PEW SITTERS
When brought up in a Christian family and taught morality, sin doesn’t make such an impact. It gets watered down to: “churchgoers don’t have sin problems and non-churchgoers do.” They are bad and need to be saved, thus the emphasis is on evangelism—getting people into the church. Sin is so much in the background and not considered that scripture addressing sin is looked over in favor of the “Great Commission.”
This is probably one of the main reasons that the generation that is big on evangelism sees the next generation not interested in evangelizing even themselves. To them, their parent’s religion seems just another way of being bigoted.
“It is not opposition of the world that most endangers the church of Christ. It is the evil cherished in the heart of believers that works their most grievous disaster and most surely retards the progress of God’s cause. There is no surer way of weakening spirituality than by cherishing envy, suspicion, faultfinding, and evil surmising” Ellen G. White (ref#331, p549).
“[A] believer may lead a fairly normal Christian life on the outside while wrestling with a steady barrage of sinful thoughts on the inside: lust, envy, greed, hatred, apathy, etc. I see about 65 percent of all Christians living at this level of spiritual conflict” Neil T. Anderson (ref#90, p107).
“[H]ow many lives are wasted by people who believe that the Christian life means simply avoiding badness and providing for the family. So there is no adultery, no stealing, no killing, no embezzlement, no fraud—just lots of hard work during the day, and lots of TV and PG-13 videos in the evening (during quality family time), and lots of fun stuff on the weekend—woven around church (mostly). This is life for millions of people. Wasted life” John Piper (ref#2, p119).
“[W]e do not just have to submit and resign ourselves in order to be made perfect. [I]f I am a child of God, God has started to work in me. He will go on, and He will bring it to perfection. But He does so by opening my mind and understanding; He reveals sin to me; He tells me to put these things into practice, to press on and to strive; and He gives the final assurance that if I confess my sin He is faithful and just to forgive my sins and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness . . .” Martyn Lloyd-Jones (ref#211, p80-81).
Bonnie's Prayer Affair 