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The Obvious Lie

Written by Rick Shrader

The Obvious Lie

by Rick Shrader

Mark Twain once said, “The secret of success is sincerity.  If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”1 He should have been living today, we would hire him to teach leadership seminars.  And it wouldn’t matter whether it was business, politics or church, the image we present has become more important than what we really are.

I call this “The Obvious Lie” because of the amazing ability we have in our day to hear and see a catchy sales pitch, know it cannot possibly be true, and yet be persuaded by it anyway.  The more fantastic the claim, the better we like it.  Does drinking your favorite beverage on a deserted island really make dancing girls appear?  No, and no one really cares.  Does it make you snow board down a snowy slope any faster?  Of course not, but that’s not the point.  The point is image, non-reality, using a product that is simply associated with those things.  So, do we really care that the commercial has lied to us?  Evidently not.

Obviously, we ought to be concerned about this state of affairs when it comes to presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ, but I am afraid we are not.  As a matter of fact, we are more than willing to use it than to fight it.  Glenn Ward, in a non-Christian book summarizing this postmodern phenomenon writes,

The increasing invasion of signs and images (in media, display, advertising and so on) into the fabric of everyday life has created a dream world of ideal lifestyles for us to fantasize about and identify with.  For example, many commercials are more concerned to attach a sense of lifestyle and experience to the product being sold than to give details about the product itself.  Because of this, we get as much satisfaction from consuming the images attached to goods as we do from whatever practical function the goods might serve.2

We have become so used to this form of communication in our lives  that we expect to be lied to.  The truthfulness of the message no longer matters. I have seen “mission statements” posted on business walls that if true, would both invade any privacy the customer had left and take three times the personnel available to see it accomplished.  I suppose we have learned that they simply want to “feel our pain” whether they can really do anything about it or not.

Lynne Cheney, who has been writing on these things for years, quoted Richard Lanham of UCLA describing what he called “The Rhetorical Man.”

Rhetorical man is an actor; his reality public, dramatic.  His sense of identity, his self, depends on the reassurance of daily histrionic reenactment …. He thinks first of winning, of mastering the rules the current game enforces.  He assumes a natural agility in changing orientations.  He hits the street already street-wise.  From birth, almost, he has dwelt not in a single value-structure but in several. He is thus committed to no single construction of the world; much rather, to prevailing in the game at hand…. Rhetorical man is trained not to discover reality but to manipulate it.  Reality is what is accepted as reality, what is useful….Rhetorical man does not ask, ‘What is real?’ He asks, ‘What is accepted as reality here and now?’  He is thus typical present-oriented.  Past and future remain as possibility only, a paradigm he may some day have to learn.3

Using the postmodern lie

I have for a long time been an advocate of the church not jumping on this band-wagon.  I cannot see that just because we are smart enough to notice what the postmodern culture is doing and accepts, that we should adopt the same technique.  One Christian writer advocates, “Give postmoderns a new experience they haven’t had before.  The experience of a new story, the ‘feel’ of a new consciousness, is the key to personal and social change. . . . Total Experience is the new watchword in postmodern worship.  New World preachers don’t ‘write sermons.’  They create total experiences.”4 It is my contention that preaching the truth to postmoderns cannot be done with the same obvious lie with which they preach to themselves.

What some seem to fail to take into account is that postmoderns believe that experience creates truth and there is no such thing as finding truth.  Facts are out, stories are in.  Narratives must be interpreted into the listener’s context, not the writer’s or speaker’s context.  Listen, for example, to two of the most prominent postmodern writers.  Jacques Derrida, in his famous Grammatology writes, “The feelings of the mind, expressing things naturally, constitute a sort of universal language which can then efface itself.  It is the stage of transparence. . . . The written signifier is always technical and representative.  It has no constitutive meaning.”5 Similarly, Jean Baudrillard says, “We are in a logic of simulation which has nothing to do with a logic of facts and an order of reasons.”6

The postmodern audience demands image, story, self-interpreting histories because it believes truth is created in this way.  The law of non-contradiction is out, the law of contradiction is in.  The differences no longer reveal error, rather they allow for  individual truth for each person.  Can we allow this misconception of what we are preaching to go on?  Can we continue to let the hearers interpret our message in such a subjective way?

