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As I look back on my fall from faith, I can heavily pin it on my fall from “fundamentalism”.

In the late 60s and early 70s, we started seeing a huge movement of ecumenicalism in the Christian faith…mostly in the USA. Today we would probably compare this to the drive for global socialism. It seemed so exciting to include every person and denomination that called itself Christian into fellowship together. What a mighty army of love in Christ we could become! Of course, it didn’t take long before the old battles revved up again between Protestants and Catholics,  Baptists and Methodists, mainline churches, and “fundamentalist” Bible churches that snuffed the life out of the true Gospel of Christ. This was probably inevitable based on the cycles of religion. If you view the recent film “American Gospel”, you will understand the phenomenon behind these changes.

I grew up in a small family church that one would generally label an independent Bible church with an “Arminian” theological bent. Arminians tend to interpret the Bible literally and believe it is the “inerrant” word of God. Much of the world labels these believers as Christian “fundamentalists”. During this movement of ecumenicalism, we soon discovered Calvinists, Catholics, Jews for Jesus, and even Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other sects all calling themselves Christians and trying to unite at governmental or community prayer breakfasts all over the world. While this seemed a good thing at the time, in retrospect I’m not sure it has been.

While we thought this might unite all sorts of believers and faiths together in all their diversity to be a more effective help to the world, I think it has overall lessened the spiritual impact of the Christian church in our world at large. It has also caused a large falling away of young people and the more intellectual or “educated” sectors of our culture from real faith. When people think there are multiple ways to faith and eternal lives, a departure from fundamental scriptures is a prerequisite.

In my decades of running from the faith and embracing secular humanism, I would often run into conversations where someone asked me if I was a Christian. I would usually answer “what do you mean by Christian?”. Most of the time they would say something like “you know, do you go to church, read the Bible, and pray?”. Because of my knowledgeable upbringing as a fundamentalist evangelical, I would challengingly say “well, if going to church, reading the Bible, and praying is being a Chrisitan, I guess I am not, but I would suggest to you that many who do all that are no more Christians than I am”. If pressed, even as an unbeliever, I would tell them that a true Christian is one who follows and imitates the Biblical Christ. It’s not about religion…it is a relationship.

Postmodernism and “progressive” Christianity have created a whole new religion that is only a shadow of what the true Gospel is. The “good news” of John 3:16, John 1:1, Genesis 1:1, and other Biblical absolutes has been replaced by Christian “socialism”, global humanism, and a new form of secularism within the religion that says “everybody is right, nobody is wrong” when it comes to faith, morals, values or absolutes. No wonder we have a problem enforcing justice in any courts of law, including the Supreme Court and global judicial bodies. There are no absolutes on behavior according to the secular humanists because we no longer follow the absolutes of the One God and His laws.

From the process of my childhood fundamental faith to the study of all the various religions and Christian theologies, I became totally engulfed in religion. I define religion as “man’s pursuit of God” and/or bringing God down to our level of understanding and worship. Much of Christiandom today has morphed into various forms of manmade worship, entertainment, and trying to “dumb down” a great and mystical God to our own humanity in all its stink and shame. The sinful man sits at the center of religious reasoning where everything God said or does is up to man’s interpretation due to circumstances or situational ethics.

Fundamentalist faith is different from religion in that it is about God’s pursuit of man and desiring relationship with us. Fundamentalists believe God has come to man because no man would ever find God as He really is or be allowed to approach Him.

God created man to be in a relationship with Him. Not to be some giant mystic master of the universe sitting in the heavens waiting to judge us or pounce on us when we sin. Fundamentalists believe God created man with the free will to choose whether we wanted to relate to God or not…to love or not.

In terms of loving God, it has always been about obeying our creator without being a robot. If God had wanted robots in His universe, he would have skipped humanity and jumped straight to AI (Artifical Intelligence) or robots to serve Him. I’m sorry, but AI will never produce spirit or soul relationships. Robots may be more productive regarding mathematics and reasoning, but they will never have the spark of soulful choice in their daily lives to interact with. And yes, God is the God of Artificial Intelligence as well. Good data in…good data out. Bad data in…bad data out. God created a “cause and effect” world. At the same time, because of His love for us humans, He interrupted that “cause and effect” nature to send His Son to us in human form so that He could interrupt the inevitable death and destruction our sinful natures were going to cause. It’s hard to comprehend in the natural, but God interrupted His own program to offer a way out of our bad choices of free will when it came to how we treat ourselves and our domain of this earth. That is what fundamentalists believe.

Fundamentalist Christians do not need churches, church programs, dogma, rituals, catechisms, or emblematic crucifixes to plug into the power of faith. They have the simple gift of faith in Christ…His birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension…witnessed by thousands of people…to sustain their confidence in the past, present, and future. We are to come as a little child to him in faith.

Fundamentalist Christians believe there is only ONE way to the ONE God, and that is through faith in His Son Jesus Christ. There is no other name or God by which people can be saved from the coming death and destruction of our sinful ways.

Fundamentalists believe they can live a life full of God’s Holy Spirit to where nothing can separate them from the love of God. They can have hope, love, and peace even in the midst of trial, tribulation, failure, or facing death physically.  With God’s Spirit indwelling them, they have the peace that passes all understanding in the midst of a dark and desperate world. Fundamentalists serve a God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. God has not and will not change from before Genesis to the end of Revelation when it comes to the Bible.

Finally, fundamentalist Christians believe there is one faith and one baptism that matters. They don’t make up new laws, rules, or rituals to “feel” closer to God. They don’t make up new sects or denominations to set themselves apart from other “Christians”. A spirit-filled Christian does not need or relate to those things. They operate in divine truth and knowledge to where it is easy to discern fact from fiction…God’s ways from man’s ways.

As the world becomes more confused about what “Christian” stands for and most professing Christians find it difficult to articulate clearly what a Christian is…you will soon see the “fundamentalists” standing out in the crowd proclaiming the truth of the Gospel and speaking out against all the false prophets or false witnesses professing other than the true, eternal Gospel.

No government, no religion, no evil will ever overcome the true spirit-filled Christian. Some of us may fall by the wayside and lose the focus of our faith in the true Christ, but those who remain steadfast will endure and stand out in a world of fakes or pure evil.

I thank God He restored my fundamentalism. He restored faith to my doubts, love to my hate, and the righteousness of Jesus covers my sins.  Herein lies the hope of my “fundamentalist manifesto”:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?… Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:35-39