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The Scariest Thing About Your Church is Its Values

Updated: Feb 11

Why Truth, Goodness and Beauty Feel Optional

4th in the Wide Witness, Deep Roots Series

A tree doesn’t care how confident you are—it cares what it’s planted in.

Picture a massive tree. Thick trunk. Strong limbs. Fruit everywhere. Now picture that same tree planted in sand. It can look impressive for a while—especially if you prop it up with sticks, stakes, and strategic Instagram angles. But eventually the wind shows up and asks a simple question: “So… what’s underneath all this?”

“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:2, ESV) If the soil is contaminated, what happens to the tree?

That’s why the foundation soil of the Christian Character Tree matters. In my graphic, the soil in which this tree is set are the Transcendentals, which is shorthand for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. And if you want a short definition that doesn’t require a philosophy degree: the transcendentals are the three ways we talk about what’s ultimately real, ultimately right, and ultimately worth loving.

Here is the main idea behind this fourth blog: Christian character won’t grow in the long run if our churches treat truth, goodness, and beauty like optional accessories. The soil isn’t a vibe. It’s a foundation.

So why do many of our churches in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) ecosystem— feel like they are committed to one transcendental (truth) and vaguely suspicious of the other two (goodness and beauty)? Is it because we assume them? Is it because we’ve quietly swapped in other values in the “soil” like efficiency, influence, winning, speed, and outrage?

Let’s do some digging and see what we find. But first:

What are the Transcendentals—and why should we care?

The transcendentals didn’t originate as a trendy Oprah self-help trio. They are a classic way of describing reality that runs through Christian thought for centuries: “truth” (what corresponds to reality), “goodness” (what is morally fitting and life-giving), and “beauty” (what is worthy of love and wonder).

Peter Kreeft explains how goodness, truth, and beauty are three things we want and need most deeply.

At their deepest level, all three are known by the heart: truth by intuition, goodness by conscience, and beauty by an awareness for which there is no similar name. As truth perceived by the mind gives us knowledge and goodness affirmed by the will gives us virtue, beauty felt by the heart gives us joy. These are our souls’ three distinctively human and spiritual powers (or activities), their three objects (or ideals), and their three ends (or fruits).¹

When it comes to theology, Christians don’t worship abstractions; we worship the triune God. But we do confess that God is true, “But the LORD is the true God…” (Jer. 10:10, ESV), “Your word is truth” (John 17:17, ESV), good, “Taste and see that the LORD is good!” (Psalm 34:8a, ESV), and glorious/beautiful, “Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty…”(Isa. 33:17, ESV), “One thing have I asked of the LORD…that I may dwell in the house of the LORD…to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD…” (Psalm 27:4, ESV). In other words, the transcendentals are a shorthand for the coherence of God’s own life and ways.

And the Bible refuses to let these drift apart:

Truth is not just accurate facts; it’s a Person: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6, ESV).
Goodness is not mere niceness; it’s God’s moral beauty embodied: “There is none good except God alone” (Mark 10:18, ESV).
Beauty is not decoration; it’s the splendor of God that captures the heart: “to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD” (Psalm 27:4, ESV).

If you remove this soil, you don’t get freedom. You get confusion. And confusion is very expensive once it grows up and starts running your church budget.

Truth without goodness and beauty becomes… a talking point with teeth

Many of us Baptists have an instinctive reflex: “We’re a people of the Book. We care about truth.” Amen. Keep that. Please do not become the kind of church where “doctrine” means “my feelings plus a worship set.”

But here’s the problem: truth divorced from goodness becomes harsh. Truth divorced from beauty becomes boring. And harsh + boring is not a discipleship strategy—it’s a slow church churn into cynicism.

C. S. Lewis saw something like this coming. In The Abolition of Man, (Yes, I’m using this again. It is just so illuminatingly accurate.) he warned that you can train people to “talk” about virtue while hollowing out the inner formation needed to “live” it. In his famous line he concludes: “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.”² In Lewis’s imagery, you’ve got head (ideas) and belly (appetites), but no “chest”—no formed loves, no trained courage, no moral imagination.

Translate that into church culture:

We can teach “biblical worldview” and still train people to be mean.
We can defend inerrancy and still lie with our clickbait.
We can preach grace and still cultivate suspicion.

Truth is not less than propositions. But if propositions never become a life—if they don’t “take on flesh” in community—then we’ve turned truth into a slogan, not a soil.

Kevin Vanhoozer helps here: doctrine is not merely information; it functions like “stage directions” for faithful living—scripted truth meant to be performed.³ If we treat doctrine as trivia, we shouldn’t be shocked when it produces Christian trivia players.

Goodness without truth becomes… a nice-sounding nothing with a Bible verse sticker

Now flip it. Goodness detached from truth doesn’t stay goodness for long. It turns into a sentimental fog: everyone is “kind,” nobody is courageous, and sin becomes “brokenness” forever—never repentance, never change, never holiness. It’s just a vibe with a Bible verse attached.

D. A. Carson describes how modern culture often redefines tolerance so that any claim to objective truth becomes a moral crime. He notes that the “new tolerance” insists we must treat all views as equally valid, and then makes “intolerance” the supreme sin.⁴ When that moral atmosphere seeps into churches, we begin to confuse Christian love with ideological surrender.

Christian goodness is not moral mush. It’s holiness plus love. And holiness requires truth.

Beauty without truth and goodness becomes… manipulation with a sound system

Beauty is the third sibling that Southern Baptists love from a safe distance. We like beauty as long as it doesn’t (a) cost too much, (b) feel too “high church,” or (c) threaten our efficiency. I really don’t like saying this, but the evidence is overwhelming: we prefer the beauty of a well-run program over the beauty of a transformed life.

But beauty detached from truth and goodness becomes performance. Aesthetics can become anesthesia. You can make people feel things without making them faithful. You can create “a moment” without creating a disciple.

