Missional

Antithesis Manifesto

/ Dennis Griffith / 3 Comments

 

Several years ago a now defunct web-based organization, Antithesis or ChristianCounterCulture.com, published a manifesto that prophetically challenges contemporary Evanglicalism.  It resonated with me then and, with the exception of the dating in the opening paragraph, it remains timely. 

From time to time I re-read, what I call, the Antithesis Manifesto to refresh my thoughts. As I reflect on it this afternoon I want to sumarize some of the assertions:

1. Today’s Christian Culture is destroying Christianity

While we are prone to lament the “world” and the decaying values, the truth is that we Evangelicals bear much responsibility for this.  We want so desperately to be accepted by the world (for the sake of evangelism) that we have largely become indistinguishable from it.  We mimic whatever is popular, and many seem to be driven by the same values systems.  (Think about it, How do we guage a “successful” church?  Often by size, money, fame, and political clout.) 

This value shift has not escaped notice. Not from those outside the Church. And not from a generation inside the church that has grown weary of our impotence, if not our outright hypocrissy.  

I recall John Stott saying that if the culture is decaying it is the fault of the church not being the preserving “Salt” it is supposed to be. (See Matthew 5:13)  Stott said you can no more blame the culture for decaying than you can a piece of meat. It is the salt that bears the responsibility to the work of preserving.

If we think the world is having a negative influence on the church it is only because the church has chosen to be like the world.  It is not the world that is destroying us. We are doing it to ourselves. And collectively, I’m afraid, we Westerners are doing little toward our mandate to preserve our culture. (See Jeremiah 29:7)

2. We must Practice Truth

It is not enough to claim the Bible is truth. We must live that truth.  This requires a serious assessment of all of our practices – ecclesiastical as well as personal – and an intentional submission of them to Biblical standards.  We need to be “formed” by the Word, not merely familiar with it.  And there is no sphere of our lives that is exempt from constant need of re-formation.

3. Our Fellowships must be REAL Communities.

The Gospel not only forms us as “new creations”, but it forms a New Community.  As the Manifesto correctly observes: “Too many of our churches are really teaching stations and activity generators. The ‘sharing of life’ in community has had little place.” 

The Gospel formed community is an open, inviting, honest place, where participants are interdependent.  This runs contrary to our individualism (another value we have assumed from the culture), but it is the Biblical model, and the environment in which Gospel Transformation really takes place. 

Conclusion

The whole manifesto reveals a definite touch of Francis Schaeffer’s influence.  Perhaps that’s why it resonates with me.  But a simple periodic review is not enough. We need to make the appropriate changes.  Without them this whole thing is rather ominous.  But if there is change there is also reason for great hope.

The Antithesis Manifesto itself concludes with these words:

If Christians take these factors into account, then we may hope for the stirring of a revolution in our day. And, should our Lord delay his return, the century before us may be marked as a time when radical Christian proclamation went forth yet again – in the power of the Holy Spirit – turning the world upside down, forever altering the cultural landscape.

(To read the original document click: Antithesis Manifesto.pdf)

On My Reading Table: The Tangible Kingdom

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

 Recent travel has made it difficult to get to a number of things – like posting on this blog.  I have one more trip to make this week, then I should be settled in for the better part of the Summer. 

Posting on the blog is not the only thing that has been put on the shelf recently. I have not had opportunity to read as much as I like, either.  But I have been reading some.  It’s rare that I go anywhere without a book or two.  It’s just that while I usually juggle three or four books, these past few weeks I’ve been limited to one: The Tangible Kingdom. 

This book by Hugh Halter & Matt Smay is focused on cultivating an incarnational community, or on turning the local church into a vital and visible presence in our local community. The premise is that the Body of Christ is called to be a visible and authentic expression of the Kingdom of God as it presently exists. 

I think it is important to remember the Kingdom of God is both a present reality AND future hope. At least that’s what Jesus taught. Sadly, though, I think we are prone to focus solely on its future coming.  To the extent we focus only on the future manifestation of God’s Kingdom we miss out on a lot. And we fail to give the world around us a glimpse of what will one day be universal – only far better; more perfect than we presently express even on our best days. 

I long for such an expression of the Kingdom, so I am excited whenever I can catch a glimpse through those who are practicing such community in their churches.

I’m not quite finished yet, but I’ll probably give a summary and review in a few weeks.  In the mean time you might want to check out the related web site: TangibleKingdom.com.

The Mark of the Christian (part 6)

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

by Francis Schaeffer

Love In Practice

Let me give two beautiful examples of such observable love. One happened among the Brethren groups in Germany immediately after the last war.

In order to control the church, Hitler commanded the union of all religious groups in Germany, drawing them together by law. The Brethren divided over this issue. Half accepted Hitler’s dictum and half refused. The ones who submitted, of course, had a much easier time, but gradually in this organizational oneness with the liberal groups their own doctrinal sharpness and spiritual life withered. On the other hand, the group that stayed out remained spiritually virile, but there was hardly a family in which someone did not die in a German concentration camp.

Now can you imagine the emotional tension? The war is over, and these Christian brothers face each other again. They had the same doctrine and they had worked together for more than a generation. Now what is going to happen? One man remembers that his father died in a concentration camp and knows that these people over here remained safe. But people on the other side have deep personal feelings as well.

Then gradually these brothers came to know that this situation just would not do. A time was appointed when the elders of the two groups could meet together in a certain quiet place. I asked the man who told me this, “What did you do?” And he said, “Well, I’ll tell you what we did. We came together, and we set aside several days in which each man would search his own heart.” Here was a real difference; the emotions were deeply, deeply stirred. “My father has gone to the concentration camp; my mother was dragged away.” These things are not just little pebbles on the beach; they reach into the deep well-springs of human emotions. But these people understood the command of Christ at this place, and for several days every man did nothing except search his own heart concerning his own failures and the commands of Christ. Then they met together.

I asked the man, “What happened then?”

And he said, “We just were one.”

To my mind, this is exactly what Jesus speaks about. The Father has sent the Son!

Divided But One

The principle we are talking about is universal, applicable in all times and places. Let me, then, give you a second illustration — a different practice of the same principle.

I have been waiting for years for a time when two groups of born-again Christians, who for good reasons find it impossible to work together, separate without saying bitter things against each other. I have long longed for two groups who would continue to show a love to the watching world when they came to the place where organizational unity seemed no longer possible between them.

Theoretically, of course, every local church ought to be able to minister to the whole spectrum of society. But in practice we must acknowledge that in certain places it becomes very difficult. The needs of different segments of society are different.

Recently a problem of this nature arose in a church in a large city in the Midwest in the United States. A number of people attuned to the modern age were going to a certain church, but the pastor gradually concluded that he was not able to preach and minister to the two groups. Some men can, but he personally did not find it possible to minister to the whole spectrum of his congregation — the long-haired ones and the far-out people they brought, and, at the same time, the people of the surrounding neighborhood.

The example of observable love I am going to present now must not be taken as an “of course” situation in our day. In our generation the lack of love can easily cut both ways: A middle-class people can all too easily be snobbish and unloving against the long-haired Christians, and the long-haired Christians can be equally snobbish and unloving against the short-haired Christians.