Is godliness a means of gain?

I have always read the description of “men of corrupt minds, destitute of the truth” in 1 Timothy 6:5 as “supposing that gain is godliness.”  But the phrase is properly translated “who suppose that godliness is a means of gain” (NKJV).  There is a key difference.  It is not that some think earning a lot of money makes one a godly person.  Rather, it is that some people actually see that putting on the air of godliness will be profitable!  We can “gain” things by being godly.  This notion, coupled with the propensity to use the lie as a working methodology, makes for a dangerous combination.

Consider the words of our Lord when He instructed the disciples on what is greatness.  “Whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister.  And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all” (Mk 10:43-44).  Isn’t it our nature to decide that, since we want to be “great,” we will have to get there by serving for a while?  Servanthood becomes a means to greatness rather than (as Jesus means) servanthood being greatness.

With the church in the midst of a consumer society, we have to ask ourselves how we intend to “build a church.”  Are we so sold out to the goal of attracting people that we will use the image of godliness to gain a crowd?  If so, then our image of godliness will end up being whatever the audience wants to interpret as godliness.  Let them be the judge.  Let them set the standard and write the definitions.  One young postmodern is quoted as saying,

It’s a pretty cool thing because there is no right or wrong when it comes to faith.  You believe what you believe, for whatever reasons seem right to you, and nobody can take that away from you.  And then, if you change your mind, that’s not an admission of failure or being wrong, but just a change of heart or maybe a sign that you’ve learned or grown up.  It’s not like math.  In spiritual matters the playing field is wide open.7

The author of the book compliments the young man for his sincerity.  As has become the common theme, the church is criticized as being Pharisaical for not accommodating the young man’s point of view and every negative trait about older people in the church is put on display.

The Sardis factor

In recent classes of Bible college or seminary students where I have spoken, I have read Revelation 3:1 and asked what it means.  The second half of that verse reads, “I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.”  Almost without exception the answer has been that the church at Sardis was a dying church where not much was going on.  It seems almost an impossible concept for today’s future church builders that the church may very well have been a growing, active church and yet have been spiritually dead!  John MacArthur writes,

The church at Sardis was proud of her reputation for being spiritually alive, but the Lord warned her that she was really dead and needed to repent (Rev. 3:1-2).  If she did not He would come upon her like a thief (v. 3)—just as one night enemy soldiers under Cyrus had sneaked into the seemingly impregnable acropolis at Sardis by way of an unguarded footpath. . . . Overconfidence led to carelessness, and carelessness led to defeat.8

Today, success, even in God’s church, is based on today’s method of evaluating success.  And for all of the talk of a new vision for a new age, that method is the same it has been throughout the pragmatic twentieth century—acceptance by the world rewarded by their gracious attendance.  Yet will they respond as Paul describes in 1 Cor. 14:25, “And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.”  Not just go through the motions, mind you, because he has been asked to and that’s the spiritual experience for the day.  But because his sin, in all its ugliness before a holy God, has buckled his knees and his heart and left him in total despair without a Savior!  Spurgeon wrote,

The battlefront is altered, but do not imagine that the conflict will be less severe.  The whole land reeks before the Lord, and is corrupt with sin.  If Christians do not labor to stay evil, who will do it?  He who does not cry out against the wolf cannot surely be at enmity with the lion.9

Notes:
1. Quoted by Os Guinness, Unriddling Our Times (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999) 63.
2. Glenn Ward, Postmodernism (UK: NTC, 1997) 109.
3. Quoted by Lynne Cheney, Telling The Truth ( 190.
4. Leonard Sweet, Postmodern Pilgrims (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000) 43.
5. Jacques Derrida, Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1997) 11.
6. Robert Antonio and Douglas Kellner, “The Future of Social Theory”  Postmodernism & Social Inquiry (New York: The Guilford Press, 1994) 129.
7. George Barna, The Second Coming of the Church (Nashville:  Word Publishing, 1998) 75.
8. John MacArthur, First Corinthians (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984) 227.
9. Charles Spurgeon, reprinted in The Baptist Vision, Feb. 2001.

