Is "The Sinner's Prayer" Harmful?

This week, we sat down for a discussion, prompted by the video below, in which pastor David Platt talks about the Sinner's Prayer, a prayer that many evangelicals and people in other Christian groups ask people to pray when they convert to Christianity. The prayer consists of an admission of sin and a request for Jesus to "enter your heart" or become the central figure in the pray-er's life. Platt questions its validity and warns about its use, and that's the jumping off point for our conversation. Note that this is a transcript of a verbal conversation; we're speaking off the cuff. So feel free to take issue with things we've said, and talk to us in the comments section; we may very well agree with you, and at all events you'll give us a chance to clarify our thoughts.



James Davisson: Platt starts the video by claiming that people in churches are "missing the life of Christ" because of the sinner's prayer. What do you guys think of that?


David Shay: The main thing I disagree with David Platt about is a little outside the context of the video—I don't agree with him because I think that, there's a level of "the life of Christ" that reaches all life on this planet, regardless of a sinner's prayer. But in this context, he's saying there are people who aren't true followers of Christ because they are saying a prayer that doesn't really mean anything, that they're told to say, and it doesn't reveal the full essence of Christ to them. And I agree with that.

JD: Can you talk more about why you agree, David? Do you feel like you know a lot of people who fit his description, people who go to church but are missing the life of Christ?


DS: I can think of people, but of course I wouldn't want to say who I think is a "false Christian!" But I think this stems from a culture where, say, a person would be like "I said the sinner's prayer when I was four years old!" and then that person goes to church every Sunday, and they say they love Jesus, but you want to say to them "Remember when Jesus was yelling at the Pharisees for these reasons? You're kinda doing what the Pharisees were doing, every day. I think Jesus would yell at you." But you can't have that discussion with them.

So it's maybe not even the sinner's prayer that's the problem, but the culture of a church that thinks that all you gotta do is say the sinner's prayer and then you're in. There just isn't discipleship; the church becomes a hangout of people who have said this prayer at some point, and there's no difference between them and non-Christians. I've always wondered with people like this that I've met, like "Why don't you just not come to church on Sunday, and be productive on Sunday morning instead? It seems like almost nothing Jesus said matters to you."


Dave Mantel: And what is "salvation" anyway, right? Are there people in the church who really believe, in their heart of hearts, that doing a "repeat after me" thing is sufficient for an immediate, complete life change? Or is it something more? Something we don't actually understand, but over the years have consistently whittled down to these three or four sentences that somehow transform a person eternally? I know there's the whole "confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord" in Romans 10 but... I don't think what we're talking about is exactly what Paul had in mind.

JD: When English the word "salvation" comes up in the Old Testament, especially when it's used in the Psalms, it doesn't have the meaning that the New Testament does when it talks about "salvation," and it certainly doesn't mean what evangelicals mean when they use the word. In the OT, it just means, "[I am in physical danger right now and require] rescue [from said danger.]" It's a mistranslation or an imposition to call that eternal salvation. But we've stated elsewhere on the blog that reinterpretations and fresh meanings for older scriptures can be positive, so that's not to say that we can't use the Psalms to talk about a different kind of salvation from what the Psalmist meant.


DM: Right, and there are so many different kind of examples in the New Testament, too, of how salvation happens in people's life. Jesus told Zacchaeus that salvation had come to his house when he just said he was going to be a better person—he hadn't actually done anything yet. Just said he was going to. The criminal on the cross just asked to be remembered, the lame man was brought to Jesus by his friends and lowered through a roof—he technically didn't do anything except have cool friends...there are loads of other examples...it just seems to me that salvation comes in a lot of different ways and means a lot of different things in scripture, so to make up this thing about some kind of prayer happening and then a moment in time when you receive "salvation" seems a little silly (to put it mildly) to me.

Unfortunately, instead of simply accepting that salvation is something mysterious and possibly different for everyone, evangelicalism has created this kind of easy, one-size-fits-all answer, because Modernity had this need to create answers to every question, even if they're wrong. The focus in evangelicalism has been, for decades: get-saved-so-you-don't-go-to-Hell. But if that's not the point, since that doesn't seem to appear anywhere in scripture...if salvation isn't something to be achieved, per se, and doesn't take place in a single moment in time, and its primary purpose is not to save us from an eternity in Hell, then what is it, and how does it happen?


