Skip to main content

If Everything Is A Miracle, Nothing Is A...

Written by Rick Shrader

If Everything Is A Miracle, Nothing Is A Miracle

by Rick Shrader

It is the opinion of the contributors to this volume that a number of new authorities threaten modern evangelicalism directly. These authorities are often grounded in what the above confession calls “custom, or numbers, or human wisdom, or judgments . . . or visions, or miracles,” and they must be challenged when they stand against the authority of the Word and Gospel of Christ.”

John Armstrong, The Coming Evangelical Crisis1

“Miracle” could be the most over-used word in Christian language. Sometimes one feels like G.K. Chesterton, a nineteenth century Catholic (in a religion strewn with factitious miracles), who wrote, “A man in Voltaire’s time did not know what miracle he would next have to throw up. A man in our time does not know what miracle he will next have to swallow.”2 It was one thing to see the liberal thinkers of his day define everything as a miracle, but quite another to see Christians using the same terminology. Generally, when Christians are able to create their own “in-house” language without ever mixing it with the real world of language, everything is easier and no one has to work too hard. But this has rarely, if ever, been prudent, nor the way things really work.

It becomes too easy for us to adopt common language that is used by nearly every part of Christendom. To object to terminology has always been a difficult thing to do, even in a private conversation, much less in a more public forum. I think there is a reason why we let this kind of error pass: We have not fought the wars against liberalism and do not still have the sting of virulent unbelief in our memories. This was the tragic downfall of the post-conquest days in Judges 2:10-15. Those who had not fought with Joshua were quick to join in the worship act of the groves. Capitulation was easier than war.

As To Definition

It has not been the obvious definition of a miracle that has troubled many believers. J. Gresham Machen, in 1923, defined a miracle as, “A supernatural event that takes place by the immediate, as distinguished from the mediate, power of God.”3 Most agree that a miracle is an intervention of God into the normal process of the world. But notice how Machen carefully distinguishes between what he calls “mediate” and “immediate.” “Mediate” things are “natural” things i.e. the normal process of nature that God has established and sustains. “Immediate” things are interventions that, though not disrupting the normal process, slice through the normal world with rules of their own (or should I say God’s own).

Men like Machen were still fighting the liberals over whether or not God ever intervened into the world. The liberal could not believe that the Red Sea ever parted, or that a virgin birth ever took place, or that anyone ever came back from the dead bodily. Ironically, one method of attack for the liberal was to insist that everything God did in relation to the world ought to be called miraculous or natural (but not both) because God was responsible for it. But once they placed all of God’s working on a singular level, they did not have to distinguish one kind of event from another. All could either be called “miracle” or “natural” but not intervention, they are merely “God’s working.” Noted liberal Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) for example, works to eliminate miracles by arguing that “there is nothing more constant with God’s infinite greatness than His maintenance of the law of nature—which He Himself has established. There could be nothing more unworthy than to conceive of Him as interfering with their regular operation.”4

Unwittingly, this is what many believers today are doing by adopting the word “miracle” to describe anything God does in the world. To them a flower blooming, a baby being born, a body ridding itself of disease, or any number of “natural” things, are all called miracles. But if everything God is responsible for is a miracle, then everything in the world is a miracle, and then nothing is a miracle. Everything is one kind of thing. Call it what you will, but it will be very difficult to say miracles (walking on water, raising the dead, etc.), distinguished from other events, happened in any other way than what is “normal.”

Why can’t we be satisfied to believe God is responsible for nature, whether a flower or a live birth or a recovered body? Why do we need to give it a superlative title like “miracle?” In a day of growing skepticism we ought to be more careful with our logic and our vocabulary. For even the young liberal knows that if everything is a miracle, then nothing is a miracle. We have (like liberal “demythologizing” of old) “demiracle-ized” the Bible. As Henry Morris wrote, “The miraculous can only have significant testimonial value if it is extremely rare—so rare, in fact, as to be beyond reach of the types of rationalizations noted previously. Miracles which can be repeated at the whim of a practitioner . . . are not true miracles at all.”5

Miracles In This Age

Many older Christians stated plainly their belief that miracles have ceased in this age of grace. I, for one, can agree. Ernest Pickering writes, “This age of grace is not the age of miracles. No Bible-believing Christian doubts the ability of God to perform miracles; however, it is not part of His program today to do so. God authenticated the ministry of the apostles with ‘signs and wonders, and with divers miracles’ (Heb. 2:4), but when the apostolic age concluded, the accompanying signs ceased.”6 Donald Grey Barnhouse wrote, “There are people today who see something unusual happening and they say, ‘Oh, a miracle!’ It is not a miracle. It was either a ‘wonder’ or a ‘sign’ but it wasn’t a miracle, for a miracle is the work that is done by a man in order to demonstrate that he is God’s messenger and God does not approve men today by miracles. He approves men today by their faithfulness to the Word of God. That’s the only criterion or standard that we have to judge any individual.”7

In his classic book Miracles, C.S. Lewis distinguishes the natural from the miraculous by noting that many of Christ’s miracles were miracles of the “old creation” (chapter 15) and many were miracles of the “new creation” (chapter 16). Lewis saw that Jesus turning water into wine was a speeding up of the process of nature where the vine takes in water and produces grapes, hence a miracle of the “old creation.” Multiplying bread is the acceleration of the process that is always going on in the wheat field as seeds produce stalks which in turn produce grain which is made into bread. Walking on water is a miracle of the “new creation,” something we will be able to do in heaven, but which is uncharacteristic of anything within nature. Lewis, however, makes this distinction between nature and miracle because he realizes that such a distinction is vital. He doesn’t doubt God’s hand in a grape vine or a wheat field, but neither does he call it a miracle. If we call the wonder of nature a miracle because of its similarity, we allow no definitive way of designating biblical miracles.

Miracles And Prayer

Perhaps the most difficult area for believers to discern a miracle from God’s work in the natural realm, is the matter of prayer. Christian writers have made this distinction by noticing two or, at times, three categories of God’s sovereign control over His creation. Jack Cottrell, for example, makes three distinctions. The first is general providence, by which God governs the world by his permissive will. The second is special providence which is nonmiraculous intervention by answers to prayers and free-will acts of men. The third is the “most intense and least used” form: a miraculous intervention, or miracles which are outside the realm of natural events.8

C.S. Lewis makes only two categories of God’s actions: miraculous and providential (or natural). In defense of eliminating the middle category he writes, “Many pious people, however, speak of certain events as being ‘providential’ or ‘special providences’ without meaning that they are miraculous. This generally implies a belief that, quite apart from miracles, some events are providential in a sense that some others are not. . . . Unless we are to abandon the conception of Providence altogether, and with it the belief in efficacious prayer, it follows that all events are equally providential.”9 But whether we make two categories or three, miracles are always separated from prayer as to their nature and purpose.

As to prayer, I believe God gave every human being the “dignity of causality” (Lewis’ term) by granting us two powers to use as we live in His natural world. The first is the power of free-will decision making. We can choose to do something or not and the world will be different as we affect it with our actions. The second is the power of prayer. We can ask God to so construct the world that situations will turn out differently because of our request. Even a denial of our request is an answered prayer. We can be thankful always for all things because we know God has heard us and done what was best and right. (I like the old concept of “middle knowledge” but space does not permit further explanation.) In either case, our actions or our requests do not produce miraculous results, though they do produce results.