 

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The Real Issue of the Dimpled Ballots

Written by Rick Shrader

The Real Issue of the Dimpled Ballots

by Rick Shrader

The real issue of the election was not how to count the Florida votes. That game had been played many times before in major cities where the outcome of close elections had to be secured. No, the real issue was played out in the Supreme Court of Florida and of the United States. It is still being displayed in the United States Senate over who will be the Attorney General and thereby interpret the United States Constitution.

We saw two courts, one state and one federal, divide their opinions over a new issue. It was not just that some judges were appointed by Democrats and some by Republicans. That mattered some. Nor was it just that some were liberal and some were conservative. That mattered more. The real issue was, and is, the text of the Constitution itself. That historical document and the very words written two hundred years ago can now be taken in one of two ways. Either the United States Constitution is a fixed document or it is a fluid document.

A judge may be a strict constructionist and believe the Constitution should be taken as the writers and founders intended. This means that he must study its historical context and setting to determine what the framers meant by the text they wrote. Then he must apply the meaning of that text to the situation before him. Judges with this point of view talk about this process as “the rule of law.”

On the other hand, a judge may be a fluid constructionist and believe the Constitution is a fluid document that has been evolving and changing over the last two hundred years. Not that the words on the page have changed, but their original meaning can no longer be ascertained (nor needs to be). The only meaning available to a reader today is today’s meaning. Rather than the culture changing to conform to the text, the text changes to conform to the culture. If today’s culture rejects the Judeo-Christian ethic, the Constitution must be read to reject it also.

Too often, this differentiation defines Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal, Christian and non-Christian. But the bottom line is the old or new view of writing and syntax, the old or new view of history and context, the old or new view of culture and ethnology, the old or new view of morality and religion.

If this seems a “stretch” to you, consider what French postmodernist Jean-Francois Lyotard wrote in 1979:

The adviser thus faces a major conflict, in some ways reminiscent of the split introduced by the Kantian critique between knowing and willing: it is a conflict between a language game made of denotations answerable only to the criterion of truth, and a language game governing ethical, social, and political practice that necessarily involves decisions and obligations, in other words, utterances expected to be just rather than true and which in the final analysis lie outside the realm of scientific knowledge.1

We are now reaping the results of half a century of such deconstructionist philosophy.

Christians have always had to contend with the anti-theistic trends in the country in which they lived. Our grandfathers did at the turn of the last century when German Rationalism came across the sea from Europe in the form of Modernism and attacked the Scriptures as being the Word of God. That was a (so-called) scientific attack based on historical and archaeological studies. Our grandfathers fought back, arguing better and sounder science, history and archaeology and they won the day.

But (as we flippantly parrot today) “the rules have changed.” If ever David’s words applied they apply now, If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? (Psa 11:3). We are not fighting Modernists. The new Postmodernists despise their Modernist fathers and grandfathers. They see Modernism as a brief and flawed phenomenon in the history of thought. Modernism used scientific method and logically constructed language to reach conclusions. This is no longer valid. The Word of God need not be attacked as unhistorical, unscientific, or even uninspired. All of those foundations for discussion have been removed by this generation. There is no language nor history nor science. Everything is in a state of fluid change and “becoming.”

The end of language

The most philippic attack on language itself has been by French linguist Jacques Derrida. His proposition is that meaning is transferred from a) the original “thing” (the “signified”); to b) the thought (“signifier”) about the thing; to c) the sound of a voice speaking about the thing; to d) the writing down of the thing. In each instance, some meaning is lost. In order for you to transfer your (wider) thoughts into (narrower) words, you are forced to drop some of the meaning about your thought. To Postmodernists like Derrida, this shows that no writing can possibly transfer the original meaning. Derrida calls this loss of meaning “The original sin of writing.”2 And he sees all language, spoken or written, as a perversion of meaning. He says, “There is therefore a good and a bad writing: the good and natural is the divine inscription in the heart and the soul; the perverse and artful is technique, exiled in the exteriority of the body.”3 That is, only the original thought (the “signified”) is good, every attempt to express it (the “signifier”) is bad.