After trying for a long time to work together, the elders met and decided that they would make two churches. They made it very plain that they were not dividing because their doctrine was different; they were dividing as a matter of practicability. One member of the old session went to the new group. They worked under the whole session to make an orderly transition. Now they have two churches and they are consciously practicing love toward each other.

Here is a lack of organizational unity that is a true love and unity which the world may observe. The Father has sent the Son!

I want to say with all my heart that as we struggle with the proper preaching of the gospel in the midst of the 20th century, the importance of observable love must come into our message. We must not forget the final apologetic. The world has a right to look upon us as we, as true Christians, come to practical differences and it should be able to observe that we do love each other. Our love must have a form that the world may observe; it must be seeable.

The One True Mark

Let us look again at the biblical texts which so clearly indicate the mark of the Christian:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35)

That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:21)

What then shall we conclude but that as the Samaritan loved the wounded man, we as Christians are called upon to love all men as neighbors, loving them as ourselves. Second, that we are to love all true Christian brothers in a way that the world may observe. This means showing love to our brother in the midst of our differences — great or small — loving our brothers when it costs us something, loving them even under times of tremendous emotional tension, loving them in a way the world can see. In short, we are to practice and exhibit the holiness of God and the love of God, for without this we grieve the Holy Spirit.

Love — and the unity it attests to — is the mark Christ gave Christians to wear before the world. Only with this mark may the world know that Christians are indeed Christians and that Jesus was sent by the Father.

Building a House of Prayer

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

As the officers of our church and I work through our vision and philosophy of ministry process, there are two simple and fundamental truths that serve as a foundation and shape my thinking.

First, Jesus says: “I will build my church.” (Matthew 16:18) And the psalmist says: “Unless the Lord builds the house the laborers labor in vain.”  (Psalm 127:1)  In other words, unless a church (or a home) is built upon the way the Lord wants it, and by the power of God himself, no matter how grand, no matter how great it appears, all our efforts are in vain.  Unless God builds our church, God will not be pleased with anything we develop.

Second, one of the characteristics the Lord specifically says will mark his church – his “house” – is prayer.  “My house will be called a house of prayer for all Nations.” (see Isaiah 56:7; Matthew 21:13) 

Cheryl Sacks, in her book The Prayer Saturated Church, points out that there are some important differences between a church that prays and a house of prayer. (Click: God’s Standard)

I guess, if you think about it, that passage adds two other dimensions to the house God builds. 

First we see Global Missions. The passage indicates the Lord is concerned about the Nations – ALL Nations.  One aspect of a house of prayer for all Nations is that our prayers should include passionate intercession for the advancement of the Gospel among all People Groups (ethnos) throughout the world. 

But another aspect this verse seems to indicate is Unity in Diversity.  Our churches should be open to, even cultivate, a cultural diversity within our doors.  Our churches ought to be places where peoples from any Nation (literally all ethnos, or ethnicities) should be welcome to come to join for prayer. While not every community has a diverse international community, perhaps our churches ought to at least reflect some of the diversity of our neighborhoods.

As I think about that, Matthew 21:13 provides both a foundation (prayer) and scope or goal of ministry (Nations).  That’s a big job.  I’m glad God is the builder.

The Mark of the Christian (part 5)

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

by Francis Schaeffer

When Christians Disagree

What happens, then, when we must differ with other brothers in Christ because of the need also to show forth God’s holiness either in doctrine or in life? In the matter of life, Paul clearly shows us the balance in I and II Corinthians. The same thing applies in doctrine as well.

First, in 1 Corinthians 5:1-5 he scolds the Corinthian church for allowing a man in the midst of fornication to stay in the church without discipline. Because of the holiness of God, because of the need to exhibit this holiness to a watching world, and because such judgment on the basis of God’s revealed law is right in God’s sight, Paul scolds the church for not disciplining the man.

After they have disciplined him, Paul writes again to them in 2 Corinthians 2:6-8 and scolds them because they are not showing love toward him. These two things must stand together.

I am thankful that Paul writes this way in his first letter and his second, for here you see a passage of time. The Corinthians have taken his advice, they have disciplined the Christian, and now Paul writes to them, “You’re disciplining him, but why don’t you show your love toward him?” He could have gone on and quoted Jesus in saying, “Don’t you realize that the surrounding pagans of Corinth have a right to say that Jesus was not sent by the Father because you are not showing love to this man that you properly disciplined?”

A very important question arises at this point: How can we exhibit the oneness Christ commands without sharing in the other man’s mistakes? I would suggest a few ways by which we can practice and show this oneness even across the lines where we must differ.

Regret

First, we should never come to such difference with true Christians without regret and without tears. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Believe me, evangelicals often have not shown it. We rush in, being very, very pleased, it would seem at times, to find other men’s mistakes. We build ourselves up by tearing other men down. This can never show a real oneness among Christians.

There is only one kind of man who can fight the Lord’s battles in anywhere near the proper way, and that is the man who by nature is unbelligerent. A belligerent man tends to do it because he is belligerent; at least it looks that way. The world must observe that, when we must differ with each other as true Christians, we do it not because we love the smell of blood, the smell of the arena, the smell of the bullfight, but because we must for God’s sake. If there are tears when we must speak, then something beautiful can be observed.

Second, in proportion to the gravity of what is wrong between true Christians, it is important consciously to exhibit a seeable love to the world. Not all differences among Christians are equal. There are some that are very minor. Others are overwhelmingly important.

The more serious the wrongness is, the more important it is to exhibit the holiness of God, to speak out concerning what is wrong. At the same time, the more serious the differences become, the more important it becomes that we look to the Holy Spirit to enable us to show love to the true Christians with whom we must differ. If it is only a minor difference, showing love does not take much conscious consideration. But where the difference becomes really important, it becomes proportionately more important to speak for God’s holiness. And it becomes increasingly important in that place to show the world that we still love each other.

Humanly we function in exactly the opposite direction: In the less important differences we show more love toward true Christians, but as the difference gets into more important areas, we tend to show less love. The reverse must be the case: As the differences among true Christians get greater, we must consciously love and show a love which has some manifestation the world may see.

So let us consider this: Is my difference with my brother in Christ really crucially important? If so, it is doubly important that I spend time upon my knees asking the Holy Spirit, asking Christ, to do his work through me and my group, that I and we might show love even in this larger difference that we have come to with a brother in Christ or with another group of true Christians.

Costly Love

Third, we must show a practical demonstration of love in the midst of the dilemma even when it is costly. The word love should not be just a banner. In other words, we must do whatever must be done, at whatever cost, to show this love. We must not say, “I love you,” and then — bang, bang, bang!

So often people think that Christianity is only something soft, only a kind of gooey love that loves evil equally with good. This is not the biblical position. The holiness of God is to be exhibited simultaneously with love. We must be careful therefore, not to say that what is wrong is right, whether it is in the area of doctrine or of life, in our own group or another. Anywhere what is wrong is wrong, and we have a responsibility in that situation to say that what is wrong is wrong. But the observable love must be there regardless of the cost.

