On David Platt’s Radicalism
Along with 612,000 other people, I watched a video by Rev. David Platt, posted on X, a week ago. The text added to the ninety-second video said,
If we actually believe the Bible, we’ll leave behind this brand of Christianity we’ve created that’s content to essentially ignore over 3 billion in the world who’ve never heard the gospel.
So the question is: do we actually believe the Bible?
The video is of Rev. Platt on a rooftop in a bustling city, giving a very emotive plea for world evangelization. And yet, my response was one of incredulity. My response bothered me a bit, not the least, because I am for world evangelization. I have been in Christian ministry for two decades. I have been on a few short-term mission trips. I have taught pastors in another country. My wife and I have a few international mission agencies that we support. And at least at one point, we considered being international missionaries. So, why my negative response to Platt’s impassioned plea?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past few days. I want to make sure that I’m not developing a curmudgeonly reflexive response to fellow pastors who call the church to care about sharing the gospel with those who don’t know Christ. After some soul-searching, I think I’ve settled on some reasons why Platt’s plea was off-putting for me.
First, Rev. Platt insists that if Christians actually believed the Bible, the three billion souls he references would already be reached or that more would be being done to reach them. The assumption here is that world evangelization is not going as planned because of the disbelief of God’s people. We could speculate this is true. After all, both letters to the church at Corinth are based on Paul’s clear opinion that the church at Corinth had not been maturing as fast as it should have been. But at the same time, that all people (or more people) are not saved (or have not heard the gospel) in 2024 in the year of our Lord does not prove that the church does not believe the call to gospel missions. In fact, Jesus teaches that God’s sovereignty over salvation means that some people will not be converted and some people (who will not believe) will not hear the gospel (Luke 4:23–27). So, that there are unconverted people in the “Red Zone” is not a clear condemnation of the church that we have not believed the Bible.
Second, Rev. Platt speculates that there are only two reasons why there are not more missionaries in the area from which he was filming. The first reason he offers is that Christians don’t know that there are billions of unsaved people across the world. Most Christians I know do know this. That fact drives them to prayer and generosity (dare I say radical generosity) to world missions. The second reason he offers is that Christians who don’t share Rev. Platt’s views believe in universalism—the heretical belief that all people will end up in heaven. The Christians I know do not believe this. So, some of my incredulity at Rev. Platt’s post is that he offers only two options to what he perceives as a lack of investment in world missions—ignorance or heresy.
Let’s stop at this point and admit that Rev. Platt is insinuating that the church as a whole is ignorant or heretical. As a fact statement, this is ridiculous. As a motivation to missions, this is, how shall we say, less than ideal. “You don’t want to be ignorant or heretical, do you? Well, give to world missions or go be a missionary.” A quick perusal of the New Testament shows that this is not how the Bible motivates Christians to care about those who do not yet know Christ.
Third, Rev. Platt insists that to comply with his impassioned plea, we must “leave behind this brand of Christianity we’ve created.” I’m left wondering what in the world he is talking about by “brand of Christianity.” Is he talking about the institutional church (visible/invisible, militant/triumphant)? If that is what he means, then I disagree with him strongly. We can’t scrap the Church in order to reach the nations. That is inane. But he is being vague. So maybe he means some bad tendencies within the church. After all, the church will always have spots and blemishes (Eph. 5:27). This is why the church must always be reformata, semper reformandum. So what did he actually mean? We’re all left wondering.
Fourth, and this is maybe my most significant pushback, what it looks like to be “radical” in this day and age is, by and large, not packing everything up and going across the world to share the gospel. For some people, yes, that is the call. And praise God for those people. But for the majority of Christians, it is not. A radical life today is getting a job, joining a church, marrying a woman, raising Christian children, sharing the gospel with your neighbors, and contributing to your community in the name of and for the glory of Christ. So, my worry in a message like this is that some young Christian guy is going to think, “I’m not being radical enough unless I’m an international missionary.” This is roundly not true.
Now, I have no animus against Rev. Platt, but I do disagree strongly with his message. I’ll also reemphasize that Rev. Platt was clearly emotive and vague. He was not presenting a theology of missions or offering advice on how a Christian might know he is being called to be a missionary. The vagueness may be due to brevity or just the inaccuracy of an off-the-cuff post. I have been guilty of both in the past. Either way, that message from a well-known pastor neither helps the cause of world missions nor does it help Christians trying to find their place in God’s world. So, I remain steadfastly committed to seeing the world evangelized, missionaries sent out, missions generously funded, and vague emotive messages about missions clarified.
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