That’s why the soil has to stay integrated. The true, the good, and the beautiful belong together—because they belong to God.

And if you want a thoroughly Baptist-friendly bridge between truth, goodness, and beauty, John Piper’s famous line is basically a transcendental mash‑up: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”⁵

That’s truth (God is gloriously real), goodness (he is worthy of worship), and beauty (he is satisfying) braided into one sentence.

So why are we not more committed to the Transcendentals?

Here’s the uncomfortable part. What I have experienced In SBC life, is that we often act like:

Truth is essential.
Goodness is assumed.
Beauty is suspicious.

Sometimes we’d never say that out loud. We just budget like it. We staff like it. We platform like it. We disciple like it.

You may say, “Okay Jimmy, you have my attention, why do you think it is this way?” I’m glad you asked. Let me suggest several overlapping reasons.

Reason 1: We confuse “right doctrine” with “formed disciples.”

Dallas Willard called this the church’s “Great Omission”: we make “Christians” (in-name) but not disciples (in-life).⁶ The Great Commission is “make disciples… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20, ESV). Willard’s point is not that evangelism is wrong—it’s that evangelism without apprenticeship produces “converts without conversion.”

My seminary professor and president, Dr. Charles S. Kelley Jr. said something similar to this and said it repeatedly, referring to our Southern Baptist churches: “We are a harvest-oriented denomination, but we are living in an unseeded generation…. Aggressive evangelism without aggressive discipleship will eventually undo itself.”⁷ That’s not a partisan critique. That’s a Baptist alarm bell.

When discipleship gets thin, goodness and beauty get thin with it. Because goodness and beauty require time. And time is the one resource we refuse to budget.

Reason 2: Our dominant “soil” is American pragmatism, not biblical wisdom.

If you have ever been in a meeting where the deciding factor was “What’s the ROI?” congratulations—you’ve met the unofficial doctrine of Baptist church leadership.

Pragmatism isn’t always evil. But it becomes spiritually corrosive when it replaces the question, “Is it “true?” “Is it “good?” “Is it “beautiful?” with “Did it work?”

Scot McKnight puts it bluntly: “Every church is a culture.”⁸ Culture isn’t neutral. It forms you. And a culture shaped primarily by efficiency will eventually produce efficient Christians—who may or may not be holy.

I stated something similar to this in a previous blog:

What you measure shapes what you value; what you value shapes what you become. If the most celebrated outcomes are the easiest to report, then leaders will naturally shape churches to favor these outcomes. Over time, a church can become an institution that excels at production while slowly starving formation. And the institution must be protected at all costs, even if it means sacrificing some of its members.

I write this because I have lived it. Some of you reading this have lived it too.

Reason 3: We traded thick formation for thin outrage.

Outrage is easier than sanctification. It is also more profitable in an attention economy.

Carl Trueman describes modern “expressive individualism” as a cultural shift where personal feelings and authenticity become the ultimate moral authority.⁹ In that atmosphere, truth becomes personal preference, goodness becomes self-expression, and beauty becomes “whatever moves me.” That cultural air gets into churches, and then we’re shocked when people treat discipleship like an Apple or Spotify playlist: skip the hard parts, keep the parts that match my mood.

Outrage fits expressive individualism perfectly: it feels like moral clarity without the inconvenience of character. If you don’t believe me, just watch the national news for 5 seconds and you will be convinced.

Reason 4: We turned “being conservative” into an identity rather than a posture of faithfulness.

Sometimes we’re not defending the faith—we’re defending our tribe.

A decade ago, Russell Moore warned that when Christians imagine themselves as a “moral majority,” political strategy can eclipse the strangeness of the gospel. He argues that if our vision of engagement becomes “a politically viable network,” then “Christ and him crucified will tend to be a stumbling block, not a rallying point.”¹⁰ No matter what you may think of him today, he saw this as an unfolding political reality in our churches.

When politics becomes the frame, truth becomes talking points, goodness becomes public optics, and beauty becomes branding.

Reason 5: We suspect beauty because we fear it will soften our convictions.

Many evangelicals are nervous that beauty is a backdoor to compromise. And yes—beauty can be weaponized. But that’s like refusing food because some people become gluttons.

Tim Keller, reflecting on Pascal, argues that we often need to help people see Christianity’s attractiveness—its “existing features”—before they are willing to consider its truth.¹¹ That doesn’t mean making the faith “cool.” It means showing that the gospel is not only true, but desirable; not only correct, but glorious.

Beauty is not the enemy of conviction. Beauty is the friend of love.

The problem is not the soil, but what we bring to it

The foundation of truth, goodness and beauty is not the problem. The problem is that we keep showing up to the garden with a bag of salt and wondering why the tree is rotting and the fruit tastes bad. Most of our "sanctification struggles" boil down to two things: we don't know what we’re doing (Ignorance), and we care about the wrong things (Flawed Values). It is not all the problems that we have, but in my opinion, most of the struggle for Christian character stems from these two.

Ignorance in its various forms

First is the issue of ignorance. Not all ignorance is the same. And ignorance makes us incompetent.

Willful Incompetence (The “Ostrich” Phase)

You have probably heard of self-imposed ignorance. That is when you don’t know something because you did not want to know it. A person is incompetent because they have chosen to be. Perhaps you have heard the saying: ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law. This kind of ignorance is a result of the flesh exerting its influence over a believer. While this afflicts all of us in one way or another, there is a different kind of ignorance that I want to address.

Unconscious incompetence (The “Delusional” Phase)

This is not knowing what you don’t know. It is a terrible situation because you don’t even see the problems coming, know that you even have them, where they are coming from, or what to do about them. You are doing things but what you are doing actually causes more harm than good over time.

Conscious incompetence (The “I Need Help” Phase)

This is knowing what you don’t know. It is when you know that something is either missing, wrong or incomplete. You are not sure which it is. You have cognitive recognition, but you still are not sure what to do about it. Your solutions at best are incomplete and at worst feed the problem. Your solutions today become your problems tomorrow.