The Bible does not make these things escapable. 1 Corinthians 6:1-7 reads,

If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church! I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead, one brother goes to law against another — and this in front of unbelievers! The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?

What does this mean? The church is not to let pass what is wrong; but the Christian should suffer practical, monetary loss to show the oneness true Christians should have rather than to go to court against other true Christians, for this would destroy such an observable oneness before the watching world. This is costly love, but it is just such practicing love that can be seen.

Paul is talking about something which is observable, something that is very real: The Christian is to show such love in the midst of a necessary difference with his brother that he is willing to suffer loss — not just monetary loss (though most Christians seem to forget all love and oneness when money gets involved) but whatever loss is involved.

Whatever the specifics are, there is to be a practical demonstration of love appropriate to a particular place. The Bible is a strong and down-to-earth book.

A fourth way we can show and exhibit love without sharing in our brother’s mistake is to approach the problem with a desire to solve it, rather than with a desire to win. We all love to win. In fact, there is nobody who loves to win more than the theologian. The history of theology is all too often a long exhibition of a desire to win.

But we should understand that what we are working for in the midst of our difference is a solution — a solution that will give God the glory, that will be true to the Bible, but will exhibit the love of God simultaneously with his holiness. What is our attitude as we sit down to talk to our brother or as group meets with group to discuss differences? A desire to come out on top? To play one-up-manship? If there is any desire for love whatsoever, every time we discuss a difference, we will desire a solution and not just that we can be proven right.

The Difference of Differences

A fifth way in which we can show a practicing, observable love to the world without sharing in our brother’s mistake is to realize, to keep consciously before us and to help each other be aware, that it is easy to compromise and to call what is wrong right, but that it is equally easy to forget to exhibit our oneness in Christ. This attitude must be constantly and consciously developed — talked about and written about in and among our groups and among ourselves as individuals.

In fact, this must be talked about and written about before differences arise between true Christians. We have conferences about everything else. Who has ever heard of a conference to consider how true Christians can exhibit in practice a fidelity to the holiness of God and yet simultaneously exhibit in practice a fidelity to the love of God before a watching world? Whoever heard of sermons or writings which carefully present the practice of two principles which at first seem to work against each other: (1) the principle of the practice of the purity of the visible church in regard to doctrine and life and (2) the principle of the practice of an observable love and oneness among all true Christians?

If there is no careful preaching and writing about these things, are we so foolish as to think that there will be anything beautiful in practice when differences between true Christians must honestly be faced?

Before a watching world an observable love in the midst of difference will show a difference between Christians’ differences and other men’s differences. The world may not understand what the Christians are disagreeing about, but they will very quickly understand the difference of our differences from the world’s differences if they see us having our differences in an open and observable love on a practical level.

That is different. Can you see why Jesus said this was the thing that would arrest the attention of the world? You cannot expect the world to understand doctrinal differences, especially in our day when the existence of true truth and absolutes are considered unthinkable even as concepts.

We cannot expect the world to understand that on the basis of the holiness of God we are having a different kind of difference because we are dealing with God’s absolutes. But when they see differences among true Christians who also show an observable unity, this will open the way for them to consider the truth of Christianity and Christ’s claim that the Father did send the Son.

As a matter of fact, we have a greater possibility of showing what Jesus is speaking about here in the midst of our differences, than we do if we are not differing. Obviously we ought not to go out looking for differences among Christians: There are enough without looking for more. But even so it is in the midst of a difference that we have our golden opportunity. When everything is going well and we are all standing around in a nice little circle, there is not much to be seen by the world. But when we come to the place where there is a real difference and we exhibit uncompromised principles but at the same time observable love, then there is something that the world can see, something they can use to judge that these really are Christians, and that Jesus has indeed been sent by the Father.

The Mark of the Christian (part 4)

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

  by Francis Schaeffer

 

True Oneness

 

In John 13 and 17, Jesus talks about a real seeable oneness, a practicing oneness, a practical oneness across all lines, among all true Christians.

   

The Christian really has a double task. He has to practice both God’s holiness and God’s love. The Christian is to exhibit that God exists as the infinite-personal God; and then he is to exhibit simultaneously God’s character of holiness and love. Not his holiness without his love: that is only harshness. Not his love without his holiness: that is only compromise. Anything that an individual Christian or Christian group does that fails to show the simultaneous balance of the holiness of God and the love of God presents to a watching world not a demonstration of the God who exists but a caricature of the God who exists.

   

According to the Scripture and the teaching of Christ, the love that is shown is to be exceedingly strong. It is not just something you mention in words once in a while.

 

Visible Love

 

What, then, does this love mean? How can it be made visible?

   

First, it means a very simple thing: It means that when I have made a mistake and when I have failed to love my Christian brother, I go to him and say, “I’m sorry.” That is first.

   

It may seem a letdown – that the first thing we speak of should be so simple! But if you think it is easy, you have never tried to practice it.

   

In our own groups, in our own close Christian communities, even in our families, when we have shown lack of love toward another, we as Christians do not just automatically go and say we are sorry. On even the very simplest level it is never very easy.

   

It may sound simplistic to start with saying we are sorry and asking forgiveness, but it is not. This is the way of renewed fellowship, whether it is between a husband and wife, a parent and child, within a Christian community, or between groups. When we have shown a lack of love toward the other, we are called by God to go and say, “I’m sorry . . . I really am sorry.”

   

If I am not willing to say, “I’m sorry,” when I have wronged somebody else – especially when I have not loved him – I have not even started to think about the meaning of a Christian oneness which the world can see. The world has a right to question whether I am a Christian. And more than that, let me say it again, if I am not willing to do this very simple thing, the world has a right to question whether Jesus was sent from God and whether Christianity is true.

   

How well have we consciously practiced this? How often, in the power of the Holy Spirit, have we gone to Christians in our own group and said, “I’m sorry”? How much time have we spent reestablishing contact with those in other groups, saying to them, “I’m sorry for what I’ve done, what I’ve said, or what I’ve written”? How frequently has one group gone to another group with whom it differed and has said, “We’re sorry”? It is so important that it is, for all practical purposes, a part of the preaching of the gospel itself. The observable practice of truth and the observable practice of love go hand in hand with the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ.

   

I have observed one thing among true Christians in their differences in many countries: What divides and severs true Christian groups and Christians – what leaves a bitterness that can last for 20, 30 or 40 years (or for 50 or 60 years in a son’s memory) – is not the issue of doctrine or belief which caused the differences in the first place. Invariably it is lack of love – and the bitter things that are said by true Christians in the midst of differences. These stick in the mind like glue. And after time passes and the differences between the Christians or the groups appear less than they did, there are still those bitter, bitter things we said in the midst of what we thought was a good and sufficient objective discussion. It is these things – these unloving attitudes and words – that cause the stench that the world can smell in the church of Jesus Christ among those who are really true Christians.

   

If, when we feel we must disagree as true Christians, we could simply guard our tongues and speak in love, in five or ten years the bitterness could be gone. Instead of that, we leave scars – a curse for generations. Not just a curse in the church, but a curse in the world. Newspaper headlines bear it in our Christian press, and it boils over into the secular press at times – Christians saying such bitter things about other Christians.