JD: It's a big question. Let's focus for now on shallowness of Christians that Platt is pointing toward, and how that's related to the sinner's prayer. Are there other sources of shallowness in Christianity, besides this notion that Christianity is about trying not to go to hell?


DS: I feel like that's the biggest one. That's almost why some people might say that Catholicism and "Christianity," western, Protestant Christianity, are two different religions. Western Protestantism today seems to be based around that notion of avoiding hell. I think there's all kinds of shallowness, though, there are shallow things Christians say all the time, and I think that's why many people raised in the church are becoming atheists. Do you know that there are people in the church who use Job to comfort people? "Hey guess what, God's just ruining your life to test you, are you going to follow God?" And people are like, "I would rather believe that there is no God and the world is chaotic than believe in a God who would torment me on earth just so I would still love God."

I'm bringing up that example because it's in the nature of what Dave Mantel was saying: there's something that we don't know, so we just insert an answer so we can sleep at night. Well you can't sleep at night, though, when your family members have died and say you then have a terminal illness, you know—when your life starts to look like Job. Before that point, you might say God tests people who say they love God by making their lives suck, but once that happens to you, you might think "I don't believe in a God that does this."

Another example: no one can say what happens after death. We can say what we think, but we can't know. And I was talking to a Christian friend, and he said, "People need direction!" And I said "Are you saying they need answers? Because what's worse, not telling people something that no one knows, or making up an answer to something that no one knows?" As far as life after death, we only have what we believe; we can't direct people to certain answers. I think you can be a Christian and still say that.

JD: For me, the big source of shallowness in Christianity is the failure to articulate really well the other reasons there are to be Christians outside of not going to hell. I got the message growing up that it was also about being free from sin and ceasing sin was part of it, and I think being free from sin is good and is a part of why being Christian is worthwhile. But the thing is, you can stop doing wrong without being a Christian, you can be an atheist who doesn't habitually do wrong things—there's lots of them, I know them.


DM: And there's another point where I feel like, at least for evangelicals, we've really missed the mark... because, what is the Gospel? What is the point of being a Christian? Is it to be able to stop doing bad things? To avoid hell when we die? I don't mean to sound like a broken record here, but if we don't know what the point of all of this stuff is—why we do what we do—then we're just following a morality paradigm and maybe being involved with a social group once or twice a week, you know?


DS: I feel like the only convincing argument for creating a religion out of Jesus' life is the Great Commission, "go and make disciples," and I don't even see that as being a convincing reason to make a religion. But I do think that making disciples is an essential part of the gospel; the book of Acts is full of this, it's a great follow-up to the gospels, because it's just the disciples going and being empowered to make connections with other people in other lands. I think we are meant to connect with each other, and I think that's part of the message of the gospel; you see Jesus breaking down walls and getting judged for it, eating with sinners, going to Zaccheus's house, talking to a woman at the well. That seems to me to be more in the nature of what God wants from us. I don't know if that would be on David Platt's agenda, but to me, that's the thing about the sinner's prayer, it distracts us from the importance of making connections.


JD: I think the gospel is something along the lines of: Jesus came to change human history, in part by teaching us not to exclude people and to love each other and be in community, and also in some mysterious way, by defeating death. I don't know how to define the gospel, and that's embarrassing. The big problem for me is that my definition of the gospel doesn't feel uniquely Christian enough—anyone can come along and say "love each other, and also we'll never really die."


DS: I think that's a pretty good answer though. I've had this conversation with others, atheists and agnostics, who are like "Anyone can be nice!" and I'm like "I know anyone can be nice, because Jesus is for everyone, God is for everyone; everyone can be nice because these things are from God and God wants them for everyone." Which is kind of a cheap answer, an infuriating answer, and it's one way that my theology is kind of cheap and shallow. It's kind of a cop out. But you can't believe in a God who is love, but the only way to experience that love is to say some words properly. What is more ridiculous, that a God has come and given us love, and everyone on the planet experience it and have it whether they know God by name or not, or the other thing, where some white guy from the U.S. comes to you and says "Say this! 'I'm a sinner and I accept Jesus.' You feel it? You feel the love?!"


JD: Any final thoughts?


DS: I agree with David Platt in that this prayer specifically is causing people to not really be Christians but believe that they are Christians. What an actual Christian is, he and I might disagree on, but we agree on that, and I think it's nice that he said it.

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