Binging on Daily Devotionals

R. C. Sproul was a natural in this genre. He perfected it in a radio program and a zillion books. To take one example, three years before he died in 2017, he published Everyone’s a Theologian: An Introduction to Systematic Theology, which you would be excused for imagining is a work with long, intricate chapters exploring theology in a systematic fashion. Instead, the book has sixty chapters, each one about five pages long. Two months of daily devotionals in one book!

One of the interesting things about having an industry built around you is that your death does not end your publishing career. Growing in Holiness: Understanding God’s Role and Yours has the odd feature of looking like a book Sproul wrote, but the back cover notes that it is “drawn from lectures of beloved theologian R. C. Sproul,” which makes one wonder what “drawn from” means and who did the drawing, or more accurately editing, of this book.

The book is in the genre of “half-time pep talk.” It is an earnest: “You are doing great! Don’t lose hope now! Just keep working hard and you will succeed!”

The content is a bit repetitive, not surprising in a mysteriously edited book drawn from lectures. We have a chapter on how 1 Corinthians 13 (the love chapter) is parallel to the Galatians passage on the fruit of the spirit, immediately followed by a chapter on the Galatians passage on the fruit of the spirit. The chapter entitled “The Assurance of Salvation,” showing that assurance of salvation come from being confident in Christ, is immediately followed by the chapter “Confidence in Christ,” which explains how confidence in Christ gives us assurance of salvation.

The biggest problem with a book like this is reading it as if it is a book with a developing argument. It is better seen as a whole series of daily devotions strung together. If you are going to read it, don’t make the mistake of setting aside an evening and reading it straight through.

Insofar as there is an overarching theme in the book, it is, as the title suggests, growing in holiness, or, using a theological term Sproul really likes, “sanctification.” How do you become more holy? Slowly.

Remember there aren’t any shortcuts. You may find various resources at Christian bookstores on how to be a spiritual giant in in three easy lessons, but you are wasting time and money reading a book like that. Why? Because there are no such easy lessons with three quick steps. It’s work—pressing work, demanding work—and it requires a plan. Which is precisely why Jesus tells us there is a cost to discipleship.

To become more holy, you have to work at it, year after year after year. “Patiently pursue love” is Sproul’s pithy formulation. For a reader who is growing weary on the Christian walk, for a reader who is frustrated that perfection has not yet arrived, for a reader who is about to give up the struggle to be good because it seems so hopeless, Growing in Holiness says, “Don’t give up hope. Just take one more step. You can do this.”

What keeps the book from being a dull refrain is the endless set of asides or slightly different ways of framing the admonition to patiently pursue love. As befits a long series of short homilies, the quality of these framing devices varies hugely in quality. We could map them into the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let’s look at some examples.

The Good. In the section on the fruits of the Spirit, Sproul gets to “goodness.” What is goodness? When you say someone is a good person, what do you mean? It’s an odd word to define, but Sproul’s definition seems to come out of nowhere. “One of its dimensions in biblical terms is the ability to appreciate excellence. We have been born again with an ability to appreciate the good, the true, and the beautiful.” How does this manifest itself?

I love to walk into cathedrals. There is a sense of transcendence that I experience just by the very atmosphere the Gothic architecture communicates. I become pensive, contemplative. It centers on the exalted nature of God. I enjoy choral music by Handel, Mendelssohn, and Bach, where the finest artistry was done to the glory of God. Many people overlook that Bach was desperately opposed to the Enlightenment. He consciously intended his music as an apologetic for Christianity.

My first reaction on reading that was incredulousness. Is Sproul really saying that one of the fruits of the Spirit is that you like Bach? Don’t get me wrong, I love Bach. But, is that really what goodness means? Hard to believe it is.

Then I realized: I can say “Alyosha is a good person.” I can also say “Bach wrote good music.” Does “good” mean the same thing in those two sentences? What is the connection? Something worth pondering—which is exactly the point of an aside in a Daily Devotional. I doubt these thoughts will go where Sproul wants them to go—I have a very hard time believing that because of the work of the Holy Spirit Christians appreciate Bach more than non-Christians do—but, there is something there worth pondering.

The Bad. In the section on obstacles to overcome, Sproul tell us “This is so basic and central to Christianity that to deny it is basically to deny the essence of the faith itself.” What is this most central doctrine of the faith, this doctrine that to deny is the same thing as denying Christ Himself? The existence of a singular malevolent being, the devil named Satan. Most Christians accept the existence of Satan. But to elevate belief in Satan to the same level as belief in Christ, to say that thinking that there may not be a unique being called Satan is to “deny the essence of the faith itself,” is wildly too strong a claim.

What is Sproul’s evidence for the existence of Satan? Here is where it gets rather bad. The Lord’s Prayer. You know the line: “Deliver us from…” Is it “evil” or “the evil one”? Experts on Greek disagree which is right. But Sproul knows it is “the evil one” and he knows “the evil one” means Satan, so there is proof that doubting the existence of Satan is the same as denying the essence of the faith.

Not good. Not good at all.

The Ugly. At least the Satan passage could be excused as Sproul just fighting a linguistic war with other translators. Not so his ruminations on some aspects of growing in holiness. There is a bizarre Legalistic Calvinism lurking at the center of some of Sproul’s admonitions. This merits examination.

Sproul wants to give the readers assurance of their salvation. If you are saved and you know it, great. If you are not saved and you know it, also great (well not great that you are not saved, but great that you know you are not saved). But, there are two other categories. There are people who are saved and don’t know it and people who are not saved and don’t know it (they think they are saved). How do you find out if you are in one of those categories?

Well, Sproul argues, look at how you are behaving. If you aren’t following the rules, then you are like the Pharisees and not saved. Jesus chastises the Pharisees for tithing mint and dill but neglecting mercy and faithfulness. And, Sproul notes, lots of people in churches are not even doing as well as the Pharisees. “I’ve read studies that indicate only 4 percent of members of evangelical churches tithe today, which means that 96 percent of professing evangelical Christians systematically rob God of their tithes.”

Lest you think that is an isolated example

I think it’s theoretically possible for a regenerate Christian to fall into such slothfulness in his spiritual growth that he neglects the means of grace—the assembling together of the saints—and that he gets himself into a pattern where he doesn’t go to church except twice a year. That is conceivable, and it is possible if you are numbered among those people that you are still in fact a Christian.
   But, dear friend, the odds against it are astronomical.

The odds are against it? Uh, are we playing the odds here? Is the test of faith simply going to church and giving 10% of your earnings (before or after tax?) to God? Sproul knows better than that. I know that isn’t what he really means. But it is what he is saying.

Reducing growing in holiness to the question of how much to give to your local church or how many times a month you attend church services cheapens the underlying message of the book. Patiently pursue love—that is excellent advice to growing in holiness. Make sure you tithe? That is awful advice to growing in holiness. The difference? The first is a change of heart, which will inevitably lead to better action. The second is a change in action, which may never result in a change in heart. Sproul would almost certainly agree with that, which is what makes parts of this book so incredibly disappointing.