Damian Kyle’s Simple Christian Life: Is It Biblical?

I have this memory of my dad from childhood, when we were talking together in his office about the simple Christian life. I remember complaining to him about how complicated the Bible seemed to be, and how difficult it was for me to undertand. I knew scattered bits of it, but I couldn’t really see how a random passage I would read in one book of the Bible fit within a broader Christian worldview. My Dad’s response to this was to say, “It really is simple, son. Just trust in Jesus to forgive your sins, and you’ll be with him in heaven.”

I don’t remember how the conversation progressed after that point, but I do know that it wasn’t until college that I actually fell in love with the Bible, for all of its brilliant complexity. I was trudging through Leviticus after committing to a 1-year reading plan, until the pistons in my brain started firing, and I began to see how the obscure sacrificial practices of the mosaic law connected to the work of Christ. I ended up failing the plan after choosing instead to do a deep dive into Leviticus, Joshua, and a few other major sources of biblical typology, out of sheer fascination with this undiscovered book I had always known.

Reflecting on that experience, I can see both the value of what my father was trying to accomplish in focusing my thoughts on the centerpiece of Christianity, as well as the factual error of his statement concerning the Bible’s simplicity. In the end, he missed an opportunity to anchor the worldview of one of his more inquisitive Bible students in the word of God. While I have tremendous respect for my dad, and for the pastor whose more elaborated views I will be critiquing in this article, it is factually wrong to say that Christianity is limited in its scope to the doctrines of salvation and a personal relationship with Jesus. And when we teach that error from our pulpits, it robs the congregation of the richness of Christian thought, while also robbing God of the fruit that would otherwise come from Christians applying his entire word to all areas of life, in all of its complexity.

In short, the word of God describes the foundation and purpose of everything that exists in the world, supplying us with a cohesive and comprehensive worldview which addresses every area of life, from the simple to the complex. Salvation of individual souls to heaven, while massively important to God and to us, is merely one of many aspects of God’s work in creation and redemption. There are other things going on in the earth, not the least of which being what the Bible says about the subject of this site, the purpose and nature of civil government. Christianity is not simple. It is as rich and complex as the world we live in.

Those who advance a simple Christian life generally follow (often unwittingly) a tradition known as pietism that began in the late 17th century, and that became the predecessor of modern evangelicalism. Counter to older traditions within the Church, which applied the Christian mind (albeit imperfectly) to all areas of life, pietists advanced the idea of a simple Christian life focusing on the transformation of the inner man. It had its roots in mysticism and spiritual alchemy, which endeavored to bring the gold out of the inner light of man’s soul. Then through the legitimate aspects of personal transformation to be found in the Bible, it Christianized and advanced these ideas in the broader church, emphasizing the new birth (and by extension, evangelism) as the sole focus of sermon content and Christian ministry.

There are few pastors in my part of the Church who exemplify pietistic ideals more explicitly than Damian Kyle of Calvary Chapel Modesto. Most pastors today seem to interpret the Bible through the lens of pietism, but will not always be explicit about their commitment to a personal relationship with God in Christ as the foundation of their system of thought. Damian Kyle on the other hand has the clarity and integrity to own his commitments, which is one reason I trust him enough to regularly listen to his teaching, to glean all of the value that does come from pietistic distinctives. As an aside, I would highly recommend his sermon on exalting humility to anyone serving in or out of the pastorate; I return to it every year or so for my own personal edification.

With that said, last Sunday, Pastor Damian preached what has to be the most explicit elaboration and urging of his commitment to a simple Christian life that I have ever heard. So I decided that a public response should be made to the sermon, to provide the other side of the story both for Pastor Damian’s benefit, and that of people searching online for perspectives on Calvary Chapel of Modesto. My concern about pietistic reductionism is not only that it is factually untrue and unbiblical, but that it devalues and actively hinders legitimate ministry work that attends to matters outside of the individual’s relationship with Jesus Christ.

Historically, pietism opened the door to the enlightenment, where the formerly Christianized Europe bowed the knee to Secularist thought in almost every area of life outside of personal religion. The political impact of Christianity in all of its advancement of human rights waned as Secularist ideologies like Marxism filled the void, and brought great destruction worldwide. Today, those who challenge these destructive ideologies from a biblical worldview often face criticism from the Church for urging Christians to step outside of their inner lives for a moment, and apply biblical wisdom and compassion to the political and cultural needs of modern civilization. This is seen by pietists as a distraction from the mission of the Church, whereas theonomists see it as obedience to the dominion mandate that God gave to Adam and Eve in Genesis (Gen 1:26-28).

