themselves as the only ones with solutions to the world’s problems.
To correct this, Christians must engage with the world authentically. The Church cannot be the Church without the world, nor can the world be the world without the Church. To truly understand who the Church is and what it is for, the Church must understand the world as it truly is.
2. Shutting Down Criticisms
If I were to ask you whether the Church today is Socrates or Athens, what would you say? Your real answer should be different from your ideal answer. Today, the Church is more akin to Athens than it is to Socrates. When people raise criticisms, questions, and doubts against the Church, they become ostracized, judged, condemned, and excluded.
Not all Christian communities do this, of course. The revival of Christian apologetics headed by populist apologists like Inspiring Philosophy and academic apologists like William Lane Craig have deepened our ability to address the philosophical challenges to Christian faith. However, not all challenges are philosophical.
Pastors often seethe against critical race theory. Some Christian teachers refuse to teach evolutionary theory. Apologists often wave away the historical sins committed in the name of Christianity to address more “suitable” challenges to Christian faith.
It is no surprise that the #exvangelical movement is still going strong, that the religiously unaffiliated have been on the rise for so long. Like Athens, we have a dangerous insecurity about our faith, our history, and our tradition which does more harm to our witness than we think.
To correct this, we must first listen before we deny, defend, or shut down conversations. We should steel ourselves to answer tough questions. Not only about faith and reason, but faith and cruelty, faith and atrocity, and faith and abuse.
3. Balancing Transcendence with Immanence
The language of transcendence and immanence here is quite analogical. Theologians make a distinction between God’s transcendence and God’s immanence. Transcendence means that God is above, beyond, and radically other than creation. Immanence, on the other hand, means that God is either within or sustaining creation.
Striking a balance between God’s transcendence and immanence is important for an endless number of reasons. Here, I shall address the political reason.
To relate God’s transcendence and immanence to political life is to relate God’s values, the Kingdom, and Christ’s teachings to worldly, temporal political orders. On the one hand, we risk the error of stressing God’s immanence too much. We do this when we over-identify God with a particular political ideology, party, or person. The extreme of this error is proclaiming a politician as a messiah, or an ideology as a savior.
On the other hand, we also risk the error of emphasizing God’s otherness too much. In the context of American party politics, we do this when we state that God is simply above the two party system. But what lies beyond that true statement? Far too often, God’s transcendence ends us up in only more confusion about how our faith relates to political life.
Conclusion
These three challenges – falsely defining the world, shutting down criticisms, and balancing transcendence with immanence – are, I think, the major challenges facing Christians today. These challenges all have to do with our basic impulses and drives. How do we understand those different than us? How do we handle standing on shaky ground? And how can we be in but not of this world?
I call for the Church to engage the world as it is. No more assuming easy falsities of our neighbors. We must also patiently, vulnerably, and honestly engage with the contemporary critiques of faith. These can be philosophical, societal, or historical. Without such engagement, we lose credibility. And lastly, we should do more thinking about what God’s immanence and transcendence entail for our political, cultural, social, and individual lives. God is neither completely removed from us. Nor is He completely committed to any worldly thing.
By engaging these challenges, we shall test ourselves as Paul instructs us to. And by engaging these broader difficulties, we can faithfully address individual issues that manifest. For it is our answer not only to specific issues, but broader ways of discerning those issues, which future Christians will look back on the same way we look back on the failures and victories of Christians who have gone before us.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In