   

The world looks, shrugs its shoulders and turns away. It has not seen even the beginning of a living church in the midst of a dying culture. It has not seen the beginning of what Jesus indicates is the final apologetic – observable oneness among true Christians who are truly brothers in Christ. Our sharp tongues, the lack of love between us – not the necessary statements of differences that may exist between true Christians – these are what properly trouble the world.

   

How different this is from the straightforward and direct command of Jesus Christ – to show an observable oneness which may be seen by a watching world!

 

Forgiveness

 

But there is more to observable love than saying we are sorry.  There must also be open forgiveness. And though it’s hard to say, “I’m sorry,” it’s even harder to forgive. The Bible, however, makes plain that the world must observe a forgiving spirit in the midst of God’s people.

   

In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus himself teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Now this prayer, we must say quickly, is not for salvation. It has nothing to do with being born again, for we are born again on the basis of the finished work of Christ plus nothing. But it does have to do with a Christian’s existential, moment-by-moment experiential relationship to God. We need a once-for-all forgiveness at justification, and we need a moment-by-moment forgiveness for our sins on the basis of Christ’s work in order to be in open fellowship with God. What the Lord has taught us to pray in the Lord’s prayer should make a Christian very sober every day of his life: We are asking the Lord to open to us the experiential realities of fellowship with himself as we forgive others.

   

Some Christians say that the Lord’s prayer is not for this present era, but most of us would say it is. And yet at the same time we hardly think once in a year about our lack of a forgiving heart in relationship to God’s forgiving us. Many Christians rarely or never seem to connect their own lack of reality of fellowship with God with their lack of forgiveness to men, even though they may say the Lord’s prayer in a formal way over and over in their weekly Sunday worship services.

   

We must all continually acknowledge that we do not practice the forgiving heart as we should. And yet the prayer is “Forgive us our debts, our trespasses, as we forgive our debtors.” We are to have a forgiving spirit even before the other person expresses regret for his wrong. The Lord’s prayer does not suggest that when the other man is sorry, then we are to show a oneness by having a forgiving spirit. Rather, we are called upon to have a forgiving spirit without the other man having made the first step. We may still say that he is wrong, but in the midst of saying that he is wrong, we must be forgiving.

   

We are to have this forgiving spirit not only toward Christians but toward all men. But surely if it is toward all men, it is important toward Christians.

   

Such a forgiving spirit registers an attitude of love toward others. But, even though one can call this an attitude, true forgiveness is observable. Believe me, you can look on a man’s face and know where he is as far as forgiveness is concerned. And the world is called on to look upon us and see whether we have love across the groups, love across party lines. Do they observe that we say, “I’m sorry,” and do they observe a forgiving heart? Let me repeat: Our love will not be perfect, but it must be substantial enough for the world to be able to observe or it does not fit into the structure of the verses in John 13 and 17. And if the world does not observe this among true Christians, the world has a right to make the two awful judgments which these verses indicate: That we are not Christians and that Christ was not sent by the Father.

 

Happy Belated Earth Day!

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

 

Earth Day 2008 just passed me by yesterday. The day came and went with barely my notice. And what little notice I did take came when I saw a blip on the news around 11pm.  The day was almost done in the East.

 

That’s a little disappointing because, quite honestly, a few months ago I had thought it might be a good idea to do a little research and post a short series about the Gospel and its relationship to Environmentalism.  That may seem a little odd if you are a conservative. But I honestly think many of conservative Evangelicals are missing something important.

 

1.  Psalm 24 does declare: “The earth is the Lord’s…”;  and Psalm 19 reminds us the God’s Creation declares his glory.  This suggests, to me, that appreciation and stewardship of our environment is a legitimate part of serving God. It may even be a legitimate resource for evangelism – but only if Christians reflect appropriate appreciation.  We need to, to borrow and paraphrase a title of a Tony Campolo book, Rescue Earth Without Worshipping Nature. (No, I have not read the book, but the title is cool.  I suspect, as with many of Campolo’s books, I would find many brilliant insights intermingled with a few, uh… unconventional assertions I cannot embrace.)

 

2. Environmental issues provide a forum in which we can dialogue with the world around us.  Certainly there will be a diversity of opinions, and some propositions which will never resonate with Evangelicals. But why are we largely absent from the conversation?  I think our failure to speak to this issue in our churches expresses to the world that we don’t really care about an issue that is close to many hearts; and it leaves the members of our churches with really only the non-theistic views of creation and environment to consider.

 

3.  While we battle in the courts and schools to reinstitute Creation Education, we hypocritaclly do virtually nothing with that creation that suggests we care.  It is not unlike the charge made against some Pro-Life activists, who passionately oppose abortion, but don’t appear to care enough for the unwanted and poor children who are born and live in horrendous situations.  (But that’s another subject… I only intended to point out that there is more behind the issues that Evangelicals do rally around, and that perhaps if we were as passionate and well rounded about these related matters we might find more receptive ears to our proclamations.)

 

I began to think about this issue several years ago, though I am still no expert. Living in East Tennessee, and before that Western Pennsylvania, it is easy to be awed by the natural beauty of the mountains, rivers, and wildlife. (Yes, for those of you who have never been there, Western PA/Pittsburgh, is beautiful outdoor country!) 

 

At that time I started reading some of the stuff put out by the Evangelical Environmental Network, because I could find nothing else on the subject claiming a distinct Christian world-view.  But I was a little disappointed with EEN because of some of the doctrinal views laced throughout their writings.  Then I became fully disenchanted with them when they launched the What Would Jesus Drive? campaign against SUV’s.  (Jay Leno had probably the best response to that question: “Let’s see. Jesus was a single guy, working as a carpenter, living in a small rural town in the middle of nowhere… What would he drive? Probably a large pickup.”)

 

But over the years I have found some solid thoughts from the Christian perspective.  Perhaps the best I’ve stumbled across is the Cornwall Declaration (.pdf) from the Cornwall Alliance.  This is a network of Evangelicals, Catholics, and Jews who recognize that “The Earth is the Lord’s” and that we who live in it have a God-given responsibility to be the stewards of what has been entrusted to us. 

 

Let me end this post by inviting comments.  What are your thoughts about Evangelicals and Environmentalism?  And if you know of any good resources out there, please let me know.

 

 

Studies in 1 John: Compassion Among Brothers

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

   In my study through 1 John I had to pause and go back over one verse this week. 

 

Having preached from 1 John 3:11-18 last week, and John’s assertion that Christians are to be characterized by love for one another if Christ is in actuality alive in them,  I am struck by v. 17:

 

“If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” 

 

Together, with John exhortation in the next verse: “…let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth”; these verses not only reflect the heart of God, they express a mandate for a more holistic ministry. 

 

Clearly John has in mind here a demonstration of compassion that is to be practiced between Christians.  It was not John’s purpose at this point to discuss the broader scope.  But his narrower focus here in no way mitigates the Christians responsibility to express mercy to all people, Christian or not, as a reflection of God’s grace. 

 

Consider Paul’s counsel from Galatians 6:10:

 

“Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”

 

Paul’s emphasis to do good, “especially” to other Christians, is consistent with John’s focus. But Paul gives a more expanded view of the heart of God.  Still, Paul shares John’s sentiment, that while we ought to show compassion to all people, how much more ought we do so for other Believers!

