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The Trojan Horse In Atlanta

August 29, 1996Written by Rick Shrader

The Trojan Horse In Atlanta

by Rick Shrader

Nobody has written a real moral history of the Greeks. . . The wisest men in the world set out to be natural; and the most unnatural thing in the world was the very first thing they did. The immediate effect of saluting the sun and the sunny sanity of nature was a perversion spreading like a pestilence. . . It would seem simple enough for the people whose poets had conceived Helen of Troy, whose sculptors had carved the Venus of Milo, to remain healthy on that point. The truth is that people who worship health cannot remain healthy. . . The early church called the gods of paganism devils; and the early church was perfectly right.

G.K. Chesterton¹

I have loved sports all of my life both as a participant and as a spectator. I have even learned to a certain degree not to get too upset when I hear of another moral failure of an athlete. Should I have expected any different? But I experienced a whole new disappointment last Friday night when I watched the opening of the Olympic Games in Atlanta. If there were any doubt about this being a post-Christian America, that visual demonstration of pagan worship has erased all skepticism. Seeing the spirits of the continents called upon to protect and watch over the games and their visual representation lauded, hearing the announcers worship “sport” and “health,” with the obvious absence of God’s name or any reference to Christian belief, my heart sank to a new low. Should I have expected any different? Perhaps not. But this is the nation which has held Christian principles above the pagan principles of the world and has sent missionaries to convert the pagans to Christianity. Without our knowing, the pagans were converting us much faster than we were converting them.

Erwin Lutzer wrote of Nazi Germany, “This national obsession with occultism prepared the way for Hitler’s meteoric rise to world prominence. . . and in no country were so many miracles performed, so many ghosts conjured, so many illnesses cured by magnetism, so many horoscopes read. There were telepathy, seances, and spiritual experiences of every sort, which camouflaged Hitler’s deceptions. Just as the New Age movement today might well be preparing the world to accept the miracles of Antichrist, so the occultism of Germany made mass deception much more difficult to detect.”²

I don’t know if the Lord will return in my life time or a hundred years from now. But I realize that I can no longer expect the average American to be part of “Christendom.” I will have to begin with him at a much lower level of moral understanding and general knowledge of God and Christ.

Consider his everyday world! My small file on Mysticism and Metaphysics reminded me of the coach of the world champion Bulls calling himself a “Zen Christian” while employing “aspects of Eastern and American Indian spirituality;”³ an Eckankar conference in a major American city combining “Religion of the Light and Sound of God, also called the Holy Spirit,” combined with the ancient wisdom of the east; a metaphysics conference in my city that teaches ways to use tarot cards, crystals, psychic hotlines, astrology, numerology, biorhythms and even internet divination; and a Kansas woman who started a new business called “Magical Moments” in which she communicates with your pet “on the level of the soul;” and besides these, I have some really bizarre ones!

In a decent report, I read that Christian groups are receiving thousands of letters from Muslims who claim to have had a vision of Jesus appearing to them and saying “I am the way” and are therefore ready “to freely respond to the gospel message.” This is said to be a response to AG missionary Gordon Barnett’s “prayer initiatives.”⁴ In other words, there are many Christians out there willing to take the opportunity of today’s spiritual ignorance to put a few feathers in their evangelistic cap.

I have to rather agree with Douglas Groothuis when he writes, “Spiritual deception is far from rare. If we do not discern and reject deceptive claims to the truth, we will become ensnared in error and mistake darkness for light. It is only by knowing and adhering to the truth of God’s Word that we can discern when the demonic is inducing or influencing spiritual experiences.”⁵

Is America becoming more civilized? No! We are believing what other generations scorned. In the late fourteenth century, Christopher Marlowe wrote a story about a man who insolently made a pact with the Devil to grant his wishes in exchange for his soul. In the last hour of his life, Dr. Faustus is wishing against hope that God’s hell were not literal and eternal but metaphysical, as Pythagoras taught. His wish for pagan reality is vain.

Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,

A hundred thousand, and at last be saved!

O, no end is limited to damned souls.

Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?

Or why is this immortal that thou hast?

Ah, Pythagoras’ metemphychosis-were that true

This soul should fly from me and I be changed

Unto some brutish beast.⁶

Marlowe reminds us that in the hour of death, no wish for some ethereal existence without judgment is possible. Our gospel ministry to this generation is serious business!

Notes:

1. G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis Of Assisi (New York: Doubleday, 1990) 28.

2. Erwin Lutzer, Hitler’s Cross (Chicago: Moody, 1995) 67.

3. “Bullish On Faith” Dayton Daily News, 6/1/96.

4. National & International Religion Report, 1/8/96, p. 1.

5. Douglas Groothuis, Deceived by the Light (Eugene: Harvest House, 1995) 154.

6. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (New York: Washington Square Press, 1968) 77.

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Trusting In Trust

July 29, 1996Written by Rick Shrader

Trusting In Trust

by Rick Shrader

In exalting faith, we are not immediately putting ourselves in contradiction to modern thought. Indeed faith is being exalted very high by men of the most modern type. But what kind of faith? There emerges the difference of opinion. Faith is being exalted so high today that men are being satisfied with any kind of faith, just so it is faith. It makes no difference what is believed, we are told, just so the blessed attitude of faith is there. J. Gresham Machen, 1923¹

Almost two years ago I wrote an article entitled “Worshiping Worship.” I thought it was time to write a follow-up on worship, so I pulled my “worship” file and perused the entries of the last two years. It has become a huge file with men of varied stripe offering comment and observation. Fundamentalists and Evangelicals especially have been justifiably critical of the irreverence in today’s “worship style.” But I’ve noticed (as many others) that there is a mirror issue in worshiping worship and that is trusting in trust or faith. An Easter article in our local paper was titled, “Many experience rebirth of faith at Easter time.” It seems a man was returning from his faith in the “material world” to a “sense of freedom and comfort” in his Catholic church. He said, “It’s not a change in belief but a change in the method of adoration.”2 The troubling fact is that such a faith has no object. Faith becomes its own object! It is faith in the ability to have faith which, of course, is not faith but works.

When the ECT document appeared in 1994, the only good news was that the issue of saving faith was pushed to center stage. Sadly, many who call themselves “evangelical” have lost the distinctive of their name by proposing that the “good news” is that salvation is in one’s content of faith rather than in one’s object of faith. But I would also suggest that Fundamentalists have often been as guilty in proposing that salvation is in one’s confession of faith. That, as well, is a trust in trust rather than in Christ. It seems to me that both errors can pack the pews with pious pretenders.

