Jeff Myers’ Unquestioned Answers: Against False Simplistic Christianity

By Tom Gilson Published on August 23, 2020

He calls it Simplicism. Not simplicity, which is about uncluttering our lives, but the mistaken attempt to unclutter thinking by making things simpler than they really are. Bumper stickers are the great example: “COEXIST” or “You can’t hug a child with nuclear arms.” But Jeff Myers, author of Unquestioned Answers: Rethinking Ten Christian Clichés to Rediscover Biblical Truths, isn’t talking about skeptics or about the left in this book. He’s talking about us. Christians. We have an addiction to Simplicism, and it’s doing us no good.

It’s an easy trap to fall into. Simple messages communicate. “Hate the sin but love the sinner.” Just seven words, and there you go: you’ve communicated a complex and difficult theological truth. God really does hate sin, and He really does love sinners. We’re supposed to follow Him and His example.

It’s quick, it’s easy — and in all kinds of ways, it’s wrong. It’s wrong because it makes the truth way more simple than it really is, which opens the door for all kinds of error. Think of the “sinner” we’re talking about with that slogan. When he hears us say it, can we count on him knowing the full, rich theology behind it? Does the woman hearing know just how great a love God has for her, love that would take Jesus all the way to the Cross? Would either of them know that God has a way of regarding persons’ worth separate from his behavior? Does he know that his “lifestyle” isn’t his whole story?

Now think of the believer who tries using that slogan: Does he understand these things? Does he know that God hates his sin, too, while yet loving him as a sinner? Might he even be using this slogan as an easy way out from really loving the sinner?

That’s just one example of the distorting Simplicism Jeff Myers is after in this book.

This Author Knows What He’s Talking About

Myers has reason to know about it. As a teenager he rejected Christianity because he’d been judged on the basis of “Us vs. Them” Simplicisms. “My childhood crisis faith led me to feel that Christianity was a simplistic solution in search of a problem simple enough for it to solve,” he says. Not that Christians are the only guilty parties: Witness the bumper sticker slogans above.

Myers has another reason to know about Simplicism, though. “In one of life’s ironies,” he says, he now heads up Summit Ministries, a “respected organization that for more than fifty-seven years has inspired rising generations to reawaken their Christian faith and be leaders who stand strong in a culture of great dishonesty.”

Respected? I’ll say. There’s nothing else to compare. I can think of one or two other organizations that may do about as well at training young people to understand and handle the complexities of our culture. There’s none other, though, that also shares the same long heritage.

Ten Unquestioned Answers

Myers credits Axis co-founder David Eaton with helping him title the book. “Some people have unanswered questions,” they reasoned. “Far more struggle with unquestioned answers.” In this book Myers takes aim at ten “Christian” unquestioned answers; ten Simplicisms distorting the faith. He lists them.

  1. “God said it; I believe it; that settles it for me.”

Okay, I’d better pause right there. Some of us are already wondering, “But that’s true! What’s wrong with it?” The thing is, all these Simplicisms have some truth to them. They’re answers, in a way; they turn hazardous only when we leave them as unquestioned answers. Sure, in the right context, with the right qualifications and conditions added to it, I could affirm that statement. It never gets used that carefully, though. And then it causes confusion, even error. I’ve known people who’ve left the faith because they thought they had to take it just that simply.

Myers does a marvelous job of dismantling such misconceptions.

More of Those Unquestioned Answers

But you’re wondering about the rest of the list, right?

  1. “Just have faith.”
  2. “God will heal our land if we humble ourselves and pray.”
  3. “It’s just me and Jesus.”
  4. “Love the sinner; hate the sin.”
  5. “Christianity is a relationship, not a religion.”
  6. “Jesus was a social justice warrior.”
  7. “It’s not my place to judge.”
  8. “This world has nothing for me.”
  9. “God is good all the time — all the time, God is good.”

In the right context, with the right qualifications and the right conditions, each one of those could be true. Some of them need a lot more qualifications and conditions. (I’m thinking especially number 7.) Still, though, with enough attention to the right details and the right nuance, correcting possible misconceptions, pointing out where it works and where it doesn’t, you could make each one of these part of a true answer.

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But that’s just another way of saying that not one of these answers works at all if we leave it as is, unquestioned. Treat it simplistically and you’re certain to get it wrong. Or else someone’s going to understand it wrong. But if they’re going to misunderstand it, why even say it?

Why It Matters, and For Whom

Myers is on to something very important here. Christianity is crippled by careless thinking. It’s an injury that’s multiplied many times over through careless communication like these Simplicisms.

I suppose you might wonder whether a book like this makes the opposite error, making it all so complex no one will understand it, either. Not to worry. Myers works with young people all the time. You could use this as a text with youth in your church, or at least with older high school students. I guarantee you many of them will be relieved when they find out they don’t have to believe Christian slogans they know don’t work as well as advertised.

I wouldn’t just recommend it for youth, though. A lot of us could use this kind of corrective, and not just to these ten unquestioned answers. We could benefit from the example, leading us to develop habits of mind that would welcome probing, exploring, questioning. We might even (as the title says) rediscover real biblical truths.

 

Tom Gilson (@TomGilsonAuthor) is a senior editor with The Stream and the author or editor of six books, including Too Good To Be False: How Jesus’ Incomparable Character Reveals His Reality.

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