Miracles And The New Birth

An additional problem area is the new birth. Since man cannot produce his own salvation, is the regeneration of the Holy Spirit a miracle? Though I would not quibble over whether this is the exception to the rule, I do not see the need to call it a miracle. For one, salvation is a result of my prayer request—a result that God always answers in the affirmative. In addition we have a small note in the book of John that Jesus began his ministry of miracles in Cana when He turned the water into wine (John 2:11). Yet Jesus had called six of his disciples by that time and it seems that at least Andrew, if not Peter and John as well, had truly believed on Him. Also, Jesus had displayed His omniscience to Nathaniel but John doesn’t seem to recognize that as a category of miracle (it is simply a divine attribute).

The Cessation Of Miracles

I believe we can agree with our spiritual forefathers that the New Testament teaches that miracles (those “signs” given for a specific reason at a specific time) have ceased. Surely we believe that apostleship has ceased and we know that, as Paul wrote, “the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs and wonders and mighty deeds” (2 Cor 12:12). The Bible tells us that sign gifts have “ceased” and revelatory gifts have “vanished away” (1 Cor 13:8-13). We no longer need either (unless we walk by sight and not by faith.)

The writer of Hebrews, writing late in the first century, notes that salvation “first began to be spoken by the Lord (first generation), and was confirmed unto us (third generation) by them (apostles: second generation) that heard him; God also bearing them (second generation) witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit” (Heb 2:3-4). The miracle working ministry of Jesus was passed on from Him to the apostles but was not passed beyond that except by apostolic presence.

And Finally . . .

I started this article by quoting G.K. Chesterton, a Catholic who was tired of the constant claim to miracles in his Church. The problem in the Roman Church ought to teach us something about a lax use of the term “miracle.” Chesterton said in another book, “Indeed the educated Englishman of today may be said to have passed from an old fashion, in which he would not believe in any miracles unless they were ancient, and adopted a new fashion in which he will not believe in any miracles unless they are modern.”10 But as we see today, acquiescing to current usage solves nothing.

I have always lived with disagreement among brethren in this area. But disagreement within a doctrinal framework is one thing, and disagreement for the purpose of conciliation is another altogether. We stand to gain almost nothing by adopting the terminology of the miraculous. We stand to lose much more.

Footnotes:
 
1. John Armstrong, The Coming Evangelical Crisis (Chicago: Moody Press, 1996), 20.
2. G.K. Chresterton, St. Francis Of Assisi (New York: Image Books, 1990), 135.
3. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 99.
4. Quoted by James Thrower, Western Atheism (New York: Prometheus Books, 2000), 82.
5. Henry Morris, “Biblical Naturalism and Modern Science,” Vital Apologetic Issues (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1994), 55.
6. Ernest Pickering, The Tragedy of Compromise (Greenville: BJU Press, 1994), 102.
7. Donald Grey Barnhouse, Acts: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979), 30.
8. Jack Cottrell, “The Nature of the Divine Sovereignty,” The Grace of God and the Free Will of Man, Clark Pinnock, ed. (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1989), 112-113.
9. C.S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: Macmillan, 1960), 174.
10. G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993), 189.John Armstrong, The Coming Evangelical Crisis (Chicago: Moody Press, 1996), 20.

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

The Words Are Still What Count

Written by Rick Shrader

The Words Are Still What Count

by Rick Shrader

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,

Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said,
To you, who for refuge to Jesus have fled?

I’m late with this article. I have spent the first five days of November in Los Angeles teaching Postmodernism to Bible College students and I am writing this as I prepare to leave for Colorado. I thought I would indulge your patience with me this month as I try to explain a number of things I have seen and experienced in this great city.

I flew into LAX and was driven to a church in the inner city where I would speak in the Sunday evening service. Dr. R.L. Hymers, whom I had recently met, invited me to speak. Dr. Hymers is a native of Southern California and has ministered to the inner city for forty years. From his aging inner city building you can look at the front door of the new Staples Center where the Lakers and the Clippers both opened their seasons this week. If you turn the other way, you gaze upon a sea of chain linked fences and brick buildings connected with streets no one should be exploring at night. His services are translated into Spanish and Chinese, his people were warm and enthusiastic.

Late that night I was driven to Bellflower where Baptist Bible College West is housed although I stayed in a hotel near Knott’s Berry Farm. Los Angeles is an amazing city of mixed nationalities, diverse landscapes and cultures, and an overdose of simulacra. It’s a city of stark reality in its mass of humanity, and yet (as virtually every large city) a buffet of non-reality greets you at every corner! My hotel lobby was designed to make me feel I was in the South Pacific—but I wasn’t; the restaurants are designed to make patrons feel they are in Mexico, or China, or Italy—but they aren’t; Knott’s and Disneyland are designed to make visitors feel they are in Frontier Land, or Tomorrow Land, or living like the Pirates of the Caribbean—but they aren’t; arcades, sports arenas and even malls are there to allow people to escape the realities of life, but they never do. Always, usually a few blocks away, is crime, poverty, and average people living real life.

Beyond the obvious pastiche, lie more subtle forms of non-reality. Commercials (in a myriad of media) lure us to buy things we don’t need by appealing to our base desires which we ought to avoid. And they do it with the obvious lie. Flashing neon lights are always brighter than what they advertise; television commercials are “made-up” far beyond what their product could possibly deliver; announcements about products are put to music and song in a way no normal person would ever act (I refuse to sing and dance and jump over the hood of my car while I drink my Diet Coke); and I really doubt it would be possible to find as many beautiful people in any bar as they always have in every beer commercial!

People today drive to work listening to music electronically created, in a luxury car they have to buy on credit, to make a product they don’t care a thing about, to sell to people who don’t need it, with advertising that creates the obvious lie. All so they can drive back home, go out to eat at a foreign cuisine restaurant, walk through a theme park mall, and go home to watch The Third Rock From The Sun, or perhaps a presidential “debate,” and end the evening with Dan Rather telling them that Madonna has gotten involved in a local charity. The kids are rushed to bed early so they can get up in time to eat their Cap’n Crunch cereal.

Now am I really so cynical about life or is there a point to this? Yes, there is a point (at least a good question). How do we deliver a 2000 year old message which is a Truth “once delivered to the saints,” preserved in a pre-electronic, non-visual medium, to a culture like this? How is a generation of people who have lost the distinction between reality and non-reality, lying and honesty, truth and fiction, going to repent for real sins, believe in the real miracle of Christ’s atonement, and accept it as any different than last night’s ten second commercial? A lot of what people know about Christianity comes to them in commercial form anyway. A thinking sinner may become as disgusted with the church billboard purporting “Experiencing Jesus” as he is with the car ad telling him to “Experience the Difference.”

As I sit and look down Beach Boulevard at the signs, the billboards, the neon lights, the magazine and newspaper stands, and I think of my experience this week, I am convinced the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ still must be communicated in the way it was given—with words. In spite of my subject matter this week (postmodernism’s grammatology of differance—the unique ability of today’s person to “defer” all statements of truth to the impossibility of knowing any historical truth), the gospel will still be communicated face to face, with a verbal explanation of the Word of God.

If image is everything in our society, it can be anything fake. If atmosphere is enhancing, it can enhance the unreal. But the gospel is a reality like crime, poverty or the living room of real people. It can’t be sold with advertising or cute buttons, nor agreed to because of beautiful people and silly songs. It must be reasoned on, wrestled with, submitted to and incorporated within. Whether we read it, write it, speak it, hear it, ponder it, memorize it, lose it or find it, it comes to us the way it was given by God—in words. It engages the mind and demands a decision: right or wrong, truth or lie, faithful or fraud, yes or no.

