I don’t know a ton about guns. I know more than Democrats running for office in red states who tell you they’re avid hunters, but I know less than actual avid hunters. I know five or six things about firearms, including the difference between a shotgun and a rifle.
Shotguns, of course, have a wide spread. If you’re firing buckshot at something, you don’t have to be terribly accurate. Fire in the general direction of the thing you want to kill and at least some of the pellets from the cartridge will hit. But if you’re beyond fifty 50 yards or so, the scattering shot won’t hit with a ton of force. Rifles, however, have a narrow aim. Hit something from fifty 50 yards away and it will most certainly die. But if you miss, you miss.
I’ve often said that pastors should have both of these firearms in their Law-preaching arsenal. Your primary job as a proclaimer of God’s word is to give your hearers the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, to declare that His death and resurrection have destroyed their iniquities and covered them in eternal life. But in order for people to understand and believe that Christ is their savior, they must first understand what He has saved them from. And doing this, showing sinners how they have alienated themselves from God, can be a tricky science.
You need to take out the shotgun and fire wide blasts of condemnation into the crowd. You have to preach broadly about broad sins, things like idolatry and pride, anger, and greed. Make statements like “We have all failed to treat people the way we should have” and everybody in the pews will get a bit torn up from the shotgun pellets. But these rather general statements are often not deadly enough to help people see what transgression they hold most dear, the ones that are hindering them from dying to sin and being reborn in Christ.
That’s when you need rifle preaching, the kind where you name very specific sins so that those who are guilty of them can feel the full force of God’s law. This is how those who view pornography see that God isn’t just generally upset about lust among humans, but that His wrath burns against them for the very specific images they gazed up. This is how those who spend all night cursing politicians while watching cable news learn that God doesn’t just call a blob of people away from a blob of sin called anger, but that He calls them to turn from the very words that have erupted from their own lips. Rifle preaching is necessary, but still has its own challenges. If you preach against pornography specifically, the man who has a pure browser history but ogles women at the gym may think he’s not guilty of sin. If you preach against raging against politicians, those who are more politically irenic but won’t forgive the sins of their neighbors or children won’t feel the sting of God’s condemnation hit them.
That’s why both styles are needed. And over the course of a man’s years in the pulpit, he’ll have plenty of time to take out both weapons. In the end, it’s not too difficult for a preacher to implement a two-gun approach.
It’s a harder task, however, for an author to do this in a single book, a task that Matt Popovits nobly takes up in Junk Drawer Jesus, where he invites readers to imagine the average person’s spiritual beliefs as a kitchen drawer filled with loose odds and ends, things you’ve collected at some point and have hung onto. He writes:
Each of us is the owner of a seemingly random collection of theologies, doctrines, and downright superstitions. It’s a “junk drawer” of religious ideas and influences, passed down to us by parents and taught to us by the television shows we stream and the social media influencers we admire. It’s a mishmash of quips, phrases, and seemingly wise sayings that have somehow stuck with us. It’s the witticisms your grandmother used to toss around with ease that sounded like they came from a religious text. It’s an insight gleaned about God from a half-heard sermon at a friend’s church you attended for a hot second in the fifth grade. It’s mental screenshots of pithy but seemingly profound memes that caught your attention on Instagram. … These are the things stuffed in our spiritual junk drawers, packed in our religious closets.
As a writer who prides himself on the ability to execute a clever metaphor, I must admit I am profoundly jealous of the one Popovits uses to help readers identify and deconstruct their religious assumptions. Likewise, his approach to the items in the junk drawer is an effective way to help readers put their fingers on the source of their spiritual restlessness. The ruler in that drawer, Popovits tells us, represents our desire to measure our spiritual progress. That ID badge represents how we view ourselves and where we find our identity. The headphones represent how we view hearing God speak to us. In all this, Popovits presents a very focused and clear metaphor with equally compelling sub-metaphors.
Where he struggles, however, is applying this to his audience. For whom is Junk Drawer Jesus written? Popovits is rather clear that his intended audience is the unchurched, the kind of people who might not be terribly inclined to pick up a Bible, those who assume the Christian faith has nothing to offer them, “someone,” as he says, “who has jettisoned Jesus from [his] spiritual makeup.”
The challenge is that this is a rather broad category. Which kind of Jesus-jettisoners does he have in mind? Trump supporters who may loosely identify as “evangelicals” but never actually go to church? Occasional attenders who think Christians might have some nice ideas but don’t ultimately see their need for Jesus? Disenchanted former Christians who were beaten down by fellow churchgoers who should have given them Jesus and His forgiveness but didn’t? Hardline progressives who see Christianity as the power source of the racist, transphobic patriarchy? All these groups may meet in No Jesus Land, but they have very different sins leading them to that destination.
For the most part, Popovits opts for the shotgun method of addressing sin, speaking rather broadly about temptations that afflict us all, at one point saying, “You may be genetically predisposed to addiction, have a struggle with lust, or wrestle with any number of bad habits that you’re prone to pursue if given the chance. Certain activities that may be perfectly appropriate for me to take part in or benign for the majority of others may trigger the worst of your impulses and therefore need to be avoided.” This is all true, of course, but, especially for unbelievers, it’s hard to see this doing more damage than sticking a few pellets in prideful hearts, which is why the rifle approach is also needed.
The few times when Popovits does get a bit specific, however, he doesn’t cover all the unchurched demographics. He calls pornography “a horrific abuse of God’s gifts of sex and sexuality,” but never in the book mentions homosexuality or abortion, other horrific abuses of those gifts that are, quite notably, two of the chief idols of the modern leftist religion.
Early in Junk Drawer Jesus, Popovits shows a willingness to indirectly call out what he sees as the idolatry of conservatives when he suggests to his hypothetical readers that they may have cast aside Jesus after being offended by “the relative silence on the part of many Christians when it comes to issues of race (as well as a hysteria over Critical Race Theory infiltrating our schools), or what seems to be a contradictory obsession with protecting access to guns used to kill kids in schools while ensuring babies make their way safely out of the womb and into the world.”
I don’t think this is a particularly accurate assessment of conservative Christian beliefs. But if he believes firearms are an idol inhibiting professed Christians from living holy lives, it’s inexcusable that he never addresses the “right to choose” or “LGBTQ inclusivity,” two of the biggest idols inhibiting leftists from doing the same.
While Junk Drawer Jesus has some major failings in presenting sinners with their need for Christ, Popovits’ presentation of Christ Himself is beautiful. He speaks like the Lutheran pastor he is: clearly and confidently, blessing readers with a glorious confession of the sufficiency of Christ’s merits, at one point saying:
Each time you come back to Christ, he doesn’t lord it over you—though he is the Lord. He doesn’t say, “I told you to cut this out” and demand you demonstrate your devotion. He simply says what John repeated throughout his letter: that he loves you. False gods will always ask for more from you, always demand more of you. But Jesus, the true God, couldn’t be more different. He doesn’t say, “Do more.” He says, “I am enough. My cross forgives you. My empty tomb assures you. My grace is sufficient for you.”
These are wondrous words that I hope his intended audience discovers. Likewise, should his book find its way into the hands of your average Christian Bestseller Reader, such a person would be blessed with something infinitely greater than the “self-help masquerading as Christian discipleship” fluff he or she typically devours. I hope these audiences find Junk Drawer Jesus. I just wish the book gave them a better balance of rifle and shotgun law-blasts. I know anyone who reads this book will encounter a faithful proclamation of Jesus Christ as Savior. I also just wish Junk Drawer Jesus gave them a bit bolder confession of what Jesus has saved them from.