 

I am convinced and convicted that this – holistic ministry – has long been an area of neglect for many (most?) conservative Evangelicals.  So I feel compelled to go back to those two verses to preach from them. 

 

As I prepared this week several old books came off my shelf that proved helpful.  I thought I’d post them for anyone interested in pursuing the God-given, ministry of compassion that John urges us to undertake in v. 17-18…

 

The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky

Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ron Sider

Charity and It’s Fruits by Jonathan Edwards

The Micah Mandate by George Grant

Ministries of Mercy by Tim Keller

Restorers of Hope by Amy Sherman

Churches Than Make a Difference by Ron Sider, et. al.

 

And finally, anyone interested in seeing how ministry of compassion is practically & effectively being implemented across America will do well to visit Christian Community Development Association.  This is a wonderful network of holistic practitioners.

 

The Beauty of Human Relationships

/ Dennis Griffith / 3 Comments

by Frances Schaeffer

This is the fourth of four posts in a series titled Two Contents, Two Realities.  These posts are slightly edited excerpts of a paper delivered by Dr. Francis Schaeffer  as part of the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland.

*********

The second reality is the beauty of human relationships. True Christianity produces beauty as well as’ truth, especially in the specific areas of human relationships. Read the New Testament carefully with this in mind; notice how often Jesus returns us to this theme, how often Paul speaks of it. We are to show something to the watching world on the basis of the human relationships we have with other people, not just other Christians.

Christians today are the people who understand who man is. Modern man is in a dilemma because he does not know that man is qualitatively different from non-man. We say man is different because he is made in the image of God. But we must not say man is made in the image of God unless we look to God and by God’s grace treat every man with dignity. We stand against B. F. Skinner in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity. But I dare not argue against Skinner’s determinism if I then treat the men I meet day by day as less than really made in the image of God.

I am talking first of all about non-Christians. The first commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind, and the second is to love our neighbor as ourselves. After Jesus commanded this, someone said, “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus then told the story of the good Samaritan. He was not just talking about treating Christians well; he was talking about treating every man we meet well, every man whether he is in our social stratum or not, every man whether he speaks our language or not, every man whether he has the color of our skin or not. Every man is to be treated on the level of truly being made in the image of God, and thus there is to be a beauty of human relationships.

This attitude is to operate on all levels. I meet a man in a revolving door. How much time do I have with him? Maybe ten seconds. I am to treat him well. We look at him. We do not think consciously in every case that this man is made in the image of God, but, having ground into our bones and into our consciousness (as well as our doctrinal statement) that he is made in the image of God, we will treat him well in those ten seconds which we have.

We approach a red light. We have the same problem. Perhaps we will never see these other people at the intersection again, but we are to remember that they have dignity.

And when we come to the longer relationships–for example, the employer-employee relationship–we are to treat each person with dignity. The husband-and-wife relationship, the parent-and child relationship, the political relationship, the economic relationship 3 -in every single relationship of life, to the extent to which I am in contact with a man or woman, sometimes shorter and sometimes longer, he or she is to be treated in such a way that – man or woman – if he is thinking at all, he will say, “Didn’t he treat me well!”What about the liberal theologian? Yes, we are to stand against his theology. We are to practice truth, and we are not to compromise. We are to stand in antithesis to his theology. But even though we cannot cooperate with him in religious things, we are to treat the liberal theologian in such a way that we try from our side to bring our discussion into the circle of truly human relationships. Can we do these two things together in our own strength? No, but in the strength of the power of the Holy Spirit, it can be done. We can have the beauty of human relationships even when we must say no.

Now, if we are called upon to love our neighbor as ourselves when he is not a Christian, how much more – ten thousand times ten thousand times more – should there be beauty in the relationships between true Bible-believing Christians, something so beautiful that the world would be brought up short! We must hold our distinctives. Some of us are Baptists; some of us hold to infant baptism; some of us are Lutheran, and so on. But to true Bible believing Christians across all the lines, in all the camps, I emphasize: if we do not show beauty in the way we treat each other, then in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of our own children, we are destroying the truth we proclaim.

Every big company, if it is going to build a huge plant, first makes a pilot plant in order to show that their plan will work. Every church, every mission, every Christian school, every Christian group, regardless of what sphere it is in, should be a pilot plant that the world can look at and see there a beauty of human relationships which stands in exact contrast to the awful ugliness of what modern men paint in their art, what they make with their sculpture, what they show in their cinema, and how they treat each other. Men should see in the church a bold alternative to the way modern men treat people as animals and machines. There should be something so different that they will listen, something so different it will commend the gospel to them.

Every group ought to be like that, and our relationships between our groups ought to be like that. Have they been? The answer all too often is no. We have something to ask the Lord to forgive us for. Evangelicals, we who are true Bible-believing Christians, must ask God to forgive us for the ugliness with which we have often treated each other when we are in different camps.

I am talking now about beauty, and I have chosen this word with care. I could call it love, but we have so demoted the word that it is often meaningless. So I use the word beauty. There should be beauty, observable beauty, for the world to see in the way all true Christians treat each other.

We need two orthodoxies: first, an orthodoxy of doctrine and, second, an orthodoxy of community. Why was the early church able, within one century, to spread from the Indus River to Spain? Think of that: one century, India to Spain. When we read in Acts and in the epistles, we find a church that had and practiced both orthodoxies (doctrine and community), and this could be observed by the world. Thus, they commended the gospel to the world of that day and the Holy Spirit was not grieved.

There is a tradition (it is not in the Bible) that the world said about the Christians in the early church, “Behold, how they love each other.” As we read Acts and the epistles, we realize that these early Christians were really struggling for a practicing community. We realize that one of the marks of the early church was a real community, a community that reached down all the way to their care for each other in their material needs.

Have we exhibited this community in our evangelical churches? I have to say no – by and large, no. Our churches have often been two things – preaching points and activity generators. When a person really has desperate needs in the area of race, or economic matters, or psychological matters, does he naturally expect to find a supporting community in our evangelical churches? We must say with tears, many times no!

My favorite church in Acts and, I guess, in all of history is the church at Antioch. I love the church at Antioch. I commend to you to read again about it. It was a place where something new happened: the great, proud Jews who despised the Gentiles (there was an anti-Gentilism among the Jews, just as so often, unhappily, there has been anti-Semitism among Gentiles) came to a breakthrough. They could not be silent. They told their Gentile neighbors about the gospel, and suddenly, on the basis of the blood of Christ and the truth of the Word of God, the racial thing was solved. There were Jewish Christians and there were Gentile Christians, and they were one!

More than that, there was a total span of the social spectrum. We are not told specifically that there were slaves in the church of Antioch, but we know there were in other places and there is no reason to think they were not in Antioch. We know by the record in Acts that there was no less a person in that church than Herod’s foster brother. The man at the very peak of the social pyramid and the man at the bottom of the pile met together in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they were one in a beauty of human relationships.