Among all the simulacra, pastiche and kitsch of a city like Los Angeles, the only way I could be a steward of the gospel has been to open my mouth and speak real words to people in real situations of life. Whether a young man in the seat next to me on the plane, a hotel clerk, a waiter or a homeless man leaning on a chain link fence, it takes words, not signs and symbols, to tell the reality of sin and salvation. Perhaps we begin to believe that the gospel will actually go to people like that through some popular hyper-real mode. It won’t. It can’t be believed. It is more real than that. And thank heavens! Who would want it?

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

The Absent Second Person

Written by Rick Shrader

The Absent Second Person

by Rick Shrader

If eternity and universality is to be found, not in dogma, but in worship—that means, in a common form of worship which will mean to the worshippers anything that they like to fancy, then the result seems to me to be likely to be the most corrupt form of ritualism.                T.S. Eliot1

G.K. Chesterton wrote, “There is something purely acoustic in much of that agnostic sort of reverence.”2 Truly, much of today’s worship is done simply as a listener, as one standing in the balcony of a large auditorium and observing the worshipers down below. In a sort of “acoustical” way he is agreeing with what he sees, hearing the sounds and seeing the sights, but is only participating vicariously as a kind of a “virtual” worshiper.

In language we have first, second and third “persons” (I, you, he). Each of those has a singular and a plural (I & we, you & you, he & they). We speak to ourselves or about ourselves in the first person, we speak about someone who is not there in the third person, but we only speak face to face in the second person. Most of us are selfish conversationalists using only the first person, or we are gossips using only the third person, but a good conversationalist mostly uses the second person

Suppose you are the one in the balcony listening to someone speaking on the main floor. You may speak in the first person (“I like that”) but you are only speaking to yourself. You may speak in the third person (“He makes sense”) but you are not talking to the speaker. In order to speak to the speaker in the second person (“You are right”) you must be on the main floor in front of the speaker.

Now suppose you are perfectly content to remain in the balcony but still want to speak in the second person. You could visualize yourself to be on the main floor, standing in front of the speaker, speaking face to face. Now in this “virtual” way, you can watch yourself speaking in person to the speaker while all the time remaining removed from the actual conversation. I think this is what we often do in church. We watch ourselves worship. We may even speak as though we were there. But we are all the time safely keeping our distance.

Rather than entering into the worship act, we may describe it all in the third person. J.S. Whale said, “Instead of putting off our shoes from our feet because the place we stand is holy ground, we are taking nice photographs of the burning bush from suitable angles.”3 Perhaps this is what Tozer meant when he said, “I believe the very last thing God desires is to have shallow-minded and worldly Christians bragging about Him.”4 Surely God tires of our remote conversations in the third person (“He is a great God,” rather than “You are a great God”).

But I think the virtual first person is more subtle than the removed third person. This is a virtual world where kids grow up in the arcades “getting into” all sorts of games that, of course, they are not actually doing. Sometimes in our churches, when we sing songs with books or overheads, piano or other instruments, I wonder how often we are merely “experiencing the moment,” kind of watching ourselves do it, but are less than cognizant of what we just did.

We have a modern example. “Ethnology” is a popular field of Sociology. An ethnologist is one who goes to study a particular culture in its own habitat. The ethnologist must sit where they sit, wear what they wear, eat what they eat. In this way he “experiences” their culture while all the time remaining a guest among them. He is not really one of them for shortly he will go home to report about what he saw. His participation was real, but he was not really one of them. Ethnology is so popular today that television reporters also become ethnologists. They rush to the scene, especially that of a national tragedy, and become “one” with the people involved. You may see a reporter clad in sea-going garments, clinging to a light pole while a hurricane blows around him. He is being pummeled by the rain and wind; he is shouting into the camera; he is almost in agony; but he has now qualified himself to tell us about what is happening to the people who live there. But he is only a virtual participant. He will soon leave and go home. But he thinks, and the viewer thinks, that he has experienced a hurricane.

We may fall into this trap, this worship of worship, in a number of ways. Writing on Psalm 100, John Calvin said, “Every man makes a god of himself, and virtually worships himself, when he ascribes to his own power what God declares belongs to Him alone.”5 My favorite cartoon from a Christian magazine was of a soloist standing on a stage with a microphone in his hand, the spotlight squarely on him, while he prefaced his song by saying, “This song means nothing to me personally but it’s a wonderful showcase for my voice.”

Similarly, Albert Mohler wrote, “Although worship may be contemporary and remain authentic, it cannot be “seeker-oriented” and remain true to the biblical concept of genuine worship. True worship focuses on God—our gracious, loving holy Lord—the Trinitarian God who delights in the praises of His people.”6 Mohler is not knocking valid attempts to reach out to lost people. He is expressing concern about allowing people to worship in the first person, even virtually, who don’t know God in the second person.

Writing on the Psalms also, C.S. Lewis wrote of the worship act, “No sooner is it possible to distinguish the rite from the vision of God than there is a danger of the rite becoming a substitute for, and a rival to, God Himself. Once it can be thought of separately, it will; and it may then take on a rebellious, cancerous life of its own.”7 How else could Lucifer deviate from the blessedness of the heavenly Presence into the selfishness expressed in the first person, “I will ascend into the heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High” (Isa 14:13-14). Paul was not amiss in his concern for the Corinthians, with their over-emphasis on experience, to warn, “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Cor 11:3). It may be human nature, that the more sensory we become in our worship, the more synthetic we are.

Ironically, there is one place where we ought to worship God as much in the first person as in the second person and that is in prayer. There we are instructed to confess our sins, to ask for our daily bread, to seek His will for our lives. How often do we catch ourselves telling God, in the second person, things He already knows? “You know, Lord, that people are lost,” “You have said, Lord, that we ought to go.” As if He has forgotten!

Isn’t it true also that much of our public prayer life is virtual? “Yes, I am praying for you.” “Let’s remember our dear sister in prayer as she goes through this time of trial.” But do we actually enter our prayer closets, get down on our knees and plead to God for her? Do we make lists for prayer meetings of all of the church’s needs and then take them home and attach them to our refrigerator door so that we are reminded of them as we pass by?

Tozer wrote, “The heresy of Samaritanism—the practice of picking out what we like to worship and rejecting what we do not like—is widespread.”8 I don’t think a saint, standing before the throne of God Almighty, will pick and choose what is appropriate worship. Rather, only the redeemed in heaven (not even the angels) can sing in the second person, “Thou are worthy . . . For thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” (Rev 5:9). And no redeemed saint will be sitting in the balcony watching!

Notes:
1. T.S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1949) 65.
2. G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993) 24.
3. Quoted by Robert Wenz, Room For God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994) 195.
4. A.W. Tozer, Whatever Happened To Worship? (Camp Hill, PA: Christian Pub., 1985) 122.
5. John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentary, Vol VI (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981) 84.
6. Albert Mohler, “Evangelical: What’s in a Name?” The Coming Evangelical Crisis (Chicago: Moody, 1996) 40.
7. C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1958) 48.
8. Tozer, 42.
 
 

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

Generic Christianity

Written by Rick Shrader

Generic Christianity

by Rick Shrader

[Real] Christianity seldom occupies the attention of the bulk of nominal Christians. Thus we may expect them to be ignorant also of its tenets. They will be acquainted merely with those doctrines and principles that the law of the land commonly holds or sanctions. But whatever is unique in real Christianity and should be habitually kept in mind, this men will consider less and less, until it is almost wholly forgotten.

