Christopher Rush

According to David Platt, author of Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, one becomes a Christian by having faith in Jesus.  So far so good.  We should reconsider the needs of people around the world and live more sacrificially.  Those warrant a gold star.  Unfortunately, then, comes the other 99.4% of the book.  In order to be a Christian, according to David Platt, one must adopt at least one child from an impoverished country, have a heart for the entire world, and spend time evangelizing in some part of the world that has not yet heard the gospel.  Well … no.  He is incorrect.  Like most of the unfortunate “popular Christian authors” of the recent past (Wilkinson’s Prayer of Jabez, Piper’s Desiring God, Eldredge’s Captivating, Warren’s Purpose Driven Life, in no particular order), Platt takes a couple of verses he thinks are most important, declares they are the sum total of the Bible/message of God/ontology of Christianity, and glosses over verses that contradict or qualify what he wants the Bible to say.  As with most disingenuous self-effacing scribblers, Platt spends a good deal of time prevaricating and apologizing for his examples and how he doesn’t want to make anyone feel bad for challenging their views and beliefs.  Why he continues to use so many specific examples and follow them with “these may not be typical of your experience” is beyond me, and it discredits the entire purpose of using specific examples or narrative samples.  His insinuation if we don’t make the same choice he made about adopting a child from an impoverished country we are not biblical Christians is so ludicrous he almost makes John Piper sound orthodox.  Almost.

Like many of his compeers, Platt’s ideas are built on the faulty premise the church is built on Matthew 28:18-20, not Acts 2:42.  Since his beginning premise is wrong, it follows just about all of his conclusions are wrong.  Similarly embarrassing is his definition of “making disciples.”  Platt can’t even exegete Matthew 28:18-20 sensibly.  First Platt says the verses are a series of commands, and then he says baptizing and teaching are subordinate to and consist of making disciples.  It’s a bit confusing, as I said, since he surfeits his work with seemingly stellar examples of how the people in his “faith community” (he can’t even say “local church” without being embarrassed, apparently) have done such wonderful things (at the end of the book he apologizes again by saying his “faith community” doesn’t always get things right) using this interpretation, but it might not be for everyone.

One example of Platt’s glossing over verses that qualify (or outright refute) his claims is his treatment of Ephesians 4:11.  Platt acknowledges Paul said some people are given to the church as apostles, some as evangelists, some as pastors-teachers, but then Platt essentially says “but really everyone in the church is supposed to be an overseas evangelist in order to be a genuine Christian, since Jesus told the disciples in Mt. 28:18-20 to go.”  Another eisegetical passage is his treatment of Romans 10.  Platt seems to interpret verse 15a (“And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?”) to mean “since Jesus told the disciples to go in Mt. 28:18-20, everyone has been sent to be an overseas missionary to the parts of the world that haven’t yet heard the gospel.”  Let’s consider the repercussions if Platt is correct: all genuine Christians (whom he inanely and incessantly describes with his pet phrase “radical abandonment” and variations thereon) leave America for the un-gospelled areas of the world.  Who will support them financially?  (God, true, but why then does the church need to exist at all?)  If the church exists solely to be a mode of evangelism to un-gospelled areas of the world, why did God give various people to the church who aren’t evangelists?  Why do spiritual gifts other than evangelism exist?  Now we begin to see why Platt is wrong: he homogenizes the church into nothing but individuals with a heart for the world (in his own definition) who spend time overseas evangelizing the un-gospelled (who then must have to adopt at least one child from an impoverished country to be radically abandoned to the gospel).

Another key failing of this book is Platt’s contradictory definition of “the world.”  To him, “having a heart for the world” can only mean “going where the gospel has not yet been preached.”  To him, people who “have a heart for their own city or region in America” are just lazy people who are too much in love with their possessions to really be authentic Christians (who are people who go overseas to evangelize unreached people).  Italy, Germany, France — they aren’t “the world.”  Only people who haven’t heard the gospel yet are “the world.”  This reminds us, then, of what would happen if all American Christians followed what he says — no one in America would be Christians, leaving the entire country unchurched.  Would it be okay, then, for Christians to go to America and spread the gospel?  Most likely not, since authentic Christianity (being radically abandoned to Jesus) means spreading the gospel only to people who haven’t heard it yet (so why all the stories of how he spread the gospel in New Orleans and how other members of his “faith community” reach American inner-city people?).

