When I was a sophomore in college, I was at a point in my Christian walk where I found myself in church one Sunday morning, having this conversation with God (no, not audibly, but very clearly in my spirit).

God asked, “Do you need me?”

I answered, “Yes.”  This most basic truth – that I had known from that first moment I accepted Jesus as savior when I was a child – that I was a sinner who needed the sacrifice of Jesus to make me whole and perfect, to rescue me from the eternal consequences of my sin – was and always has been very clear to me.

Then God asked, “Do you want Me?”

I answered, “Yes, because I know I need You.”  I am prone to being excessively rational at times.

So, then, God asked me, “Do you love Me?”

I answered, “No.”

This was the harsh reality of my soul in that moment, and there was no sense trying to make it out to be anything other than what it was.  But, I think the important thing to note in light of that fact, is that I was still searching for Him.  In truth, I wanted to run away.  But I couldn’t.  Because I knew I needed Him.  Because no matter how much I found life to be unfair, I knew that eternal life was only found in Him.  So, I stayed.

And how did God respond to me?  When I said I didn’t love Him, did He turn away?  Quite the contrary, actually.  Instead, in that church where the “extremes” of Christianity –  like mentioning hearing from God – were avoided so as to not offend anyone, the pastor stood in front of the congregation and said something to the effect of “I sense there is someone here who is telling God that you need Him, you want Him, but you don’t feel like you love Him.  If that’s you, I’d love to pray with you.”  I never knew him to do such a thing before or since.  I went forward…I was the only one who went forward…and the pastor prayed for me.  I don’t honestly remember what was prayed, but I think I mostly just needed to know that in the midst of my sincere doubts and struggles, God heard and cared enough to let me know, and not let me walk away.

The truth is, at 18 years old, most of my beliefs were formed based on what I had heard from someone else.  I hadn’t yet read all the way through the Bible and I had a fair amount of erroneous ideas about what Christianity was all about.  But I knew that true, saving gospel, my need for Jesus, and I went back to just that.  The verse “I determined to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (I Cor. 2:2), became my perspective on my faith.  I stripped everything away except for that and proceeded to re-build my belief structure, bit by bit, with the Word of God always informing each facet.

So, why am I writing this?  Because “deconstruction” of one’s faith has apparently become fashionable.  Upon experiencing disillusionment with the Church, or being faced with an uncomfortable truth from the Bible, or finding that life doesn’t always work the way we want, so many professing Christians are beginning to examine the entirety of their supposed faith and deciding to throw it all away, or to rebuild it into a more “progressive” Christianity.  Not all respond this way, and it is certainly not a bad thing to examine one’s faith, but I think the rash of people walking away from traditional Christian values and, in fact, condemning even solid, Biblically-based beliefs, is indicative of the serious and wide-spread problem in the Church of not preaching the true gospel.

What I have witnessed in countless ways the past several years has been preaching and evangelizing that is founded on “love”.  Churches draw people in by telling them how much God loves them and wants to be with them.  Outreach efforts have the primary goal of communicating that God loves everyone.  Which IS true.  But it isn’t the gospel. I believe churches are filling up with people being taught to seek love, rather than God.  I believe churches are filling up with people who have never really been told that they are sinners who need a savior, and because God loves them, He sacrificed His Son for the forgiveness of their sins.  God’s love is the motivation, but it doesn’t preclude the reality that there is a sin problem, and it, in and of itself, is not the solution to the problem of sin.  Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, and our acceptance of all that it means for our lives, is the answer.  Inherent in that, before we can even begin to talk about the magnitude of God’s love, is the magnitude of the depravity of man.  In fact, only in understanding the depths of our own sin can we start to scratch the surface of the incomprehensibility of God’s love for us.

A gospel of “love” cheapens what love really is (if everyone is innately lovable, then love isn’t a hard thing), it renders the cross meaningless (if everyone deserves love, then they don’t deserve punishment), and when a person is faced with defending Christian faith and values to others and to themselves, they are left with nothing but shifting sand (why does a good person even need a savior?).  Then they loudly proclaim to the world that they tried Christianity and it failed them.

The true gospel, though, helps us recognize that we are culpable for the wrongs we do.  It requires us to acknowledge that we all, at times, have a bent toward sin – selfishness, laziness, bitterness, hatred, greed, etc. – that it isn’t just a case of trying our best and falling short, but willfully choosing to not love God or man.  It establishes a rational divide between God’s holiness and our unholiness, and it establishes the need for a savior to bridge that divide.  God’s love is on full, unhindered display in this good news of Jesus Christ, but we also have to acknowledge that He is not only love, but He is also just, good, holy, powerful and altogether higher and better than us in every way.

Jesus said that many will come to Him on the day of judgment, calling Him Lord, and that He would send them away, saying He never knew them.  I wonder if this unwillingness to preach the true, full gospel is why.