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Good Manners

Written by Rick Shrader

Good Manners

by Rick Shrader

It is assumed that equality means all men being equally uncivil, whereas it obviously ought to mean all men being equally civil. Such people have forgotten the very meaning derivation of the word civility, if they do not see that to be uncivil is to be uncivic. . . Now for this particular moral and religious idea there is no external expression except courtesy. It can only be conveyed by a certain grand manner which may be called good manners.

G.K. Chesterton1

In the foreign countries to which I have traveled, one thing has always stood out in contrast to my homeland and that is the lack of simple courtesies. Whether being crowded off a busy street by a honking motorist or someone pushing their way past me in a public place, I have always excused it as part of a more backward culture.  Once, after long delays and numerous incivilities in the Moscow airport, a whole planeload of passengers cheered when the wheels of the airplane lifted from the ground. But I now need to make an apology to all those foreign lands to which I was guilty of comparing the U.S. of A. You have won! We have become as you! As the bumper sticker reads, ‘‘It don’t matter no more.’’

I recently read an excerpt of a commencement address by John Silber, president of Boston University. He referred to a seventy-five year old speech by Lord Moulton, an English judge, entitled ‘‘Law and Manners.’’  Moulton divided human actions into three domains. On one side is law, where we are forced to act a certain way. On the other side is free choice, where we have complete freedom to act as we please. In the middle is the domain he called manners. While it covers moral and social responsibility, it also covers ‘‘all cases of doing right where there is no one to make you do it but yourself.’’2

I believe that it is in this middle ground that the Christian individual has the supreme advantage over all other people. He has the Holy Spirit and the Word of God to guide him in his deportment and personal character. Also, a country with a Christian history and ethic has an advantage over a non-Christian country. Its people will be more cordial, not just law abiding. On the other hand, they will exercise self-restraint for the sake of others, not merely flaunt their individual liberty. That has been America’s testimony—until now!

We have managed to eliminate Moulton’s middle ground of manners. For Americans, what is not expressly forbidden by law (and that is being challenged continually) should be entirely permissible at all times and cannot be (must not be!) challenged in any way. If a more courteous citizen dares to correct a filthy speaking person, or suggests that some lewd action is out of place, he will more than likely receive a coarsely worded reply, complete with gestures, directing him to mind his own business.

In much the same vein as Moulton, Neil Postman evaluates our culture by noting, ‘‘There are two ways by which the spirit of a culture may be shriveled. In the first–the Orwellian–culture becomes a prison.  In the second–the Huxleyan–culture becomes a burlesque.’’3 That is to say, cultures like ours may collapse by the imposition of law from without, or by the apathy of lawlessness from within. Either way, the collapse comes from a lack of self-control in that middle buffer zone of manners that all healthy societies need.

Cal Thomas said, ‘‘A culture defines itself by the limits it sets for its people.’’4 You might say, our greatness is measured by our manners which shows we need less law and can handle more freedom.  But Myers concludes of America, ‘‘In time, especially for the young, standards of dress, of manners, of conversation, of friendship and love, and even of belief came to be shaped by popular culture more than by family, church, or community.’’5 Our popular culture has insisted on complete freedom without self-restraint (according to Postman, Huxley is winning!).

I want to make this point as well: within Christianity, even within our local churches, we have been encroaching upon this middle ground of self-control. In the name of ‘‘non-essentials’’ or ‘‘preferences’’ or the like, we may be giving new converts the wrong impression. They may think we mean there are only two domains within which to walk: what the Scripture expressly says and everything else!  I have heard statements like, ‘‘I am free to do anything that is not precisely unbiblical.’’ We even compare ‘‘convictions’’ with ‘‘preferences’’ as if they are the only two realms of living, or ‘‘essentials’’ with ‘‘non-essentials’’ in the same way. Like our culture, we have left little room for self-control.

As in the world, we cannot make laws to govern all Christian actions (unless we want a Christian ‘‘big brother’’ state) and neither can we throw out all ‘‘oughts’’ and ‘‘shoulds’’ (unless we really want a Christian ‘‘brave new world’’). The middle ground between total legalism and total license is included in what the Bible calls ‘‘sanctification’’ and ‘‘holiness.’’ Paul didn’t always spell out every detail of Christians’ lives but he would say, ‘‘as you have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more’’ (1 Th. 4:1). What is this ‘‘more and more’’ if it is not self government taken by our own initiative? Then he added, ‘‘This is the will of God, even your sanctification’’ (vs 3).

Older Christian writers used to call this area true ‘‘religion.’’ Tozer wrote, ‘‘Religion, so far as it is genuine, is in essence the response of created personalities to the Creating Personality, God.’’6 If we are to be a light to a dark world, we need to let it shine in this middle area as well, where the world has no light because it has no power to control itself. But we have the mind of Christ.

 

Notes:
1. G.K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 95,97.
2. John Silber, ‘‘Will Our Media Moguls Do The Right Thing?’’ (AFA Journal, 9/95), 16.
3. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death (New York: Penquin Books, 1985), 155.
4. Cal Thomas, The Things That Matter Most (New York: Harper-Collins, 1994), 47.
5. Kenneth Myers, All God’s Children And Blue Suede Shoes (Wheaton:  Crossway Books, 1989), 69.
6. A.W. Tozer, The Best Of A.W. Tozer (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978), 14.

 

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God’s Work Of Art

Written by Rick Shrader

God’s Work Of Art

by Rick Shrader

In our time most American Christians do not sense the precarious position of the church in their neo-pagan culture. The world is no longer willing to grant its traditional favors to the church. People will not become Christians by simply living within the country and watching television. In America today Christians are once again aliens, colonists in a foreign land. Under these conditions, communities of faith are absolutely essential for the initiation, nurture and formation of individual Christians. People will neither become nor remain Christians, in the biblical sense of the term, apart from life in the colony.