Part of the difficulty that comes with critiquing a modern pietistic sermon is a common use of vague nuancing statements that shield the sermon from a fair analysis of its reductionism. By this I mean that a clear message is communicated to the listener throughout the sermon, but at one or two points a nuancing statement is brought in that ultimately contradicts the main point. Such a statement will typically be forgotten by listeners as the weight of the main point overwhelms it. But its presence makes the sermon technically immune from critique.

This is a key problem in Pastor Damian Kyle’s sermon on the simple Christian life, so we’ll need to spend some time proving that the use of a nuancing statement doesn’t ultimately absolve the sermon from a charge of reductionism, before we can define his view clearly enough that it can be critiqued. To start, compare the content of the sermon summary (which people will tend to remember) with one of the few nuancing statements injected into the middle of the sermon (which people will tend to forget).

“And so in our own lives tonight, just to look at our own relationship with the Lord, and if it has become very, very complicated – if my Christian life has become more about anything other than a personal relationship with the Lord, and everything flowing out of that, Paul would step in and say, “Who have you been listening to? Who pulled you from that simplicity? Who made this more complicated for you than that? Who indoctrinated you? Who did you give a voice to? And then to rebuke it, and have it be washed away, and to return back to that simplicity in our life.

“Simplicity is not an easy thing to maintain sometimes in the Christian life, depending on what environment we’re in, or how active our minds are – we’re our own worst enemies in this regard. Some of us don’t even need other people to complicate this whole thing. But we do need the reminder, for this to stay simple in our lives. That’s what it’s intended to be, and to extinguish any voice that makes it more complicated, whether through legalism, or the redefining of Jesus, or bringing in traditions of men, or whatever else it might be. God has called us to something beautiful and simple. Let’s stand together and we’ll close us in prayer.”

— Closing summary of the sermon, 109:16

One of the beauties of becoming a Christian, and we know him immediately as our Savior and as our Lord, we’re beginning that relationship with him, and then we come to learn about him as our kinsman redeemer, and a priest after the order of Melchizedek, and some of these other things that we grow into as Christians, and there’s so much to grow into in terms of the authentic Jesus, as he is. And how intricate everything is. Our salvation rests upon him being exactly who he is as revealed in the scriptures. You take any part away from that, and now that salvation falls apart.

— Nuancing statement, 22:02

You’ll notice that in the second quote, Pastor Damian briefly acknowledges the intricacy (i.e. complexity) of the authentic Jesus, a statement which nuances and ultimately contradicts the war against complexity that he wages throughout the rest of the sermon, and certainly in his final summary. One might argue that in both quotes, he expresses a view that Christianity begins with a simple and personal relationship with the Lord, then grows into all of the rich complexity of the full teaching of scripture. But then it raises a question as to what exactly is being criticized in his opposition to complexity. If complexity is a mark of maturity, then why does Pastor Damian speak so vehemently against it in the rest of the sermon? These two points cannot logically coexist, yet they exist together in Pastor Damian Kyle’s sermon, and the affirmation of complexity in the nuancing statement helps to shield the rest of the sermon from the problems that come with treating simplicity as if it were a virtue.

If Pastor Damian’s view were that an individual begins his Christian life by entering into a personal relationship with God through Christ, then goes out into the world in obedience to Christ to apply scripture to all aspects of his life — whether in politics, the arts, the sciences, or any other part of this world that God has created — then I would have no issue with this sermon or others like it. Salvation and the worldview behind it is simple enough that a child can understand it, and complex enough in its intricacy and application to engage the minds and actions of even the most mature Christians across centuries and in all walks of life.

If Pastor Damian’s view of the Church were that it is to aid the Christian in his growth into the rich complexity and applicability of the biblical worldview, and to organize Christians to do so in community and collective efforts — in politics, the arts, the sciences, and every other part of this world that God has created — then I would cheer him on as a reformer the likes of whom is a sight to behold in modern Christianity. But is that really the message being communicated by his sermon? No, I believe it is fair to say that the praising of simplicity and the demonization of complexity brings Pastor Damian and other pietists under the critique of the author of Hebrews, just after his notably complex discussion about Melchizedek.