Despite the subtitle, Platt does not spend much time actually refuting the American Dream.  The only relevant parts of the “American Dream” to him are materialism (the acquisitive kind, not the philosophical synonym to naturalism) and sloth.  At the end of the book, amidst his other apologies, Platt offers some platitudes (I had to do it some time) about how he loves America and is glad for the freedoms God has allowed him to have in America — but, really, he wants us to feel bad for being Americans.  American Christians don’t take Christianity seriously is what he implies throughout the book — otherwise why would he spend so much time comparing American Christians with their luxury cars, luxury clothes, million-dollar buildings, luxury tvs, and luxury everything else with the many Christians around the world he’s visited who have to hide their faith and go many miles out of their way to meet secretly in fear of the government?  Americans aren’t real Christians, because they are too comfortable with their faith and the government, which doesn’t ever persecute Christians (he’s not joking, either).  It’s nice Platt admits his own “faith family” is a hypocrite in this, being a four thousand-member group with their own multi-million-dollar estate — but does he say he is doing anything about it?  No.  They continue to worship in their overly-comfortable multi-million-dollar estate as they send missionaries out to unreached sections of the world.  Leaving aside the question of biblical authenticity of “megachurches” for another time, shouldn’t Platt admit he is doing more in his own sphere of pastoral authority to conform his own church (see we not clearly now the dangers of contradicting Biblical church authority structure of a plurality of lay elders and lay deacons?) to his interpretation of what authentic Christianity looks like in abandoning American materialism?  Yes, he should, but like most of his ilk, he distances himself at the end by saying he is only trying to start the discussion and get his audience thinking — he’s not actually making points that must be followed for the good of everyone (even though he also says throughout he is right and those who don’t do what he says are not living authentic Christian lives radically abandoned to Jesus).

Though he doesn’t come right out and say it explicitly, as said above Platt wants us to feel guilty for being born in America, as if God made a bit of a mistake putting us here instead of some unreached, pre-industrial area that follows after God authentically without distractions.  True, Platt ineffectively says “material goods and riches aren’t intrinsically bad, and sometimes God gives people things,” but he follows that up with the New Testament never says God blesses people financially like he did in the OT (which isn’t exactly what anyone I trust would call “accurate”), and pretty much everything we have in America is a luxury we can sacrifice for the spread of the gospel, according to him.  Perhaps that last thought is true, and it’s nice he doesn’t come right out with a socialistic declaration “genuine Christianity means redistributing wealth equally to all the ends of the earth,” but he gets rather legalistic toward the end about it (even though he says he doesn’t want to be).  I agree most of us have more than we need, and we could certainly give more than we do (if statistics are anything to go by), but that does not equate with “only overseas missions work is the mark of genuine Christianity.”  Isn’t it just possible some of us are put into America (or England, or Germany, or Italy) to minister to the people here, making disciples here, reaching the lost here?  If Christians are only to go to places that haven’t heard the gospel, do we really love the people in countries that have access to the Bible but don’t believe yet by ignoring them and going only to yet-unreached places?  That strikes me as the very opposite of love.

Perhaps the most destructive refutation to Platt’s arguments (calling them “arguments” for the sake of generosity) comes from Platt himself.  During his final chapter enumerating his one-year plan of radical abandonment, Platt gives it all away multiple times.  His first self-damaging point is his claim “we should only try to do this for a year, because we might not be able to sustain it for longer.”  What?  If this is the right way to actually live the authentic Christian life, why should we only do it for one year?  Is he placating us by saying we only have to feel bad about being luxurious Americans for only one year and then we can go back to what we temporarily abjured?  His ambiguous notion we will be changed forever by it may be true, but that doesn’t explain why we can only afford to do this for one year.  He expresses one of his few cogent thoughts here, though, when he says we would all do well to pray for the world through Patrick Johnstone’s important Operation World.  I agree, but I didn’t need David Platt to tell me to do it.

His second point is “read through the Bible in a year.”  How is that radical?  Does he tell us to study it, to memorize it, to learn the languages and read it in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic?  No, just read it.  Check it off the list — go to your grave knowing one year (only once, since it’s too costly a program to do for more than one year) you read through the Bible.