Bruce Shelley, The Consumer Church1

Is our church a necessity to us or just a necessary evil?  During World War II, Hitler and his generals kept their membership in the Catholic Church but, of course, never participated in its function.  After he finished with the ‘‘Jewish Problem’’ he intended to solve the ‘‘church problem.’’ He said, ‘‘The point that must be reached is to have the pulpits filled with none but boobs, and the congregations with none but little old women. The healthy young people are with us.’’2 Ironically, it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died in a Nazi prison camp who wrote, ‘‘An individual Christian, trying to make it without the support of his or her family, simply makes no sense. Membership in the church, far from being a matter of personal choice, is a spiritual necessity.’’3

It should not be a novelty in any age to hear a thing stated one way when, in fact, just the opposite is the practical result. For example, Gene Veith wrote of our own generation, ‘‘The contemporary stress on community as the focus of church life is another good-sounding emphasis that in practice can become sinister, as the German Christians have shown. . . Too often communalism leads instead to conformity and to the replacement of transcendent values with group values.’’4

Far too often today, talk about the church and its ministry is simply a group value that has come into vogue that attaches itself to the New Testament Church but in the end lends to its destruction.   How often do such things come across a pastor’s desk!  One man proposes to start an organization called ‘‘Community Builders’’ and explains, ‘‘While congregations and denominations have a purpose, we must move beyond them in our local area and demonstrate biblical unity of the Body of Christ.’’5 He then describes their ministry to be exactly like a church. Of course, he asks for the local churches in his area to support him. Another group of businessmen wants to start a support organization for local Christian business people who will meet for ‘‘Bible study, outreach, work, and opportunities for networking and fellowshiping’’6 but is not intended to be a church (that would give it a negative connotation). Then there is the story of singer Larry Gatlin, who made much of his fortune singing in churches, but now says, ‘‘I don’t go to a particular church on Sundays. I can build my own cathedral (the article goes on to say, ‘So on Sundays Gatlin can be found at his home in the Myrtle Beach area, worshiping quietly by himself while watching devotional TV shows in his own room’).’’7 No wonder that two out of five unchurched adults say they have ‘‘made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ’’8 without making any connection between Him and His church.

As a pastor of a local church, I have given this phenomenon more than a casual thought. I have seen in my short life-time, and even shorter ministry, the local congregation of believers, having membership together, owning property with a church building on it, meeting at agreed upon times and trying to carry on a set of absolute beliefs through teaching and preaching, become a sort of step-child to people calling themselves Christian not to mention non-Christians. A typical prospect to our church may ask if we provide any number of services, none of which may have anything to do with the church. Or they may ask what church functions we have at non-church hours and at non-church locations, and never ask about our own church services. In addition, there is the constant pressure to be more marketable with the look and sound of our church, not so much from within our church, but from those who would join.

Any pastor reading this knows exactly what I am talking about. He also knows that the choices are not easy. As a Baptist, I know we are not traditionalists and yet we have a rich traditional heritage.  I know I am commissioned to reach out to my generation and at the same time not to be yoked together with them. I know that culture can be a positive tool and a destructive tool. In the last four years I have pushed myself to read more about this phenomenon than I have read about it in my entire life. It has at least informed me of this:  history is not as ignorant of the effects of culture as my generation thinks it is, and my generation is playing with fire it knows little about. I am, therefore, very reluctant to accommodate my generation in matters of my faith (Francis Schaeffer decried this accommodation and called rather for ‘‘confrontation’’9).

We have spent the last year at our church doing a thorough examination of every part of our ministry. We have asked ourselves if the Lord is pleased. In speaking to our church from 2 Corinthians, I came across a verse in chapter thirteen that seemed to put my thoughts into clearer focus. ‘‘We are glad, when we are weak, and ye are strong: and this also we wish, even your perfection (vs 9).’’ Paul, as an apostle, didn’t mind if he suffered as long as the church was strong. His desire for them was their katartisin (not the normal word for ‘‘perfection’’).  That is the word from which we get ‘‘artisan.’’ To Paul, the church is to be God’s ‘‘work of art.’’

Our determination has become this: to be what God wants us to be; to do what God wants us to do; and to show what God wants us to show.  We want to be His ‘‘work of art.’’ Now a piece of art is supposed to reflect the Artist’s handiwork. Tampering with it is forgery. A person coming into the gallery either likes it or he doesn’t. It is not the custodian’s job to please the observer, only to show him what the Artist has made.

The local church is the one place on the earth where the lost can actually see the body of Christ in a functioning manner. There we are! All of us together! Praying, singing, reading, teaching, caring, comforting, correcting and a number of other functions that the New Testament describes churches doing! There are families uniting together in worship, singles finding common bonds, widows and orphans and babies! We are not trying to be anything but the body of Christ. To be like the world would be forgery. Like the computer term ‘‘wysiwyg,’’ “what you see is what you get.”

From here we go out to our homes, our jobs and schools and neighborhoods, to be salt and light to a world that thinks it doesn’t need us. And I find that people who go out from a church like this, have no trouble navigating their world.  They are confident that their faith is intact and that they are connected to history as well as to Christ. They don’t have unreal expectations from the world nor the world from them.  And one of the greatest blessings in this world is to invite someone to come to church and see the body of Christ function. After all, if they accept Him, what they are seeing is what they will be getting!

Notes:
1. Bruce and Marshall Shelley, The Consumer Church (Downer’s Grove:  IVP, 1992), p. 50.
2. Gene Veith, Jr. Modern Fascism (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1993), p. 66.
3. Shelley, The Consumer Church, p. 50.
4. Gene Veith, Modern Fascism, p. 72.
5. Mark Gardner, ‘‘Community Builders: A Proposal for Community Ministry’’ (A paper to community members).
6. ‘‘Christians Make Impact In Local Business’’ (Dayton Business Reporter, July 1995), p. B-9.
7. ‘‘All The World’s His Church’’ (Knight-Ridder News Service, nd).
8. George Gallup, Jr., and David Poling, The Search For America’s Faith (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980), p. 90.
9. Francis Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1984), p. 98-99.

 

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Get Real

Written by Rick Shrader

Get Real

by Rick Shrader

How, then, it may be asked, can we either reach or avoid [God]? The avoiding, in many times and places, has proved so difficult that a very large part of the human race failed to achieve it. But in our own time and place it is extremely easy. Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you’d be safer to stick to the papers. You’ll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.

C.S. Lewis, Christian Reflections

A famous Christian author once said that he was relieved to find that ‘‘Christianity, in spite of its revolutionary and apocalyptic elements, can be delightfully humdrum.’’ To the non-Christian, that is exactly what he fears (and yet hopes) he may find. It has been noted repeatedly that our generation cannot long endure quietness, stillness or any state where the physical senses are not externally stimulated. The house builder today who is privileged to work outdoors, opens his truck door and turns up his radio. The surgeon operates in a sterile room with music blaring. Even on a picnic in the Rocky Mountains you will likely hear a radio or smell cigarette smoke. These are merely symptoms of a deeper problem. Where Christianity proposes to help is exactly where worldlings do not think they want help.

Let’s take this a step further. We often hear today that people without Christ live in some world that is supposed to be more ‘‘real’’ than the Christian’s world. It is the ‘‘real’’ world of drugs or the ‘‘real’’ world of music or some other ‘‘real’’ state of physical stimulation which has ‘‘real’’ fun or ‘‘real’’ excitement. The same is often said of the ‘‘real’’ world of pain and suffering and heartache. I am not about to propose that such pain or such stimulation are not real in the physical sense. But when they say ‘‘get real,’’ the reality they mean is actually an escape from reality or at best an artificiality placed on top of reality. If what I am saying is not true then the Christian message is in serious question.