William Wilberforce, 18291

Tozer wrote, “In many churches Christianity has been watered down until the solution is so weak that if it were poison it would not hurt anyone, and if it were medicine it would not cure anyone.”2 It is generic Christianity! Any version will do, any level of commitment will suffice, any doctrinal system is sufficient. And why? Because the highest goal we have for Christianity is to mend broken homes, clean up society, reform broken lives, put God back into schools, and generally lift the moral level of mankind enough to alleviate some of its pain and suffering.

In our Denver paper last Sunday, the Knight Ridder News Service ran a column titled, “The moral life and TV’s ‘The Simpsons’: Despite continuing controversy, the show’s full of Christian ideals.” The article explains how the old TV show supposedly contained many Christian ideals about family and morals. > Not long ago the Associated Press ran an article about a Christian minister in Alabama who teaches a Bible class called “Finding the Way Back to Mayberry.” As he shows reruns of the Andy Griffith Show, the minister proclaims that he “sees God in Aunt Bee’s nurturing, in Andy’s wise counsel and Opie’s innocence.” Because the subject is so appealing, attendance at his church has grown over 200. >Many are talking now about the new “God speaking” billboard campaign which is running all over the country. Black and white billboards with a message such as “I love you. I love you. I love you. —God” One billboard says, “Keep using my name in vain. I’ll make rush hour longer.—God”

If Christianity is true because it works, perhaps Mormonism is more true! The 1999 Princeton Review of Colleges just reported that BYU is the least partying school in the USA. The Mormons are well known for their moral effect on cultures and societies. In a consumer-oriented culture, these may be better reasons for becoming a convert than the real message of Christianity.

The real message of Christianity has never been as popular with the world. But the generic version is popular with nominal Christians and non-Christians alike. It allows each person to keep his own dignity, his own personal desires and his own agenda in life. It attaches nicely to these, giving the person’s whole life a religious purpose as well as personal goals and achievements. Being a Christian, then, sheds all the negatives of repentance, sacrifice and especially suffering, and settles for the general rising standard of a good society where all faiths and religions contribute equally to a better moral climate.

In this generic form of Christianity, our positional and final sanctifications are emphasized almost to the exclusion of any progressive effort, which is now firmly relegated to the back-woods of “legalism.” The natural growth pattern of young person to young adult, and young adult to older person, is sanctification enough. The selfishness seen in a young person’s wilder life usually changes into young adult interests and we all rejoice in such “Christian growth.” The older Christians’ willingness to give the direction and leadership to young adults with as little resistance as possible is praised as wisdom and lauded by the young adults. Thus the natural aging pattern is also praised as wonderful “Christian growth.”

Is the Christian message to sinners unique from any other offer of religion or reform? Is there more to it than just belief in God, desire for happiness, good citizenship, spiritual dieting, exercising and crafting? Perhaps G.K. Chesterton was right when he said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”3 C.S. Lewis said, “if we do not believe it, let us be honest and relegate the Christian faith to museums. If we do, let us give up the pretense that it makes no difference.”4 That is, that the Christian faith is generic, in the same field with all “faith communities.” It may succeed where others fail, and it may fail where others succeed. But if it lifts people to higher spiritual levels, it is true enough.

Mahatma Gandhi said that he was never interested in knowing whether Jesus really lived, the Sermon on the Mount would be just as true to him if Jesus never existed.5 That is pure liberalism and yet it may be just as descriptive of many generic Christians today as it was of the Hindu leader. Do we believe Christianity because it has utilitarian value to society, or because its doctrines are true? In 1923, J. Gresham Machen wrote,

Christianity will combat Bolshevism; but if it is accepted in order to combat Bolshevism, it is not Christianity: Christianity will produce a unified nation, in a slow but satisfactory way; but if it is accepted in order to produce a unified nation, it is not Christianity: Christianity will produce a healthy community; but if it is accepted in order to produce a healthy community, it is not Christianity: Christianity will promote international peace; but if it is accepted in order to promote international peace, it is not Christianity. Our Lord said: ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” But if you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness in order that all those other things may be added unto you, you will miss both those other things and the Kingdom of God as well.6

Notes:
1. William Wilberforce, Real Christianity (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1997) 100.
2. A.W. Tozer, Worship and Entertainment (Camp Hill, Penn: Christian Pub, 1997) ix.
3. G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With The World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994) 37.
4. C.S. Lewis, The Weight Of Glory (New York: Macmillan, 1980) 116.
5. Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1995) 46.
6. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977) 152.
 

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

A Harp, A Bowl, and A Crown

Written by Rick Shrader

A Harp, A Bowl, and A Crown

by Rick Shrader

Life’s day will soon be o’er, all storms forever past,

We’ll cross the great divide to glory, safe at last;

We’ll share the joy of heav’n—a harp, a home, a crown,

The tempter will be banished, we’ll lay our burden down

 

It will be worth it all, when we see Jesus

Life’s trials will seem so small, when we see Christ;

One glimpse of His dear face, all sorrow will erase,

So bravely run the race, till we see Christ.

 

I have often said to the people I pastor, we do not come together to worship, we are worshipers who come together. Sunday simply reveals what we already are. John Flavel, the Puritan, said, “Carnal men rejoice carnally, and spiritual men should rejoice spiritually.”1 The Sunday services won’t change us much. Tozer wrote, “If you cannot worship the Lord in the midst of your responsibilities on Monday, it is not very likely that you were worshiping on Sunday.”2 In an age like ours, we are easily drawn in to a spirit of symbolism over substance. We are too used to seeing and hearing the “spin” put on an account to bother about checking for reality. A person who spends multiple hours each week watching non-reality on a screen, is not likely to be bothered much by non-reality for one hour on Sunday morning. As a matter of fact, he may prefer it.

However, our biggest shock in worship is yet ahead. When we are ushered into the throne room of God, with its crystal sea and rainbow covering, its cubical creatures and numberless angels, and most of all, Him from whose face heaven and earth flee, then we will discover heaven’s reality and our own regrets. I wonder if it has occurred to us that we are only training for that service. Rebecca Merrill Groothuis wrote, “Most of the skills we learn in order to get along successfully in this life will be of no use in heaven…But when we invest ourselves in learning to worship, we are making an investment in a skill that will be essential throughout eternity.”3 There is no greater primer to worship than Revelation 4 and 5. In it we have a description of three worship tools with which we ought to be practicing.

When Esther Rusthoi penned the words “A harp, a home, a crown,” she no doubt was thinking of our mansion prepared for us, and two well-known instruments of heavenly worship, the harp and crown. Revelation includes a third instrument for worship and leaves the dwelling place for later. I will use the biblical order of Revelation 4 & 5.

1. The Crowns (Rev 4:10)

When the heavenly creatures give glory and honor to God, the twenty four elders (I take to be representative of the bride in heaven after the rapture) cast their crowns before the throne and sing, “Thou art worthy.” Twice crowns were mentioned in the letters to the seven churches, each time to churches which received no rebuke from Christ. Smyrna was to be faithful unto death and they would receive the crown of life (2:10). Philadelphia was to hold fast to their faithfulness so that they did not lose their crown (3:11). Evidently, they were to desire the use of their crowns as instruments of worship when they finally, after much agony, reached heaven.

Crowns are rewards for how we run the race of Christian service (see 2 Tim 4:6-8). The less self-centered our service is, and the more God-centered (precious stones, not wood, hay, or stubble), the greater our ability will be to worship in the heavenly service.

2. The Harps (Rev 5:8, 14:2, 15:2)

To every one of the twenty four elders is given a harp, a stringed instrument with which to play and sing. The only song played on this instrument is the song of the redeemed, “for thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood” (5:9; see also 14:3). In chapter 5, the elders play and sing; in chapter 14 John hears “the voice of harpers harping with their harps”; and in chapter 15, those “who had gotten the victory over the beast” sing with “the harps of God.” Neither the angels nor the creatures are allowed to sing the song of the redeemed. Heavenly praise for salvation is done only by the redeemed about redemption.