The New Testament furnishes us not only with examples of genuine faith, but with examples of unsaving faith. John 2:23-25 shows us a group of people who “believed” in the content of Jesus’ message but John makes it clear that they were not regenerated (James reminds us that the devils “believe” in this way). Acts 8:13-24 shows us a man, Simon, who “believed” and was baptized but, it turned out, his public confession was not enough to bring him salvation. On the other hand, Hebrews 4:3 speaks of “We which have believed” and have entered into rest. Alexander Maclaren commented, “He does not mean, ‘we which acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and the Savior of the world,’ but we who, acknowledging, let our hearts go out to Him in trust, and our wills bow down before Him in obedience and submission.”³

When I say that saving faith is not in the content alone I mean that it takes more than just believing that the facts are true regarding Jesus Christ to get saved. When I say that saving faith is not in the confession alone I mean that it takes more than just mouthing some words about Jesus Christ to get saved. The liturgical churches have often been guilty of the former and the non-liturgical churches have often been guilty of the latter. One error creates an evangelism where faith, or trust, is in the ability to understand while the other is in the ability to say so.

One biblical (and historic) way of defining saving faith is by using the three Latin words notitia, assensus and fiducia. The Baptist theologian, Augustus Strong, reminded us of these in his 1907 Systematic Theology.⁴ Recently, R.C. Sproul has defended saving faith against the ECT agenda by using these words. ⁵ I find the three-fold (four, counting confession) definition in the New Testament.

Notitia means knowledge. One must hear of Jesus Christ before he will ever be saved. Faith cannot come before “hearing” (Rom 10:17). Heb 11:13 describes the saints as “having seen them afar off” i.e. the promises which told of salvation. Obviously, no one can believe if they do not know that salvation is available.

Assensus means to give assent to something or agree. After one hears the message, he may or may not agree as to its validity. Many have never believed that the gospel story is actually true. Heb 11:13 (in KJV & TR) reads, “and were persuaded.” Rev. 1:3 has, “Blessed is he that readeth (notitia) and they that hear (assensus).” In 1 Cor 14:25 Paul said that prophecy was better than tongues because then someone can interpret and give the meaning so that a visitor may be “convinced of all” that is said.

Fiducia is trust or what Strong calls the “voluntary element.” Heb 11:13 says that they “embraced” the message of salvation which they had “seen” and were “persuaded of.” J.O. Buswell, in his Systematic Theology, stresses at length what he calls this “cognitive element” of faith.⁶ This is not just a hearing of the gospel and is more than just admitting that the gospel story is true. It is to realize that Jesus Christ can be your Savior and for you to want that more than anything else. (Note: This is where repentance comes in this progression. Paul, in 1 Cor 14:25, says that at this point the man will “fall down on his face.” The Thessalonians, in 1 Th 1:9, “turned to God from idols.”) Sproul speaks of this moment as a change in “perceived value.”⁷ Now, for the first time, the sinner sees Christ as something to be desired and to grasp with his whole heart.

The Bible adds one more concept to these three and that is confession. Heb 11:13 says that at this point “they confessed.” Rom 10:10 (a passage that deserves a fresh study) says that “with the heart man believeth unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto (“because of”) salvation.” Obviously there are no magic formulas for saving faith. Confession is just that, a public display of what the heart secretly has believed. If the belief is real, the confession will definitely follow.

True saving faith takes place when a sinner has exercised fiducia. After having learned of Christ and become convinced that His claims are true, he is willing to give up anything and pay any price to have Him. When this kind of faith takes place, confession will not only follow but will be impossible to silence; invitations will not have to rely on trickery; lordship will not be a problem; godly living and separation from the world will come naturally because a selfish nature has been overcome by a new nature in love with Christ.

Why does Peter (2 Pet 1: 5-7) tell us to “add to your faith virtue?” Because a person who has true faith wants, first and foremost, to please the One with whom he has fallen in love. This simple obedience is virtue. Why does he then say to add “to virtue knowledge?” Because now this person wants to know what he should do to produce such virtue. And the progression continues through agape love.

If you think I am suggesting that a real problem in Christendom today is not that we are becoming too exclusive of all “faiths,” but rather that we have become too inclusive of any partial expression of faith, you happen to be right. And could this not be a vital reason why we see so many saying they have faith but having no interest in virtue? And because there is no virtue, there is little interest in knowledge?

This unsaving kind of faith is simply a trust in trust, a faith in faith but it does not have Jesus Christ as the lovely object and desire of reception. I don’t know how widely this may be the case in our churches but it must cause us some concern. A.W. Tozer wrote, “To the question ‘what must I do to be saved?’ we must learn the correct answer. To fail here is not to gamble with our souls; it is to guarantee eternal banishment from the face of God. Here we must be right or be finally lost.”⁸

Notes:

1. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdman’s Pub. Co., 1923) 141.

2. Fort Collins Coloradoan, April 3, 1994.

3. Alexander Maclaren, Exposition of Holy Scripture Vol. 10 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdman’s Pub. Co., 1959) 304.

4. Augustus Strong, Systematic Theology (Old Tappan: Fleming H. Revell, 1907) 836-844.

5. R.C. Sproul, Faith Alone (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995) p. 75-88.

6. J. Oliver Buswell, A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980) II,175-186.

7. Sproul, p. 86.

8. A.W. Tozer, The Best of A.W. Tozer (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1978) 100.

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Dummies

June 29, 1996Written by Admin

Dummies

by Admin

By Don Shrader

Currently, there are a number of computer “how to” books out entitled “____” for Dummies. The original book written was DOS for Dummies. From there, the series went to PC’s for Dummies, and now we have Windows for Dummies, AOL for Dummies and The Internet for Dummies. I saw some the other day called Cooking for Dummies, Gardening for Dummies and Home Repair for Dummies. In the future I suppose we will see books such as Psychology for Dummies and maybe even Brain Surgery for Dummies. Of course, the original purpose of the “Dummie” books was to help the layman utilize complex technologies without having to gain a true understanding of the inner workings and relationships of the multifarious interplays of hardware, software, terminologies, etc. In essence, these books were intended to help the layman manipulate the computer with all of its complex and powerful capabilities without having to truly understand how it functions.