How often has a Christian walked away from a blessed church service or a wonderful quiet time or just from some Christian friends, out into the ‘‘real’’ world, to suddenly become aware that what he has just left is what is real and what he has entered is artificial. 1Timothy 6 is a commentary on this very truth. Rather than happiness being found in striving after things, ‘‘godliness with contentment’’ becomes ‘‘great gain.’’ The ‘‘man of God’’ is to flee the artificial stimulation and ‘‘follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.’’

G.K. Chesterton, in What’s Wrong With The World, illustrated this truth in comparing the rich man’s home and the poor man’s. The poor man’s simple home is the most exciting place in his life because it is the only place (for him) of freedom in a world of rules, laws and expectations. At home he is free to do what he wants. The rich man’s home, on the other hand, is (for him) the one dull place in a whole world of excitement that is available to him. He doesn’t worry about the rules or laws that plague the poor man because if he breaks them he merely pays whatever the cost. Paul warned Timothy not to run after this ‘‘love of money’’ but to seek the contentment instead.

The constant biblical appeal to the believer is to avoid the false (but physically real) stimulation to which the ‘‘natural’’ man gravitates. I think that this Christian reality which worldlings call boring but we call exciting is described with the biblical word ‘‘faith.’’ But it is faith as a noun more than faith as a verb, a difference that has largely escaped our generation. It is a state of being in which we live and are content more (if at all) than a secret power to obtain things we do not have. We walk by this faith. We teach this faith. We are weak or strong in this faith. It is a state of understanding that God exists and that the world which has the fewest artificial stimulations (or in this case distractions) is the world closer to reality precisely because it is a world alone with God.

Now a real problem is this. Our faith is usually no match for the stimulations. The ‘‘real’’ world of the worldlings takes over immediately when invited and seems to render the ‘‘faith’’ world powerless and muted. Our fallen nature gravitates to the immediate things and quickly forgets the plainer things. The Bible contrasts this with the word ‘‘lust’’ (literally ‘‘short desire’’) and the word ‘‘longsuffering’’ (literally ‘‘long desire’’). We are all aware of this battle at this lowest level. But we are just as faithless as the fornicator when we, in the name of religion, evangelism or worship, gravitate to other distractions stimulated by our desire for this artificial world whether it be audio, visual or emotional. Rather than being drawn into the presence of God (as we are often told) we are being barred from His presence and the real world of faith.

While the Christian is drawing nigh to God by continually stripping away the artificial, the worldling doesn’t think he wants the stimuli turned off. We know he really does. The artificially stimulated world he lives in is no more real than an athlete on steroids or a newlywed on a honeymoon. It is hard for a worldling who has never been there to understand the joy he is missing. He thinks it will be boring and lifeless and until he becomes a Christian it will be.  The worst thing we could do is to cloud the issue at this point.  He must see the faith for what it is in order to accept it.  It ought to be obvious to us that he is uncomfortable and unwilling. But once he crosses over into the faith life, he will see it for what it really is, ‘‘delightfully humdrum.’’

 

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The Bible: Still Under Attack

Written by Rick Shrader

The Bible: Still Under Attack

by Rick Shrader

The facts are that God is not silent, has never been silent. It is the nature of God to speak. The second Person of the Holy Trinity is called the Word. The Bible is the inevitable outcome of God’s continuous speech. It is the infallible declaration of His mind put into our familiar human words.     A.W. Tozer

The Eighteenth century philosopher Francois Voltaire said, ‘‘If we would destroy the Christian religion, we must first of all destroy man’s belief in the Bible.’’ At the end of the Twentieth century we may be witnessing, not the destruction of Christianity (of which no power in heaven or earth is capable), but the destruction of the Christian foundation of this society. That foundation has been no less than a confidence in the reliability and sanctity of the Bible. Ulysses S. Grant once said, ‘‘To the influence of this book we are indebted for all the progress made in true civilization, and to this we must look as our guide in the future.’’ Such is not the case in present-day America.

Our generation was not here when our Grandfathers-in-the-faith fought the great Fundamentalist/Modernist battles at the turn of this last century. The rationalistic Liberals had attacked Christianity at the very source, the proposition that God had spoken in not only the Living Word but also in the Written Word. This written Word of God was made to be seen as a merely human product to be manipulated in the same fashion as any other human book. Our spiritual forefathers boldly met that challenge and succeeded in preserving not only Christianity’s but America’s faith in the Book.

That fight was aided by peripheral studies such as Archeology which connected our present reading of the Bible with historical evidence from the past. Textual studies of  ancient manuscripts also confirmed the church’s historic faith in the reliability of the Bible. Even the style of the biblical Greek was confirmed to be authentic while the Dead Sea Scrolls moved our understanding of the biblical Hebrew one thousand years closer to the original texts and confirmed their reliability. Modern literature also gave profound witness to the Bible.  Victor Hugo said, ‘‘England has two great books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare, but the Bible made England.’’

But that was then. This is now. Christians who will see the turn of the next century may be playing while western civilization burns.  Perhaps we have thought the Bible question was settled and we no longer need to defend its integrity. But while we have concentrated on the proclamation of the Word (and who does not want to be left with that task alone?) the audience to which we are speaking has undermined the authority, significance, reliability and relevance of our text. In March of this year, USA Weekend published statistics in which one third of Baby Boomers said they were born again and twenty eight percent of them also believed in reincarnation!

In a blasphemous book entitled God: A Biography (called a ‘‘theobiography’’), author Jack Miles has Christ on the cross asking mankind to forgive God: ‘‘Forgive Him for He knows not what He has done,’’ and has God apologizing to Job for tormenting him. This year the Wis.-based Freedom From Religion Foundation put stickers on Gideon Bibles that said, ‘‘We’re offended to have these Bible in our rooms.’’

In preparing some Biblical Archeology material, I constantly have come across statements by archeologists disclaiming the historicity of the Bible. The greatest find of the nineties was in biblical Dan where a stone ‘‘stele’’ was found with the words ‘‘House of David’’ from the eighth century B.C. (making it the only place we have found the biblical name David outside biblical texts). But in Biblical Archeology Today, Philip Davies wrote, ‘‘Biblical stories, like any other ancient accounts, ought to be verified before being accorded the status of facts. . . I am not the only scholar who suspects that the figure of King David is about as historical as King Arthur.’’

To today’s audience, the Bible is simply a record of what the church has culturally expressed. since it does not come from our generation, it has little significance for our culture. Stanley J. Grenz, in Revisioning Evangelical Theology: A Fresh Agenda for the 21st Century, published by Inter-Varsity, says that the role of Scripture in Christian theology is ‘‘ultimately unnecessary.’’ Following this postmodern agenda he writes, ‘‘In recent years we have begun to shift the focus of our attention away from doctrine with its focus on propositional truth in favor of a renewed interest in what constitutes the uniquely evangelical vision of spirituality.’’