There could not be a selfish note in the heavenly chorus. Unlike so much singing today, our heavenly singing will be only of the Lamb. The great song-writer, P.P. Bliss once said, “This singing and talking about the Good News of a present, perfect, free salvation and justification by faith is so popular and attractive, I do not believe I shall ever find time for any else. It seems to me it is needed. How much of everything else we hear preached, and how little Gospel.”4

3. The Bowls (Rev 5:8, 8:3)

The elders are also given “vials” or bowls, “full of odors, which are the prayers of saints.” In chapter 8, the angels mix their own incense with the prayers from the saints’ bowls and cast them to the earth, the effect of which is catastrophic (see 8:3-5). Our prayers thus become an integral part of heavenly worship, equal to the crowns we wear and the harps with which we sing. Are our prayers as selfish as our works and our singing? Tozer wrote, “How many hours of prayer are wasted beseeching God to bless the projects that are geared to the glorification of little men.”5 How little do we truly wait on and worship God in an attitude of prayer!

T.S. Eliot once wrote, “A religion requires not only a body of priests who know what they are doing, but a body of worshippers who know what is being done.”6 If earthly worship is merely the tuning period before the heavenly orchestra plays, we may have to ask the Conductor for extra time to find the right pitch.

 

Rick Shrader

 

Notes:
1. John Flavel, “A Coronation Sermon,” Orations from Homer To Mckinley, IV (New York: Collier, 1902) 1599.
2. A.W. Tozer, Whatever Happened To Worship? (Camp Hill, Penn: Christian Pub, 1985) 42.
3. Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, “Putting Worship in the Worship Service,” Douglas Groothuis, Christianity That Counts (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994) 75.
4. Quoted by E. Wayne Thompson & David L.Cummins, This Day In Baptist History(Greenville: BJU Press, 1993) 546.
5. A.W. Tozer, Born After Midnight (Harrisburg: Christian Publications, 1959) 58.
6. T.S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949) 96.

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

Our Daily Reading

Written by Rick Shrader

Our Daily Reading

by Rick Shrader

Special Note: Debra Conley is a regular contributor to Aletheia as the creator of “The Little Corner” (Now called “From the Catbird Seat”).  Mrs. Conley is a veteran English and Literature teacher in the Atlanta area. She has published several articles in magazines and journals and works as a proof-reader for text-book publishers. In addition, she happens to be the only daughter of the editor’s parents.

I have some helpful suggestions for developing readers of you and your children. Some of my ideas and philosophies are a result of raising my own children, both of whom are avid readers, and my twenty-five years of classroom experience. Some of my advice comes from a book I recommend to all new parents: Read To Me: Raising Kids Who Love To Read by Bernice E. Cullinan. This great little book is packed with sensible approaches and even includes reading lists selected for each age group. I readily ordered this scholastic publication from www.Amazon.com for only $4.99!

Much success in cultivating a reader starts with a daily pattern. Even before your child is old enough to learn to read, he should be read to. It was a habit for me (thanks to my parents!), so whatever I was reading, I just read it to them. I could make Michener sound as funny and interesting as Dr. Zeuss. The point is that daily reading must be as much of a habit as brushing your teeth. Of course, I agree with the experts that this time should be a relaxed atmosphere free of television or any interruptions. Whatever you make important, your children will likely see as worthwhile also.

Another factor to consider in developing young readers is the adult example. Do your children see you reading? The old adage “Monkey see, monkey do” is certainly true of children. Let them see that reading every day is an “adult thing.” They all try to be like adults! Ask yourself how much importance your home places on reading for everyone. Besides seeing each of you read every day, do they hear or participate in a discussion of what you are reading? Is it treated as an integral part of adult life, or just something for the little people?

Do you have a reader-friendly home? Look around your home. Is the majority of reading material an age 5 or younger level? What is the proportion of grown-up to children’s books? How about periodicals? Growing up in my home meant books and reading material in every room! Reading by the adults was never restricted to one area. Think about the possibility that you save your reading time for after the kids are in bed (for your own relaxation!) and therefore neglect to set the open example they need to see. You may need to adjust your schedule to include fifteen or more minutes of reading while they are up.

Reading can be fun in a way that helps a toddler develop other skills. Any teacher will tell you that reading is a direct link to skilled writing and vocabulary development. As you read, whether to yourself or with your child, do you take time to get a dictionary and look up words you do not know? Do you study the diagrams and maps, trying to explain them out loud? I made my children keep a written list of new words we looked up. This can introduce them to a link between reading and writing. As they mature and learn to write, they can put the new word in a sentence. Does your child know that information other than word definitions can be found in the dictionary? He can find what his name means, a list of units of measure (is he as tall as a yard yet?), foreign words and phrases, symbols for math and sciences, correct forms for writing letters, and of course, geographical places located and described. Keep your dictionary close to the reading area!

For clues as to when your child is ready for certain levels of reading, please check the book, Read To Me, referred to earlier. Also, consider other problems. The most common complaint from parents is that their child’s attention span will not allow for reading. Watch your child when something obviously captivates him. Clock how long he pays rapt attention to a certain toy, game, or activity. Then try to connect his reading material to the same object (trains) or activity (a circus show on TV). If he begins to say “car” every time he sees one, get him a book about cars.

Does he spend his concentration on items he take apart, assembles, toys that make noise or have bright colors? Does he like animals? There are so many books that imitate these sounds, colors, or movements. There are even books that have music tapes with them, flash cards (you can make your own) and every sort of pop-out or moving part.

An activity I used with my children was to make flash cards of their favorite words, or of their favorite animals and their sounds. Then I laminated the cards so that the child could handle them often. When we reached a certain level of skill, I made “books” from these cards, letting them help me put words and objects together to create a story. Matilda the Loose Meatball was the all-time favorite, and it was created entirely by us.

I also suggest making colorful, laminated flash cards of the basic reading sounds (most can be found in workbooks available at any store). Cut out the associated picture that comes with each sound, then tie them together with yarn or whatever. Let them be a part of your child’s toy box.

Remember that small elements of reading can become a part of every day. Your child can help you spot the caveats in the small fine print of grocery coupons and store item labels. He can help you read road signs and maps, then read a book about that very place. I will never forget the year my dad let me plan the family vacation. He gave me the basic destination and how many miles we could travel each day. The rest was up to me! I was twelve. I read for a month! I poured over campground books, maps, travel brochures, even the AAA bathroom lists! We got there (Yellowstone and the Tetons) and back using almost every part of my project! The only part he scrapped was my plan to leave my little brother Joe with the Indians.

Keep a Rand McNally or similar travel book in your car. Most of the new ones have special information about cities, national parks, historical sights, even diagrams of airports. Does your child even know what a map legend is?

Remember. Setting the example is the most important part. Let your child see that reading is an “adult thing.” Imitation is not just the most sincere form of flattery, it is the most common method of learning in the early years. Let your monkey see what you want your monkey to do!

Morals and  Values

One of the major contributing factors in the decline of our society is the substitution of “values” for “morals.” It is most noticeable in the labeling of activities and viewing materials for our children and adults. By this slight-of-hand, something can be considered right for an older person but wrong for a younger person. The error in this should be obvious to anyone who knows a holy God. Why are profanity, nudity and violence wrong for children but right for adults? At precisely what age or time does something immoral become moral?

