“A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God’s truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.” – John Calvin1
“If the whole church goes off into deception, that will in no way excuse us for not following Christ.” – Leonard Ravenhill
“A minister, without boldness, is like a smooth file, a knife without an edge, a sentinel that is afraid to let off his gun. If men will be bold in sin, ministers must be bold to reprove.” – William Gurnall
“Can we be casual in the work of God — casual when the house is on fire, and people in danger of being burned?” – Duncan Campbell
“We should not ask, ‘What is wrong with the world?’ for that diagnosis has already been given. Rather, we should ask, ‘What has happened to the salt and light?’” – John Stott
“Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.” – Blaise Pascal
“My fear is not that our great movement, known as the Methodists, will eventually cease to exist or one day die from the earth. My fear is that our people will become content to live without the fire, the power, the excitement, the supernatural element that makes us great.” – John Wesley
“If the church marries herself to the spirit of the times, she will find herself a widow in the next generation.” – Charles Stanley
“Never adopt an attitude of indifference, for if you do you will suffer for it. The weight will grow heavier and heavier.” – Watchman Nee
“If you seek to please men you can never be a servant of the Lord.” – Zac Poonen
“Revival brings back a holy shock to apathy and carelessness.” – Winkie Pratney
“A different world cannot be built by indifferent people.” – Peter Marshall
“Christian Youth, I need to ask why you sit in the padded pews of your fathers while all around the darkness takes your cities and your friends.” – Andrew Strom
“The man who has nothing more than a kind of Sunday religion — whose Christianity is like his Sunday clothes put on once a week, and then laid aside — such a man cannot, of course, be expected to care about growth in grace.” – J. C. Ryle
“It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.” – C. S. Lewis
“He who runs from God in the morning will scarcely find Him the rest of the day.” – John Bunyan
“Many come to bring their clothes to church rather than themselves.” – Thomas Fuller
“The average person who claims to believe in God (as does the vast majority in America) is too preoccupied with himself to give God much time or serious thought.” – Dave Hunt
“It is a shame for a person to have been a Christian for years but not to have advanced beyond the knowledge of his salvation.” – Theodore Epp
“When we become too glib in prayer we are most surely talking to ourselves.” – A. W. Tozer
“The world never burned a casual Christian at the stake.” – John R. Rice
“How can you pull down strongholds of Satan if you don’t even have the strength to turn off your TV?” – Leonard Ravenhill
“There is a kind of gospel being proclaimed today which conveniently accommodates itself to the spirit of the age, and makes no demand for godliness.” – Duncan Campbell
“Apathy is the acceptance of the unacceptable.” – John Stott
“God has no place for undercover agents.” – Woodrow Kroll
1 All of these quotes are from the websites below:
Apathy Is a Slow Funeral. m.r.neveu
Curt Blattman’s devotional is not subtle. That is good, because apathy is rarely beaten by soft lighting and a warm mug. Apathy is a collected alarm bell. The quotations pile up like witnesses in court, all saying the same ugly thing. The Church does not usually die by persecution first.
Death arrives by drift, comfort, distraction, vanity, and the polished cowardice that pretends silence is wisdom.
Here we go into the fray, Ethyl…kiss the barking dogs for me. (Check the back seat of my car, I tend to drop off after 9pm.)…And check yourself before ya wreck yourself – some barking dogs will bite.
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We like to assume that Christian apathy is a harmless weakness. We are then shocked to learn (often from the children) that apathy is moral surrender in church clothes.
Yeah. And we stick them little ones in a side room on Sunday for “church.”
John Stott’s line lands like a brick. Apathy is “the acceptance of the unacceptable.” Curt’s collection presses that point from different angles. Indifference is not neutral. It is a consent mechanism. It lets error speak, lets evil organize, lets compromise dress itself as maturity, and then wonders why the room smells like smoke. (or maybe something we stepped in…?)
A sleepy church always thinks it is being balanced when it is being domesticated.
That is a sharp thread running through the devotional. Duncan Campbell warns against a gospel accommodating the popular spirit of the age, making no demand for godliness. Charles Stanley (not the kid) warns that a church wedded to the age will be widowed by the next generation. That is classic “Stanley,” (not his kid), and not just memorable language. Call it a diagnostic and answer the darn doorbell. Suffer the barking dogs for their bite.
The world does not need the Church to be exciting, trendy, or endlessly agreeable. We need the Church to remain Christian while the age has one of its recurring nervous breakdowns.
Spiritual fire does not suddenly “poof” disappear. It leaks out through neglected habits…iffin you are my age – yea, like that leak, too.
Mr. Blattman’s source material keeps returning to daily spiritual negligence: glib prayer, shallow devotion, Sunday-only religion, too much self-occupation, too little thought of eternity. Bunyan, Tozer, Ryle, Lewis, and Hunt all circle the same corpse.
Apathy does not usually begin with rebellion. Apathy usually begins with inattention, when prayer morphs to performance, when worship becomes attendance, when discipleship becomes a label instead of a life. The soul grows cold by inches, which is how some people prefer their apostasies. ________________________________________
Here ya go, catch: Three strikes against Christian apathy.
1. Apathy is silence where loyalty should bark.
Calvin’s image is perfect because it is humiliating. A dog barks when the master is attacked. Meanwhile, many modern believers develop a whole theology of tasteful silence while truth is mocked, twisted, or traded for approval. Please don’t insult believers (old and new) and call it discernment. Theology without teeth is fear wearing same-day dentures. Gurnall adds that a minister without boldness is a knife without an edge. Same principle. A faith that does not speak when it matters is dull drifting into slow death.
2. Apathy is comfort chosen over calling.
Wesley didn’t fear extinction. He feared contentment without holy fire. Andrew Strom’s line about youth sitting in padded pews while darkness takes their cities is brutal. I hope you can recognize this.
Entire congregations can and do confuse comfort with blessing. They think being untroubled means being healthy. Scripture says otherwise. God’s people are called to vigilance, holiness, courage, repentance, and (gasp) witness. Not religious upholstery. Not spiritual napping with a cross on the wall.
3. Apathy is the burial cloth of an effective witness.
Lewis says Christians become ineffective when they cease thinking of the other world. That is a deadly observation. When heaven grows dim, earth becomes tyrannical. When eternity loses weight, earthly appetite takes over. Then churches start managing image instead of seeking power from God. Revival, as Pratney says, shocks apathy. Why? Because revival restores proportion. God is holy, souls are dying, truth matters, time is short, and discipleship costs something. Casual Christianity has no answer for that because casual Christianity is mostly a costume department.
What Curt’s devotional strongly implies, and I should state plainly, is this: apathy is not merely a failure of zeal, but a failure of love.
Apathetic Christians do not merely lack intensity. They have lost proportion in their loves. They love the slide of ease more than obedience, the slack of reputation more than truth, the oily pleasure of entertainment more than prayer, and hesitant self-preservation more than clarity and grace. That is why apathy is spiritually foul. It is not just inactivity. It is misdirected worship. The hands go slack because the heart has already bent the knee elsewhere.
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And no matter where I go, there I am…
Curt’s devotional works because he refuses to flatter the reader. Good. The Church has been overflattered for years and has gotten soft in the bones. Christian apathy is not a personality quirk. It is a spiritual hazard, a public scandal, and often a private judgment already underway. The cure is not manufactured hype. It is repentance, awakened prayer, recovered fear of God, renewed love of truth, and costly obedience. Real Christianity still has blood in it. It still has nerve. It still has a voice.
Apathetic faith is unbelief that learned how to sit in a pew without drawing attention to itself.
Thanks, Mr. Blattman.