If you realize the three issues of ignorance above and start to learn and change you will move to a place where lasting solutions can be found.

Now for the second issue we bring to the transcendental soil: flawed values.

Flawed Values: the invisible toxin shaping our soil

Now we get to the place of my current struggle for real connection: how do “values” relate to the transcendentals for the nourishment of Christian Character?

Values are the operating priorities we actually live by—what we reward, what we fear, what we chase. And here’s the key: values don’t just influence behavior; they shape what we “call” true, good, and beautiful.

Values that quietly sabotage the transcendentals in church life

Efficiency (Speed) over Faithfulness (Patience).

If your highest value is speed, you will treat formation as “too slow.” But the fruit of the Spirit doesn’t ripen in a microwave (Galatians 5:22–23).

Platform over Presence.

Platform turns truth into performance and goodness into optics. Presence—the slow, embodied life with people—makes truth believable and goodness tangible (1 Thessalonians 2:8).

Winning over Witness.

Winning loves the short-term spike, the rush. Witness loves the long-term faithfulness. Winning asks “Who is with us?” Witness asks “Who needs Christ?” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Certainty over Wisdom.

Certainty is not the same thing as truth. I once served under a team leader who took our team to lunch early in my time there. One of the team members asked me, “What is it like working with him?” I answered, “He is never in doubt, but often wrong.” To our leader’s credit, he laughed and agreed. Maybe you know someone like this. Truth can handle questions. Wisdom knows what to do with truth. Proverbs calls wisdom “better than jewels” (Proverbs 8:11), but our value system sometimes treats it as optional—like a church library.

Image Management over Repentance.

If the value is “protect the brand,” then confession is dangerous. But without confession, goodness becomes fake and beauty becomes plastic (1 John 1:8–9).

These values didn’t arrive by accident. They are native to American life—especially in a market-driven, media-saturated society. Our churches inhale them the way fish inhale water. Nobody notices until the oxygen runs out.

Two Really Important Questions with Some Imperfect Answers

Question 1: How did this happen? (A very short, very incomplete diagnosis)

A few streams converged:

Decisionism without apprenticeship. We learned to count decisions but struggled to form disciples.¹²(Okay, “decisionism” may be a made-up word but you get the idea.)
Market logic. Churches adopted the metrics and instincts of consumer culture: product, brand, target audience, growth strategy, etc.
Media incentives. Outrage and hot-takes outperform slow wisdom. It is what gets the attention, the clicks and the views.
Postmodern moral air. Culture demands “tolerance” defined as “no truth claims,” and Christians respond by either (a) screaming, or (b) surrendering.¹³Certainly you have not forgotten our own SBC “church too” issues involving our Executive Committee.
Expressive individualism. The self becomes the center; community and tradition become obstacles.¹⁴

Put those together and you get a Southern Baptist Convention that is excellent at asserting truth—and often weak at “displaying” it as goodness and beauty.

Question 2: What can we do about it?

Let’s get practical. If the soil is the transcendentals, then we need practices that cultivate truth, goodness, and beauty together—because you can’t “think” your way into character.

First, rebuild truth as discipleship, not trivia

Teach doctrine as “how to live,” not “how to win arguments.”¹⁵
Recover biblical catechism: teach the whole counsel of God as a coherent story, not disconnected proof texts.
Train people in “gentleness” and “respect” as part of apologetics (1 Peter 3:15). Truth is not just asserted; it’s embodied.

Second, rebuild goodness as habit, not hype

N. T. Wright describes virtue as what happens when repeated wise choices become “second nature.”¹⁶ That implies practice, repetition, community, and time.

So:

Normalize confession and repentance (James 5:16).
Make service ordinary (Ephesians 2:10).
Put spiritual disciplines back in the toolbox: prayer, fasting, generosity, Sabbath, biblical priority (Matthew 6:1–24) among others.

Dallas Willard called this apprenticeship: a “24/7 life with Jesus.”¹⁷ That’s not mystical. It’s mundane faithfulness—done over years.

Third, rebuild beauty as honesty, not aesthetics

Beauty in church life is not “better stage lighting.” It’s integrity and wonder.

Let worship be reverent and joyful—God-centered, not performer-centered (Psalm 96:9).
Tell the truth about suffering and sin; beauty that lies is just propaganda (Psalm 42; Romans 8:28).
Create space for art, poetry, testimony, and silence. We are forming loves, not merely transferring information.

Keller’s Pascal point matters here: we don’t “make” Christianity attractive by editing out the hard parts. We reveal the faith’s real beauty—Christ himself.¹⁸

Fourth, audit and repent of our value system

Ask your church the questions nobody wants to put on a slide:

What do we celebrate? Numbers? Or faithfulness?
Who do we honor? The gifted? Or the godly?
What do we fear? Decline? Or sin?
What do we reward? Results? Or Christlikeness?

Al Mohler’s “theological triage” is helpful for ordering doctrines by urgency.¹⁹ But we also need “moral triage”: the ability to tell the difference between “scraped ego” and “gunshot wound to character.”

Fifth, build a discipleship pipeline that expects transformation

If your church has a clear process for onboarding volunteers but no clear process for training saints, you have accidentally become a nonprofit with hymns.

Make disciple-making boringly normal:

A clear pathway from “new believer” to “maturing disciple” to “disciple-maker.”
Older believers actually invest in younger believers (2 Timothy 2:2).
Character aims stated explicitly: truth + goodness + beauty shaped into Christlikeness (Galatians 4:19).

Finally, stop choosing one transcendental

If we plant the tree of Christian character in the soil of the True while neglecting the Good and the Beautiful, we get brittle Christians who can argue but can’t love.

If we plant in the Good without the True, we get sentimental Christians who want to be kind but can’t name what kindness is.