Our society prefers “values” because the word connotes relativity (an object’s “value” is determined by the market price). “Value” has nothing to do with right and wrong, only what society does, says or allows. This relativism permeates our culture. I remember as a teenager when my high school decided to have a smoking area outside the back door. I couldn’t explain it, but I wondered how smoking could be wrong in one place but right in another. Similarly, the parent who scolds his child for using a bad word and then uses it in an adult setting, just because he is an adult, has succumbed to the values of a relativistic society.

The atheist only has values, he cannot believe in morality. Neither can he insist that his values be incumbent on anyone else. But morals can’t bend nor change from one situation to the next. They are as absolute as the Moral Giver. Are they confining? Are they judgmental? Yes and no. Yes, morals give us a straight edge with which to judge and align our values. But no, morals are rather liberating! They tell us how much grace is needed and available in our sinful world. And in a culture where sin abounds, grace does much more abound!

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

We Are Also History Revisionists!

Written by Rick Shrader

We Are Also History Revisionists!

by Rick Shrader

St. Amant: “The historian can never allow the message of history to create historical facts. Nor can he ignore or distort those facts in the interest of his own bias.”1

Antiphon: “Be not so unjust; rather leave something for that other witness, Time, who aids the zealous seekers of eternal truth.”2

One of the primary tools of our postmodern culture is our ability to reconstruct history for our own purposes. Dr. Peter Gibbon of Harvard University, travels the country lecturing on this destructive phenomenon. He says, “I remind my audiences that Thomas Jefferson is now thought of as the president with the slave mistress, and Mozart as the careless genius who liked to talk dirty. . . . Revisionist historians present an unforgiving, skewed picture of the past. Biographers are increasingly hostile toward their subjects. Social scientists stridently assert that human beings are not autonomous but are conditioned by genes and environment.”3

This art of reconstructing the facts of history is properly called Deconstructionism and its basic hermeneutic is suspicion. The postmodernist suspects the evil intent (usually the exercise of power of the advantaged over the disadvantaged) of the writer of history who, no doubt, wrote his account as he wanted to see it. The modern reader, therefore, has every right to rearrange the “facts” the way he/she sees them or would like them to be. This becomes even more sinister when we see the same postmodernist justifying lying for the same reason. All we know about the way something happened is the way someone wants to remember it. Therefore, my account (lie) of the same incident is equally valid to anyone else’s including the eye-witness! If this is the way our generation is viewing history and truth (and believe me, it is!), then why not forget reading and spend your time watching TV, videos and computer games? Those accounts of reality are as real to the viewer as actual history!

My proposition in this article is that many Christians today, ourselves products of this subtle inculcation, do a similar slight-of-hand with the Scriptures in order to make them yield to us what we want to find there. It is always easier to see faulty logic in others when we ignore our own.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “What we see when we think we are looking into the depths of Scripture may sometimes be only the reflection of our own silly faces.”4 If, when we look into Scripture, we see what we have wanted to see and miss the intent of the speaker and author, then we have rewritten the sacred history as well.

Revisionists see history as a scrabble game of words. No attention need be paid the order and resultant meaning of the old text. The words are merely left to us to unscramble and rearrange in an order that will gain us points. Perhaps the ultimate example of this game today is the so-called Bible Code. By rearranging all the consonants of the Hebrew Bible with a computer, the user can come up with any order of words and meanings he wants. You would think we would debunk it all immediately! But our generation takes it seriously because it is born out of our basic revisionist hermeneutic.

J.I. Packer wrote, “Scripture can only rule us so far as it is understood, and it is only understood so far as it is properly interpreted. A misinterpreted Bible is a misunderstood Bible.”5 How often do we play spiritual scrabble with the words of Scripture? We merely comb its pages looking for the right words that will support the subject we are attempting to validate. When we find them, we preach our “conclusion” with authority because it was found in the Bible!

The humorous old story of the man who wanted to prove suicide is still instructive. He took three phrases that seemed handy and put them together so that they read, “Judas went and hanged himself.” “Go thou and do likewise.” “What thou doest, do quickly.” Of course, his conclusion has no more biblical authority than Romeo and Juliet though the words are the very words of Scripture. I once heard a man preach a farcical sermon on the blood of Jesus washing us white as snow from the poem “Mary had a little lamb.” It contained a lamb and its fleece was white as snow. It went with Mary wherever she chose to go. Though the meaning of redemption is true, the poem never intended it.

While reading the gospel of Mark recently, I was reminded of hearing a well-known evangelist preach on changing methodologies from Mark 2:21 & 22. This is the statement by Jesus of not putting new cloth on old garments, and not putting new wine in old wineskins. The evangelist’s point was that new times require new methodologies even though the message remains old. Now, I may agree or disagree with the evangelist’s proposition, but I have never gotten any impression that Jesus was talking about such a thing! I only think about it when reading the text because of what I heard the evangelist say, not from coming to such a conclusion from a normal reading of the story.

Whether you agree with me or not about that particular interpretation, do you not agree that we often use the words of Scripture to say what we want to be said even though the writer or speaker of the text never intended to be teaching it? I think a serious question at this point would be: can we use the Scripture in such a way with any promise of power and blessing from the Holy Spirit? Are we not actually rewriting what He wrote though we are using His very words? Isn’t this the same revision of historical text as we see the unbelievers doing around us today?

Blaise Pascal wrote, “Anyone who wishes to give the meaning of Scripture without taking it from Scripture is the enemy of Scripture.”6 One day there will appear many who said and did a lot in Jesus’ name whom He never knew. Words will be no substitute for proper meaning.

Notes:
1. Quoted by Wm. Estep, The Anabaptist Story (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996) 272.
2. Antiphon, Orations: Homer to Mckinley Vol. I (New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1902) 63.
3. Peter Gibbon, “The End of Admiration” Imprimis, May 1999.
4. C.S. Lewis, Reflections of the Psalms (New York: Harcourt & Brace, 1958) 121.
5. J.I. Packer, Truth and Power (Wheaton: Harold Shaw, 1996) 137.
6. Blaise Pascal, Pensees (New York: Penguin Books, 1966) 104.

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

Chapter and Verse

Written by Rick Shrader

Chapter and Verse

by Rick Shrader

In the area of morality we find exactly the same thing. Man cannot escape the fact of the motions of a true right and wrong in himself; not just a sociological or hedonistic morality, but true morality, true right and wrong. And yet beginning with himself he cannot bring forth absolute standards and cannot even keep the poor relative ones he has set up.

Francis Schaeffer1

More and more we are hearing that moral wrongs are only those things that are specifically mentioned in a specific chapter and verse in the Bible. All else, we are told, is morally neutral and amounts only to personal preferences and cultural or religious mores. Sure, one thing may be better than another in a given situation, but unless the Bible specifically mentions the thing in question, it cannot truly be said to be moral or immoral. So we hear it being said.

Such an idea is already having devastating effects on our society as well as on our Christian faith. It is no wonder that people are offended at the suggestion that something they are doing may be wrong. Even Christians are retorting with “show me chapter and verse” when confronted with bad habits, suggestive language, questionable viewing material as well as extra-biblical beliefs that are not specifically named in the Scripture. I suppose they are also offended when a preacher applies Scripture to today’s life situations.

The implications of such thinking are sobering. If nothing is moral (positive or negative) unless it is specifically mentioned in the Bible, the world is basically unaffected by sin, except for the ones God has labeled for us in the Bible. The whole world is basically neutral toward right and wrong. In addition, man is basically innocent until God pronounces him sinful by naming certain things he is doing as sin. Until that time, his actions are not immoral and therefore are not an offense to God. Even the Rich Young Ruler was morally just because he had kept the law from his youth. It was only Jesus’ command to sell all he had that, at that moment, made him become disobedient to God. If only specific things mentioned in specific chapters and verses constitute moral behavior, churches ought to quit wasting money on a preacher who, after he reads a text, begins to add his own words, thoughts and applications. They ought to just play audio tapes of the Bible and leave it at that.