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. (Heb 5:11-6:2)

The author of Hebrews actually considers it immature to be constantly talking about the elemental aspects of the gospel. He wants his readers to stop being so simple-minded, to love God with all of their minds, and apply themselves to the more complicated aspects of the Christian faith — in short, to grow into the rich complexity of a mature understanding and walk with the Lord. Does such a passage align with the basic tenor of this call for a simple Christian life? Or does it contradict it? In the earlier quote, Pastor Damian viewed simplicity as a thing to be maintained throughout the Christian life, rather than a phase to grow out of, and he spoke of an active mind as if it were the enemy of simplicity, which it is. But a mind should be active. Personal intellectual development and contribution to public knowledge is part of how we love God and extend his dominion over the earth (Mat 22:37).

If we take Pastor Damian’s sermon as a whole, the simple Christian life can be fairly defined on his view as an individual entering into a personal relationship with God through the redemptive work of Christ, growing in personal Christian character, ignoring and disobeying biblical commands toward social action and civilization-building, then going to heaven when we die. This summary is perhaps most succinctly brought out in the following two quotes:

And [Paul is] saying here, in part, “Now when I was with you – stop and think about it. When I was with you, the church was all about Jesus. It was all about God. It wasn’t about all of this other junk that’s now come in, and it’s complicated what Christianity actually is. And just simply being born again by the Holy Spirit, entering into a personal relationship with God, and then enjoying and growing in that relationship all the way through this life, and then graduating up into Heaven when this life is over. It’s no more complicated than that. (9:59)

I have been in church services – not just liberal churches – where you’re in the middle of the service, and you look at it and it all gets done, and you say, “Where was Jesus in this? Where is God in this at all?” It might be because it’s become very social in nature, or it has other focuses than that. It has other aims and goals than that. And they’re achieving them. But Jesus gets lost as the focus of the church. And so Paul is waking them up to this reality. (17:16)

Social action of course is not a distraction from the biblical Jesus. Done right, it is an expression of the biblical Jesus. The pietists have redefined who and what Jesus is, reducing the extent of his ministry to merely his work to redeem individuals. Yet Jesus constantly took social action, rebuking the political leaders of his nation for their immorality and injustice (Mat 23), even running for political office as the heir to the throne of David (Luk 19:28-20:18). And now, he is seated on the throne of Heaven proclaiming a gospel message of repentance to the political leaders of the earth, that they would repent of their rebellion against God and serve Christ, lest they perish when he finally returns to judges them (Psa 2). Who then is charged to bring that gospel message of repentance to the lowly and the powerful alike? The Church that he left behind to continue his work (Mat 28:18-20).

Out of fear of unbiblical social action, and on account of their reduction of the Christian life to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the pietists speak as if the entire field of social action were inherently evil, or a distraction, rather than a part of God’s good creation that has been corrupted by Secularism etc., and that needs to be brought back under God’s dominion — like the sciences, like the arts, etc. And certainly that is a fair description of Pastor Damian’s view, that social action is among a vague group of human endeavors which are a distraction from a personal relationship with Jesus, rather than an expression of it. The truth is that because God created the world and everything in it, there is no area of man’s dominion that is a distraction from God’s purposes for our lives, as we live them unto him (Col 3:17). Consistent Christians take action and build civilization exactly because we have a personal relationship with God through Christ, and are therefore aiming to live in obedience to his word (John 14:15). The pietists are in error, and in grave error that is spread at the expense of a just and compassionate society.

Usually when Pastor Damian speaks about a personal relationship with God in relation to a particular passage of scripture, the comment is straightforward eisegesis of pietism into the passage, rather than exegesis of the passage’s meaning from the text. This can be acceptable in the context of a sermon, in the same way that a Calvinist might talk about total depravity whenever the subject of sin appears in scripture. The role of a teacher is to show the congregation how a particular passage ties into broader Christian theology as he understands it, so that inevitably involves some eisegesis of other established ideas into the text.

Yet Calvary Chapel pastors cross a line, I think, when they stuff a whole lot of extra words into the mouths of the apostles and other biblical writers. It’s one thing to explain to the congregation how you believe a passage of scripture ties into the broader Christian worldview. It’s another thing altogether to speak as if the apostles themselves are the ones saying what you’re saying, advancing your system of theology as if it bears apostolic authority. Consider the following verse, and what Pastor Damian Kyle says about it:

But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. (2Co 11:3 NKJV)

—

And [Paul is] saying here, in part, “Now when I was with you – stop and think about it. When I was with you, the church was all about Jesus. It was all about God. It wasn’t about all of this other junk that’s now come in, and it’s complicated what Christianity actually is. And just simply being born again by the Holy Spirit, entering into a personal relationship with God, and then enjoying and growing in that relationship all the way through this life, and then graduating up into Heaven when this life is over. It’s no more complicated than that.”