Whether we want to or not, we are going to have to fight our own battle for the Bible. Francis Schaeffer warned us, ‘‘Unless the Bible is without error, not only when it speaks of salvation matters, but also when it speaks of history and the cosmos, we have no foundation for answering questions concerning the existence of the universe and its form and the uniqueness of man. Nor do we have any moral absolutes, or certainty of salvation, and the next generation of Christians will have nothing on which to stand.’’

Has Voltaire won? Have we won a few battles but lost the war? Not necessarily. But we must know when to befriend and when to confront. Becoming user friendly with the Bible can come at the price of becoming verbally indistinct. We desire so much to appeal to  our generation but the desire of our generation is to have no appeal.

In the same Eighteenth century in which Voltaire died, Harvard President Joseph Willard at a graduation exercise, prayed that the class of 1799, about to enter a new century, had kept ‘‘the sacred code called the Bible in which you have been instructed from your early years and which is worthy of all acceptation, and that none of the writings of infidels have unhinged your minds or removed from them the hope of the gospel.’’  Let us pray that our minds do not become unhinged by a friendly-sounding but infidel culture.

 

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OK, What Is Postmodernism

Written by Rick Shrader

OK, What Is Postmodernism

by Rick Shrader

We must not forget that the world is on fire. We are not only losing the church, but our entire culture as well. We live in the post-Christian world which is under the judgment of God. I believe today that we must speak as Jeremiah did. . . And if this is true in our moment of history, we need each other. Let us keep our denominational distinctives. And let us talk to each other about our distinctives as we keep them.

Francis Schaeffer, 1984

In the last issue, I argued for retaining our denominational titles in the face of a postmodern age. It is my contention that changing the way we express and describe our convictions about faith for the postmodern’s sake is to become more postmodern than Christian. It is to agree that no human propositions are important and therefore everything is subject to change. The only absolute is that there are no absolutes. The change in your approach only proves to them that that is true, especially in the use of a title since the power to change a ‘‘text’’ is at the bedrock of the postmodern proposition of meaninglessness.

Having used the term ‘‘postmodern’’ in recent articles, It is only fair to attempt a definition for this seemingly contradictory term. Christian as well as secular apologists have picked up this term and are using it in a growing fashion. Some have noted that in 1934, Frederico de Oniz coined the term postmodernismo and in 1939 Arnold Toynbee suggested that the post-WWI era should be called ‘‘post-modern’’ (R. Albert Mohler, Jr. in Challenge, p. 68). These precursory uses, however, could not be descriptive (because of their early date) but only predictive of our age, as Schaeffer’s term ‘‘post-Christian’’ was in 1984.

The term ‘‘postmodern’’ suggests a two-fold definition. The first is chronological. Just as the traditional age was before the modern age, postmodern is after the modern. The Traditional age of orthodoxy is usually seen as prior to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. The influence of the Reformation had profound effect on Europe and America until that time. Modernism arose out of Deism, Skepticism and Rationalism and some have placed the turning point (from traditional to modern) at the French Revolution in 1789. Human reason became the basis for truth rather than divine revelation. Without the need for God, rational man could bring the world to new heights of progress and understanding. But now, two hundred years later, society is disillusioned with modernism. Man doesn’t seem to be better off. Science hasn’t solved all the problems of the universe nor answered all the questions.  Some start a new era of ‘‘post-modern’’ thinking after WWII, some start it in the sixties and some point to the fall of Communism, specifically 1989, making a neat two hundred years from the French Revolution.

A second aspect of our definition is philosophical. Postmodern man is not a modernist and actually decries the failure of modern humanism. Explanations of man’s existence from outside himself have failed as well as explanations from within himself. Man can really know nothing. Our supposed understanding of the world comes from a sinister plot of the powerful to victimize the weak. History itself has been a manipulation of words by powerful people (usually white European males) to create dependent classes. We need not think that such history is true in the classical or modern sense. Such history and whatever ‘‘truth’’ it contained can be changed simply by rewriting or reshaping it just as all people of all ages have done (this puts a whole new light on the rhetoric of baby boomer politicians). Even God may now be thought of as the product of a ‘‘process’’ of thinking.  Virtual reality becomes the only reality there is.

Since he is now free to rewrite and reshape all situations at will, power, to the postmodern, is derived from information. The more information a person has access to the more powerful he is. He doesn’t have to be wise or even correct (error would be someone else’s fault after all), but he must be able to manipulate others by having information they do not have. Listen to the commercials that appeal to you on this basis!  Computers have largely become an image of power due to the sheer volume of fingertip information they represent.

We could also compare (I think Gene Veith is best at this) modern art with its purely human expressions to postmodern shock art whose only meaning is in its response from the audience. Compare skyscraping modern architecture to unrealistic postmodern buildings where the inside is out and the outside is in. Compare modern dress with its sleek lines and finely cut clothes to postmodern grunge, unnatural hair lines and shocking contrasts. But these are all the result of the basic philosophy of having no absolutes because we have no reliable texts. Walter Truett Anderson tells the story of three umpires. The first, representing the pre-modern perspective would say, ‘‘three balls and three strikes and I call ‘em the way they are.’’ The second umpire, representing the modern perspective would say, ‘‘I call ‘em the way I see ‘em.’’ The third umpire, representing the post-modern perspective would say, ‘‘they ain’t nothin’ til I call ‘em.’’

As Christians, we can rejoice in the defeat of a God-denying modernism and yet at the same time fall right into the hands of a worse monster by continually reshaping our message according to the latest poll. While we glibly discuss becoming culturally relevant we may become walking illustrations of postmodernism’s most basic proposition. We fundamentalists often lead the way in following such cultural fads because we pride ourselves on being independent of orthodox traditions. Here are two admonitions directed to Evangelicals that we fundamentalists could heed.

R. Albert Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary says ‘‘Evangelicals, attracted to the vague but seductive notion of postmodernity as a breakdown of secular modernity, are in danger of romancing modernity’s latest stage . . . and thus risk forfeiting the integrity of the evangelical truth claim, and the Gospel itself.’’ Os Guiness, Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum warns, ‘‘But perhaps postmodernism’s main challenge to the church is to our central mission as Christians: following Christ and making Him Lord in all of life. The church cannot become simply another customer center that offers designer religion and catalogue spirituality to the hoppers and shoppers of the modern world. Followers of Christ are custodians of the faith passed on down the running centuries. Never must we allow anyone outside the church to become cannibals who devour the truth and meaning of this priceless heritage of faith.  Letting the church be the church and the gospel be the gospel is integral to letting God be God.’’

 

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Why The Name ‘Baptist?’

