Night of the Living Dead Christian, by Matt Mikalatos. March 2012 CSFF Blog Tour, Day 3

The author identifies a disturbing problem so prevalent in our churches today, and that is the disjunction between so-called faith and the evidence of that faith through works. He brings this out near the end of the novel, after the werewolf’s quest for a cure has come to a successful conclusion:

...it suddenly hit me that our churches are full of these people. Faith with no deeds. We believe in Jesus, we go to church, we lead semi-decent lives, but we aren’t being transformed. We aren’t changing. We don’t think the deeds matter, because we have the “fire insurance.” We’re going to get into Heaven just fine, so we can keep lying and stealing and sleeping around and murdering and being selfish and whatever else it is we’re doing.

  But what James seemed to be saying was that a faith like that was a problem. It’s not the deeds or lack of deeds that’s a problem, it’s that something is wrong with our faith if it’s not producing actions. It’s ineffectual. It’s the sort of faith that fills a pew but leads us to a moment when we are face-to-face with Jesus and show him our works and he says, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” (p 217)

Can we identify the reasons for why this problem exists? Obviously, it has been present with us since the beginning of the New Testament church as evidenced by the letter of James, “So also faith, by itself, if it does not have works, is dead,” 2:17). Part of the reason is the natural tendency of our depravity to misunderstand the implications of the gospel. Paul sensed this as well, and, like James, may have had to defend against it: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” Rom 6:1,2.

Mr. Mikalatos understands this aspect of the gospel, that genuine saving faith produces good works, and he brings the reader face-to-face with it. There is a great need for that in our Christian writing, and Mr. Mikalatos has not shrunk from that.

Yet, there is a serious flaw in Mr. Mikalatos’s theology, and it can actually contribute to the problem. The flaw is this: he does not believe in man’s total depravity, and one's stance on total depravity  has a direct bearing on his preaching and evangelism which in turn affects the response of the unconverted. Let me explain.

In a conversation with Robert (a zombie) and Lara (a vampire), who are despairing of their conditions, Mikalatos points to the image of God in them as a reason for hope. Robert counters by asserting we are totally depraved and if we are a reflection of God, bearing his image, then God himself would likewise have to be completely depraved. Mr. Mikalatos responds:

“I don’t think so. It might mean that we’ve misunderstood what it means to be sinful. Or that we’ve emphasized it so much that we’ve simply lost sight of the fact that in our deepest, most horrific actions, some piece of us is still outside of that, some part of us is made in God’s image, and that’s not something we can ever completely eradicate.” (p 220)

A little later, Matt relates a story for Robert and Lara about a symphony he and his wife once attended, and how the music filled the concert hall with magnificent beauty, and how it revealed that, as an image-bearer,

“...a man can take what is in his mind and scratch it out on paper, and others can fashion instruments, and still other sacrifice their lives to learn to bring pleasing sounds from these instruments.” (p 222)

And then, later again, while observing other nameless men and women who had attended the symphony, and reflecting on the players of the symphony, and the conductor, that for all of them and us,

“... we need not be captives to our base selves, because by God’s grace there stirs a deeper desire to be like the one who made us.” (p 223)

Now, I believe that we are made in God’s image and appeal unhesitatingly to that fact as a reason to pursue writing as a conscious effort to reflect our Creator through the creation of our own story-making.

But being made in God’s image does not mean that there lies within the sinner a spark or tiny island or a small reservoir by which he wants to be like the one who made him. If this notion of an inherent sensitivity or openness or searching for God is at the bottom of one’s anthropology, I maintain that one’s understanding and explanation of the gospel is going to be affected adversely. If there is somewhere deep in the heart of every person a desire to be like God, then the appeal to that person will be merely to become a follower of Jesus. And that is not what the gospel calls us to do. We cannot call sinners to become followers of Jesus because sinners do not want to be followers. Sinners want to be sinners.

The New Testament appeal to the sinner is this, “Repent and believe.” Jesus saves us from our sins. He frees us from our sins. If there is any hope for change, it does not spawn from a fractured remnant of the image of God that resides in us as a deep, innate stirring that seeks to be like the one who made us. We are called to look away from ourselves and turn wholly to the one who has the power to set us free. By the work of regeneration, the Spirit of God awakens us to our sinfulness, grants us repentance and faith to turn to the only one who can free us from our sin - its penalty, power, and someday, its presence. And that will not happen unless the sinner is faced with the truth of his sinfulness and his complete helplessness to do anything about it.

