So what’s the problem? A Baptist preacher once said, “We’ve spent too many years telling people they can never lose what they never had.”

Americans like formulas. We turn everything into formulas. So we have turned conversion into a formula. We can tell you how to avoid hell, guaranteed, if you follow these four easy steps. Or assent to four easy statements.

But the “steps to salvation” or the “Romans road” are not easy steps to take. We’ve fooled ourselves because we wish they were.

For example, Romans 10:9 says “…If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you shall be saved.” But can you make yourself do that, whenever an evangelist tells you that you should? You may have better reasons for believing that Jesus was raised from the dead than for believing that Osiris was raised from the dead. But I don’t think you normally believe that dead people can come back to life. Wouldn’t it take a miracle to change your mind?

Should you believe the gospel because your church tells you to? You can’t. You literally can’t. That isn’t faith, it’s assent — deciding to accept doctrines and not argue about them. Should you believe in the resurrection of Jesus because the brilliant apologetics of someone like Josh McDowell? No, in his final debate with Ahmed Deedat, even Josh McDowell responded to Deedat’s Muslim arguments by telling the story of what God had done for his alcoholic father.

Without faith, it is impossible to please God. And faith is a gift.

Has there ever been any empirical evidence that “redemption and lift” is a reality? There are many examples of poor sectors of countries that have had genuine revivals but no lift. The redemption and lift philosophy has been used to reject the idea of getting involved in holistic ministry.

Then what a bad use of the redemption and lift philosophy: to say that salvation has economic implications so we shouldn’t encourage them. That is, to paraphrase William Carey‘s critics, “If God wants to improve crop yields or reduce child abuse, he will do it without your help or ours.” If the Gospel affects the whole person, what kind of ministry is there besides holistic?

It turns out that in Donald McGavran’s Understanding Church Growth, one of the main points which he made in his chapter “Halting Due to Redemption and Lift” was negative, not positive: when poor people respond to the witness of the Gospel, they often want to leave the neighborhood, which leaves the neighborhood without their witness to the Gospel.

So I’m applying the term differently than McGavran did. However, you’re applying the term differently than I did. Notice that the examples I gave were on a personal/family level. When one man has more disposable income because he stops drinking, that doesn’t mean his whole community has more disposable income. However, if enough people stop drinking, some bars will go out of business, which affects the whole community. That happened in the 1905 Welsh Revival, documented by J. Edwin Orr.

Just a thought: you referred to “sectors of countries” but do the words “sector” or “country” (in our sense of those words) even appear in the New Testament mandates? The Gospel can transform sectors and countries, but it does that by transforming individuals, households, and people groups: all words which do appear in the New Testament mandates.

However, in the same way that lift can be promoted by redemption, lift can be thwarted by lack of redemption. If a “holistic ministry” focuses on fighting alcoholism among people who enjoy being drunk, that ministry is going to have some problems.

The advertisements ask the question, written simply over an image of a blue sky with wispy white clouds: “A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?”

The ads are actually misleading. That 2008 survey cited by the sponsors, American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population, didn’t ask people if they were good. The word “good” doesn’t even appear in the report. It just asked about religious affiliation. True, the 15% who said they had no religious affiliation weren’t saying they were Christians between churches, but they weren’t saying they were atheists either. Only 7% said they were atheists.

The most startling claim, of course, is that New York City has a million good people, period. I mean, I think the Chasidic Jews only estimate a dozen or two really good people worldwide. Maybe good people are naturally attracted to New York City. But you still need to keep alert on the subway, and lock your car.

Still, the ads ask a good question, even if they begin with an inaccurate statement. That is, they ask, “Are you good?” I suspect that, if they think about it, that question will make a lot of New Yorkers a little uncomfortable. I know it did that for me. And if the answer is No, there are organizations in New York City that can help. But I don’t think they’re atheist organizations.

Of course, if you’re in the Matrix, nothing is really happening.

- G.K. Chesterton, Christendom in Dublin, 1933

- G.K. Chesterton, “The New House” Alarms and Discursions

- G.K. Chesterton, Commonwealth, 1933