What happened to preaching against going to movies? It used to be that Christians cared about their witness. Now we bring the movies into the church, even the sermons. What happened to preaching against eating out at restaurants that serve alcohol? Again, it doesn’t seem that Christians care much about their witness here. What happened to preaching against work and recreation on the Lord’s Day? What happened to preaching against card playing (the kind with face cards, not Rook), which is the gateway drug to gambling? What happened to preaching against women dressing like men (Deut 22:5) or immodestly (1 Tim 2:9)? What happened to preaching against interracial dating and marriage (Deut 7:3-4)?

I echo your question: where did these old sins go?

A number of factors came together in the 18th and 19th century (mainly to do with the mixture of industrialization with urbanization) that produced a huge amount of leisure for a wider proportion of the population (the “middle class”). For a period of time there was a willingness (especially amongst protestants and protestant influenced governments) to place significant regulation on the excess in leisure (the temperance movement and Prohibition being most notable) in order to protect families, the workplace, and society in general from the vices that accompanied unregulated leisure.

In the mid/late 20th century we have learned to accommodate the vices (social safety net helps but also new laws that target the worst excesses [drinking and driving, date rape]) even as we move from the Gutenburg galaxy into the Screen Age (McLuhan anyone?). The combination of a large middle class, the social safety net, the screen age (and a dose of electronic transfer of funds) have contributed significantly to this state of Hyperleisure in which we (in the “developed” world) all live.

Hyperleisure means that we have infinite choice, except to rest. It also means that instead of regulating leisure and vices we tend to require people to use safety devices (so they won’t place an undue burden on the social safety net). There are no limits (at the very least it is “know your limits”).

So what happened to all the old sins? “Its your life, you can waste it just as long as you don’t waste mine (or my contribution to the social safety net).”

Most will have no clue as to why such things are even important.

I understand what you’re saying. Still, it seems that they know and have made their respective choices.

Mr. Brendemuehl, in my limited experience, a great part of it is that, except for clergy/elders, the lives of average pew-sitting Christians rarely overlap with other Christians outside of Sunday. The lack of life-on-life exposure in contexts outside of worship at church is a lack of relations of love which both limits what sins are seen and also makes it difficult to criticize during the rare occasions of contact since few are loved well by only being criticized at the few moments of contact.

Combine that isolation with a culture of moral relativism in many areas of life and you get the personal and social conditions where preaching against sin is not taken very well.

Most evangelicals would agree so far. I suggest this agreement is not enough.

The isolation is a direct consequence of the fragmentation of life that is characteristic of modernity’s political and economic institutions and structures which are geared to fashioning atomistic, interchangeable, and efficiently productive worker units easily controlled by a bureaucratic elite through the promise and provision of cheap food and cheap entertainment, rather than geared toward cultivating a blood-washed holy community of sacrificial and obedient love for God and neighbor in this world. It can’t be overstated that the two different purposeful visions occupy the same conceptual and practical space; they compete against each other in the lives of modern people.

Much of the cause of the decline of the Gospel in the evangelical church in the U. S. is because many of its leaders, due to certain historical developments, do not believe the sociopolitical, technological and economic structures embodying the former vision matter outside of narrow, moralistic considerations. They are concerned with the lying aspect of the question “Should I lie on this contract to purchase securities from Goldman Sachs” rather than how the current financial system as a whole is beneficial or destructive to the calling of the church.

This represents not only disobedience to the call to love God and neighbor, but a forfeiture of the evangelical mission itself because the plausibility of the Gospel rests on cultural practices and institutions and not merely ideas. Missionaries have always addressed practices and institutions, not simply ideas, as a part of the evangelism-discipleship mission of the Church; “addressing” need not entail complete rejection, but sometimes it does entail rejection.

Ask an evangelical pastor what he thinks about how the financial system impacts the plausibility of the Gospel and the faithfulness of his church. Ask an evangelical pastor what he thinks about how social technologies benefit and harm the plausibility of the Gospel and the faithful living of his congregation.

Most will have no clue as to why such things are even important. And that is why the Gospel in the American church is being distorted; not so much because people aren’t talking about the Gospel enough or articulating it accurately enough (though that is certainly part of it) but because the very linguistic ground on which the intelligibility of our words (including Gospel concepts like law, justice, mercy, love) rests is being altered by modern practices, artifacts and institutions embodying a different vision of life. And the evangelical churches in America are largely ignorant or indifferent to it, smugly secure in their belief that as long as they hold to a (bare bones) Gospel, they can ignore the rest of reality.

That is not the way of faithful love and in the end the spreading of the Gospel will suffer from such unfaithfulness. God may let the American church die out (though they themselves will be saved) as he once did in the Orient and in other areas of the world.

That said, with where I’m living and working (a student newspaper at a state university as a student in the humanities), it makes more sense to approach the Gospel as you see Tim Keller and other missional PCA/A29 types doing it. There are a certain set of presuppositions you’re dependent upon in using the law as you’re advocating and those presuppositions are non-existent at my university, so we have to approach things differently. That doesn’t mean one is right and one is wrong, it’s just two different ways to get to the (in essential things, at least) same place.

There is another way I think.

Being driven by real, deserved guilt. John the Baptist said “Who warned you to flee the wrath to come?” as if that was why people were coming to him to be baptized.
Jesus said “Fear Him who has the power to destroy both body and soul in Hell.”

So clearly the fear of God is hugely important and God doesn’t say “Sorry, you’re only here because you’re afraid of hell, you’re out.”

Clearly gratitude is important, very. But it’s not that only motivation I think.

What of Paul? “No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”

That sounds a little like fear to me. And he’s talking about holy living, no?

Were people, and sometimes we need more push than a joyful heart. Not always, but sometimes.
Is there no place for the fear of God, and the fear of being disqualified?
(For the Piper fans, of whom I am one, even he admits to having that stuck back in the corner of his mind.)

I’ve found that true in my own experience — especially in re: family vacations.

You’ve also given me a new appreciation for the positive obedience of Jesus, who spent his entire life here away from his heavenly home and his public ministry constantly on the move.

While it is not the only way to preach the Gospel to sinners, extolling the demands of the law is an entirely valid way of preaching the Gospel to sinners — provided (as you said) we get to the good news after breaking them the bad news.

As to the “driven by gratitude” riff which is popular today (thanks Piper? Edwards? Max Lucado?), it’s fair enough. I think it’s OK to have a right-minded fear of God as well, knowing that he is the judge of us all and that his wrath abides on those who do not repent. You know: the Jews at Pentecost didn’t repent until they were “cut to the heart” (who knew Bon Jovi was King James?). The stick and the carrot are both useful.
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Collin –

as a guy who travels for work, I’ll pray for you when you travel if you’ll let me know when you’re on the road. I am never weaker than when I am unable to go home at the end of the day.

Should churches pursue holiness? Of course. But we have to do it in a very specific way that is driven by gratitude for the Gospel, not moralistic guilt. Remember the Martyn Lloyd Jones quote – if you’re not being accused of preaching licentiousness, you’re probably not preaching the gospel.

Personally, I need it, so feel free to pile on. I’m just saying that the transparency police are listening, and they are taking notes.