Regrettably, the gospel call often is misconstrued to be a call to follow Jesus. Mr. Mikalatos himself presents the gospel in this way as one may conclude from videos of his speaking engagements. Such a call assumes that the one called actually has the power to follow Jesus. A call to follow Jesus presumes that if the sinner looks within himself he will realize that following Jesus is the only thing that makes sense.

The response to such a call is disastrous. Instead of the sinner repenting and turning to Christ to be delivered from his sin and thereby enabled to do what he cannot do in himself, he takes courage in his own ability to follow Christ, having a false sense that he has the power to do it, and that all he needs is to give in and let Christ show him how. It does not address the root of his problem, his slavery to sin and inability to do anything but sin. There may be change, but it is not the transformation that the New Testament speaks of. The sinner remains at heart an unchanged sinner.

Thanks to Saltriver (Tyndale House Publishers) for kindly providing a copy of Night of the Living Dead Christian for review on the March 2012 Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour.

Matt Mikalatos’s Web Page
List of CSFF Blog Tour Participants

Night of the Living Dead Christian on Amazon.

Night of the Living Dead Christian, by Matt Mikalatos. March 2012 CSFF Blog Tour, Day 2

Night of the Living Dead Christian has a mix of reviews on Amazon.

The lowest rated review was a single two-star in which the person simply said he could not get into the book, which happens, of course. I’m sure there are many out there who would find it hard to get into the Harry Potter books, though I suspect they are related to Charles Winchester III.

I read several of the three star reviews. They generally came down on the favorable side, but often just barely. Questionable use of zany humor, an odd presence of werewolves and zombies, and an incoherent flow of the story were some of the reasons proffered for the unenthusiastic ratings. Regardless, there is one thing that they all seemed to get from the story, and that was the need for transformation.

I agree with that. Transformation, and more precisely, transformation that comes only from Christ is the essential message of the book.

But there are some serious problems. In a post for a previous blog tour I argued that a novel is robustly Christian only if it brings the salient truths of the gospel into the story (October 2011 Tour, Day Three – The Bone House. I restricted the scope of those truths to the reformed doctrines of grace defined by the acronym, TULIP (Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints). I believe the doctrines of grace are a correct and therefore biblical understanding of what the gospel is. As such, they are the measuring rod for what makes a story Christian. In my estimation, Night of the Living Dead Christian fails to meet that standard.

The failure is at the point of Total Depravity. Total Depravity is simply this, that every person born into this world is a sinner. Each of us are conceived in sin (sinners from the moment of conception) as David testifies, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me”, Psalm 51:5. There is nothing good in us, nothing that seeks after God or his ways. There is nothing in us that enables us to seek him because the spiritual things of God are things the natural man is incapable of understanding, 1 Cor 2:14. It is not that he tries to understand them but for whatever reason, fails to. It is that the things of God are foolishness to him and he does not want to have anything to do with them.

The werewolf Luther Martin, the character that the story centers on, is not like this. We catch this early on, in the werewolf’s own words:

None of use desire to remain wolves. All of us desire to remain wolves. It is the nature of the werewolf to be both man and wolf, and for many years I was satisfied – no, pleased – to be both man and wolf. (p 47)

The imagery (or allegory, if you will) of a werewolf as representing the unconverted man is wrong. Here is the picture: the base, amoral animal nature of the wolf represents the bad of human nature while the intelligent, sane and moral nature of the man represents the good. But the sinner from birth does not have a good side. In fact, a werewolf like the one in our story, who has two conflicting natures at war with each other, can only be true of the Christian, for the Christian alone is the one who has been freed from his sin which seeks to regain mastery over him –

For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do (Gal 5:17).