Whenever I go into a Christian bookstore these days, I soon feel as if I am perusing row after row and shelf after shelf of “Dummie” books for “Christians.” There are “how to” books on every subject imaginable. There are books on how to study the Bible without having to work at it, how to become a prayer warrior, how to live a Spirit-filled life, how to cope with emotional distress or abuse, how to have self acceptance, and how to maintain promises to others. There are twelve step recovery program Bibles, The Promise Bible so you can see what God wants to do for you, and the Full Life Bible. There are books on economics and budgeting, on how to choose friends that are right for you, how to diet from a Christian perspective. You name the subject and there are “Christian” books written about it from all sorts of theological viewpoints, all claiming divine authority and direction in order to help you understand God’s teaching on the subject. Michael Horton writes, “Theology is considered irrelevant, whereas ‘practical’ tips for success in business, marriage, child rearing, and personal self-fulfillment seem to suddenly be the Bible’s major preoccupation.”¹

It is not that help books are all wrong or improper. And certainly, there is a need for good study and reference books to help us better understand and apply proper hermeneutical principles to the study of God’s word. But the propensity of “how to” books is overwhelming. It becomes obvious that what the vast majority of us want is a God for Dummies handbook that will help us learn how to manipulate the power of God without having to comprehend who God really is. Just as the “Dummie” computer books were intended to help novices utilize the power of the computer without ever having to understand the inner workings of the computer, so the majority of books in a Christian bookstore seem to be aimed at helping us manipulate the power of God without ever having to understand the source of the power. Elsewhere, Horton asks, “Is the greatest story ever told now boring, since we cannot see how it can possibly make us feel good or advance our self-fulfillment over the next seventy-two hours?” He goes on to declare, “Many intend a high view of Scripture when they insist that it is a manual for life, but, in fact, treating the Bible as a manual ends up leading to a low view of Scripture by trivializing the message.”² Horton further asserts that the Bible is not about us, it is about God and His redemptive activities.

The current lack of scholarship, understanding and deep thinking by Christians today, even in the ministry, is evidence that we overwhelmingly are more interested in using (and abusing) the power of God to our benefit than we are in applying ourselves to understanding the true essence of God and what that means to us. The unwillingness of pastors and laymen to take on the more difficult and intricate aspects of God and study these through His divine revelation is appalling. The book of Hebrews tells us that solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good and evil (5:14). But the plethora of “how to” books seems to fly in the face of the earlier warning from Hebrews when it states, We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness (5:11-13).

Rather than delving into the meat of the Word such that we can come to an understanding and agreement based upon the constant exercise of our spiritual senses, we prefer to read and study “how to” books which nibble away at the truth. Can the publication of the ultimate “how to” book, God For Dummies, be far away?

Don Shrader

Notes:

1. Michael Horton, “Recovering The Plumbline,” in The Coming Evangelical Crises (Chicago: Moody, 1996) 235.

2. Ibid. 251.

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When Truth Doesn’t Matter

May 29, 1996Written by Rick Shrader

When Truth Doesn’t Matter

by Rick Shrader

We live in an era that boasts of its vehement resistance to propositional truth. Truth is said to be a “relationship” or a “personal encounter.” Existential philosophy has placed so much stress on the personal and relational character of faith that an allergy has developed against propositional or objective truth.

R.C. Sproul¹

Richard Rorty said, “truth is what my peers will let me get away with saying.”² Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University said, “We’re in a day and age in which I can make any claim I want.”³ Fifty years ago Adolf Hitler was also complaining about the world he himself had created when he said, “Everyone has deceived me! No one has told me the truth.”⁴

We have all read the statistics of the attitude of Americans toward telling the truth. It seems we have lost the concept of truth. Truth is now the confirmation of my statement about the way I see things. I didn’t say the confirmation about the way I see things, but the confirmation of my statement about the way I see things. My statement may have little similarity to the actual facts but if I say it is true for me, then it is true as far as I am concerned. And if I happen to add “I believe” to my statement, it carries even greater weight and can be even further from the actual facts. For example, in my home state of Ohio, a group of Mormon youth recreated the early Mormon journey through Ohio. One said, “I realized for our pioneers to go through something like that, they had to believe in the church very strongly. I believe this church is true.”⁵ Ironically, the same paper carried a story on Jainism (a growing religion from India) in which the writer said, “Jains believe there is no absolute truth for humanity. Rather, there are several individual truths that vary from person to person.”⁶

The Eastern Pantheistic religions are finding fertile soil in present American culture. The further we drift from the God of absolutes to a consumer mentality in religion of “the one that is right for me,” the more strange the concept of truth will appear to our generation. While covering a politician’s speech, Joseph Sobran noted that reporters wrote, “impressively smooth performance,” “effective performance,” “bravura performance.” Then Sobran wrote, “The only question was whether he had won over the half-attentive mass audience, not whether he had actually told the truth.”⁷ It would be an easy thing to refute if we still lived in the old days when, as Pascal said, “It is false piety to preserve peace at the expense of truth.”⁸ In those days everything that was past was considered history and fact. It may have taken research but the truth stood as a matter of record! The future was the only unknown. Today it is the opposite. What is past cannot be known and history is only someone’s personal interpretation of the events. History (as well as the future) is whatever I say it is or believe it to be.

So in an Orwellian sort of way, when a speaker is accused of not telling the truth, it is not he who is blamed, it is the accuser who has displayed such bigotry in assuming he can know the truth! Robert Nisbet wrote, “The ideologies which gained entry into the academy in the sixties claimed that the fundamental intellectual principles of Western culture were illegitimate and must be overthrown. With that destroyed, terms like truth, good, evil, and soul could be discarded.”⁹ G.K. Chesterton noticed this years ago in the English school system, “No English school-boy is ever taught to tell the truth, for the very simple reason that he is never taught to desire the truth. From the very first he is taught to be totally careless about whether a fact is a fact; he is taught to care only whether the fact can be used on his ‘side’ when he is engaged in ‘playing the game.’”¹⁰

We would be naive at best to think such attitudes do not creep into Christianity as well. It does on the most intimate personal level and on the public level. God said simply, “Thou shalt not lie.” I wonder if we were given the chance to write down the ten most important concepts for society today if we would have even thought of that one! Maybe that is because we are not taught to desire fellowship with God and “they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”

So where are we if truth doesn’t matter? John MacArthur says, “Too many Christians are content to gaze nonchalantly at the surface of scriptural truth without plunging any deeper. They often justify their shallow indifference as a refusal to be legalistic.”¹¹ That is, we are in a state of apathy. Noel Smith once wrote, “When we get tired of aiming for such a standard, we are going back and gear up the mule.”¹² Smith knew the stakes were too high to quit. As that great Anabaptist, Balthasar Hubmaier always signed, “Truth is Immortal.”

Notes:

1. R.C. Sproul, Faith Alone (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995) 77.

2. Rorty quoted by William L. Craig, Reasonable Faith (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994) 173.

3. Lipstadt, Denying The Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory quoted by John Leo, USN&WR,2/28/94.

4. Erwin Lutzer, Hitler’s Cross (Chicago: Moody Press, 1995) 170.

5. “Footsteps of Faith,” Dayton Daily News, nd, 1996.