If we plant in the Beautiful without the True and the Good, we get emotionally moved Christians who confuse goosebumps with holiness.

The goal isn’t to become a “truth church” or a “justice church” or an “aesthetic church.” The goal is to become the kind of people who can say, with integrity, “Follow me as I follow Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).

So, yes: our values affect our view of the transcendentals. And yes: American church culture can quietly sabotage the soil. But the solution isn’t despair; it’s repentance and replanting. If we don’t get the soil right, nothing else will be right either.

Because the soil is not an idea. The soil is the living God—true, good, and beautiful—calling us into a life where character is not a brand, but a witness.

Endnotes

¹Kreeft, Peter. Wisdom of the Heart: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful at the Center of Us All. p. 173. Kindle Edition. p. 173.

²Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. HarperOne, 2001, Ch. 1.

³Vanhoozer, Kevin J. The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology. Westminster, John Knox Press, 2005. For a representative quotation, see a review citing p. 362 at: https://www.faith-theology.com/2007/06/kevin-vanhoozer-drama-of-doctrine.html

⁴Carson, D.A. Sermon: “The Intolerance of Tolerance (Part 1),” The Gospel Coalition. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sermon/the-intolerance-of-tolerance-part-1/ A full treatment of this is found in Carson’s award-winning book “The Gagging of God.”

⁵Piper, John. Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. Multnomah Press, 2003. pg. 288.

⁶Willard, Dallas, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship. HarperOne, 2006.

⁷ www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/sbc-digest-rainer-receives-mcgavran-church-growth-award-wright-speaks-at-southwestern/ and also in the book: Kelley, Jr., Charles S. The Best Is Yet to Be: The First 100 Years of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 2018. pg. 114.

⁸McKnight, Scot, and Laura Barringer. A Church Called Tov: Transforming a Toxic Culture into a Culturing of Goodness. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Momentum, 2020. Chapter 1.

⁹Trueman, Carl R. Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022. Pg.26.

¹⁰ www.russellmoore.com/2016/06/21/politics-cant-drive-the-gospel/

¹¹ timothykeller.com/blog/2014/1/1/pascals-method-for-presenting-the-christian-faith

¹² www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/sbc-life-articles/an-interview-with-charles-s-kelley-jr/

¹³https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sermon/the-intolerance-of-tolerance-part-1/

¹⁴Trueman, Ibid.

¹⁵Vanhoozer, Ibid.

¹⁶Wright, N. T. After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. HarperOne, 2010.

pg. 21.

¹⁷Willard, Ibid. pg. 158.

¹⁸ timothykeller.com/blog/2014/1/1/pascals-method-for-presenting-the-christian-faith

¹⁹ albertmohler.com/2005/07/12/a-call-for-theological-triage-and-christian-maturity/

WHY YOUR LIFE HACKS ARE NOT WORKING

Updated: Feb 4

We Need A Renovation, Not A Filter

We live in an age that is effectively "unhinged." I made the case for this in a previous blog. We are simultaneously obsessed with "authenticity" and addicted to image management. We track habits, we "hack" our dopamine, we color-code our calendars, and we buy leather-bound journals hoping God will be impressed by the smell of fresh paper. Yet, if we are honest, a lot of us remain anxious, easily angered, and addicted to comfort. We are spiritually exhausted, not because we are doing too much, but because we are being too little.

A master carpenter can ruin your day in about five seconds. You show him a table you’re proud of—gorgeous finish, smooth legs, the kind of piece you’d post on Instagram with the caption “Blessed”. He nods politely, runs his hand along the edge… and then he flips it over. He doesn’t stare at the finish. He stares at the joints.

To the untrained eye, the surface is the whole story. But a craftsman knows the truth: the hidden joinery (structural integrity and strength) determines whether the table stands for a century or collapses the first time somebody plops down a crockpot full of roast and a plate of corn bread.

That is character. It’s not your “finish.” It’s not your spiritual filter. It’s not your ability to smile and say “I’m doing fine!” while your soul is doing donuts in the parking lot. Character is the joinery of the soul—the unseen architecture that determines whether you stand when the load gets heavy. And right now, in a culture that rewards the shiny surface over the sturdy joint, we are seeing a lot of tables collapse.

The Crisis Of The Empty Chest

Why are we collapsing? C.S. Lewis, in The Abolition of Man, diagnosed our modern condition as "men without chests."¹ I offer no apology for the continual use of this analogy, there is not a more apt description. Here Lewis states that we have cultivated bright, technical minds ("Head") and we are ruled by our visceral appetites and desires ("Belly"), but we lack the stabilizing moral center ("Heart" or "Chest") to regulate them. We oscillate between being smart enough to build nuclear weapons and hedonistic enough to use them, with no character to restrain us.

Lewis provides a haunting illustration of this in The Great Divorce through the figures of the Dwarf and the Tragedian.² A soul arrives in heaven as a grotesque duo: a tiny, shrinking Dwarf (the shriveled, authentic self) holding a chain attached to a tall, theatrical Tragedian (the fake persona used to manipulate others). The Tragedian does all the talking, feigning hurt and offense, while the Dwarf—the actual human soul—shrinks until it vanishes.

This is the perfect picture of our modern character crisis. We have spent decades polishing the Tragedian—our brand, our reputation, our "public self"—while the Dwarf within has starved. We don't need a new "life hack" or a spiritual "oil change". We need the Spirit to "thicken" the Dwarf into a solid human being. We need a renovation, not a paint job.

Character Is Not Just “Being Nice”

So, if we stop sanding the surface and start checking the joints, what exactly are we looking for? What is character?

It is easy to confuse character with personality. But character is not a personality type. Some "nice" people are spiritually hollow, and some "gruff" people are deeply faithful. Nor is it simple rule-keeping; the Pharisees were excellent at rules but dead inside.