And I love it for another reason. There was a man called Niger in that church, and that means black. More than likely, he was a black man. The church at Antioch on the basis of the blood of Christ encompassed the whole. There was a beauty that the Greek and the Roman world did not know–and the world looked. And then there was the preaching of the gospel. In one generation the church spread from the Indus River to Spain. If we want to touch our generation, we must be no less than this.

I would emphasize again that community reached all the way down into the realm of material possessions. There is no communism, as we today know the word communism,  in the book of Acts. Peter made very plain to Ananias and Sapphira that their land was their own, and when they had sold their land they were masters of what they did with the money. No state or church law, no legalism, bound them. What existed in the early church was a love that was so overwhelming that they could not imagine in the church of the Lord Jesus having one man hungry and one man rich. When the Corinthian church fell into this, Paul was scathing in 1 Corinthians in writing against it.

Note, too, that deacons were appointed. Why? Because the church had found difficulty in caring for one another’s material needs. Read James 2. James asks, “What are you doing preaching the gospel to a man and trying to have a good relationship with him spiritually if he needs shoes and you do not give him shoes?” Here is another place where the awful Platonic element in the evangelical church has been so dominant and so deadly. It has been considered spiritual to give for missions, but not equally spiritual to give when my brother needs shoes. That is never found in the Word of God. Of course, the early church gave to missions; at times they gave money so Paul did not have to make tents. But Paul makes no distinction between collections for missions and collections for material needs, as if one were spiritual and the other not. For the most part when Paul spoke of financial matters, he did so because there was a group of Christians somewhere who had a material need, and Paul then called upon other churches to help.

Moreover, it was not only in the local church that the Christians cared for each other’s needs; they did so at great distances.  The church of Macedonia, which was made up of Gentile Christians, when they heard that the Jewish Christians, the Jews whom they would previously have despised, had material need, took an offering and sent it with care hundreds of miles in order that the Jewish Christians might eat.

So, there must be two orthodoxies: the orthodoxy of doctrine and the orthodoxy of community. And both orthodoxies must be practiced down into the warp and the woof of life where the Lordship of the Lord Jesus touches every area of our life.

True Spirituality

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

This is the third of four posts in a series titled Two Contents, Two Realities.  These posts are slightly edited excerpts of a paper delivered by Dr. Francis Schaeffer  as part of the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland.

*******

The first reality is spiritual reality.

Let us emphasize again as we have before: we believe with all our hearts that Christian truth can be presented in propositions, and that anybody who diminishes the concept of the propositionalness of the Word of God is playing into twentieth-century, non-Christian hands. But, and it is a great and strong but, the end of Christianity is not the repetition of mere propositions.

Without the proper propositions you cannot have that which should follow. But after having the correct propositions, the end of the matter is to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds. The end of the matter, after we know about God in the revelation He has given in verbalized, propositional terms in the Scripture, is to be in relationship to Him. A dead, ugly orthodoxy with no real spiritual reality must be rejected as sub-Christian.

Back in 1951 and 1952, I went through a very deep time in my own life. I had been a pastor for ten years and a missionary for another five, and I was connected with a group who stood very strongly for the truth of the Scriptures. But as I watched, it became clear to me that I saw very little spiritual reality. I had to ask why. I looked at myself as well and realized that my own spiritual reality was not as great as it had been immediately after my conversion. We were in Switzerland at that time, and I said to my wife, “I must really think this through.”

I took about two months, and I walked in the mountains whenever it was clear. And when it was rainy, I walked back and forth in the hayloft over our chalet. I thought and wrestled and prayed, and I went all the way back to my agnosticism. I asked myself whether I had been right to stop being an agnostic and to become a Christian. I told my wife, if it didn’t turn out right I was going to be honest and go back to America and put it all aside and do some other work.

I came to realize that indeed I had been right in becoming a Christian. But then I went on further and wrestled deeper and asked, “But then where is the spiritual reality, Lord, among most of that which calls itself orthodoxy?” And gradually I found something. I found something that I had not been taught, a simple thing but profound. I discovered the meaning of the work of Christ, the meaning of the blood of Christ, moment by moment in our lives after we are Christians–the moment-by-moment work of the whole Trinity in our lives because as Christians we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. That is true spirituality.

I went out to Dakota, and I spoke at a Bible conference. The Lord used it, and there was a real moving of God in that place. I preached it back in Switzerland. And gradually it became the book True Spirituality. And I want to tell you with all my heart that I think we could have had all the intellectual answers in the world at L’Abri, but if it had not been for those battles in which God gave me some knowledge of some spiritual reality in those days, not just theoretically but, poor as it was, knowledge of a relationship with God moment by moment on the basis of the blood of Jesus Christ, I don’t believe there ever would have been a L’Abri.

Do we minimize the intellectual? I have just pled for the intellectual. I have pled for the propositional. I have pled against doctrinal compromises, specifically at the point of the Word of God being less than propositional truth all the way back to the first verse of Genesis. But at the same time there must be spiritual reality.

Will it be perfect? No, I do not believe the Bible ever holds out to us that anybody is perfect in this life. But it can be real, and it must be shown in some poor way. I say poor because I am sure when we get to Heaven and look back, we will all see how poor it has been. And yet there must be some reality. There must be something real of the work of Christ in the moment-by-moment life, something real of the forgiveness of specific sin brought under the blood of Christ, something real in Christ’s bearing His fruit through me through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. These things must be there. There is nothing more ugly in all the world, nothing which more turns people aside, than a dead orthodoxy.

This, then, is the first reality, real spiritual reality.

Honest Answers to Honest Questions

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

This is the second of four posts in a series titled Two Contents, Two Realities.  These posts are slightly edited excerpts of a paper delivered by Dr. Francis Schaeffer  as part of the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland.

*******

The second content is that Christianity is truth, and we must give honest answers to honest questions. Christianity is truth, truth that God has told us; and if it is truth, it can answer questions.

There is no dichotomy in the Bible between the intellectual and cultural on the one hand and the spiritual on the other. But often there has been a strong Platonic emphasis in evangelicalism, a strong tendency to divide man into two parts -his spiritual nature and everything else. We must take that conception like a piece of baked clay, break it in our hands, and throw it away. We must consciously reject the Platonic element which has been added to Christianity. God made the whole man; the whole man is redeemed in Christ. And after we are Christians, the Lordship of Christ covers the whole man. That includes his so-called spiritual things and his intellectual, creative and cultural things; it includes his law, his sociology, and psychology; it includes every single part and portion of a man and his being.

The Bible does not suggest that there is something distinct in man which is spiritual and that the rest of man is unrelated to the commands and norms of God. There is nothing in the Bible which would say, “Never mind the intellectual, never mind the cultural. We will follow the Bible in the spiritual realm, but we will take the intellectual and the creative and put them aside. They are not important.”

If Christianity is truth as the Bible claims, it must touch every aspect of life. If I draw a pie and that pie comprises the whole of life, Christianity will touch every slice. In every sphere of our lives, Christ will be our Lord and the Bible will be our norm. We will stand under the Scripture. It is not that the “spiritual” is under Scripture while the intellectual and creative are free from it.

