Week 11: Beware of Sola Bootstrapsa
Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.
Acts 20:28
I am so thankful for the pastors who taught me preaching. As strange as it may sound, when you are a seminary student they make you practice preaching. Every time I pass the beautiful white church in Germantown (next to Methodist Hospital) I tell my wife, “That’s where I practiced my preaching.” Our seminary used to be there, and the historic little chapel was our preaching lab. My wife is never amazed when I remind her of that for the 100th time.
One of my preaching professors used to tell us that when we preached sermons we had to fight against ones that preached “Sola Bootstrapsa.” To clarify, “Sola” is the latin word meaning “alone.” During the protestant reformation of the 1500’s the cry was “Sola Scriptura” which meant: “Scripture Alone.” Therefore, “Sola Bootstrapsa” was a pun on the phrase. The point my professor was making was that we preach “Sola Bootstrapsa” when telling someone to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. No preacher worth their salt should ever preach one of those sermons. If we were going to be Christ-centered preachers then every sermon had to make God the hero of the text. The temptation was to make human beings the heroes, but that was wrong. We were not to preach “Be Like” sermons (be like David) but sermons that displayed the God who saved the sinners of Scripture (like David).
In the same way that sermons need not preach one pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, our Christian education cannot preach bootstrap theology either. Bootstrap theology is officially called Moral Therapeutic Deism. That is a two-dollar term that means we give people morality lessons, throw in some self-help therapy, and add a generic god that loves everybody. One can have a Churchless, Christless Christianity that simply teaches one to live better (by their own strength and power), do better (be a good person) and believe in the big guy upstairs. Please hear me on this: this teaching is in no way biblical Christianity.
Biblical Christianty states that God has made himself known through the person and work of Jesus Christ, and the church is the body of Christ (the extension of that person). The church must guard the teaching and mission because they are the physical hands and feet of Jesus to a lost world. When Paul left the Ephesian elders (pastors at the church at Ephesus) he told them to pay careful attention to the church body. The church was precious because Jesus attained it by his own blood.
The goal of Christian education is to proclaim that there is a very definite and real God who has provided one way of salvation. We back that teaching up by living the gospel out in community called “church.” While I firmly believe that moral therapeutic deism (or sola bootstrapsa) has never been the goal or focus of our Christian education, I do think that is what some have taken away from it. I say that because I see where many of my former students (from 20 plus years ago) are today. To be clear, there are a good number of our former students serving Christ and connected to the local church. Praise God for them! The proverbial “other half” are nominal at best and antithetical to the gospel at worst.
We cannot say that it is our fault completely that people reject the gospel. There are many factors that are beyond us. I do observe one interesting fact: those who never were in a local church assembly “back then” are the ones who have denied the faith today. That may be anecdotal on my part, but it seems to be the case. I think this points to the importance of being a part of a local assembly of believers. We cannot let school become the church for people. They walk away having never been part of a spiritual community (family). They think they understand Christianity, but they have never really grasped it. They are sadly like a person who has looked at pictures of the Grand Canyon and determined it’s nothing to look at. You cannot make such judgements if you’ve never been.
I want to encourage you to first see the value of Christ-centered church (and Christianity) so you can proclaim a Christ-centered education. I am praying that we all avoid the generic moral deism, and point out the specific gospel of Jesus Christ. We will teach our students by not only our words, but by living out the gospel in community with other people.
Discussion Questions:
Do you think Moral Therapeutic Deism is a threat in Christianity?
Have you witnessed this kind of teaching and preaching?
How can you teach in such a way as to make Jesus the hero of the biblical text, and not man?