Habitual Capability

Dallas Willard, a philosopher who thought about this more deeply than perhaps anyone in the last century (my opinion), defined character as habitual capability. It is the result of thousands of small choices that have calcified into a permanent shape.³ It is who you are in the dark.

Thomas Aquinas, the heavyweight champion of medieval theology, put it this way: Virtue is a "good operative habit".⁴ It is a settled disposition. It is what you do without thinking.

Here is the test: If you stand in front of a lost wallet for ten minutes debating whether to keep it, you might be honest in that moment, but you do not yet have the virtue of honesty. You are still fighting the civil war of the soul. The virtuous person returns the wallet before their brain even has time to formulate a temptation. They don’t have to “hack” their willpower because honesty has become their nature.

Christian character is the stable, Christlike shape of a whole person—Head, Heart, and Hands—formed by the Spirit over time. It is the kind of person who tells the truth when lying would be easier, forgives when revenge would feel delicious, and serves when nobody claps.

Why Christian Character Is Superior

"But wait," I hear you ask. "My atheist neighbor returns his shopping cart, donates to the Salvation Army, pulls his trashcan from the curb within six hours of the trash truck coming by, and…and composts! Can’t you have character without Jesus?"

Sure. You can have civic virtue. You can have grit. The Stoics were experts at this. But Christian Character is distinct—and yes, superior—in both its Source and its Goal.

Union, Not Willpower

Secular virtue is powered by willpower. It is "white-knuckling." It is the mantra of "Try Harder". But Christian character is powered by union with Christ. The New Testament doesn’t command us to manufacture fruit; it commands us to stay connected to the Vine.

If your plan for holiness is “white-knuckle it and hope for the best,” I admire your optimism, but that’s not Christianity. As Dallas Willard noted, grace is not opposed to effort, but it is opposed to earning.⁵ We train, but we train in the power of Another. Christian character is "fruit"—organic, slow, and impossible to produce without life-sap from the Spirit.

Glory, Not Just "Good Citizenship"

Secular virtue aims at "self-actualization" or being a "productive citizen". Christian character aims at glory. It aims to make you a person, as John Piper often alludes, who can stand in the blazing presence of God and not burn up.⁶

As C.S. Lewis famously said in the Screwtape Letters, the goal isn't just to make a horse jump better, but to turn a horse into a winged creature.⁷ Here we are now looking beyond renovation; we are looking for resurrection. We are becoming "little Christs".

The Anatomy Of Christian Character: A Tree In The Soil

How do we build this? We need a mental map. I’ll confess, this part has been very hard for me to picture, let alone write. I have lost track of the number of times I have started over. Truthfully, I felt like giving up. Yet, I reminded myself that for this blog, this is just a map – a snapshot of the anatomy of Christian Character. More will come on each of these in the future.

For most people, visuals help. So imagine a massive, ancient tree. This is the structure of Christian Character. It synthesizes the Transcendentals, the Beatitudes, the Virtues, and the Fruit of the Spirit.

Christian Character Tree by Jimmy Kinnaird

One other thing. I hold the right to come back and do updates. I still feel like a novice when it comes to understanding, appreciating and applying Christian Character. As we look into each of these different aspects, I have the feeling that some statements I have written and the visuals that I have supplied will need to be amended to reflect a more robust representation of Christian Character.

With that clarification out of the way, let us look at the foundation of reality in which godly character must be rooted.

The Soil: The Transcendentals (Truth, Goodness, Beauty)

The tree doesn’t hang in mid-air. It is rooted in reality. In classical Christian thought, reality is anchored in the Transcendentals—objective properties of God Himself. If you read the previous two blogs you encountered a treatment of them in our modern culture, both in and outside of the church. Speaking of culture, if you try to grow your character in the shifting sands of cultural relativism, the tree will topple.

The True (Head): We submit our minds to reality as God defines it, not "my truth" or "your truth". Without this soil, we end up in narcissism.
The Beautiful (Heart): We re-order our loves. As Jonathan Edwards taught, true religion consists largely in "holy affections".⁸ We sin because we are enchanted by lesser beauties. Character is finding Jesus more beautiful than our idols.
The Good (Hands): These are embodied habits. Good soil isn't something the tree does; it is what the tree receives.

The Roots: The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1–12)

Hidden underground are the Roots—the internal spiritual states found in the Beatitudes. These are largely invisible to the public eye, but they absorb the "nutrients" of grace. You can’t have a healthy tree with rotten roots.

Each Beatitude acts as a feeder root for a specific virtue in the "soil" (based on 2 Peter 1:3-11):

Poor in Spirit → Faith: Admitting spiritual bankruptcy is the only way to draw up grace.
Mourning → Virtue: You only grow in moral excellence (virtue) when you truly grieve the ugliness of your sin.
Meekness → Knowledge: Only a submissive heart can receive true knowledge without arrogance.
Hunger for Righteousness → Self-Control: You will only control your lower appetites if you have a superior hunger for God.
The Merciful → Steadfastness: Practicing constant forgiveness builds the muscle of enduring compassion.
Pure in Heart → Godliness: Singleness of focus is the essence of practicing God’s presence.
The Peacemakers → Brotherly Kindness: Reconciliation is the practical outworking of kindness.
Persecuted for Righteousness → Love: This is the summit. Enduring suffering for Jesus is the ultimate test of sacrificial Love. It is easy to love when the sun is shining; it takes a root deep in Christ to love when the world is burning you down.