Written by Rick Shrader

Why The Name ‘Baptist?’

by Rick Shrader

Christians, if they are to be an alternative to postmodern relativism, need to confess their faith, in word and deed. This means knowing what the faith is. Christians in every church body might begin by returning to their own doctrinal heritage. . . In doing so, they might regain their vitality and testify to a core of Biblical truth that will stand as a blazing witness to the relativistic culture. Biblical churches with doctrinal integrity will have a stronger witness than muddled, eager-to-please-everyone congregations that do not stand for anything in particular.

Gene Veith, Postmodern Times

There is no denying we live in a generation that disdains labels. To assert any belief with a personal label is to be intolerant and insensitive to those who disagree. The modernist used to simply disagree and was willing to fight about it. The postmodernist says no one should be so dogmatic to say they are right and others are wrong. This is a change from our forefathers, says Bruce Shelley, ‘‘The first, now traditional, form of the Christian community in America emphasized denominations. . The term for this new arrangement, denomination, comes from the Latin word nomen, meaning ‘to name.’ A denomination, then, is an association of congregations under a special ‘name’ with similar basic beliefs, similar church government, similar styles of worship and similar goals in their mission to America” (The Consumer Church, p. 59-60).

With that positive and historic attitude toward church names, popular singer Steve Green disagrees. In the song ‘‘Let The Walls Come Down,’’ he sings ‘‘Walls designed by Satan in the twilight of the ages, now stand as great divisions all across the world today; walls not born of governments nor strife amid the nations, but walls within our churches and between denominations; stones of tried tradition carved in fear and laid in pride, become a dismal prison to those withering inside; let the walls come down, let the walls come down.’’ Though these words are not historically accurate, they have become a convenient theology for many of today’s churches and only add fuel to an unnecessary fire.

Some say that they have been offended by unguarded and even unloving statements from some Baptist brethren. I don’t doubt these offenses nor the fact of these statements. However, I don’t see them changing their family name when someone proves to be a nut in the family tree. And I think the analogy is valid. Others say that the lost are offended by the name Baptist and it becomes a stumblingblock to them. But how far are we willing to follow this acquiescence? We could conceivably end up disallowing all speech except the literal reading of the biblical text. Anything else would be human interpretation and may give offense. Others point out the ignorance of our generation and the problem of placing this baggage on their immature minds. Yet, that is why the schools have not taught Johnny to read. It would be an unkind difficulty to put upon the first-grader.    I have to agree with Spurgeon when he says, ‘‘I am unable to sympathize with a man who says he has no creed; because I believe him to be in the wrong by his own showing. He ought to have a creed. What is equally certain, he has a creed–he must have one, even though he repudiates the notion. . . The objection to a creed is a very pleasant way of concealing objection to discipline, and a desire for latitudinarianism.  What is wished for is a Union which will, like Noah’s Ark, afford shelter both for the clean and for the unclean, for creeping things and winged fowls’’ (fr. MacArthur, Ashamed of the Gospel, App. 1).  I am not ridiculing nor belittling my friends who have dropped their denominational name. I have been asked my opinion and I am saying I strongly disagree with them. I think the trade-off will pay very poor dividends.

Without trying to defend Baptist history in this short space nor delineating my agreement with its historic doctrines (doctrine being the first factor listed in Acts 2:42), I do wish to give some reasons for retaining the name Baptist, especially in our generation.

1. Denominational names (I mean, of course, the one which describes you) are not divisive but unifying because they are up front and honest. My grandparents’ generation knew what they believed, were honest enough to put it out front on a sign, thanked the Methodists for being honest enough to do the same and all went about their business as good citizens and neighbors. Don’t we today call that being open and genuine? It was the knowledge and forthrightness of their convictions that brought them together. It is today’s ignorance and lack of conviction that separates Christians. J.Sidlow Baxter wrote, ‘‘The fatal blight on modern Protestantism is not its plurality of denominations, and the WCC is wasting our time laboring that dreary blunder’’ (Rethinking Our Priorities, p. 29).

2. The willingness to discard the name Baptist is due more to a loathing of tradition than to a concern for the unchurched. If this generation really doesn’t know what the name means, then what’s the problem? If they are that ignorant then it doesn’t matter to them what the name is. Evidently, it matters more to someone already there. G.K. Chesterton called tradition the democracy of the dead (Orthodoxy, p. 47). It is allowing past generations a say in our present decisions.  Jaroslav Pelikan of Yale University said, ‘‘Traditionalism may be the dead faith of the living, but tradition is the living faith of the dead’’ (fr Shelley, The Consumer Church, p. 72). Perhaps we have become more attached to the ethics of this generation than any other generation.

3. If these denominational names fade away, others like them will take their place. We already see this happening with names like ‘‘Bible Church,’’ ‘‘Vineyard,’’ etc. Churches will gravitate to others of like faith and wear their labels. So what’s wrong with keeping the ones we have? Besides, any study of postmodernism will tell us that it was the moderns who discarded old labels, the postmoderns are into restoring. The name-changing fad may already be out of date! One postmodern writes, ‘‘The idea that all groups have a right to speak for themselves, in their own voice, and have that voice accepted as authentic and legitimate is essential to the pluralistic stance of postmodernism’’ (David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, p. 48).

4. The recognition of our doctrine is still the most important testimony we have. Our doctrine is our conviction about truth and a denominational title is still a legitimate identification. We are to ‘‘stand fast in sound doctrine.’’ I know we can have correct doctrine without a label but why? You know those people at a seminar who won’t wear their name tags! Do they help or hinder the situation? In 1966, Addison Leitch wrote, ‘‘But suppose we accept the freedom from definition principle. After all, the important thing is to be a Christian, not a Presbyterian. Very well, a Protestant or a Romanist Christian? Will not the attitude that refuses to draw lines between Presbyterians and Baptists or between Protestants and Romanists eventually blur the distinctions between Christians and Buddhists and Moslems? It will, and it does’’ (fr Kenneth Myers in Power Religion, p. 49). One Baptist wrote in the early 1800s, ‘‘From these remarks it will be perceived, that while the subjects and mode of baptism is the external ground of difference between Baptists and others, that difference involves a great principle; and the primary question is not, shall infants be baptized? But, whether God’s Word or tradition shall be our guide’’ (John Adams, Baptists: Thorough Reformers, p. 64). I don’t mind wearing a title that indicates that commitment.

5. I’m more concerned with not saying enough with the name Baptist than fearing I have said too much. I am constantly looking for ways at our church to inform the visitor of what we believe and how we practice. We used to be able to let new people come right into our membership with little or no orientation. But today people will join with little regard for your belief and practice and we must be as careful as possible. I am not interested in discarding one more way of getting this accomplished. And if someone mistakenly thinks that doctrine is stuffy and boring, it is our biblical duty to change that thinking (1 Tim 4:12-16). Chesterton said, ‘‘This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy’’ (Orthodoxy, p. 106).