6. Ibid.

7. Joseph Sobran, “He is not called Slick Willie for nothing” Universal Press Syndicate 3/29/94.

8. Blaise Pascal, Pensees (New York: Penguin Books, 1966) 325.

9. Robert Nisbet quoted by Cal Thomas, The Things That Matter Most (New York: Harper Collins, 1994) 6.

10. G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With The World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994) 162.

11. John MacArthur, Reckless Faith (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994) 40.

12. Noel Smith quoted by Norma Gillming, The Best of Noel Smith (Springfield: BBC, 1985) 4.

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Does Mind Matter?

April 29, 1996Written by Rick Shrader

Does Mind Matter?

by Rick Shrader

Does Mind Matter?

Who would not think, to see us compounding everything of mind and

matter, that such a mixture is perfectly intelligible to us? Yet

this is the thing we understand least; man is to himself the greatest

prodigy in nature, for he cannot conceive what body is, and still

less what mind is, and least of all how a body can be joined to a

mind. This is his supreme difficulty, and yet it is his very being.

Blaise Pascal¹

(17th Century)

Kasparov himself, in explaining how he eventually beat the machine, wrote, I changed slightly the order of a well-known opening sequence. Because it was unable to compare this new position meaningfully with similar ones in its database, it had to start calculating away and was unable to find a good plan. A human would have simply wondered, ‘what’s Garry up to?,’ judged the change to be meaningless and moved on.² Was this the limit for a machine? Will there always be that gap between calculation and consciousness or have we just not had enough time to put a mind into this machine?

To many, these issues of the technology age signify the end of the reign of materialism over the soul of man. George Gilder of the Discovery Institute wrote, “For the central fact of the twentieth century is not the overthrow of the mind, but the overthrow of matter.”³ He refers to the demise of the last two hundred years of scientific thinking that man is just a glob of protoplasm that learned to speak. He goes on to say, “From Marxism to behavioralism, from routine evolutionism to logical positivism, from deconstructionism to reflex psychology, scientists and scholars produced an unending stream of theories that reduced man to a mechanism.”⁴ The old naturalistic view is that as man and his brain organism evolved, the idea of consciousness was produced by the advanced brain. But now, with the coming of quantum physics and the separation of matter and energy (a subject for another time), Gilder says, “We find a high drama of richly intelligible activity where electrons combine and disappear without occupying conventional time or space, and things obey the laws of mind rather than the laws of matter.”⁵ That is to say, materialists can account for the matter in the universe but they cannot explain where the intelligence, consciousness or thought come from.

So when this month’s issue of Time Magazine asks the question “Can Machines Think?,” they are equally asking, “Does man have an immaterial part to him that we will never be able to build into a machine? Does man have a soul?” Time highlights two robots, Cog and Cyc, which are stretching the limits of “AI” (artificial intelligence) but has to conclude, “With AI, the tenets of strict materialism are being realized–and found, by some at least, incapable of explaining certain parts of human experience. Namely, the experience part.”⁶

In more common language this is like asking, “Will computers become so complex that eventually they will develop (or evolve) their own conscious will and take over?” After all, we already speak of computers being ill with a “virus.” Time reports that next month an ecobiologist in Japan will release a tiny self-reproducing program onto the Internet (an experiment called “digital biodiversity reserve”), a “virtual organism” which will quickly “populate the network and begin to evolve.”⁷ (Insert Twilight Zone music here)

A few years ago, Neil Postman wrote of this concern. He said, The computer, it is implied, has a will, has intentions, has reasons—which means that humans are relieved of responsibility for the computer’s decisions. Through a curious form of grammatical alchemy, the sentence ‘we use the computer to calculate’ comes to mean ‘the computer calculates.’ ‘The computer shows’ or ‘the computer has determined.’ It is Technopoly’s equivalent of the sentence ‘It is God’s will.’⁸ This directs our attention to the question of moral authority.

Has this latest form of art, the technological machine, illustrated for us and convinced us that man is a machine as well? Just as the computer has evolved to the point where wires, chips and plugs actually think for themselves, so man has evolved to the point where tissue, blood and mucus have developed consciousness? Ravi Zacharias writes, “Fyodor Dostoevsky predicted that at first art would imitate life, then life would imitate art, and finally, that life would draw the very reason for its existence from art.”⁹ The materialist, anyway, has long thought that the mind came from a brain, not the brain from a Mind.

The good news is that the more science has tried to produce consciousness from matter, the less it has succeeded. The new experiments with robotics, computers and even quantum physics have only shown that mind, consciousness and “being” stand apart from the material universe and cannot be explained by it. But C.S. Lewis warned us fifty years ago, The extreme limit of this self-binding is seen in those who, like the rest of us, have consciousness, yet go about to study the human organism as if they did not know it was conscious. As long as this deliberate refusal to understand things from above, even where such understanding is possible, continues, it is idle to talk of any final victory over materialism.¹⁰

Perhaps one day we will learn, as Time mused, you don’t invite a forklift to a weightlifting competition! But more is at stake still, with our materialistic generation than chess matches and tests of strength. We have been conditioned in every modern way possible to live in this world as though there is no other. We have, in the now familiar words, created God in our own image. In a very real way, to the materialist, the only god there is, the only real consciousness, is a product of the material world. Our soul is only an unexplained energy field produced by selective evolution.

Jesus said, “A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Luke 12:15). He then added a parable of a rich man whom we could rightfully call a materialist. He lived only for the material things which he could collect and finally thought, “I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry” (vs 19). Can there be any doubt that our materialistic age has adopted this attitude? (Don’t we often define heaven or eveen spirituality by the absence of material things rather than by the presence of the spiritual?)

Jesus had an answer for this man and for every age of materialism: “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?” (vs 20). Then He said to the disciples, “The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment” (vs 23). God has devised a final exam for the question of mind and matter. It is called death. You can guess at the answer, or ignore the evidence but you can’t skip the exam!

I return to Pascal for this final observation: Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this.

Thus all dignity consists in thought. It is on thought that we must depend for our recovery, not on space and time, which we could never fill. Let us then strive to think well; that is the basic principle of morality.¹¹

Rick Shrader

Notes:

1. Blaise Pascal, Pensees (London: Penquin Books, 1966) p. 94.

2. “Can Machines Think?” Time, March 25, 1966, p. 55.

3. George Gilder,”The Materialist Superstition” The Intercollegiate Review, Spring, 1996, p. 8.

4. Gilder, p. 7.

5. Gilder, p. 11.

6. “Can Machines Think?” p. 55.