The Trunk: The Cardinal Virtues

Rising from the ground is the Trunk, providing the structural strength. This is where we dust off the "Classical Toolbox" that modern evangelicals often leave in the barn.⁹ These are the Cardinal Virtues (from the Latin cardo, meaning "hinge"), the pivots on which all moral life swings.¹⁰

Prudence: This is not just "caution." It is practical wisdom—knowing what to do and when to do it. It is the driver of the other virtues.
Justice: This is the constant will to give God and neighbor their due. It is not just a sentiment; it is an obligation.
Temperance: Self-control. It is the ability to enjoy good things (food, drink, rest) without worshipping them. It puts the brakes on our "lizards".
Courage (Fortitude): Steadfastness. As Lewis noted, courage is just "every virtue at the testing point". It is the ability to keep going when obedience stops being interesting.¹¹

The Limbs: The Theological Virtues

Reaching up to the sky are the Theological Virtues: Faith, Hope, and Love. Aquinas reminds us that while we can practice the cardinal virtues (even pagans can be brave), these theological virtues must be "infused" by grace. They connect us directly to God.¹² They are the branches that provide shade to the community.

The Sap: The Spirit & The Word

What moves from the roots to the branches? The Spirit of God, working through the Word of God. Without the sap, the tree is just firewood.

We keep the sap flowing through "spiritual disciplines"—reading Scripture, prayer, fasting, service, silence and solitude. These aren't chores; they are how we keep our vascular system open to God’s life. You don’t read the Bible just to check a box; you read it to keep the sap moving.

The Fruit: Christlikeness

Finally, the result. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22–23).

Notice the Bible calls it fruit, not factory output. Fruit happens naturally when the tree is healthy. You don’t see apple trees straining and grunting to produce apples. They just... apple. Because that is what they are.

When the "Soil" of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is rejected, we get the "Works of the Flesh" (Galatians 5:19)—a chaotic plurality of "biting and devouring". But when the system is aligned, we get organic unity. The "Lizard" of lust is transformed into the "Stallion" of holy desire.¹³

The Carpenter is at Work

Christian character is the stable, Christlike shape of a whole person—Head, Heart, and Hands—formed by the Spirit over time. It is the process where the Spirit does what Eustace Scrubb (the boy-turned-dragon in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) could not do for himself: He tears off the dragon skin and makes us into sons and daughters of the King.

Eustace tried to scrape it off himself, but he just found more dragon scales underneath. It took the Lion (Aslan/Christ) to tear deep—painfully deep—to remove the crust of the old self and reveal the new.

This might feel overwhelming. You might be looking at your own "joinery" and seeing a lot of wobble. So do I and that is okay. You can’t grow this tree overnight. Actually you can only grow it as fast as you stay in step with the Spirit.

In the coming blogs, I am going to explain this further. I will dedicate future blogs to digging deep into the Soil and Roots (what is real and how to re-order your loves), constructing the Trunk (a deep dive into those Cardinal Virtues), expanding the Branches (infusing the Theological Virtues) and inspecting the Fruit.

For now, know this: The Carpenter is already at work in you and for you. He isn't afraid of your wobbly joints. He knows exactly what He’s doing.

End Notes

¹Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. HarperOne, 2001, Ch. 1.

²Lewis, C. S. The Great Divorce: A Dream. HarperOne, 2001, Chapters. 12-13.

³Willard, Dallas. Renovation of the Heart. NavPress, 2002. P.142.

⁴Saint Thomas Aquinas. The Summa Theologica. Edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Translated by Laurence Shapcote, Second Edition, vol. 18, Robert P. Gwinn; Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990, p. 28.

⁵Willard, Dallas. The Great Omission. HarperOne, 2006. P.166.

⁶https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/a-kingdom-that-cannot-be-shaken?utm_source=chatgpt.com

⁷Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. HarperOne, 2001, p. 216.

⁸Edwards, Jonathan. A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections: In Three Parts ... Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1996, p. 2.

⁹Kreeft, Peter. Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992.

¹⁰Ibid, p. 59.

¹¹Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. HarperOne, 2001, p. 161. (Letter 29).

¹²Saint Thomas Aquinas. The Summa Theologica. Edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Translated by Laurence Shapcote, Second Edition, vol. 18, Robert P. Gwinn; Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990, p. 60.

¹³Lewis, C. S. The Great Divorce: A Dream. HarperOne, 2001, pp. 111–12.

THE GATES OF HELL DO NOT FEAR OUR SPREADSHEETS

We learned to count everything–except what counts.

The Bus and the Body Count: A Cautionary Tale

In the early 2000s, there was no hotter ticket in evangelicalism than Mars Hill Church in Seattle. In fact, Christianity Today chronicled the saga of this church in their podcast, “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill.”

Mars Hill was the epitome of the "We Build" model—aggressive, culturally relevant, and exploding with numerical growth. At its helm was Mark Driscoll, a leader with a preacher’s gift and a CEO’s ruthlessness. The metrics were staggering: 15,000 weekly attendees, a global podcast audience, and a brand that seemed invincible.

But beneath the hood of this high-performance vehicle, the engine was running on a toxic fuel mix of narcissism and utility. Driscoll famously described the church not as a body or a family, but as a bus. He told his leaders that the bus had a destination, and if anyone got in the way, the bus would run them over. "There is a pile of bodies behind the bus," he once said, "and by God’s grace, it’ll be a mountain by the time we’re done."¹

He was building a movement. He was building a brand. He was building a legacy. But was he building the church?

In 2014, the wheels didn't just come off; the entire chassis disintegrated. The collapse of Mars Hill wasn't just a leadership failure; it was a structural inevitability. When the foundation is human personality ("Petros") rather than divine confession ("Petra"), the gates of hell don't even need to attack. They just have to wait for the mortar to crack. The church dissolved, the campuses fractured, and thousands of believers were left spiritually homeless, victims of a "We Build" project that mistook adrenaline for the Holy Spirit.

This story is not an anomaly. It is the logical conclusion of a theology that believes we are the ones doing the heavy lifting.

The Great Divergence: The Carpenter vs. The Contractor

In Matthew 16:18, Jesus makes a statement that serves as the exclusive franchise agreement for the Kingdom of God: "I will build my church."

Notice the pronoun. I. Not we. Not you. Not us.

Jesus is the Builder. He is the Architect. He is the Construction Supervisor.