C.S. Lewis said of his loyalty to his own church, ‘‘I found that it was the only way of flying your flag’’ (God in the Dock, p. 61). I have lowered the flag on the pole enough for this ‘‘untoward generation.’’ It has made me uncomfortable in almost every area of life outside my own home. I have simply drawn the line at the name on my church. They can’t have that too. In a recent reprint of a Vance Havner article, I read and identified with these words, ‘‘The church began to degenerate, as Augustine tells us, when holy days were merged with holidays to please the influx of new pagan members. Today we have moved from the catacombs to the colosseum and revised our standards to suit a generation of pleasure-lovers who do not love God.’’  I think we’ve gone far enough.

 

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Multi-everythingism

Written by Rick Shrader

Multi-everythingism

by Rick Shrader

The last few decades have been marked by a special cultivation of the romance of the future. We seem to have made up our minds to misunderstand what has happened–which is (apparently) much easier. The modern man no longer preserves the memoirs of his great-grandfather; but he is engaged in writing a detailed and authoritative biography of his great-grandson. Instead of trembling before the specters of the dead, we shudder abjectly under the shadow of the babe unborn. This spirit is apparent everywhere, even to the creation of a form of futurist romance. . . I shall not hesitate to maintain here that this cult of the future is not only a weakness but a cowardice of the age.         G.K. Chesterton

I flew out of DIA exactly one week after it opened (yes, I did get my bag on time and in one piece). Everything is new, modern and fresh and I enjoyed exploring all the gadgets, trains, tunnels and cookie stores. Along with the futuristic architecture are prominent, and nowadays all too common, tributes to the multi-culturalism of our society. Especially prominent at DIA is the appeasement of the American Indian ancestral spirits which were said to be disturbed during construction. This is all artistically mixed with the modernity of the jet age and the necessary forward movement of technology (the symbolism was made but nothing of substance changed). We Americans seem to be happiest when we have sufficiently convinced ourselves that everything anyone ever believed is true and nothing anyone ever believed is false. It’s a kind of ‘‘multi-everythingism.’’  Last Christmas, for example, the city of San Jose, removed the creche from a city park and erected an eight-foot statue of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl because it was a “multi-cultural” symbol.  Gene Veith wrote, “Whereas modernism emphasized unity, postmodernism favors diversity.  Postmodernism embraces multi-culturalism and continually invokes pluralism.  The principle of diversity as a governing value manifests itself stylistically.”    As the day of multi-everythingism dawns brighter in America, Christianity’s unique claim on April gets pushed increasingly into the shadows. The doctrine of Christ’s bodily resurrection is, of course, welcome to join the multi-religious banner but its claim of uniqueness must be abandoned or be labeled bigotry–which is anathema in enlightened America. These days Christianity must not exalt itself or its beliefs over any other belief. It must settle for a blurry past of religious ideals that look no more threatening than reincarnation, yoga or other suppositions.

In 1910 G.K. Chesterton wrote a treatise on his disintegrating English generation called What’s Wrong With the World. A point he made fits well today in America (the opening quote gives some of the idea). That is, men are more afraid of the past than of the future.  The future can be manipulated, dreamed about and portrayed in any Unrealistic way one wants. Every man is brave, noble and successful in the future.  Thomas Sowell said, “Everything is new and unparalleled if you are sufficiently ignorant of history.”

The past holds facts that no one can change and ideas that worked or did not. Chesterton suggested that a weak society is one which ignores the rigors of historical study and spends all of its time living in a future that doesn’t and probably can’t exist. In such a society (which he saw his becoming) nothing can be proclaimed as absolute, nothing can be forbidden and any desire of the flesh or belief of the mind can be fantasized or written as fact. Today’s literature, video arcades and film industry is enough to convince me that he was right.

Is the contemporary Christian generation confronting or capitulating to such a fearful culture? Look at the Christian fiction (an oxymoron?) section of your local Bible book store compared to the Christian history section, or the words of Christian choruses compared to historic hymns, or today’s messages on success compared to great preachers of the past century. My point is that when Christianity takes on this characteristic, its claim on a unique historical event will be concealed and its message of accepting this historical event as fact will seldom be taken seriously.   We see this trend happening with encouraged fanfare such as ‘‘The 1993 Chicago Parliament of the World’s Religions’’ in which 125 religions gathered together to give ‘‘a declaration of Global Ethic’’ and ‘‘a vision of co-operation in the 21st century.’’ Along with those who professed Christianity were leaders of Baha’i, Buddhism, Mormons, Zoroastrians and even Wiccan. Charles Colson was honored as representative of simply another religious alternative. This is the future religious scenario of America and eventually the world.

So once again we are faced with the Christian challenge of April. In a multi-everything culture we are being asked to put the resurrection doctrine on the same shelf with every other religion and merely look to a future with societal harmony of beliefs and ideals.  C.S. Lewis observed that no other religion depends on the miraculous for its existence.  If you took every miracle out of every other religion, they would not change in any basic tenet.  But if you take the miraculous out of Christianity you have nothing left.

So Christianity alone will look back into the past and insist that our society face the facts. We will invite them to surrender their future fantasies of meaningless religion because a past fact has a claim on their lives. There is no escaping, changing or dreaming about the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ and his ascension back into heaven. It happened. It is the truth.

 

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Change And Progress

Written by Rick Shrader

Change And Progress

by Rick Shrader

In regard to culture, theories that hate beauty and order have undermined meaning, value, and conscience. Whether it is popular culture or high culture, they have led to ever stranger sins and more startling obscenities. Each year requires more baroque perversions to provoke society’s jaded capacity for outrage.         Cal Thomas

Cal Thomas was writing about the Sixties’ mentality when he wrote those words. The sixties’ experiment of indulgence with no restraint has proved to be a dismal failure in every regard. Every category of social structure has failed to produce the utopia promised by the sixties’ freedom from morality. And why is that? It is because the basic premise was wrong. Instead of man being his own god in a relativistic universe, he is made in God’s image in a moralistic universe. A fish can’t fly and a bird can’t live under water and a man can’t function properly in this world without God.

You might say that the Hippies/Boomers/Yuppies brought about change but not progress. Now, in the nineties, we are having to undo the change and refix the foundation so that true progress can be made.  We have become fond of the word ‘‘modernity’’ in the nineties as if it were equal to progress but, of course, it is not. Os Guinness says modernity ‘‘refers to the character and system of the world produced by the forces of modernization and development.’’ But such change toward modernity may or may not be toward the good. Neil Postman called this ‘‘Technopoly–the submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology.’’

But is this progress? In the nineteenth century Tocqueville said, ‘‘The American lives in a land of wonders. Everything around him is in constant movement, and every movement seems an advance. Consequently, in his mind the idea of newness is closely linked with that of improvement.’’ But even techniques that have made businesses more productive (like tele-marketing) have not necessarily made an improvement on our quality of living. Many, of course, have (like modern medical techniques) but it is certainly not conclusive that just because something is different it is better.