He says, “That’s what I did – when I left the Church, it was all about Him. Now it’s become about a lot of other things, and become complicated,” when he speaks…in verse 3, “so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”

That’s the challenge. That’s the challenge in the Christian life, is to keep this that simple – that it is supremely about a relationship with him, and then nothing else competes with him, and him as the central focus within a church, or within an individual Christian’s life… (9:59)

According to Pastor Damian Kyle, because Paul in verse 3 used a word that can be translated as “simple,” we now have Paul saying the following:

• The Church should be all about Jesus. I believe this is true, but I don’t believe the passage at hand is actually teaching that idea, even though it might look like it at first glance. Yet the logic is too complex to go into on an article about simplicity, and irrelevant to my main point, so I’ll just give this one to Pastor Damian, close enough.
• The false teachers are complicating Christianity, and this is why Paul is opposing them. Even if we grant the translation, “corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ,” which may not be the best sense of the words, the context still shows that Paul is concerned about the quality of the ideas being propagated by the false teachers (i.e. that they’re false), not the complexity. The concept of complexity doesn’t show up anywhere in the entire chapter; this is pure eisegesis.
• Paul’s view of Christianity is “just simply being born again by the Holy Spirit, entering into a personal relationship with God, and then enjoying and growing in that relationship all the way through this life, and then graduating up into Heaven when this life is over.” None of those ideas are present in the text; they are being stuffed into the mouth of Paul.

I never used to see it when I was younger in the faith, but this hijacking of the words of the apostles goes on all the time in just about every Calvary Chapel I attend and listen to, save for the online ministry of Mike Winger. It’s a bad habit in the movement that needs to be addressed and stopped. I can’t count the number of times that I thought a particular passage taught a particular idea, only to find that a Calvary pastor I trusted had simply injected his own opinions into the words of the biblical writers. This tradition of tolerating eisegesis because the ideas are purportedly true leads Bible students to play fast and loose with the scriptures, rather than work to understand them with accuracy.

With that said, setting aside the issue of putting words into the mouths of the apostles, we have the more substantive question of whether or not the passage as a whole even teaches this idea of the simple Christian life. The only justification for it is that the word “simple” or “simplicity” appears in verse 3 as a description of the Christian’s devotion to Christ. Notably, many translations use the word “sincere” to give a sense of the original word, which is not the opposite of “complex.” Rather, “sincere” is the opposite of “false” or “deceptive,” which are concepts that do appear elsewhere in the passage (and even in verse 3), in reference to the false teachers (2Co 11:3, 11:13, 11:26).

Arguably, a more robust interpretation would deal with the juxtaposition of deception and sincerity that seems to be in this passage and the surrounding chapters. Paul is concerned that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent, and thereby inherited his deceptive nature, so the Corinthians would be deceived by the false teachers, and join them in their deceptive nature and work. Instead of this, Paul wants them to have a sincere (honest, heartfelt) devotion to the Christ who produces sincerity.

In support of this, we have the notable fact that according to Strongs, 5 out of the 8 biblical uses of this word for “sincerity” or “simplicity” occur in 2 Corinthians, the same book as the passage in question. It’s a word that is only ever used by Paul, and one that he focuses on in 2 Corinthians. When you look at those other passages, it suggests a theme in the backdrop of his concern for the church.

First, 2Co 1:12 has Paul “boasting” in his and others’ “simplicity and sincerity” in contrast to earthly wisdom. He made this claim only a few verses before making his first defense against false accusations that were brought against him by the false brethren in question (2Co 1:17-23). So the language and the concerns of the first chapter closely parallel the language and concerns of chapter 11, wherein Paul gives a more elaborate “boast” about his own sincere devotion to Christ, in contrast to that of the false brethren, much as he hated to do so. This means that the joining of “simplicity” and a different word for “sincerity” as synonyms in chapter 1 implies that “sincerity” is the proper sense of the word in chapter 11. The concern is to guard against dishonesty, not complexity.

Second, the word for “simplicity” can also have a connotation of “not self seeking, openness of heart manifesting itself by generousity,” which oddly enough also appears in 2 Corinthians, as if the three senses of the word (simplicity, sincerity, other-centeredness) were all expressions of the same core idea. Paul uses the word to refer to the “generosity” of the churches in Macedonia who took up a collection for the impoverished church in Jerusalem (2Co 8:2), as well as the “generosity” of the Corinthians in agreeing to also help with it (2Co 9:11-13).