Yet, walk into the average church growth conference or Christian leadership meeting this year, and you will hear a different gospel. You will hear the gospel of the Contractor. This is the subtle, pervasive belief that Jesus provided the raw materials—salvation, the Bible, the Holy Spirit—but He left the actual construction up to our ingenuity. We have become the General Contractors of the Kingdom, sub-contracting Jesus out for the "spiritual stuff" while we handle the marketing, the strategy, and the metrics.

You may protest. But think for a moment. Maybe read the previous paragraph again before you read the next provocative statement.

The difference between a church built by the Carpenter and a church built by Contractors is not just semantics; it is the difference between a sanctuary and a shopping mall.

With that said, I want you to understand what I am not saying. I am not saying that outward growth does not matter. It does. The early church counted how many were saved in their first service, about three thousand souls in the Book of Acts, chapter 2. There are multiple references to the number of people at different gatherings in the New Testament. Even in the Old Testament, there is a book by the name of Numbers! Numbers are important and so is outward growth.

If we deny that outward growth matters, we end up sanctifying mediocrity and baptizing apathy. Faithfulness and fruitfulness are not enemies.

We need to organize. We need to plan. I am not saying we don’t.

But here is the pivot: What you measure shapes what you value; what you value shapes what you become. If the most celebrated outcomes are the easiest to report, then leaders will naturally shape churches to favor these outcomes. Over time, a church can become an institution that excels at production while slowly starving formation. And the institution must be protected at all costs, even if it means sacrificing some of its members.

To demonstrate my point, I present to you a working contrast of the two models. However, remember these are “characterizations.” I am not making a statement that every church is this way, but in my experience, many churches in our Southern Baptist Convention have a tendency toward the “contractor” model, and could use some reflection and correction. These are broad descriptions and sweeping claims, but valid nonetheless.

Read the difference and weep.

The Contractor’s Model: "Success"

In the "We Build" paradigm, the church is an enterprise. Its goal is market share. Its method is anxiety-inducing pragmatism.

The Metric: The "Holy Trinity" of the Contractor is Bodies, Budgets, and Buildings. If these numbers are up, God is present. If they are down, we need a new strategy.
The Leader: The pastor functions as a CEO or a brand manager. Charisma is valued over character because charisma fills seats.
The People: They are "resources" to be deployed or "customers" to be retained.

The Carpenter’s Model: "Faithfulness"

In the "Jesus Builds" paradigm, the church is a body. Its goal is maturity. Its method is faithful obedience.

The Metric: The Fruit of the Spirit. Are people becoming more patient, kind, and self-controlled? These are "lead measures" that predict future health, unlike attendance, which is a "lag measure" of past performance.
The Leader: The pastor is a shepherd, smelling of sheep, often inefficient with their time because they are busy with the slow work of soul care.
The People: They are "living stones" (1 Peter 2:5) being fitted together by God, often through friction and conflict, into a holy temple.

When we try to do Jesus' job (building), we end up exhausted. When we neglect our job (abiding), we end up empty. As Dallas Willard famously quipped about the modern church's obsession with growth hacks, "We are not only saved by grace; we are paralyzed by it." We expect God to zap us with growth while we ignore the disciplines of the Master Builder. ²

The Difference at Ground Level

How does this theological shift play out in the real world? Glad you asked. I will tell you how. It changes the very atmosphere of the church. The result is not merely a different leadership style. It is often a different kind of church. One that Peter, Paul and Timothy would not recognize.

This shift alters the Transcendentals—those timeless properties of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty that reflect God’s nature which I introduced in the previous blog. There I applied them to the general culture, here I apply them to the church we build - The Contractor’s Church and the church Christ builds - The Carpenter’s Church.

Truth: From Revelation to Relevance

In the Contractor’s Church: Truth is often curated for Relevance. The Contractor asks, "Will this sermon series preach? Will it offend the target demographic?" Truth becomes a product feature, optimized for user experience. We see this in the rise of "hologram preaching" and content that mimics the pacing of TikTok—fast, episodic, and designed to hold attention rather than transform the heart.³ The goal is to lower the barrier to entry so low that we forget we are entering a holy space.

In the Carpenter’s Church: Truth is valued as Revelation. It is the "North Star" that guides us, regardless of the cultural weather. The Carpenter’s church isn't afraid to be "weird" or "untimely." As the famous dictum goes, a church that marries the spirit of the age will find itself a widow in the next. The "Jesus Builds" model trusts that the naked Word of God has the power to build "Men with Chests"—people of conviction who don't need a smoke machine to feel the Spirit.⁴(For many churches with online services, I appreciate that a smoke machine adds depth and richness to the video presentation. I am just making a point that I hope you will appreciate none the less.)

Goodness: From Virtue to Utility

In the Contractor’s Church: Goodness is redefined as Utility. A person is "good" if they volunteer, tithe, and don't cause trouble. A leader is "good" if they produce results, even if they leave a trail of emotional debris behind them (the "bus" analogy again). This leads to "Vampire Christianity"—a term Dallas Willard used to describe people who want just enough of Jesus' blood to save them from hell, but none of His life to change how they treat their neighbor.⁵ It produces a culture of functional deism where we claim to trust God but operate entirely on human horsepower.

In the Carpenter’s Church: Goodness is understood as Virtue. It is the slow, often invisible formation of Christian character. Success is defined not by how many people attend, but by who those people are becoming. Are the husbands loving their wives? Are the business owners treating their employees with dignity? Are the singles living with purity and purpose? Have they really become salt and light? The Carpenter is building saints, not just consumers. He is interested in the "interior castle" of the soul, not just the curb appeal of the Sunday service.

Beauty: From Glitz to Glory

In the Contractor’s Church: Beauty is flattened into Glitz. The architecture mimics the shopping mall or the convention center—neutral, safe, and indistinguishable from the secular world.⁶ The "Green Room" culture separates the "talent" from the "audience," turning worship into a spectator sport where we watch professionals perform intimacy with God.⁷ It is the aesthetic of the "cool," which is always fleeting.

