Deism: A Serious Problem

I was asked a question this week about how to answer someone who holds to a sort of quasi-deism. This particular person holds the position something like God created everything but has since left us on our own to figure things out. Initially I began to think; certainly no one really holds this position anymore. After all, how would one know for certain that this deistic God did indeed create everything?

My thoughts soon carried me away into thinking about what would influence someone to think this. Hasn’t the Church dealt with this? Or, has it?

My thoughts soon brought me, as they often do, to N. T. Wright. I found this quote in Simply Christian which I found simply remarkable.

Many popular misconceptions of Christian faith make the mistake at this point of trying to fit Christian faith into a residual Deist framework. They depict a distant and austere God suddenly deciding to do something after all, and so sending his own Son to teach us how to escape our sphere and go and live in God’s instead…

Perhaps some in the church—with their teaching that the earth is doomed and must be tolerated until our final escape to heaven—have caused this misconception. Perhaps Deism is more of a problem than I assumed at first.