If it’s true that the “sincere” and “other-centered” senses of the word overlap, instead of simply being distinct homonyms that coincidentally appear in the same book, then we have further context that informs our understanding of Paul’s use of the word in chapter 11. Paul is not only contrasting the deception of Satan and his workers with the single-minded sincerity of Christ and his bride, but he is also contrasting the fruit that deception and sincerity produce. Sinful deception “makes slaves of you, or devours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face” (2Co 11:20). Righteous sincerity will endure “far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death” out of a genuine desire to serve Christ and his bride (2Co 11:23).

Against this robust view is the belief that the word that is sometimes translated as “simple” in 2Co 11:3 means “simple” as contrasted with “complex,” in the modern English sense. Again, we have no evidence anywhere in the passage that Paul is concerned with complexity as a problem introduced by these false teachers. And honestly, I feel awkward even trying to treat seriously the idea that Paul the apostle, of all people, would be opposed to complexity in the Christian life. The guy has some of the most intricate, complex doctrine and reasoning in the Bible, and in the history of Christian thought.

But for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that the interpretation of “simple not complex” is what Paul is arguing against here. All that gives us is the idea that a Christian’s devotion to Christ should be simple. It says nothing about the outworking of that devotion in the rest of a person’s life. One could argue that Joseph, Daniel, Job and the apostles Paul and Peter were all relatively virtuous men, so on this view of the passage they must be men with a simple devotion to Christ. Yet their lives were riddled with political intrigues, doctrinal disputes, and other complexities as that simple devotion worked itself out in everyday life. So simple devotion cannot be automatically extended to describe a simple Christian life; the language of the passage doesn’t make that leap, even if the word in verse 3 is rightly understood as “simple not complex,” which I maintain it is not.

In the end, “simplicity” as contrasted with “complexity” is nowhere to be found in the passage or its surrounding context. Whether or not it can be established on other biblical grounds, the call for a simple Christian life is entirely foreign to the passage at hand, an opinion of Pastor Damian Kyle that he reads into the text, not one that he gets out of it.

It is like pulling teeth to get modern evangelical pastors to admit that there is more to the Christian life than singing songs, praying prayers, attending Bible studies, and waiting to be raptured. It doesn’t matter that God in his word says that he hates the assembled worship and prayers of those who neglect justice in civil government (Isa 1:10-20, Amos 5:18-24, Mic 6:8), making justice a higher priority to God than even church services. You can cite a hundred dire warnings in scripture to that effect, yet none of it matters because every pastor infallibly knows that God only cares about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and he wants us to keep it that simple, regardless of whatever his word might say.

It isn’t rhetoric or overstatement to point out that pietism and its focus on a personal relationship with God is a sophisticated, modern expression of the historic heresy of gnosticism, at least in its anti-material views. Like gnostics, pietists sever the connection between our love of God and our love of neighbor, so that we can perform the spiritual without the physical. They will elevate spiritual things like prayer, scripture reading, gospel proclamation etc. and denigrate physical things, like justice for abortion, pornography, and sex trafficking, or compassion for those wrapped up in these national sins. Yet as James said, “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” (Jas 2:18) Consistent Christians demonstrate the reality of our spiritual relationship with God by the fruit that it produces in our physical relationship with the world around us. The physical is not a distraction from the spiritual. It is the very context in which our faith is expressed, elaborated, and proven to the world.

We need to repent of this gnosticism, if for no other reason that it dishonors God and perverts his word — to say nothing of its destructive impact on Christian thought and the world around us. We need to repent, and return to a comprehensive Christian worldview as the goal of biblical instruction, not merely those aspects of Christianity which describe and frame a personal relationship with God.

Again, I have the utmost respect for Pastor Damian in those areas where he preaches well. And I understand not seeing the errors of pietism; I spent the better part of my life as a pietist — living according to its principles, and reading the Bible through its distorted lens. Even now I am ashamed to think about how much of the scriptures I knew, and how little of them I thought to apply to the problems of the world around me. But that is the Christian life — learning the word of God, being corrected by it, repenting in humility, and growing into ever-increasing conformity to it.

The world’s problem is sin, and the gospel of Jesus Christ offers a total solution that redeems not only man, but his entire civilization and cosmos. That redemption begins now, as men and civilizations bow the knee to Christ in repentance, being sanctified in our obedience to him, until the day when sin is finally eradicated from the cosmos. It really is that simple. And it really is that beautifully complex.