Point three is to sacrifice your money for a specific purpose: he hesitates to tell us to whom (and apparently one’s own local church is not good enough), and selling your luxuries and giving that money away is likewise not good enough.  Only sacrificially is good enough, lowering your standard of living until you are more like the real Christians in nonindustrial countries.  Throughout the book he refers to the oft-misunderstood “rich young ruler” encounter in Mark 10.  Lucidly, Platt makes the point Jesus doesn’t tell everyone who wants to follow Him to “sell all you have and give to the poor,” which was refreshingly accurate — but then he contradicts himself and intimates we are to do it, and if we don’t, we aren’t being radically abandoned enough to be an authentic follower of Christ.  Jesus doesn’t tell everyone to sell all and give it to the poor, but David Platt does.  (But only for a year.)

The most self-destructive part of the work comes in point four of the one-year plan: spend time in another context.  Several times, Platt tells us the real Christian life is not just checking off a “to-do” list (which he himself asks us to do with reading the Bible, and the rest of this chapter, basically), and genuine Christianity is solely about spreading the gospel overseas, making disciples of previously unreached people.  Now, though, Platt gives it all away: it doesn’t matter where we go, it doesn’t matter how long we go, it only matters that we go, he says.  As incredulous as I was for the first eight chapters, when I read that thought from Platt I truly could not believe Multnomah Books actually let that through.  According to David Platt, God’s will for our lives is so undefined it’s up to us to decide where we are to go and for how long.  We can’t possibly be wrong as long as we go for a brief time to some place that hasn’t yet heard the gospel.  But, if it doesn’t matter how long we stay, how does that align with the need to “make disciples”?  Doesn’t that take a while?  Never you mind — what really matters is that we have gone.  Check it off the list, and you are being radically abandoned to Jesus (and thus, the only authentic Christians in the world).  Is it possible for non-American Christians to be radically abandoned to Jesus, since they can’t abjure American luxury and go overseas?  Apparently they are so innately Christian they don’t need to follow the plan Platt has for them.  Just go and get it over with, backslidden American pseudo-Christians.

If that completely self-refuting point was not enough, Platt wraps it up with point five: commit to a multiplying community (which is his phrase for an authentic local church — but since America doesn’t have any authentic churches being too consumed by materialism, one must go overseas to find the real thing).  Once you have fulfilled your radical conscription to temporarily go someplace where the gospel has never been heard before, you can come back and relax and support the church as it sends out the next batch of radically abandoned short-term missions trip recruits.  But if the whole point of the church is solely to send out overseas missionaries, how will the church grow in ways other than numerically?  Perhaps this is where all the other parts of the Bible Platt has ignored or inaccurately commentated on could help the church grow in non-numerical ways, but Platt has run out of room and time to expound on them.

Finally, now, we have the Five Pillars of Authentic Radically Abandoned Christianity.  If we need more assistance, Platt tells us his website has more encouraging stories and insights by which to live radically, and we should also contribute our stories to the site while we are on and once we have completed our one-year radical commitment (but, isn’t the Internet just another American luxury distracting us from authentic Christianity? and if we have a computer, shouldn’t we be selling that to give sacrificially to a good cause?).  More we could say, but I think even this little response has said enough about why this book from the world’s youngest pastor of a megachurch (please turn down your hypocrisy meters, where applicable) can easily be eschewed.  Had Platt actually taken the time to Biblically refute key (and specific!) flaws of the contemporary incarnation of the “American Dream,” this may have been a pretty good book.  It is, instead, just a long-winded rant about David Platt’s personal misinterpretations about the gospel message and his own pet definition of “Christian.”  His ubiquitous “radical abandonment” phrase is never defined (only imaged through diverse and contradicting examples) and gets rather annoying by the end (of chapter one).  Yes, we should give sacrificially and be more concerned with the entire world, but that doesn’t mean we are all called to go overseas (and certainly not on little short-term missions trip jaunts of our own design and duration) or that checking off these five pillars/procedures is in anyway radical or even authentic Christianity.  The “whole world” includes our own neighborhood and our own country (is Acts 1:8 true as well as Matthew 28:18-20?); some send missionaries overseas, some support them, some are them.  Not everyone in the body of Christ fulfills the same function.  Fortunately, those of us who know God’s role for us (at least in its present form) feel not one iota of shame or compunction that we don’t match up to David Platt’s standards or definitions.  Perhaps he will someday write the book the subtitle of this book suggests — I might want to actually read it; but that’s not what this book is about.  This book is about what David Platt wants Christianity to be.  He is not correct.