When the Bible makes statements such as “Abstain from all appearance of evil,” how is the reader to understand it? Is he to search his concordance for some references to “appearance” and “sin” in the same sentence with “adultery” or perhaps “murder?” How about when Paul tells Timothy to “depart from iniquity?” Is Timothy only obligated to depart from things that are specifically mentioned in a verse beside the word “iniquity?” Or are we to realize that God wants us to apply a book “once delivered to the saints” to all forms of iniquity that appear in whatever age Christians will be living? I think so.

The fundamental issue at stake in the chapter and verse mentality is a fundamental doctrine of the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans. Before there was the Word of God and even now in places where the Word of God has never been taken, men have always been guilty before God because of their transgression of God’s Moral Law. “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves” (2:14). The way Paul “proves” “that they are all under sin” (3:9), is by showing that all men are always violating God’s Moral Law in decisions they make every day.

It is when men discard a belief in a moral Law Giver, that they begin discarding morality, not once they find a Bible. Bruce Lockerbie wrote, “History shows that, without recognition of a universal moral Good, man readily assumes that what satisfies his lusts and indulges his pride may logically be called good.”2 It is at that point that man insists before God that his actions are “natural” and therefore right (of course he never stops to think that something can only be called “right” if there is also a “wrong”). This is like the child who insists he should not be punished because he didn’t hear Dad say such and such was wrong. In short, how can Paul say that there is “none that doeth good” if man first had to violate a written law? If true, man truly was not guilty of sin until Moses. But Paul has already thought of that!

After stating that all men sinned in Adam (5:12), he says, “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression” (5:14). And why did they die before any written revelation of God was given? The notes in The Believer’s Study Bible say, “The continuing effect of Adam’s sin on his posterity is clearly evident. The point of the verse is that when the Mosaic Law was given, the offense of sin, which all men intuitively recognized (2:15), was expressed clearly in written form as revelation from God.” Men’s actions have always been (and always are) bent toward sin, the violation of God’s Moral Law. Through the conscience of his own violations to this Law, God brings the sinner to a place of receiving the Good News in chapters and verses!

In reaching our generation, we must not lose the high moral ground! This is God’s ordained method of showing a sinner his sin. And we must accept the denunciations of “moralizing” that come with it. Recently, Robert Bork wrote of the demise of morality in our western culture, “When religion faded in England, the next generation insisted upon the strict demands of morality, not realizing that they were living on, and using up, the moral capital left behind by prior religious generations. Gradually, the imperatives of morality faded. We have entered a period in which morality is privatized.”3 Have we not also “privatized” morality into chapters and verses? Are we not also using the “moral capital” of a generation more moral than ourselves? Soon, the fund will be dry and we will have little of conviction to say to our own generation.

 
Notes:
1. Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1971) 127.
2. Bruce Lockerbie, The Cosmic Center (Portland: Multnomah, 1986) 52.
3. Robert Bork, “Conservatism and the Culture” The Intercollegiate Review, Spring, 1999. P. 6.

There was an interesting interview on Fox the other night. Catherine Crier interviewed Dr. Laura Schlesinger concerning the state of America’s families. Dr. Laura is pretty tough in her comments and defends the traditional family without apology. She commented that it is a strange thing to see Americans, in an attempt to feel compassion for those in broken homes, literally throwing away the traditional family. In her Jewish manner she said, we put the normal thing, the good thing, over in a corner and then we spit on it! We seem to think that since broken homes exist and are even common, non-broken homes can be discarded. If the broken has become acceptable, must the ideal for which we strive be thought unacceptable?

I am a pastor as well as a father. I am commissioned by God to take care of both a home and a church. I identified with Dr. Laura’s comments in more than one way. It is difficult to maintain a traditional home and family when the world seems determined to make the traditional the non-traditional. What has always been normal now becomes abnormal and shoved into a corner of irrelevancy. It seems society no longer considers the traditional family and home to have any right to speak or lead by example. We have been fooled into thinking that the only wise counsel is out of failure, not out of success.

As a pastor I often feel the same dilemma. To say “traditional church” is to say “out of touch” or “stodgy.” It is viewed by some as being too ideal, too pious to be of any help to “real” people. Surely, some say, if the church does not have difficult carnality showing through, it has little comfort to offer the down-trodden and hurting of our world. But as the comfort for our sin comes from a Wonderful Counselor who was perfect, so should His church strive to be like Him.

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

Our Moral Dilemma With Ethnic Cleansing

Written by Rick Shrader

Our Moral Dilemma With Ethnic Cleansing

by Rick Shrader

All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century’s moral poverty. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualizing and irreligious humanistic consciousness. 

                       Alexander Solzhenitsyn1

We are experiencing a moral schizophrenia in our country today. We have just been dragged, kicking and screaming, through a twelve month object lesson of why people’s private moral lives are no one else’s business, only to be thrust into the world-wide drama of policing every country’s moral actions. Ravi Zacharias wrote, “Morality will always be bent to suit the one whose will is being tested.”2

This dilemma is a needed test of our national moral consciousness. I do not intend to address the question of whether America (or NATO) should be the world’s policeman. On a playground with bullies, sometimes it is better for the other kids to take care of this business, and sometimes it is necessary for an outsider to step in. I believe there is a much more serious and long-range lesson to be learned as we watch an immoral President struggle for the moral credibility to lead a nation into war. Charles Finney wrote, “If we are deceived in respect to our being subjects of moral government, we are sure of nothing.”3

Allow me, for a moment, to look at our moral history. It is my contention that our Modernist forefathers were never consistent in seeking a basis for their morality. For the last two hundred years we have been told that our existence is the result of a chance meeting of impersonal atoms that produced energy. I say energy instead of life because life would imply a meaningful existence. The Modernist never really believed that life is anything more than the impersonal movement of atoms bumping into one another. Man is really no different than a rock. If one rock happens to fall on another rock and crush it, no wrong has taken place. Those atoms merely moved in one direction rather than another. In a naturalistic world, such consequences cannot be called moral, or right and wrong. Yet for two hundred years the Modernist has been lecturing us about everything from social justice to personal rights. He can’t have it both ways. Either those atoms could not act differently or they should act differently.

Now the Modernist tried to solve this moral dilemma by searching for some transcendent meaning to life. The artists tried Romanticism, the theologians tried Existentialism and the philosophers tried Relativism. It was only a matter of time until the whole experiment exploded. How can life have meaning if there is nothing that “should” or “ought to” happen?

Their children, of whom our President is one, see it all more consistently. We call them Postmodern. They have (if one starts with the naturalistic premise) correctly stopped worrying about whether mere atoms of existence should or should not bump into one another. We are here, on the third rock from the sun, all alone. There is nothing “out there” to tell us that one thing is more right or more wrong than another thing. We don’t even exist beyond our physical make-up.

When a Postmodern, who is just a random pile of atoms, has what some call an “affair,” no morality exists to pronounce what some call “judgment.” To make such a pronouncement is to commit the only possible wrong: to take upon oneself the decision that someone else “shouldn’t” do something. That would be total arrogance and judgmentalism. (I hope you see the hopeless inconsistency here.)