7. “Can Machines Think?” p. 58.

8. Neil Postman, Technopoly (New York: Vintage Books, 1993) p. 114-115.

9. Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1994) p. 73.

10. C.S. Lewis, The Weight Of Glory (New York: Macmillan, 1980) p. 72.

11. Pascal, p. 95.

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More Than The Common Faith

March 29, 1996Written by Rick Shrader

More Than The Common Faith

by Rick Shrader

Some Christians who once championed sound doctrine beat a retreat

once in a while and from stratospheric heights announce that they

do not stoop to controversy. When a man contends for the faith in

New Testament style he does not stoop! Some assert that they have

become mellow in later years, but one must remember that some things

become mellow just before they spoil.

Vance Havner¹

In the small book of Jude, written by the Lord’s half-brother, we find a command that may be the most neglected, if not forgotten, in the Bible. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints (vs 3). All Jude wanted to do was write a simple letter to some Christian friends about the common faith. True, he gave all diligence to do it and was not remiss in his description of what this faith was. But the Holy Spirit changed his mind about his subject matter! It was the late 60s or early 70s and apostates were in the churches: certain men crept in unawares who looked like, talked like and worshiped like true believers but were spiritual clouds without water. So in spite of Jude’s noble intent, he was divinely thrust into a battle for the faith.

Warren Wiersbe wrote, “I must confess that I sympathize with Jude. In my own ministry, I would much rather encourage the saints than declare war on the apostates. But when the enemy is in the field, the watchmen dare not go to sleep. The Christian life is a battleground, not a playground.”² And what is this faith for which we are to contend which is in addition to the common salvation? It is the once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints faith (faith is the last word in the verse). S. Maxwell Coder writes, “Our contending is to be for the faith. The Spirit of God did not use the word salvation, nor the word gospel. The faith concerns our salvation, it has much to do with the Gospel, but it is a more inclusive term than either. The faith is that extensive body of Bible doctrine which makes up the perfect whole of the truth revealed by God concerning our common salvation.”³

The interesting thing is, the book of Jude deals with apostates: those who are religious charlatans. They didn’t even belong to the common faith. Evidently, an atmosphere that refuses to talk about anything except the salvation experience will breed apostasy rather than rid itself of it. In such an atmosphere there would be no way to define, grow or observe what is true and what is false. One would not be accountable for believing God about anything beyond the initial belief act. The faith that works, as James describes it, would be unnecessary. And the faith that works is then reduced to a faith that is not allowed to work. Therefore Jude, in order to fight unbelief, must tell his readers to contend for the faith that was entrusted to them, or as Paul put it, “the whole counsel of God.” Jude was placed just before the book of Revelation as the vestibule to the last days. We are walking through it now. And never was the message of Jude needed more than in these days of apostasy. Today people only want to speak of the common salvation and yet we are losing any ability to define the common salvation. Rather than making more converts, we are filling our churches with apostates. R.C. Sproul responded to the ECT document with these timely words, “It doesn’t matter what you believe ‘as long as you are sincere.’ This credo is on a collision course with Christianity. It preaches another gospel of justification by faith, which reveals, after a momentary second glance, that it is the very antithesis of the gospel and of sola fide. This reduces justification by faith alone to justification by sincerity alone.”⁴

It has to be a concern to anyone who truly cares where people spend eternity that in many movements today unsaved people are encouraged to think they are saved. Anyone who lives in flesh and blood would rather have peace than strife. But is tolerance for the sake of tranquility worth even one soul going to hell not to mention the one billion Roman Catholics in the world today? Are we ready to abandon this great mission field because one generation is tired of contending for the faith? Will we not give Catholics the gospel in order to promote social causes? Just as in Jude’s day, we have come to this subterfuge by insisting that we should not speak of anything except the common salvation and that without definition. The result is a growing apostasy. It is not the born-again person who gains in this armistice anymore than the little rabbit who gained some warmth by coming into the serpent’s sanctum. The Roman church considers us all to be wayward children wanting to come home.⁵ It will swallow the evangelical or the fundamentalist. And while its jaws are opening wide in those directions, it is already seeking other prey. The Jerusalem Report recently published the growing dialogue between Rome and orthodox Judaism in an effort to settle on a common faith statement so that neither one calls the other faithless. But the article warns, “There can be no true dialogue if Christians (i.e. Catholics) continue to secretly hope that Jews will convert . It is a dangerous question, challenging long-cherished assumptions each has held about its exclusive centrality in God’s plan of redemption.”⁶ These are apostates talking to one another about a common salvation!

I walked in on a conversation recently where a born-again man and a man professing Judaism were congratulating one another on their common faith. I had to object. How can I allow a man who denies that Jesus was the Christ to think he is safe for eternity? The conversation turned cold but the conviction sure warmed up! This may have happened because in our community an evangelical church and a Jewish Synagogue hold an annual “Diversity in Harmony” day in which they worship together and congratulate each other in their respective faiths. In similar fashion, the “Interfaith Council” in our community recently announce that the Islamic Center had joined their fellowship of ministers which has long embraced Catholics and Jews. Now, under the anodyne of “Interfaith” there is actually no faith that can save.

Last year at the Congress on the Holy Spirit and World Evangelism, Vinson Synan of Regent University said, “The Holy Spirit wants to break down the walls between denominations.”⁷ Every Christian who has an evangelistic love in his heart is forced to ask himself if that is true. To find an answer he may look around at the growing apostasy in professing Christendom and see if people are closer to getting saved than before these walls started coming down. He may conclude that people are happier and perhaps more peaceful but are they at all convicted of their lostness? He may see true Christians holding hands or shedding tears with Catholics, Jews and Mormons but is it really because they are convinced they are in need of a personal Savior?

To save time he may simply read the book of Jude and understand why the Holy Spirit could not allow him to reduce his sincere efforts to just the common salvation, not in a day of apostasy. If that is what the Holy Spirit gave Jude by inspiration, who are we to suggest He wants something different from us?

Notes:

1. Vance Havner, “The Forgotten Anathema,” Sword of the Lord, 1/7/55.

2. Warren Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, Vol. II (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1989) 549.

3. S. Maxwell Coder, Jude: The Acts Of The Apostates (Chicago: Moody Press, 1958) 17.

4. R.C. Sproul, Faith Alone (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995) 76.

5. Walter Klassen, Anabaptism In Outline (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1981) 211.

6. “Catholics & Protestants Celebrate Unity in the Holy Spirit” (N & IRR, 8/7/95)

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A Good Conscience

February 28, 1996Written by Rick Shrader

A Good Conscience

by Rick Shrader

This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the

prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them mightest war

a good warfare; holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having

put away concerning the faith have made shipwreck.