If you made it through the last paragraph, congratulations! You can see why cultural watchers say things like, “They have, in good postmodernist fashion, abandoned the classical conception of truth and are simply playing with various contortions of consciousness.”4 Ironically, the very seriousness of this subject creates every reaction from ridicule to emulation. It becomes hard to believe that our national institutions, our schools and even our churches are affected. One professor writes, “Postmodernist tenets may seem academic and somewhat arcane, but they are being taught throughout contemporary universities. The new generation of college graduates has been immersed in this kind of thinking. Our new teachers, journalists, lawyers, judges, and political leaders have been indoctrinated.”5

The end of history

It is not a large jump from the end of language to the end of history. If we cannot really transfer truth “absolutely” in the form of language, how can we know anything that has been recorded as history? Most of history we learn by reading what someone wrote about events that happened. Add to this dilemma the “hermeneutics of suspicion,” that most of history was written by the powerful in order to control the weak. Those that controlled the governments, the religions, the institutions of business, recorded the history in a way that would continue to be advantageous to them. Of course, this history must be “deconstructed” by looking beyond the actual text and discovering these cultural motives.

Veith points out how this applies to the documents of our nation:

Consider, for example, the Declaration of Independence. . . Although the text speaks of equality, its language excludes women (“all men are created equal”). Although it speaks of liberty , its author, Thomas Jefferson, owned slaves. The surface meaning of equality and freedom is completely contradicted by the subtext, which denies equality and freedom to women and minorities.6

In other words, the Declaration and the Constitution must not be taken as they were written. They must be deconstructed. And when they are, deconstructionists can usually find whatever agenda they set out to find. The original meaning is lost, irrelevant, and biased.

Is there a conclusion?

Christians have much reason to be alarmed. Our faith is based on an historical event: the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the integrity of the historical record (the Bible) of that event. We cannot separate the Jesus of history (what really happened) from the Jesus of faith (what we want to believe happened). And we cannot negotiate with the text of the Scripture. This is why Christians will increasingly be seen as a danger to the new way of thinking. Dan Story summarized it this way, “Christianity and Christian ethics are no longer relevant. In fact, orthodox Christians are seen as bigoted, narrow-minded, and anti-intellectual because we refuse to accept other religions as ‘paths to God’ or to consider homosexuality, pornography, or abortion as permissible in a moral society.”8

But we need not fear for the truth of Christianity. For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth (2 Cor 13:8). We must fear rather for a generation from whom the words of Scripture will be concealed. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost (2 Cor 4:3). The new battle for the Bible is a battle for the clear proclamation of God’s Word.

Notes:
1. Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 1979) 32-33.
2. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) 35.
3. Derrida, 17.
4. Douglas Groothuis, The Soul In CyberSpace (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997) 119.
5. Gene Veith, Jr., Postmodern Times (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994) 67.
6. Veith, 55.
7. Michel Foucault, “Nietzche, Genealogy, History,” From Modernism to Postmodernism, Lawrence Cahoone, ed. ( Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 1996) 368.
8. Dan Story, Engaging The Closed Mind (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1999) 9.
 

 

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Culture: The Incarnation Of Our Religion

Written by Rick Shrader

Culture: The Incarnation Of Our Religion

by Rick Shrader

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There may be no more important word in today’s Christian vocabulary than “culture.” R.C. Sproul wrote, “Adjusting to the customs and worldview of one’s environment is one of the strongest pressures people experience. To be ‘out of it’ culturally is often considered the nadir of social achievement.”1 Everything has to be relevant to the culture from tennis shoes to worship styles. It would be difficult to find a discussion group or seminar on ministry today without interacting with the word “culture.”