Consider the ministry of Paul. Paul went to the Jews, and what happened as he talked to them? They asked Paul questions, and he answered. He went to the non-Jews, the Gentiles, and they asked him questions, and he answered. He went into the marketplace, and there his ministry was a ministry of discussion, of giving honest answers to honest questions. He went to Mars Hill, and he gave honest answers to honest questions. There are three places in the Bible where Paul was speaking to the man without the Bible (that is, to the Gentiles) without the man with the Bible (the Jew) being present. The first was at Lystra, and his discussion there was cut short. Then we find him on Mars Hill where they asked questions, and Paul answered; this too was cut short. But one place, happily, where he was not cut short is in the first two chapters of the book of Romans. And there we find carried out exactly the same kind of “argumentation” that he began at Lystra and on Mars Hill.

Many Christians think that 1 Corinthians speaks against the use of the intellect. But it does not. What 1 Corinthians speaks against is a man’s pretending to be autonomous, drawing from his own wisdom and his own knowledge without recourse to the revelation of the Word of God. It is a humanistic, rationalistic intellectualism–a wisdom that is generated from man himself as opposed to the teaching of the Scripture–that we must stand against with all our hearts. Paul was against the early gnosticism, which said a man could be saved on the basis of such knowledge. Paul did answer questions. He answered questions wherever they arose.

Consider the ministry of our Lord Jesus Himself. What was His ministry like? He was constantly answering questions. Of course they were different kinds of questions from those which arose in the Greek and Roman world, and therefore His discussion was different. But as far as His practice was concerned, He was a man who answered questions, this Jesus Christ, this Son of God, this second person of the Trinity, our Savior and our Lord. But some one will say, “Didn’t He say that to be saved you have to be as a little child?” Of course He did. But did you ever see a little child who didn’t ask questions? People who use this argument must never have listened to a little child or been one! My four children gave me a harder time with their endless flow of questions than university people ever have. Jesus did not mean that coming as a little child simply meant making an upper-story leap. What Jesus was talking about is that the little child, when he has an adequate answer, accepts the answer. He has the simplicity of not having a built-in grid whereby, regardless of the validity of the answer, he rejects it. And that is what rationalistic man, humanistic man, does.

Christianity demands that we have enough compassion to learn the questions of our generation. The trouble with too many of us is that we want to be able to answer these questions instantly, as though we could take a funnel, put it in one ear and pour in the facts, and then go out and regurgitate them and win all the discussions. It cannot be. Answering questions is hard work. Can you answer all the questions? No, but you must try. Begin to listen with compassion. Ask what this man’s questions really are and try to answer. And if you don’t know the answer, try to go someplace or read and study to find the answer.

Not everybody is called to answer the questions of the intellectual, but when you go down to the shipyard worker you have a similar task. My second pastorate was with shipyard workers, and I tell you they have the same questions as the university man. They just do not articulate them the same way.

Answers are not salvation. Salvation is bowing and accepting God as Creator and Christ as Savior. I must bow twice to become a Christian. I must bow and acknowledge that I am not autonomous; I am a creature created by the Creator. And I must bow and acknowledge that I am a guilty sinner who needs the finished work of Christ for my salvation. And there must be the work of the Holy Spirit.

Nonetheless, what I am talking about is our responsibility to have enough compassion to pray and do the hard work which is necessary to answer the honest questions. Of course, we are not to study only cultural and intellectual issues. We ought to study them and the Bible and in both ask for the help of the Holy Spirit.

It is not true that every intellectual question is a moral dodge. There are honest intellectual questions, and somebody must be able to answer them. Maybe not everybody in your church or your young people’s society can answer them, but the church should be training men and women who can. Our theological seminaries should be committed to this too. It is part of what Christian education ought to be all about.

The Bible puts a tremendous emphasis on content with which the mind can deal. In 1 John we are told what we should do if a spirit or a prophet knocks on our door tonight. If a prophet or spirit knocks on your door, how do you know whether or not he is from God? I have a great respect for the occult, especially after the things we have seen and fought and wrestled against in L’Abri. If a spirit comes, how do you judge him? Or if a prophet comes, how do you judge him? John says, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world. By this know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God” (1 John 4:1-2).

Now that is a very profound answer; it has two halves. First, it means Jesus had an eternal preexistence as the second person of the Trinity, and then it means He came in the flesh. When a prophet or a spirit comes to you, the test of whether he should be accepted or rejected is not the experience that the spirit or prophet gives you. Nor is it the strength of the emotion which the spirit or the prophet gives you. Nor is it any special outward manifestations that the spirit or the prophet may give you. The basis of accepting the spirit or prophet – and the basis of Christian fellowship – is Christian doctrine. There is  no other final test. Satan can counterfeit and he will.

I am not speaking against emotion in itself. Of course there should be emotion. I am saying that you cannot trust your emotions or the strength of your emotions or the boost your emotions give you when you stand in the presence of the spirit or the prophet. This does not prove for one moment whether he is from God or the Devil, or whether your emotions are simply from within yourself. And the same is true with Christian fellowship. These are to be tested, says the Word of God, at the point at which the mind can work, and that is on the basis of Christian doctrine.

So there are two contents, the content of a clear doctrinal position and the content of honest answers to honest questions. Next I want to talk about two realities.

Rooted in Sound Doctrine

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

This is the first of four posts in a series titled Two Contents, Two Realities.  These posts are slightly edited excerpts of a paper delivered by Dr. Francis Schaeffer  as part of the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland.

As is often true for Schaeffer, his insights are timeless, and as pertinent today as they were a generation ago. 

******

The first content, if we want to see somethng profound happen in this generation, is clear doctrinal content concerning the central elements of Christianity. There is no use talking about meeting the threat of the coming time or fulfilling our calling in the twenty-first century unless we consciously help each other to have a clear doctrinal position. We must have the Courage to make no compromise with liberal theology and especially neo-orthodox existential theology.

Christianity is a specific body of truth; it is a system, and we must not be ashamed of the word system. There is truth, and we must hold that truth. There will be borderline things in which we have differences among ourselves, but on the central issues there  must be no compromise.

Evangelicals can fall into something which really is not very far from existential theology without knowing it. One form of such “evangelical existentialism” is the attitude, if not the words, “Don’t ask questions, just believe.” This sort of attitude was always wrong, but it is doubly wrong today when we are surrounded with a monolithic consensus which divides reason from non-reason and always puts religious things in the area of non-reason. We must call each other away from this idea. It is not more spiritual to believe without asking questions. It is not more biblical. It is less biblical and eventually it will be less spiritual, because the whole man will not be involved. Consequently, in our evangelism, in our personal work, in our young people’s work, in our ministry wherever we are, those of us who are preachers and are preaching, those of us who are teachers and are teaching, and those of us who are evangelists must be absolutely determined not to fall into the trap of saying or implying, “Don’t ask questions, just believe.” It must be the whole man who comes to understand that the gospel is truth and believes because he is convinced on the basis of good and sufficient reason that it is truth.