Just after the sixties Francis Schaeffer warned evangelical Christianity of the coming problem of fitting a constant truth (all truth is!) into a changing culture. He said, ‘‘If our reflex action is always accommodation regardless of the centrality of the truth involved, there is something wrong.’’ Also, ‘‘The culture is to be constantly judged by the Bible, rather than the Bible being bent to conform to the surrounding culture.’’ More recently, Os Guinness said it this way, ‘‘Failing to think Christianly, evangelicals have been forced into the role of cultural imitators and adapters rather than originators. In biblical terms, it is to be worldly and conformist, not decisively Christian.’’

In the 1940’s, C.S. Lewis asked the question, ‘‘How can an unchanging system survive the continual increase of knowledge?’’ He answered by using the illustration of the alphabet. A five year old boy may be memorizing twenty-six letters of the alphabet upon which he will later build a store of knowledge. At the same time a mature scholar may be reading metaphysics from Plato and noting the literary beauty and its place in history. But the scholar is dependent upon what the boy is still learning. If those twenty-six letters aren’t properly learned and their meaning properly preserved, Plato cannot make sense. The fundamental pieces must stay intact. ‘‘If that goes,’’ says Lewis, ‘‘then there has been no progress, but only mere change. For change is not progress unless the core remains the same.’’ The same would be true of our first numbers to the application of algebra or our first grade-school science experiment to rocketry.

Similarly the only way Christianity can make sense and pass on truth to any culture is to keep intact the most basic and fundamental pieces of its tradition. Schaeffer said, ‘‘The Reformation did this in its day in relation to the culture coming at the end of the Middle Ages. And we must never forget that all the great revivalists did this concerning the surrounding culture of their day. And the Christian church did this at every one of its great points of history.’’ Calvin said, ‘‘The more determined men become to despise the teaching of Christ, the more zealous should godly ministers be to assert it and the more strenuous their efforts to preserve it entire, and more than that, by their diligence to ward off Satan’s attacks.’’

If we think we have seen the end of Satan’s attempts to change the alphabet of our culture, we are blind guides indeed. In 1970 H.R. Rookmaaker, Professor of Art at the Free University of Amsterdam, observed, ‘‘Perhaps a new culture is growing that can come into being only when the old civilization is completely destroyed. But if things continue the way they do the new culture will be neither humanistic nor Christian.’’ In 1994, Gene Veith, Professor of English at Concordia University, Wisconsin, answered, ‘‘Many people today are sensing that the modern era is over. As we enter the twenty-first century, it seems clear that Western culture is entering a new phase which scholars are calling ‘postmmodernism.’’’ He says, ‘‘Postmodernism dismisses ‘foundationalism,’ defined as ‘the idea that knowledge is the reflection of truth and that we can discover a stable foundation for it in God, History or Reason.’’’

We who name the name of Christ and who hold high the ‘‘Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth,’’ must realize that every culture is an expression of a belief system whether it be in art, music, fashion, theater or medicine. Neither should we underestimate the power and craftiness of the god of this world and his ability to ‘‘change’’ the alphabet. The writer of Hebrews, in chapter six, admonished believers to leave the basic principles and go on to perfection, not laying again foundational things. He did not, of course, advocate changing those foundational things. Rather, he meant to build upon those things more complete and mature things.  Leave the alphabet and go on to Plato, so to speak. Real ‘‘progress’’ is more than ‘‘change’’ especially in the Christian walk.

Lewis wrote of the changes in life, ‘‘Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind. Whatever we have been, in some sort we are still.’’ It would be foolish for an Oak to despise acorns or grandpas to despise grandchildren or humans to despise DNA. It is also foolish for moderns to despise their own traditions. All the tradition that was really true is still part of us and vitally connected to us. It is change for change’s sake, the kind that wants to separate us from our roots, for which we must be cautious. At the same time, no one wants to stay with the alphabet or have only acorns or be only a child. But the difference is progress, not merely change.

 

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The Church Will Prevail

Written by Rick Shrader

The Church Will Prevail

by Rick Shrader

The modern man found the church too simple exactly where modern life is too complex; he found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy. The man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on entrees. The man who disliked vestments wore a pair of preposterous trousers. And surely if there was any insanity involved in the matter at all it was in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe. If there was any insanity at all, it was in the extravagant entrees, not in the bread and wine.

G.K. Chesterton

If I wanted to arouse animosity among many Christians and Christian leaders today I might say something like, ‘‘Let it be clearly stated that there can be no service acceptable to God in this age that does not center in and spring out of the church.’’ And I might surprise many of them by noting that I had just quoted A.W. Tozer, a renowned Alliance Church pastor. Such statements, earlier in this twentieth century, were easily received and practiced by believers of varied denominational stripe. At the end of this century, however, many Christians cringe at such a forward statement.

In 1994, David Briggs wrote an article for the Associated Press titled, ‘‘Study: Americans spurning their religion.’’ He began by saying, ‘‘In the high-stakes game of denominational musical chairs, the big winner of the 90’s may be no church at all . . . It’s become quite acceptable these days to be nothing throughout your life . . . It doesn’t really matter what you are anymore.’’ In a telling admission Briggs noted that liberal Protestant denominations, to stop the attendance decline, ‘‘can’t go out beating the bushes with the old-time Gospel.’’ Why? Because, of course, they don’t believe it! He called these ‘‘inherited religions’’ because church life is handed down, not accepted by faith.  The point of the article was that to keep these ‘‘inherited religions’’ going, churches were ‘‘updating’’ statements of faith and church policy to ‘‘a new kind of realism’’ in an attempt to ‘‘keep its culture strong.’’

This is not new, of course. In 1990, Newsweek ran an article titled ‘‘A Time To Seek,’’ in which churchgoers said, ‘‘Instead of me fitting religion, I found a religion to fit me;’’ ‘‘Unlike earlier religious revivals, the aim this time is support, not salvation, a circle of spiritual equals rather than an authoritative church or guide.’’ No wonder a Gallup poll reported that two in five unchurched adults say they have ‘‘made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ,’’ but not, obviously, to the church which He built. Louis Harris said that religious faith ‘‘is contained within the individual rather than reflected in slavish loyalty to church attendance or to the letter of the dogma of a particular religion.’’

It is becoming increasingly difficult for churches to keep a local church emphasis without feeling the squeeze put on by both the Christian and non-Christian culture. We have been familiar with ‘‘para-church’’ organizations for a long time but it is not so much an issue of ‘‘para’’ as it is ‘‘multi’’ and ‘‘dis’’ as in multidimensional, multifarious, multifaceted and diversity, diversion, divarication. I find myself coming back to this often in my reading and thoughts. Our generation is busily ‘‘celebrating diversity’’ but has little to no clue about what it is that unites people (whether a belief in God that unites human beings or a common intellectual doctrine that unites Christians). It is no surprise that an emphasis on a unified local gathering seems out of sync with today’s view of the church.