1 Timothy 1:18-19

It is an interesting time to be a pastor of a local church especially if you, through conviction and conscience, have come to adopt a definite set of biblical beliefs. Perhaps those convictions have led you into the fellowship of others of like convictions, and all of you together accept a title like “Baptist” because it has historically described those convictions. It is interesting because in a day when many are lamenting a lack of conviction, direction and willingness to take a stand, they are at the same time criticizing (even attacking) the identification and promotion of your convictions by the use of that title.

This forthrightness of your conviction is further complicated (but not abated) by these “many” equating your conviction of conscience with a sort of racism, bigotry or prejudice. Can differences in doctrine and belief really be the same as differences in the color of skin? You begin to feel this new attitude arising that (a) to disagree with anyone is to suggest you think you are right and they are wrong; (b) and to say such a thing is to suggest superiority in your thinking and inferiority in theirs; (c) and since no one can be that sure of what truth is; (d) your attitude of having, and especially promoting, convictions is simply bigotry. And if that is not enough, you are then asked, no implored, to repent of such sin right beside those who are actually guilty of the real kind of bigotry that those of your title have for centuries abhorred!

The most historical identification for this conviction of conscience among those who call themselves Christians is the name Baptist. Not that they alone held this view, but that they were the champions of this cause when no one else would pay the price for it. As one Baptist historian has written, “This was the firm Baptist ground . . . the Baptists located the responsibility of conscience . . . at the tribunal of inspired truth . . . The Reformers could not be made to see that point at all but drifted further and further away from it.”¹

These independent thinkers were given the names Anabaptists and Baptists by others. They were intended to be derogatory but Baptists didn’t mind if they carried the correct connotation. The London Confession of 1644 was titled, “The confession of faith of those churches which are commonly (though falsely) called Anabaptists.”² Of course, they never considered themselves to be re-baptizing anyone. They simply, by conviction of conscience, baptized their adult converts, something that Zwingli, Luther and Calvin would not admit was unbiblical but would not by conscience do.

When the Reformers broke from Rome over justification by faith alone, the Baptists were glad, having always agreed on that point of doctrine. They had long held to two important doctrines that the Reformers were just beginning to proclaim: Scripture alone and Faith alone. In the Lanterne of List from the 1400s they had written, “Holy Scripture is the supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct.”³ In the Eighteen Dissertations from 1524 they wrote, “Faith alone makes us pious before God.”4 By this same time, Baptists also had long held to three other doctrines of conscience that the Reformers never did embrace: adult baptism, the Lord’s supper as a memorial, and the separation of church and state. These are all well attested in almost every written history of the Baptists and Anabaptists.⁵

Armitage, in relating long discussions between Anabaptists and Reformers, quotes Zwingli, Luther, Calvin and even Melancthon defending infant baptism on the basis that although the Bible doesn’t teach it directly, it nevertheless doesn’t teach against it. At one place Zwingli says, “There are many things besides infant baptism, not expressly mentioned in the Bible, not against God.” To which the great Balthazar Hubmaier replied, “Be still, Zwingli, or the Catholic Faber, will hear you. That is what he said to you but you demanded a plain passage from him.”⁶ For no greater crime than this, Zwingli drowned hundreds of Anabaptists in the Rhine. He insisted on freedom of conscience for himself and refused it to anyone with whom he disagreed.

The 1500s had hardly gotten underway before the Reformers were firmly entrenched in their state churches. First, Zwingli in Switzerland, then Luther in Germany and finally Calvin in Geneva. Feeling the need to hold control over the people and churches, all three began to persecute dissenters, particularly the Anabaptists. Even a non-Baptist book admits, “The combined forces of the Catholics and Lutherans were intent on destroying the Anabaptists’ threat to the established order. The defendants were butchered and their leaders cruelly tortured to death.”⁷ In fact, each of these three leaders were instrumental in putting specific Anabaptist dissenters to death. Zwingli had Felix Mantz drowned in Zurich because he baptized his converts.⁸ Luther praised the burning of Leonard Kayser⁹ and Melancthon said, “One Anabaptist is better than another, as much as one devil is better than another.”¹⁰ Calvin had Michael Servetus burned alive in Geneva in 1553.¹¹ There were hundreds and thousands more. In fact, Armitage estimates 50,000 were hanged, beheaded and buried or burnt alive in the Netherlands alone under Charles V.¹²

All that the Anabaptists and Baptists wanted was liberty of conscience to believe what they were convinced the Scriptures taught and to practice the same openly. But “Catholic and Protestant alike made it the duty of the magistrate to establish religion and enforce it by fine, imprisonment and death; but the Baptists said, ‘no, this is a remnant of heathen usurpation, of which Christ’s law knows nothing.’”¹³ This is why Armitage calls these years “The Reformed Inquisition”¹⁴ and “The Evangelical Inquisition.”¹⁵

In the 1600s when religious groups began to formulate and write down doctrinal statements, the Baptists were the first to include, in The London Confession of 1644 for example,¹⁶ a statement of conscience under civil authority. Vedder says, “They were the pioneer body among modern Christian denominations to advocate the right of all men to worship God, each according to the dictates of his own conscience, without let or hindrance from any earthly power.”¹⁷ In America it was the Baptist settlement of Rhode Island with its capital uniquely called “Providence,” which from the beginning advocated separation of church and state according to conscience.¹⁸

In light of these things, it seems odd that Baptists are actually being coaxed by some leaders to repent of their heritage and conscience. Sure, there have been Baptists that have been less than gracious but that is in spite of their heritage, not because of it. For some to suggest that treasuring such a heritage is tantamount to bigotry or racism is not only a prevarication, but it is to fall prey to a greater and more harmful error itself. It is to ask believers to set aside their own conscience about Scripture for sake of a more influential person’s agenda. This is something Zwingli demanded of Baptists long ago. They could not be deceived then and I doubt that they will be now. Of Hubmaier it was said, “To the law and the testimony he referred every doubtful question, and by the decision thus reached, he loyally abided.”¹⁹ A good conscience cannot do less in our own day.

Notes:

1. Thomas Armitage, The History of the Baptists (Reprinted by Klock & Klock, 1976. Originally by Bryon, Taylor & Co. 1890) 401.

2. William Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1980) 153.

3. Lumpkin, 12.

4. Lumpkin, 20.

5. See Henry Vedder, A Short History of the Baptists (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1969) chapters 10 & 11.