Moreover, we must be very careful to emphasize content in our messages. How much content will depend upon the people with whom we are working. In a university setting, the content will be slightly different than in a situation where people are not as educated. Nevertheless, whether we work with a man or woman who is not as educated or whether we work with an intellectual, in all instances the gospel we preach must be rich in content. Certainly, we must be very careful not to fall into the cheap solution (which seems so fascinating at first) of just moving people to make decisions without their really knowing what they are making a decision about. We in L’Abri have had people come to us who have “accepted Christ as Savior” but are not even sure that God exists. They have never been confronted with the question of the existence of God. The acceptance of Christ as Savior was a thing abstracted. It had an insufficient content. In reality, it was just another kind of trip.

Likewise, in a Christian school or college we can try just to religiously move the students on the basis of something apart from the intellect, separated from the academic disciplines and the whole of study. We must say no to this.

What we need to do is to understand our age to be an age of very subtle religious and political manipulation, manipulation by cool communication, communication without content. And as we see all these things, we must lean against them. We have a message of content; there is a system to Christianity. It is not only a system, true enough; it is not a dead scholasticism, true enough; but it is a system in that the person who accepts Christ as his Savior must do so in the midst of the understanding that prior to the creation of the world a personal God on the high level of Trinity existed. And if they “accept Christ as their Savior” and do not understand that God exists as an infinite-personal God, and do not understand that man has been made in the image of God and has value, and do not understand that man’s dilemma is not metaphysical because he is small but moral because man revolted against God in a space-time Fall, in all probability they are not saved. If we “evangelize” by asking for such “acceptance of Christ as Savior,” all we have done is to guarantee they will soon drift away and become harder to reach than ever. Not everybody must know everything – nobody knows everything; if we waited to be saved until we knew everything, nobody would ever be saved – but that is a very different thing from deliberately or thoughtlessly diminishing the content.

Another way to fall into an “evangelical existentialism” is to treat the first half of Genesis the way the existential theologian treats the whole Bible. The first half of Genesis is history, space-time history, the Fall is a space-time Fall, or we have no knowledge of what Jesus came to die for, and we have no way to understand that God is really a good God. Our whole answer to evil rests upon the historic, space-time Fall. There was a time before man revolted against God. The internal evidence of Genesis and the external evidences (given in the New Testament by the way the New Testament speaks of the first half of Genesis) show that the first half of Genesis is really meant to  be space-time history-that is, space and time, the warp and woof of history.

In relationship to this is the danger of diminishing the content of the gospel in a reverse fashion. Bible-believing Christians who stand against the liberal theologian when he would say there are no absolutes in the Bible can make the opposite mistake by adding other elements as though they were equally absolute. In other words, the absolutes of the Word of God can be destroyed in both directions. That is, the liberal theologian can say, “After all, there is no such thing as an absolute, and specifically the Bible does not give absolutes,” or the evangelical can reach over into the middle, class standards and say, “These standards are equal to the absolutes of the Word of God.”

The obvious illustration is how the church treats the counterculture person or a person dressed in a different way. Young people come to us at L’Abri from the ends of the earth, become Christians, and go home and then try to find a Bible-believing church that will accept them without all the change of life-style. I do not mean they try to retain a drug life or a promiscuous sex life which would be against the Word of God. I mean, for example, the way they dress or talk. It is one of my greatest sorrows that the evangelical church often will not accept the person with his lifestyle unless it fits into the middle-class norm in that particular geographical location. And unhappily we often do not realize what we have done when we do this. It is not only a lack of love. We have destroyed the absolutes of the Word of God by making something else equal to God’s absolutes.

If you ask me why the evangelical church has so often been weak in the question of race in the past, I think it was the same. 1  We were surrounded by a culture that had racial prejudices and which did not look at all men as equal, and we allowed this to infiltrate the church. We made taboos apart from and even against the Word of God, and we held them to be equal with the absolutes of the Bible. But to exalt a cultural norm to an absolute is even more destructive today because we are surrounded by a totally relativistic society. As we make other things equal to the absolutes of the Word of God, it may not be more sinful in the sight of God than it was in the past, but it is more destructive. Consequently, when we talk about content, we are talking about something very practical indeed. We must have a strong, strong doctrinal content.

And as we have a strong doctrinal content, we must practice the content, practice the truth we say we believe. We must exhibit to our own children and to the watching world that we take truth seriously. It will not do in a relativistic age to say that we believe in truth and fail to practice that truth in places where it may be observed and where it is costly. We, as Christians, say we believe that truth exists. We say we have truth from the Bible. And we say we can give that truth to other men in propositional, verbalized form and they may have that truth. This is exactly what the gospel claims and this is what we claim. But then we are surrounded by a relativistic age. Do you think for a moment we will have credibility if we say we believe the truth and yet do not practice the truth in religious matters? If we do not do this, we cannot expect for a moment that the tough-minded, twenty-first century young person (including our own young people) will take us seriously when we say, “here is truth” when they are surrounded by a totally monolithic consensus that truth does not exist.

Consider an example in the academic world. One girl who was teaching in one of the major universities of Britain was a real Christian and very bright. She was teaching in a sociology department whose head was a behaviorist, and he told her she had to teach in the framework of behaviorism or lose her post. Suddenly she was confronted with the question of the practice of truth. She said no, she could not teach behaviorism, and she lost her post. This is what I mean by practicing truth when it is costly. And this will come in many, many places and in many, many ways. It will come in the area of sexual life forms, being surrounded by permissive sexualists and asexuality. We must be careful by the grace of God to practice what we say the Bible teaches–the one-man, one-woman relationship–or we are destroying the truth that we say we believe. And this practicing will include church discipline where it is necessary.

But nowhere is practicing the truth more important than in the area of religious cooperation. If I say that Christianity is really eternal truth, and the liberal theologian is wrong–so wrong that he is teaching that which is contrary to the Word of God–and then on any basis (including for the sake of evangelism) I am willing publicly to act as though that man’s religious position is the same as my own, I have destroyed the practice of truth which my generation can expect from me and which it will demand of me if I am to have credibility. How will we have a credibility in a relativistic age if we practice religious cooperation with men who in their books and lectures make very plain that they believe nothing (or practically nothing) of the content set forth in Scripture?

Incidentally, almost certainly if we have a latitudinarianism in religious cooperation, the next generation will have a latitudinarianism in doctrine, and specifically a weakness toward the Bible. We are seeing this happen in parts of evangelicalism as well. We must have the courage to take a clear position.2

But let us beware. We certainly must not take every one of our small secondary distinctives and elevate them to be the point where we refuse to have fellowship on any level with those who do not hold them. It is the central things of the Word of God which make Christianity Christianity. These we must hold tenaciously, and, even when it is costly for us and even when we must cry, we must maintain that there is not only an antithesis of truth, but an antithesis that is observable in practice. Out of a loyalty to the infinite-personal God who is there and who has spoken in Scripture, and out of compassion for our own young people and others, we who are evangelicals dare not take a halfway position concerning truth or the practice of truth.

Thus, with regard to the first content there are three things to recognize: first, there must be a strong emphasis on content; second, there must be a strong emphasis on the propositional nature of the Bible, especially the early chapters of Genesis; and third, there must be a strong emphasis on the practice of truth. We can talk about methods, we can stir each other up, we can call each other to all kinds of action, but unless it is rooted in a strong Christian base in the area of content and the practice of truth, we build on sand and add to the confusion of our day.