Cullen Murphy, writing in The Atlantic Monthly, notes that we used to regard nature as something that was to be held in awe, and culture as something we could control and modify. Now we hold “The culture” in awe and treat nature as something we can control for our own purposes. He then comments, “‘The culture’ is today the more fearsome realm, or at any rate the more convenient scapegoat, and the notion that we have only limited influence over it appears to be widespread.”2

This obvious flip-flop of priorities has both degraded the natural realm, which ought to remain the domain of spiritual wonder, and exalted the cultural realm to a god-like status that can only be obeyed but not controlled. Politicians make campaign promises to control the environment but Hollywood defers its ability to curb profanity and violence.

We would do well to remember that the root of culture is the “cult” or the society formed by the mores of the people involved. Francis Schaeffer once wrote, “We of the West may not be brainwashed by our State, but we are brainwashed by our culture.”3 We have let culture form us rather than we forming our culture. In an atheistic society that would not be considered bad. There, beliefs and values are relative and are only formed as a result of what people naturally do. But in a Christian society (whether that be a single life, a family, a church or a nation) the opposite is true. Belief comes first and then forms and controls the values as well as the actions. The result is nothing less than culture.

In short, as the title to this article suggests, culture is the result of our beliefs. T.S. Eliot, in a book called Christianity and Culture, wrote, “We may go further and ask whether what we call the culture, and what we call the religion, of a people are not different aspects of the same thing: the culture being, essentially the incarnation (so to speak) of the religion of a people.”4 A professor at our university (CSU) wrote in our local paper, “Religion defines our relationship to the world around us. It is intriguing how important religion is to our culture, family and value systems.”5 Because this is true, I would suggest at least three logical imperatives that follow.

We cannot separate belief and culture

As we have seen, culture on any level, is an outgrowth of what we believe. God holds us all responsible for our actions because those actions have been thought of in a person’s mind and then acted out. So the scriptures can say, as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he (Prov 23:7); doing the will of God from the heart (Eph 6:6); They do always err in their heart (Heb 3:10). Perhaps the closest biblical word is “custom” (eqos) as when the Philippians complained that Paul and Silas taught customs, which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe, being Romans (Ac 16:21). Earle Cairns noted that Luther preached that culture must follow consistently from faith. He writes, “Above all, he [Luther] awakened his day to the fact that culture was not merely a matter of reason, but of regeneration by faith in Christ.”6

Today, no one wants to be responsible for his own actions, yet he wants to be free from anyone telling him how he ought to think. Actions have been totally divorced from scrutiny and often with the silly mantra, “don’t impose your moral standards on me!” That is silly because it is itself an imposition of the moral standard that no one’s thinking outside oneself shall have any bearing on how one acts. But the statement immediately strikes a thinking person as wrong because we know intuitively that all of us are bound to act in such a way that is determined by our moral belief. If one lies, he has somehow figured out in his head why saying what he said is justified. His moral imperative may have been self-preservation, or prejudice or any number of reasons, all of which he believes took precedent the moment he “lied.” The person who tells the truth has also acted on principles that he believes.

It has been my experience in reading that many non-Christians are recognizing this principle faster than Christians. Too many Christians believe “The culture” (notice how the definite article grants the word status) is only to be discovered and modeled and has nothing to do with religious or moral values. Consider the contrast from David Dickens (not a professing believer), Professor of Sociology at UNLV, “Thus culture historically has been fused with religion. The axial principle of contemporary culture, however, is the expression and remaking of the self in order to attain self-realization and self-fulfillment, which implies the denial of all limits or boundaries to experience.”7 No doubt, whatever you believe you will act out in some way.

We cannot separate faith and works

Though we may be more familiar with this language, perhaps it will help to consider it in light of what has already been said. It is simply inevitable that you will live in accordance with what you believe. The reason a lost man cannot live a Christian life (to any biblical consistency) is because he really does not believe what Christians believe. Sooner or later he has to go back to being consistent with his own thoughts. One commentator has written, “For the real business of life is not so much to get things done in any way, as to diffuse a right spirit among men, and get them to do things well.”8

It ought to be a subject of early Sunday School that when we come to Christ we change from an old life to a new life. And if, as believers, we lapse into the old way of life, we have chosen a way that is inconsistent with what we now believe. Demas loved this present “age” (aiwna) but his thinking had become wrong-headed. G.K. Chesterton correctly observed, “The moment we care for anything deeply, the world (that is, all the other miscellaneous interests) becomes our enemy.”9

If we continue to hold culture as inviolable we will continue to worship at its altar by our works. But if we realize that we are not to do so, indeed do not have to, we will live consistently with our faith regardless of the customs and cultures of the people around us.