Luther Martin is no such Christian. Though he grew up in the home of a Lutheran minister, he rejects any claim to be a Christian. He paints some of the integral doctrines of the Christian faith in farcical terms. The reformed doctrine of Unconditional Election is treated this way, as well as the significance of the atonement:

Thus we come to the likewise ridiculous Christian sentiment that he [God] has “chosen” or “elected” us to be in relationship with him, and that he loves us and adopts us as his progeny. It is like saying I have tipped over an anthill and selected certain ones of them to be my children. Not merely that, but I have chosen to sacrifice my human child so their accursed anthill can be spared destruction, and that I am making this handful of ants the heirs of my vast estate – of my house, my car, my food, my clothes, my money. Certainly this comparison does not even begin to scratch the surface of the ridiculous claims of the Christian faith. (p 156)

This underscores that the gospel is foolishness to the sinner, and Luther Martin is such a sinner. Matt Mikalatos’s use of a werewolf to represent the condition of human beings without the grace of God in Christ is simply wrong.

One might counter by saying that any allegory is going to breakdown at some point and that you cannot expect a one-to-one correspondence between the allegorical character and the real-life one which it represents. I agree, but the werewolf was chosen because, in Mr. Mikalatos’s theology, the sinner is not totally depraved, just as the werewolf is not totally animal.

That is a serious flaw in the theology that underlies Mr. Mikalatos’s novel, and it has serious implications. I will address this more in my third post.

Thanks to Saltriver (Tyndale House Publishers) for kindly providing a copy of Night of the Living Dead Christian for review on the March 2012 Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour.

Matt Mikalatos’s Web Page
List of CSFF Blog Tour Participants
Night of the Living Dead Christian on Amazon.

The Gospel and "I Will" Messages

The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, died on the cross and made an atonement that completely satisfies the justice of God for sinners who repent and believe in Christ to save them from their sins through that atonement. The ramifications of the gospel are many and whole systematic theologies have been written which explore and expound those ramifications.


The central thought in salvation is that it is salvation from sin. This does not mean merely that we are forgiven of our sins, though that is true. More fundamentally, it means we are saved from our sins and sinfulness. We are sinners at heart, which is to say we are born sinners so that as we grow from infancy to childhood to adulthood we sin continually. Our natural inclination is not to seek God and obey him. It is the opposite - to rebel against him and despise his holy commandments. (Romans 3:10-18; Psalms 14 & 53)

An aspect of our sinful state is that not only do we not do good, but we are utterly unable to do good. Much is said (pro and con) about the total depravity of man, but little about the total inability.

"For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God." Romans 8:7, 8.

It is not a lack of proper motivation, good counsel, intellectual insight, or sheer will that the sinner does not do good. It is because he is incapable of doing good. He has no motivation, insight or will to do good. All such counsel to do what is good is foolishness and looked upon as strange (1 Peter 4:4).

Granted, even the worst of sinners do things that are outwardly commendable (Hitler had a heart for children), and that is because the law of God is written on the heart convicting and excusing men (Romans 2:14, 15). But the unbelieving sinner’s doing the commendable thing does not come out of an attitude like David’s:

“Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You,”
“Against You, You only, have I sinned, And done this evil in Your sight,”
“I said, 'LORD, be merciful to me; Heal my soul, for I have sinned against You.'" (Psalms 119:11; 51:4; 41:4 respectively).

David kept God’s law because he loved God and his commandments (Psalm 119:97; see also I John 5:3), and he grieved when he disobeyed them. The unbelieving sinner does the “right thing” out of an innate (God-given) sense of right and wrong, which he agrees with, but not out of a love for God and his holy will.

The gospel, the good news of salvation from our sins and sinfulness, should be at the core of all preaching, not only to the unbeliever, but also to the believer. The repentant sinner begins in humility by renouncing anything he can do or offer God, and turning to Christ by faith for everything he needs: forgiveness, justification, sanctification. The mature believer must do the same. He has no power in and of himself by which he follows and serves Christ. He had no innate ability to do that when he first came to Christ for salvation, and he has none after. Constantly aware of his tendency toward sin, the believer must always look to the cross and Christ for grace to persevere and overcome his sin.

