Fads and fashions

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching… Ephesians 4:14

I vaguely remember a song from many years ago about someone who was “a dedicated follower of fashion”. I think it was back in “the swinging sixties”, and that it mocked the tendency of many people to latch onto whatever was the latest thing in clothes, music, hair styles or whatever. How shallow people were! (Perhaps still are.)

Exactly the same thing can be true of religion – and that includes Christianity.

And it’s nothing new – Ephesians 4:14 makes it clear that it happened even in the earliest days of the church. Paul is urging his readers to grow up, to mature in their faith, and he uses a dynamic illustration to describe what will happen to them if they don’t: they will be “blown here and there by every wind of teaching”.

There are Christians, he implies, who are fickle, unstable and far too easily taken in by the latest plausible spiritual fad – people who jump on spiritual bandwagons. Just think of autumn leaves in a strong, gusty wind: that’s you! he says.

This is where getting old can offer many examples.

My conversion at 15 virtually coincided with the birth of what became known as the charismatic movement (ancient history today!). At first it was seriously bewildering – all those weird Pentecostal practices seemed to have broken their bounds and come flooding into the “mainstream” churches. It took us – well, me anyway – some years to digest what was going on and to come to some kind of assessment. When I did that, I was humbled to learn that while there was indeed much that was damaging and simply wrong, there was perhaps even more that was thoroughly scriptural and much needed for the enrichment and enlivening of tired, stale churches.

Since those days we have had a steady succession of movements… “heavy shepherding” - churches controlled by leaders who were very likely self-appointed; the “prosperity gospel” - if you’re a Christian you can expect to be wealthy and successful in everything you do; the “new Calvinism” - which places a distorted emphasis on the great truths of the Reformation; “deliverance ministry” – which sometimes seems, in practice, to be obsessed with the devil and all things demonic; the “ministry of healing” - with an admirable but sometimes naïve faith in the availability of physical and mental healing; “Christian Zionism” - which very likely places an unscriptural emphasis on the nation of Israel.

I could go on…

What can be confusing, of course, is that there are likely to be elements of both good and bad in all such trends. So the key question is: how can I tell the difference between a mere fad and a genuine movement of the Holy Spirit? God is sovereign, after all, and he is quite capable of doing something new. Christians whose minds are firmly bolted and barred against any possibility of “a new thing” are just as harmful as the dedicated follower of spiritual fashions. Cynicism can be just as deadening as gullibility is deceptive.

The apostle John tells us not to “believe every spirit, but to test every spirit to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1). In a word, we are to nurture the gift of discernment – the ability to probe and ask thoughtful questions so that we are not misled.

But how do we do this? That question may need a whole blog to itself (perhaps next time). But at the very least a good grasp of the Bible is needed, and wise, mature, reliable Christians to guide us. Not everybody is a scholar, and that’s fine, and many Christians are not natural readers (remember that probably the majority of the early Christians could neither read nor write), and that’s fine too. But the Bible is a very complex book, and it’s silly to pretend otherwise. So we need all the help we can get.

An obvious but perhaps overlooked safeguard against being deceived is, quite simply, time. Yesterday’s exciting novelty may well turn out to be tomorrow’s stale innovation, so we need to pause, not get too excited, and look at things in the cold light of day.

If we embrace new ideas too readily there is a danger that we turn our churches from being – well, simply churches, that is, communities of followers of Jesus, and turn them in effect into spiritual clubs for the like-minded. I can think of churches I have known which seem almost more like sects or even cults.

If we do find ourselves sometimes a little confused by the bewildering array of options available to us as we look around the churches, here’s a three-point plan that I would suggest…

(1)  Love Jesus. He and he alone is to be the focal point of our lives. And remember that loving him also means obeying him (John 14:23). 

(2)  Trust Jesus. He and he alone is worthy of our simple, childlike faith.

(3)  Serve Jesus. He and he alone deserves our glad and sacrificial service until the day we die.

Stick with these simple guidelines and you won’t go far wrong. 

Father, our world is awash with new ideas, some of which are clearly outside the mainstream of the Christian faith while others may represent the moving of your Spirit. Please give me the wisdom and humility to know the difference! Amen.