Our President spent a whole year convincing us of this Postmodern nihilism. We were lectured over and over that our personal actions cannot be called moral or immoral. But now he is faced with the problem of having to act presidential. He is being asked to take action against people who (according to archaic standards) are being immoral. In his mind he knows that even ethnic cleansing cannot be called right or wrong. It is just the way the atoms happened to bump into one another. The large rock just happened to fall on the small rock and crush it. It is just the way things are. No right. No wrong. The rest of the world, however, is not quite ready for his advanced, Postmodern thinking. They still have a relativistic (Modern) view that if society says it is wrong it must be acted upon as wrong. So he plays the expected role

I said before that this is a good and necessary dilemma for our society. Somehow people must be made to think through the inconsistency of trying to live without morality. Dostoyevsky said, “If there is no immortality then all things are permitted.”4 The Modernist eliminated the immortality, the Postmodernist is eliminating the need to ask permission. The nihilistic values of our culture are being preached with fervency in theaters, in concerts, on video screens and the internet. The Clintonian belief system is growing ever larger but it will take some more time to overcome the sheer numbers of older Modernists and true moralists.

Meanwhile, the Christian has a great opportunity to point out the moral contradiction of the Postmodernist who lives privately without morals but is forced to live publicly with morals. The time will come when the opportunity is gone and repentance cannot be preached with impunity. The Man of Sin will be a man with no regard for life.

Speakers for righteousness must not separate the private and the public. “All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” Neither do I believe they can separate their methods from their message, nor their culture from their religion. Rather, as T.S. Eliot wrote that “culture [is] essentially, the incarnation of the religion of a people.”5 When the Postmodern man sees this in our churches, he may “be convinced of all, judged of all. . . And so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth” (1 Cor 14:24-25).

Notes:
 
1. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, quoted by William Rusher, “Conservatism’s Third and Final Battle” The Intercollegiate Review, Fall 1998, p. 6.
 
2. Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God? (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1994) 178.
 
3. Charles Finney, Systematic Theology ( Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1994) 27.
 
4. Quoted by William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1984) 61.
 
5. T.S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949) 101.

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

The Wilderness Encroaches

Written by Rick Shrader

The Wilderness Encroaches

by Rick Shrader

Admitting that, when you first go to mingle with worldly scenes, you may intend not to be seduced from the path of duty; admitting that you at first possess sincerity, firmness, and courage; you will soon deviate from them. Those ideas of zeal and firmness against vice with which you enter into the world will soon grow weaker; intimacy with the world will soon make them appear to you unsocial and erroneous; to them will succeed ideas more pleasant, more agreeable to man, more according to the common manner of thinking; what appeared zeal and duty you will regard as excessive and imprudent severity; and what appeared virtue and ministerial prudence you will consider as unnecessary singularity. Nothing enervates that firmness becoming the ministerial character like associating freely with men of the world.

Jean Baptiste Massillon1

 

Last summer I had an enjoyable dinner with Dr. Harold Rawlings in Cincinnati, Ohio. He used the phrase, “the wilderness encroaches” as we were talking in the context of being constant and vigilant in the ministry. Having grown up around farms in the Midwest (Landmark Baptist Temple is my home church) I recall the blackberry and raspberry bushes growing along the fence rows. If they were not mowed back every summer, they would encroach into the yard and take as much space as they were allowed to have. I am sure that Adam noticed the same thing not long after God said to him, “Cursed is the ground for thy sake . . . Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee” (Gen 3:17-18). Dr. Rawlings did not elaborate on the phrase, but I have thought about its use in many ways. Here are three of those ways.

The wilderness encroaches upon our manners.

The manners that a civil society insists upon, is a middle ground of free self-control, existing between an encroaching totalitarianism on the one hand, and antinomianism on the other. Douglas Groothuis wrote, “Restraint is the price of civilization, and we are casting off restraint.”2 To the extent a people can maintain personal manners, they can maintain their freedom.

We all feel the encroaching wilderness that takes its toll on our manners: every time we let our wife open the car door herself; every time we walk inside with our ball cap still on; and every time we interrupt, fail to say “please” and are too lazy to say “thank-you.” Manners are never against the law, only against the conscience.

In a more chivalrous age Blaise Pascal wrote, “Some fancy makes me dislike people who croak or who puff while eating. Fancy carries a lot of weight. What good will that do us? That we indulge it because it is natural? No, rather we resist it.”3 It is our nature to let down in this area of manners, especially when those who stood over us to make us be polite are gone and we are our only enforcers. Our age is not an age of self-control. Modern man is what philosophers have called “the Noble Savage” and Kenneth Myers wrote, “If the Noble Savage is the highest form of man, you can hardly protest if his table manners are deplorable.”4 Let’s mow back the wilderness with self-imposed manners!

The wilderness encroaches upon our morality.

Our age is an age without moral restraint; an age that no longer believes in a moral absolute. The whole yard of right and wrong has been overgrown by the wilderness of permissiveness. Os Guinness said, “‘Just say no’ has become America’s most urgent slogan when ‘why not?’ has become America’s most publicly unanswerable question.”5 We must be vigilant to stop the onslaught by crushing even the smallest weed of immorality.

God has a Moral Law that exists in our world. Because man is made in God’s image, he is intuitively aware of moral right and wrong and, being a sinner, is justly condemned for his failure to keep it. It is our duty as believers to be moral people for the sinner’s sake. A contemporary writer put it, “Moral behavior presupposes a transcendent absolute.”6 If we let the wilderness of moral permissiveness creep into our lives, we convey the message to the sinner that we are not responsible for the Moral Law. Ironically, it is in the smallest matters of morality where the sinner sees our inconsistency the most. He hears our little lies; he sees our fits of anger; he watches where we go, what we look at, how we respond to the smallest situations. By acquiescing in small matters we forfeit a voice in larger ones as well.

The wilderness encroaches upon our ministry.

Considering all that the Apostle Paul said about setting our affections on things above (Col 3:2), I do not believe it is possible to be too heavenly minded to be any earthly good. C.S. Lewis wrote, “Those who want Heaven most have served Earth best. Those who love Man less than God do most for Man.”7 But after Paul’s heavenly vision of 2 Corinthians 12, he was given a thorn in the flesh to remind him to not let the worldly cares overrun his higher calling. The wilderness of worldly cares can cause us to be cumbered about with much serving and yet miss the part that is most needful.

Savonarola once said, “In the primitive church the chalices were of wood and the prelates were of gold; today the prelates are of wood and the chalices are of gold.”8 In our day of symbolism over substance and emotion without meaning, the love of this present world creeps in too easily. Paul was ready to depart and to be with Christ while Demas had departed to be with the world. J. Sidlow Baxter wrote, “Holiness is not only a reclamation of the garden from weeds, but a filling of it with fragrant flowers.”9 The best way to fight the wilderness is to “manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place” (2 Cor 2:14).

Notes:
1. Jean Baptiste Massillon, “On the Spirit of the Ministry” Orations, 4 (New York: Collier, 1902) 1719.
2. Douglas Groothuis, The Soul In Cyberspace (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997) 91.
3. Blaise Pascal, Pensees (New York: Penquin, 1966) 196 (86) p. 88.
4. Kenneth Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes (Wheaton: Crossway, 1989) 142.
5. Quoted by Ravi Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil (Dallas: Word, 1996) 134.
6. Kenneth Boa, “What is Behind Morality?”, Vital Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1994) 20.
7. C.S. Lewis, Present Concerns (New York: HB&J, 1986) 80.
8. Savonarola, “On the Degeneration of the Church” , Orations, 3 (New York: Collier, 1902) 1281.
9. J. Sidlow Baxter, Christian Holiness (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1977) 162.

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More