6. Armitage, 382.

7. Eerdman’s Handbook to the History of Christianity (New York: Wm. B. Eerdman’s Pub. Co., 1977) 401.

8. Vedder, 138.

9. Armitage, 403.

10. Armitage, 404.

11. Erdmans, 381.

12. Armitage, 411.

13. Armitage, 399.

14. Armitage, 336.

15. Armitage, 395.

16. Lumpkin, 169.

17. Vedder, 213.

18. Vedder, Chapt 20.

19. Vedder, 156.

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What About Lewis and Chesterton?

January 29, 1996Written by Rick Shrader

What About Lewis and Chesterton?

by Rick Shrader

This means open war between men, in which everyone is obliged to take sides, either with the dogmatists or with the skeptics, because anyone who imagines he can stay neutral is a skeptic par excellence. This neutrality is the essence of their clique. Anyone who is not against them is their staunch supporter, and that is where their advantage appears. They are not even for themselves; they are neutral, suspending judgment on everything, including themselves.

Blaise Pascal¹

In connection with our book reviews concerning the Evangelicals and Catholics Together accord, I think I should explain why I like these two authors, one an Anglican and the other a Catholic, even though I disagree with ECT. Both (as well as Catholics such as Blaise Pascal and Evangelicals such as Francis Schaeffer) are referred to by Charles Colson in his defense of the ECT document as examples of an Evangelical and a Catholic who would have agreed with and signed this accord.² I wouldn’t be so sure that either man would have agreed with ECT, it being easy to speak for men posthumously. Even if they would have I could still read them and enjoy them. Both in his book that is reviewed this month and in his book The Body, Colson argues that real thinkers (and there is no doubt that Lewis and Chesterton were) would not quibble over technical issues of theology and did, in fact, keep themselves above such matters. This is because, Colson believes, they had a broad view of what constitutes salvation and were concerned only with the broad issues of evangelism. It may be true that they avoided defining salvation, but is that because they had a broad view or because they had a narrow view which they seldom tried to delineate to their type of readers? After all, they were thinkers who would not have embraced a faith without understanding what it was saying.

Colson writes, ”The new cooperation is possible because of what C.S. Lewis called ”Mere Christianity” — the essential elements of Christianity upheld by all theological traditions.”³ As a reader of Lewis, I am not convinced that Lewis would be pleased with this summary. In the same preface Lewis writes, ”So far as I know, these were my only motives, and I should be very glad if people would not draw fanciful inferences from my silence on certain disputed matters.

“All this is said simply in order to make clear what kind of book I was trying to write; not in the least to conceal or evade responsibility for my own beliefs.”⁴The better definition of the term ”Mere Christianity” should be taken from The Screwtape Letters where Lewis defines it as the opposite of ”Christianity And.”⁵ That is, ”Mere Christianity” is not Christianity with no definitive explanation of personal faith, but Christianity without the added baggage of what we humans always want to put on it. Perhaps that is why Lewis, a former atheist, did not become a Catholic! So why do we read men such as Lewis and Chesterton? Do we really have to embrace the Anglican or Catholic faith to appreciate or learn good things from them? Must we say that if they speak truth, they are saved? Isn’t Colson arguing for the very thing Christians have never wanted i.e. that we can’t learn from anyone else unless we are convinced they are truly born again? Lewis and Chesterton have both taught me much about God and this world. If there have been true Christians within the Anglican and Catholic churches, I think they were good candidates. But that would be in spite of those churches, not because of them!

Even if they were not true believers, why can’t I learn some truth from them if it does not contradict the Bible? This in light of the fact that they were speaking of general things that do not constitute salvation but were written to point men toward salvation? Lewis and Chesterton taught us not to get caught in Colson’s trap.

Notes:

1. Blaise Pascal, Pensees (London: Penguin Books, 1966) 63-64.

2. Charles Colson, Richard Neuhaus, Editors, Evangelicals & Catholics Together: Toward A Common Mission (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1995) chapter 1.

3. Colson and Neuhaus, p. 34.

4. C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1960) 7-8.

5. C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.

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What Child Is This?

December 29, 1995Written by Rick Shrader

What Child Is This?

by Rick Shrader

What Child is this, who, laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping?

Whom angels greet with anthems sweet, while shepherds watch are keeping?

Why lies He in such mean estate where ox and ass are feeding?

Good Christian, fear–for sinners here the silent Word is pleading.

So bring Him incense, gold and myrrh–come, rich and poor, to own Him;

The King of kings salvation brings–let loving hearts enthrone Him.

English melody, fifteenth century

It has always been one of the striking testimonies of Christianity that Jesus Christ came quietly into this world and left the same way. Though He ascended to heaven while five hundred watched, when His mortal put back on immortality, He simply sat up inside a tomb, quietly put his clothes aside and walked out without audience. At His birth, although angels sang to shepherds on far away hills, when the Babe cried and first breathed earth’s air only cattle turned their headsin witness. The gospel account simply fits with the reality that we know of this world.

With the gospel writers, we are not to take the miraculous conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit in any other way but matter of fact. They don’t ask us to. We don’t have to give an explanation of the miracle, we only have to believe it or reject it. Is it any less reasonable than the alternatives we are offered?

For example, the Romans believed that Zeus impregnated Semele without contact and that she conceived Dionysus, lord of the earth. The Babylonians believed that Tammuz (see Ezek. 8:14) was conceived in the priestess Semiramis by a sunbeam. In an ancient Sumerian/Accadian story inscribed on a wall, Tukulti II (890-884 B.C.) told how the gods created him in the womb of his mother. It was even claimed that the goddess of procreation superintended the conception of King Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.). At the conception of Buddha, his mother supposedly saw a great white elephant enter her belly. Hinduism has claimed that the divine Vishnu, after reincarnations as a fish, tortoise, boar, and lion, descended into the womb of Devaki and was born as her son Krishna. There is even a legend that Alexander the Great was virgin born by the power of Zeus through a snake that impregnated his mother, Olympias.¹

The biblical account is above all such make-believe. Nothing about Christ’s incarnation violates what we know of this world. It only asks us to accept that the Creator of the world can enter and leave it when He wants and as calmly as He wants. It doesn’t insult us with tortoises or sunbeams in the womb. It is not God who is unreasonable in the Christmas story, it is man with his selfish nature and bent toward unbelief. “The incredulous are the most credulous. They believe in Vespasian’s miracles only to disbelieve in those of Moses.”²

We might say that God has asked us to accept a balance of reality in the world into which the incarnation fits perfectly well. God has placed us in a middle world between the microscope and the telescope. We can ascend into the starry heavens until we are overwhelmed by the size and awesomeness of space itself. Or we can descend into the

microcosms of the cells and atoms only to find smaller worlds revolving in their own atmospheres. Man was placed between those two extremes at the center of God’s creative process so that we might be in a place to receive God’s revelation with a reasonable faith that fits with reality. The greatest revelation was when God also became a man, coming into the center of His creation, to reveal Who and What is the reason for our existence.