Recently I listened, with my son, to some messages delivered by a local youth pastor to a group of young people in his congregation. The series of messages were advertised as the “I Will” messages. The overwhelming emphasis was that the hearer must choose to follow and serve Christ. An occasional reference to repentance, the sin nature, and sin itself was made, but it was mentioned in passing, as though it were of secondary importance. Now, I hope that the mention of these in such a peripheral way does not mean that the youth pastor thinks of them as secondary. I doubt very much that he thinks that way. But the point is that regardless of his personal estimation of those things, or even more broadly, the official doctrinal position of the local church he serves in, the 'I Will' messages do not lay a proper emphasis on our sin and sinfulness.

The youth were constantly pressed to make a choice to follow Christ because God gave (offered) them that choice. In fact, they were told that they should be glad that God gave them that choice, the implication being (I suspect) that God does not make us choose one way or the other; he has given us the free will to choose and will not force his will upon us. We are not automatons.

If the messages were based on a free will theology (the choice to believe or serve is completely in the hands of the sinner and saint), I can see why the references to sin, sinfulness, and repentance were on the periphery. If the choice is ultimately contingent on our innate ability to choose, then why not emphasize it? If in spite of our sinful hearts we have the power to choose to follow and serve, then that is what our message must focus on.

But that is not the gospel way. The gospel way is to point sinner and saint alike to Christ in his death and resurrection. Christ suffered the penalty of sin and rose in power over it. The condemned sinner is led to Christ and the cross to be saved and turned from his sins. The believer is led to Christ to acknowledge humbly that without the work of God in his heart (won by the victory of Christ over sin through the cross and resurrection), there is no serving, no choosing.

"We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them," Ephesians 2:10.

By sanctification, purchased for us through the cross, and imparted to us by the risen Saviour through his Spirit, do we humbly obey the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not a mustering of our natural ability to chose to serve. We have no such ability. We are sinners at heart and must always look to the grace of God in Christ and his cross to overcome our rebellious will.

This was the way of Paul who predicated the imperative on the indicative. When he urged, beseeched, or commanded obedience, he did so always looking back to the finished work of the cross and resurrection as our deliverance from our sin.

Paul exhorts the Romans to yield their bodily members as instruments of righteousness [imperative] (Romans 6:12, 13) because they are in union with Christ who was raised in newness of life; as sin no longer had dominion over Christ, neither did it any longer have dominion over them, they are no longer slaves to it, they have been freed from the power of sin through their union with Christ in his death and resurrection [indicative] (Romans 6:2-11, 14):

He urged the Philippians to work out their salvation [imperative] because it was God who was at work in them both to will and do his good pleasure [indicative]. This work of God in them was predicated on God's exaltation of the Saviour by resurrection, ascension, and session at his right hand with the ultimate effect of his universal lordship acknowledged by all (every knee shall bow), (Philippians 2:9-13).

He beseeched the Ephesians to walk worthy of their calling [imperative] (Ephesians 4:1) because God’s Spirit strengthens his people in the inner man, and God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think because of the power (i.e., the power of his Spirit) that works in us, the same power he worked when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand [indicative] (Ephesians1:19, 20; 3:20).

Left to ourselves, we Christians would go astray and leave our God. Unless he works in us by his Spirit to be strengthened to resist and overcome the sinfulness of our hearts, we would leave him. For that reason, we must always look to Christ and his work (death and resurrection) to defeat our sin - its penalty, power, and someday its presence.

To the degree that a message or sermon ignores our sinfulness (even as Christians) and the need to rely upon the Spirit of God for the power to follow Christ, to that degree the message is based on a false gospel. The false gospel is this, that spiritual blessing and the ability to serve Christ comes through the power of our choice and not the power of the cross of Christ and his Spirit. To press upon one to choose to follow Christ on the basis that he has the innate ability to choose and serve Christ, is pressing that one to perform a self-generated work whose goal is to obtain a sanctification that can only be produced by a God-generated work, through the Spirit, who strengthens us to keep us from going astray.

Our message to our youth and adults should not be to declare brazenly, 'I will chose to serve,' but to humble ourselves like David who sang:

Direct my steps by your word! Do not let any sin dominate me!
(Psalm 119:133)


Create for me a pure heart, O God! Renew a resolute spirit within me!
Do not reject me! Do not take your Holy Spirit away from me!
Let me again experience the joy of your deliverance! Sustain me by giving me the desire to obey!
Then I will teach rebels your merciful ways, and sinners will turn to you.
(Psalm 51:10-13)