Once upon a time I tweeted this: "The marriage controversy is not unrelated to the fact that many churches will be overdosing on silliness this Sunday."

Some asked me what I meant by it. This is what I meant:

Church life in general and the worship gathering in particular, over time, shape a Christian's thinking and values. Since that is true, we have a good insight toward an answer to these questions: Why do you suppose so many self-professing Christians today see no sin in same-sex couplings? And why do you suppose so many evangelicals who do still see the sin nevertheless seem to struggle to think and speak about marriage with any depth beyond political soundbites and emotional cliches?

We are reaping what we've sown with our church life the last 25 years. The story widely told as our "gospel" amounts to a self-helpy self-actualizing self-fulfilling pragmatically spiritual whatchamacalitism. We decided doctrine was too dry, so we tore it out and humidified the sanctuary auditorium with fog (sometimes literally). And Hendricks warned us: "A fog in the pulpit is a mist in the pew."

I'm not trying to oversimplify. I'm only saying that American evangelicalism by and large has. And if our long-timers don't know the gospel with enough depth to navigate the confusing waters of our post-Christendom culture, it's our own dang fault. They can only go as deep as the gospel we give them.