We learn in the Scriptures that God is both transcendent and immanent. God is transcendent in that He is totally separate, apart from and above His creation. But He is not as transcendent as the existentialist and agnostic would have us think. He is willing to reveal Himself and has done so in many ways, coming into the center of His world with voice, letter and in person. God is immanent in that He is close to and everywhere present in His creation. But He is not as immanent as the pantheists and new-age thinkers would have us believe. He does not consist of the material universe and cannot be found in its parts. Rather, as before, He must come into the world in order for us to know Him. ‘‘God is a person and he made us as persons in his likeness. Because we are persons and he is a personal God, we have the capacity to worship him and to know him and to love him.’’³

And this brings us back to the Christmas story. It is the record of a mighty God overshadowing a virgin Mary, sending angels to sing in concert to shepherds and throwing a star in the sky for wise men to see. But that same God came quietly into our world among the mud of a stable floor and the smells and sounds of common herds. He came as an infant who needed to be nursed and protected from his enemies. He was the perfect revelation of a transcendent, immanent God. There was enough light to lighten the willing and enough mystery to keep them in awe. But there was also enough mystery to hinder the unwilling and yet enough light to rid them of excuse. It was the perfect form for man to receive.

‘What means this glory round our feet,’ The Magi

mused, ‘more bright than morn!’

And voices chanted clear and sweet,

‘Today the Prince of Peace is born.’⁴

Notes:

1. John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, Vol 1 (Chicago: Moody Press, 1985), 12.

2. Blaise Pascal, Pensees (London: Penguin Classics, 1966), 100.

3. Robert Wenz, Room For God? (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994), 162.

4. James Russell Lowell’s Christmas Carol .

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Is It By Faith?

November 29, 1995Written by Rick Shrader

Is It By Faith?

by Rick Shrader

The mass meeting is also necessary for the reason that in it the individual, who at first, while becoming a supporter of a young movement, feels lonely and easily succumbs to the fear of being alone, for the first time gets the picture of a larger community, which in most people has a strengthening, encouraging effect . . . In the crowd he always feels somewhat sheltered . . . When from his little workshop or big factory, in which he feels very small, he steps for the first time into a mass meeting and has thousands and thousands of people of the same opinions around him, when, as a seeker, he is swept away by three or four thousand others into the mighty effect of suggestive intoxication and enthusiasm, when the visible success and agreement of thousands confirm to him the rightness of the new doctrine and for the first time arouse doubt in the truth of his previous conviction–then he himself has succumbed to the magic influence of what we designate as ‘mass suggestion.’ Adolf Hitler¹

At the same time we see our huge globe becoming ‘‘McWorld,’’ we also see the tribalization of its people into Orwell’s ‘‘Group-think.’’ The individual today (and his ability to think for himself) is lost in the sea of Globalism, Pluralism, Multi-culturalism and Jihad. One has to be a member of a group to find identity or even to claim his rights as a victim. A law-breaking gang has more clout and voice than an individual law-abiding citizen. If modernism exalted rugged individualism, postmodernism swallows the individual into a soupy sea of ethical relativism controlled by the perceived needs of society.

I believe the individual Christian is also in danger of losing something very vital–the reality of his faith! These aren’t the best of times but neither are they the worst of times. Christian history has recorded far worse times of persecution and distress when it took monumental faith to endure. There have also been times of great individual achievement when believers found tremendous strength to be creative and productive. I am not discounting the strength of fellowship (of which I have written often this year). I am expressing a fear that the emotion of a group can easily replace the calm reserve of individual faith needed so much in our culture.

We have been reminded recently that a show of strength in a public place can be mere symbolism without substance. But there is a supposed substance! One can be a ‘‘brother’’ because of the color of one’s skin and the identity with that group. Then that one can be given the Christian charge of brotherhood as if that were the type of brotherhood he entered. He then is instructed to return home and carry on this new definition of brotherhood among his own family. As long as he remains attached to the group and retains the memory and feeling of the rally, he can carry out the principles that he learned. But when all the feeling is gone, so is the commitment because it was generated from without rather than from within.

Rather than faith being a personally received conviction involving absolute truth, it becomes a means for group conformity. In describing our culture, Gene Veith writes, ‘‘Under the canons of postmodernism, those who act as individuals and dissent from the way the group is supposed to think often face intense criticism for violating group solidarity. Conversely, group members often surrender their individuality and their true opinions in order to conform to their group.’’²

I read of a man going to a play where, in the middle of the performance, the audience was given a ballot and asked to vote on the outcome of the play. The actors actually arranged the play to end in the way the audience voted. As absurd as it seems, that is exactly the attitude of a society without a belief in a transcendent God who controls His world. But since a culture cannot exist without cultural norms, an atheistic society creates those norms, not from an outside Authority but from within itself and from the needs of the group as a whole. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. If that group happens to be fascist or some other form of a gang, then power to enforce those needs can also be justified.

I am not being simply reactionary to popular trends. Anyone who has grown up in an evangelistic church knows the value of feeling the conviction of the Holy Spirit as a speaker addresses a group. But there is a significant difference between that and the phenomenon we are seeing today. In a Christian gathering, an individual brings his conviction, generated by his personal commitment to truth, to the group. In today’s group-think, the individual draws his conviction, generated by the emotion of the event, from the group. The Christian would perform his responsibility, with or without the group, because it is done by faith before God.

There is something demeaning to our faith when we have, for example, a group of Christian young people sign a pledge to live virtuously. We are saying that their faith alone does not have the power, nor the integrity, nor the urgency it takes to live the plain Christian life as described in God’s Word. We are saying that faith is one thing but reality is another. We have simply refused to walk by our faith. And experience tells us that a person who will not live virtuously because of his faith, will not do so regardless of how many promises he makes. It is not the promise that gives us integrity, it is the faith.

When, in C.S. Lewis’ book, the master demon Screwtape instructs his nephew demon Wormwood about deceiving a believer, he explains, ‘‘The real trouble about the set your patient is living in is that it is merely Christian. They all have individual interests, of course, but the bond remains mere Christianity. What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call ‘Christianity And.’ You know–Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians, let them be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.’’³

If our faith in a transcendent God will not cause us to walk Christianly, no amount of sight in an immanent crowd can do it for us.

Notes:

1. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943), 479.

2. Gene Veith, Postmodern Times (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994), 154.

3. C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: MacMillan, 1982), 115-116.

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