The supreme example of balance between unity and diversity is the Godhead. Ravi Zacharias recently wrote, ‘‘A proper understanding of the Trinity not only gives us a key to understanding unity in diversity, but also brings us a unique answer to the great struggle we face between races, cultures, and–for that matter–even genders.’’ It should also help us to keep a balance and not go overboard in one direction or the other. The pendulum has swung to both extremes for sure but now it seems to be swinging away from the gathered emphasis and far toward the scattered.

The one group, the one method, the one picture of believers we find in the New Testament is the church. It cannot be everything our culture wants it to be nor should it. Yet, it is truly amazing what we can find in the New Testament to qualify as business of the church.  And the more it takes us away from a simple, unified gathering the more popular it seems to be. Somehow our gatherings have come to be seen as a boring tradition which, because it is biblical, we must continue to perform. But we can’t wait to get away from that assemblage and on to more exciting and diverse things!

Now if you know me you know I don’t advocate turning the clock back nor ignoring all new ideas or methods. If we have let our assemblies grow cold and stale we need to recognize that and deal with it.  No doubt, it is easy to keep our churches from being diverse enough in ministry and make-up.  It is our mission to take the gospel outside the walls of the church but in the process we cannot abandon the most common and obvious biblical model we have. We don’t abandon the car when it runs out of gas. We fill it up again.

One thing is sure in this present cultural climate–if an alternative can be found to the local church assembly, people will take it! If problems can be solved in a psychologist’s office rather than at a church altar, if service can be performed at a coffee shop rather than in a classroom, if character can be learned in a stadium rather than in a pew, if learning can take place with entertainment rather than with concentration, then there is no further ethical mandate needed than that! Even for God to ask otherwise would be recalcitrant.

In C.S. Lewis’ second Screwtape Letter, Screwtape (the master demon) says to Wormwood (his nephew), ‘‘One of the great allies at present is the Church itself. . . All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. . . Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like ‘the body of Christ’ and the actual faces in the next pew. . . Your patient, thanks to Our Father Below, is a fool. . . He will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. . . Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords.’’

The catch is, of course, that it is not the gates of hell that will prevail!

 

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Vision and Revision

Written by Rick Shrader

Vision and Revision

by Rick Shrader

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart

Nought be all else to me, save that Thou art;

Thou my best thought, by day or by night;

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Irish hymn, c. 8th century

 

Vance Havner said, ‘‘A leader is a person with a magnet in his heart and a compass in his head.’’ We are living in a day when prominent leaders seem to be people with one index finger on a statistics manual and the other held up in the wind. In a day when a proper and precise vision is vitally necessary, there seems to be as much muddle as mettle.

The information age puts at our finger tips the goals and dreams of nearly all the world’s prominent leaders. We can access the vision of Sears, Penney, Walton, and Iacocca or any number of Christian leaders as well. Now, it seems, everyone has his own unique vision statement modified slightly from everyone else’s. One author even advocates getting alone with God and praying that He will reveal a vision tailor made for your ministry. The few dozen or so that I have read seem to be general statements that often could be translated, ‘‘We believe in doing what the Bible says,’’ which, I am about to argue, is what we ought to plainly say. (Let me insert here that I know we need to have better focus. My point will be that we cannot maintain focus without maintaining the large, constant vision which God has already revealed.)

One of the greatest steps in my Christian walk was taken years ago reading (as a textbook) Alva J. McClain’s Greatness of the Kingdom. McClain proposed that the two-fold theme of the Bible is the King and His kingdom. The goal of our personal character is to be like Christ, the coming King and the goal of our stewardship is to emulate the coming kingdom in the age in which we live. In Philippians three, Paul says, ‘‘that I may win Christ;’’ ‘‘that I may know him;’’ ‘‘I am apprehended of Christ Jesus;’’ and at the same time says, ‘‘I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead;’’ ‘‘I press toward the mark for the prize;’’ ‘‘For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.’’ This way of looking at the whole scope of God’s revelation gives us the Christian vision to which we put our hands constantly to the plow. The Lord commanded us to ‘‘Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.’’

We have seen the effect of the Christian vision in history. Western civilization is a history of Christian principles lived out by society.  From the Reformation to the Great Awakening, industrious changes and progress were made because the Christian work ethic was eternally (kingdom) based. Self government and individual moral behavior were the norm because the Christian individual goal was the righteousness of Christ. The present resistance within us to Eastern mysticism and African spiritism is not a resistance to people who look and sound different. It is a resistance to a non-Christian world view that has proven to be disastrous economically, politically, morally and spiritually.  Human efforts to build anything worthwhile without the Christian vision will eventually fail.

G.K. Chesterton painted it this way. The naturalist (or antitheist as Ravi Zacharias calls him) sees no meaning or life beyond the world in which we live. To him, this earth is his only vision. It is large and awesome, acting as his mother, his instructor and his spiritual advisor. The supernaturalist on the other hand, sees this world as a waiting station to the next world. It is smaller and secondary.  It is at best his sister instructing him of its Creator who is waiting to meet him beyond the world’s limits. To the naturalist, the world is his vision, constantly changing and being updated. To the supernaturalist, the world is the canvass and God is the vision.

When an artist paints a portrait he expects the subject to remain constant throughout the process though he himself may change or destroy many canvases. His vision is his subject and that must not be changed but the canvas necessarily changes until it is the best the artist can make it. Now if the artist has a different subject every hour, what is the use of starting anything on the canvas? His vision changes too often to produce anything. So the naturalist sees the latest product of evolution as the latest and only vision. There is nothing to emulate beyond that. It is no wonder that such artists reduce their vision to defeated abstractness where the only vision is within themselves.

If our analogy squares with our theology, it makes sense that our job is to make continued and varied efforts to paint a picture of a constant vision, the King and His kingdom. It is because our vision remains forever the same that our efforts must constantly be scrutinized and sharpened. We may change a method or a brush stroke, but to change visions every hour is to admit that we have no vision. In that case we will begin to produce abstract Christianity that resembles only ourselves.

Are we not painting this picture so that others will see a true presentation of what is eternal? It is not our concern that they see themselves. They have mirrors for that. It is not our concern that they see us. We don’t need a vision for that. It is not our concern that we make a name for ourselves in the art of ministry. The fact is, we were employed by the Subject of our picture to bring glory to Him. Rembrandt was only ‘‘successful’’ because he represented his subject as no one else could do.

Gutson Borglum was the sculptor who carved the massive figures of four American presidents on Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. When asked how he produced such an amazing work, he replied, ‘‘Those figures were there for forty million years. All I had to do was dynamite 400,000 tons of granite to bring them into view.’’ So it is that our King is the same yesterday, today and forever and His kingdom is forever!

 

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