The solution to the Church’s woes isn’t that complex; we are experiencing symptoms of the same disease. We have ceased to trust. We have questioned God’s self-revelation in the Holy Scriptures. We fail to realize that the “solution” to every “issue” is to hold fast to the gospel that was first preached to us.

The Church is falling apart. At least it seems so every time I run through my blogroll. I can’t help but wonder if others feel this way and are as eager as I am to find some common thread connecting the problems plaguing the Church and, in so doing, discover a solution. Such a solution must be complex and multi-stage, must it not, given the complexity of the issues dividing us into separate (but politely engaged) camps and sometimes into warring factions? Likely we feel as though we have to tackle each issue one at a time on its own grounds but all this does is put us on edge; we feel caught in a trap, weighed down with so many responsibilities.

But I believe we take too much on our own shoulders, expecting our skill to win the day, our intellectual rigor to win out, our charity to melt the hearts of those who fight against us. The truth of the matter is that these distracting “issues” and “solutions” are just that – distractions. They’re symptoms of a disease that has been gnawing away at the church from the beginning- and I mean literally The Beginning. This disease is captured by the serpent’s words to Eve, “Did God really say…?”

The solution to the Church’s woes isn’t that complex because what we are experiencing are simply symptoms of the same disease. We have ceased to trust. We have begun to question God’s self-revelation in the Holy Scriptures. We fail to realize that the “solution” to every “issue” is to hold fast to the gospel that was first preached to us, the gospel which is so well summarized in Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost. This good news which exegetes the world, tells us who God is and who we are and how we are to be towards Him, is the cure for all our ills. We forget Him and we forget ourselves when we begin to see the world in terms of “issues” and “solutions.” Has the world ever been friendly with God? Were we at peace with Him before His grace reached into our hearts and pulled us out of the tomb and crowned us with His love in Christ Jesus? Whence comes this expectation that we can do anything on our own to hold back the decline, drive away the darkness, or conquer the forces of evil?

The failure to trust God’s word both implicitly and explicitly has put us where we are today. Denominations that once upheld the majesty and sovereignty of God are crumbling because they have placed man on His throne. Institutions that once provided our clergy with the tools they need to shepherd the flock of Christ have moved on to instruct in sociology, gender studies, and politics. This change wasn’t immediate. There was much careful weighing of the facts. Everything was very reasonable. But all along the serpent was whispering, “Did God really say…?”

We are now faced with “worship wars,” theistic evolution, the Insider Movement, the drive for more political involvement (perhaps even an “evangelical” echo of the mainline social gospel), capitulation to the liberal LGBT agenda. The list could go on. Yet what all of these symptoms point to is a rejection of the verbal plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. “Thus saith the Lord” has become “Thus might have said the Lord” or “Thus would the Lord [Jesus] probably say” or “Thus the Lord did not say because we know better” or any iteration thereof. In so distorting the witness of the Holy Scriptures to their own role in the transmission of truth is it any wonder we feel so ill-equipped to tackle the “issues?”

“Yes,’ you might say, ‘this is all true and we have much to repent of in our handling of the Holy Scriptures. But what’s to be done about the issues as they won’t simply go away?” My answer is this: Stop looking at the issues and look at Christ. Just stop. Just look (that is, trust). Stop worrying. Stop pretending we can provide a “solution” that will be amenable to all parties. Stop expecting those who are at enmity with God to lay down the weapons of their warfare because you’ve been nice to them. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Stop fighting the world with worldly means and start using God’s means of battle: prayer, preaching, reading the Holy Scriptures, receiving the sacraments as a means of refreshment. Stop pretending we can accomplish anything apart from God’s grace. He came down among us to live the life we could not live, dying the death we dare not die, drinking the wrath of God to its bitter dregs, rising again having conquered death, swallowing it up in victory. He reached down to lift us from death to life. What could we ever hope to accomplish apart from His work?

The dead will remain dead until the Lord awakens them with His word of power. This word we must hold dearer to us than any other thing for without it we would never have known of God and His great love towards us. As life has come to us in Christ Jesus through the witness of His word so we must trust its power to bring life to all those elect of God in all the world. God’s word will make manifest God’s power in God’s own time.

It is not our convincing arguments, our subtle redefinitions, our careful explanations that will transform. It is the word proclaimed against all opposition- and that word alone!- that will save the Church, preserve her, and bring her to glory. The world may seem to triumph for a time. There will be difficulties. “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you.” We must always remain steadfastly focused on the Christ of the word who is Himself the living Word of God.

Regarding those who remain opposed to the Church the apostle John attests to the words of our Lord, “But you believe not, because you are not of my sheep.” He doesn’t say, “You believe not because my followers weren’t extra-especially deferent towards you” or “You believe not because you didn’t find the arguments presented by my followers’ greatest intellectuals convincing” or “You believe not because the laws passed by a country full of my followers grated against your desires.” Christ says those who do not finally believe do not do so because they do not belong to Him.

It is not our duty to make the message pleasant, to chisel the edges from the Holy Scriptures, to carefully redefine the message to be more in line with contemporary values. Our responsibility in the face of the “issues” that confront us is not to find “solutions.” It is to proclaim. We must proclaim the living word of God which is “…quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” We must proclaim the Holy Scriptures as the only infallible rule of faith and practice. We must proclaim Jesus Christ who in His person fulfilled the law of the Old Testament turning curse into blessing and in whom we have our only hope of salvation. Without Him as He is revealed in the Holy Scriptures- fully and truly- the battle is lost and our souls also.

Evan McWilliams is a member of Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Lakeland, Fla., is an architectural historian, and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of York in the UK. This article appeared in his blog, Inscrutable Being, and is used with permission.