We cannot separate worship and evangelism

Sometimes this is termed “message and methods” or “belief and methodology.” I call it “worship” because that is what we are doing when we consciously live before God in spirit and truth (Jn 4:24). Worship is our cognitive belief system, our always walking before God in an unseen faith (2 Cor 5:7). I call it “evangelism” because that is the living out of our faith to the rest of the world, to every person in every circumstance. If our worship constitutes our religion, then evangelism constitutes our culture. In every action we are affecting our world and creating a culture that is positive or negative for the gospel’s sake (1 Cor 9:23).

I have always been concerned when Christians speak of their worship, message or belief as something that is unchangeable but speak of their evangelism, methods or methodology as always changing. In fact, it ought to be the very opposite. My belief has to be compared to and corrected by the Word of God. I should be constantly honing my thinking (which is my true belief system) to God’s standard. But my methodology ought to (and it will) simply follow in obvious consistency behind my belief. I smile with Os Guinness when he wrote, “A well-known proponent states, ‘I don’t deal with theology. I’m simply a methodologist’—as if his theology were thereby guaranteed to remain critical and his methodology neutral.”10

It would be inconsistent (hence hypocritical) of me to act in a way that does not follow from my belief. It would be inconsistent to evangelize in a way that contradicts my worship. It would be inconsistent to use a method that is not parallel to my message. I concur with the concern of older writers who were alarmed when they saw the dichotomy of message and methods that was current. A.W. Tozer, for example, in the 50s wrote, “’The message is the same, only the method changes,’ say the advocates of compromise.”11 L.S. Chafer, in the 20s wrote, “It may be conceded that genuine results are sometimes obtained even where misleading methods are employed; but there by be great harm done as well.”12 D.L. Moody, in the 1800s wrote, “But, some say, if we take the standard and lift it up high, it will drive away a great many members from our churches. I believe it, and I think the quicker they are gone the better.”13

Now I am aware that the rebuttal to this point of view would focus on the ridiculously obvious such as the color of shirts or the type of organ. Such is to miss the point. John MacArthur said, “I do believe we can be innovative and creative in how we present the gospel, but we have to be careful to harmonize our methods with the profound spiritual truth we are trying to convey.”14 The Bible doesn’t ask us to use gospel stealth tactics, luring unbelievers with something that is contrary to our faith, and then revealing a non sequitur for a belief system. Rather, as Paul admonished Philemon, That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus (Phile 6).

Notes:
1. R.C. Sproul, Willing To Believe (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997) 16.
2. Cullen Murphy, “The Culture Did It,” The Atlantic Monthly, December 2000, 18.
3. Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There (Downer’s Grove: IVP, 1998) 159.
4. T.S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1949) 101.
5. Robert Theodoratus, Coloradoan, 5/1/2000.
6. Earle Cairns, Christianity Through The Centuries (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1977) 322.
7. David Dickens, “North American Theories of Postmodern Culture,” Postmodernism and Social Inquiry (New York: The Guilford Press, 1994) 79.
8. W.G. Blaikie, “Second Samuel,” The Expositor’s Bible (New York: Funk & Wagnels, 1900) 290.
9. G.K. Chesterton, Heretics (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2000) 22.
10. Os Guinness, Dining With The Devil (Grand Rapids: Baker Book, 1993) 26.
11.  A.W. Tozer, Worship and Entertainment (Camp Hill: Christian Publications, 1997) 166.
12. L.S. Chafer, True Evangelism (Chicago: The Bible Institute Colportage Assoc., 1929) 13.
13. D.L. Moody, Spiritual Power (Chicago: Moody Press, 1997) 120.
14. John MacArthur, Ashamed of the Gospel (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1993) 85.

 

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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.

 

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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?

 

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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.
 
 

 

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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.
 

 

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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.

 

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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!

 

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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.

 

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