In the Carpenter’s Church: Beauty is valued as Glory. Roger Scruton, the philosopher of aesthetics, argued that true beauty is a "call to the divine"—it arrests us and forces us to look up.⁸ A church built by Jesus values the beauty of holiness. It might meet in a living room or a cathedral, but the aesthetic is one of reverence. It resists the "desecration" of modern utility. It refuses to turn the bride of Christ into a brand. As Scruton noted, "Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it does not matter." ⁹ The Carpenter’s church restores beauty by being a place where the broken are made beautiful, not just where the beautiful are celebrated.

What We Lose When We Build

The divergence between these two models hits the ledger and the calendar.

The Cost of Labor: In the "We Build" model, burnout is the standard operating procedure. Pastors are quitting in record numbers because the burden of being the "Chief Energy Officer" is crushing.¹⁰ You cannot sustain a supernatural movement with natural energy. When we try to manufacture the wind of the Spirit with industrial fans, we just blow everyone away.

In the "Jesus Builds" model, the yoke is easy and the burden is light (Matthew 11:30). This does not mean there is no work; it means the work is fueled by grace, not grind. It is the difference between a rowboat (human effort) and a sailboat (harnessing the wind).

The Cost of Finance: The Contractor’s budget is heavy on "Presentation"—lights, stage, marketing, and the "Sunday Experience." The Carpenter’s budget is heavy on "People"—benevolence, mission, and discipleship. We see this in the shift of churches like The Village Church, which voluntarily slashed its budget by millions to move from a centralized "empire" model to a decentralized "multiplying" model.¹¹ Redeemer Church, founded by Tim Keller made a similar move beginning in 2016 and completed that in 2022.¹²They realized that reproduction (biological life) is cheaper and healthier than replication (franchise expansion).

The Cost of Fellowship: The "We Build" model offers "connections"—loose, low-commitment social networks. The "Jesus Builds" model offers "communion"—deep, covenantal relationships that can withstand offense. It is the difference between a "content-based" gathering and a "table-based" community. The emerging "Dinner Church" movement is a prime example of this return to the table, where the cost of entry is vulnerability, not just a ticket.¹³

Are You Building a Tower or a Temple?

This isn't just a critique of megachurch pastors. It is a mirror for every individual Christian. We all have an "Inner Contractor" that wants to build a life that looks impressive to the neighbors.

We measure our spiritual lives by lag metrics: How many chapters did I read? How much did I give? How many services did I attend? Jesus measures our spiritual lives by lead metrics: Am I growing in love? Is my anxiety decreasing as my trust increases? Am I becoming the kind of person who naturally does what Jesus would do if He were me?¹⁴

The Virtue of Temperance: To move from Contractor to Carpenter, we need the virtue of temperance—the ability to say "no" to growth that compromises our soul. We need to ruthlessly eliminate hurry, as Willard advised, “Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life.”¹⁵ We need to stop trying to be "original" and start being "faithful." As C.S. Lewis wrote, "No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it... and what men call originality will come unsought."¹⁶

Resigning as General Manager of the Universe

The promise of Matthew 16:18 is offensive to our pride but a balm to our anxiety. "I will build my church."

The gates of hell—death, despair, and decay of culture—will not prevail against the church Jesus builds. But they will prevail against the church we build. To coin a phrase–They eat our marketing plans for breakfast. They are not scared of our fog machines. (Here I go again with the fog machines!) They are not threatened by our vision statements. They do not fear our spreadsheets.

But they tremble before a group of people who have resigned from the job of building the church and have taken up the job of being the church.

This year, 2026, let’s hand the hard hat back to the Carpenter. Let’s stop trying to build a tower to heaven to make a name for ourselves (Genesis 11) and start building a table on earth to welcome the stranger. Let’s stop measuring the height of our steeple and start measuring the depth of our roots.

Jesus is a better Builder than we are. And His warranty lasts forever.

End Notes

¹https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361446686_Spiritual_Tyranny_at_Mars_Hill_A_Rhetorical_Analysis_of_Mark_Driscoll's_Relational_Metaphors

²Willard, Dallas. The Great Omission. HarperOne. 2006. p.166.

³https://anglicancatholicliturgyandtheology.wordpress.com/2019/08/19/holy-hologram/

⁴Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. HarperOne, 2001, Ch. 1.

⁵https://dwillard.org/resources/articles/why-bother-with-discipleship. This is also found in Willard’s book, The Great Omission. HarperOne. 2006. P.14.

⁶https://hyperallergic.com/house-of-worship-or-shopping-mall-the-drab-architecture-of-megachurches/

⁷https://www.alessifamilybusiness.com/exposing-the-green-room-effect-why-we-say-no-to-celebrity-church-culture/

⁸https://www.eighthdayinstitute.org/beauty-a-very-short-introduction

⁹https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/desecration-beauty/

¹⁰https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360826993_REIMAGINING_PASTORAL_EDUCATION_AND_TRAINING_DEFEATING_PASTORAL_BURNOUT_AND_DROPOUT_THROUGH_UNITING_THE_UNIVERSITY_MODEL_THE_APPRENTICESHIP_MODEL_AND_MULTI-MODEL_THEOLOGICAL_HIGHER_EDUCATION

¹¹https://www.christianpost.com/news/multisite-churches-now-autonomous-congregations.html

¹²https://www.redeemer.com/learn/about_us/redeemer_history

¹³https://missioalliance.org/three-ways-declining-churches-become-thriving-churches-an-invitation-to-explore-fresh-expressions/

¹⁴Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. Harper, 1988. p. 283.

¹⁵Comer, John Mark. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. Waterbrook, 2019. p. 19.

¹⁶Lewis, C. S. The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses. HarperOne, 2001. p. 175.