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From Happy Days to the Simpsons
by Peter Corney (reprinted from On Being, September 1995) 'The Gospel must be constantly forwarded to a new address because the recipient is repeatedly changing his place of residence.' Helmut Theitticke Something's happened out there. People have changed their address, and unless Christians work out where they've moved to we will fail to communicate with them. We are living through a radical change in the way people understand reality and truth. This change is so fundamental that almost everyone under 30, and many under 40, view the world through a new set of glasses. Here's how John Carroll describes the changes in his book Humanism: The Wreck of Western Culture: "We live amidst the ruins of the great, five hundred year epoch of Humanism. Around us is the 'colossal wreck'. Our culture is a flat expanse of rubble. It hardly offers rest or shelter from a mild cosmic breeze, never mind one of those icy gales that regularly return to rip men out of the cozy intimacy of their daily lives and confront them with oblivion. It is surprising that we are run down? We are desperate, yet we don't care much any more. We are timid, yet we cannot be shocked. We are inert underneath our busyness. We are destitute in our plenty. We are homeless in our own homes. "What should be there to hold our hands, is not. Our culture is gone. It has left us terribly alone. In this devastation it cannot even mock us any more, sneer at the lost child whimpering for its mother. That stage, too, is over. Our culture is past cruelty. It is wrecked. It is dead. "What are we to do? Is it a time to lament, to complain, to laugh? Is it a time to seize hold of some fine marble fragment and dream it whole? Is it a time to close our eyes and try to lose ourselves in our own little back-gardens? Or is it time to embrace one of the lingering ghosts, squeeze it for its warmth, and pretend we are alive. No! It is time for a new beginning." Some years ago, Alan Bloom wrote in his book The Closing of the American Mind: "There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of. Almost every student entering the university believes... that the truth is relative. If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the students' reaction: They will be uncomprehending. That anyone should regard the proposition as not self-evident astonishes them... The relativity of truth is a moral postulate... The only enemy of the true believer... the person who is not open to everything." As Christians we need to understand this change. The modern world is dying and the postmodern world is rising in its place. The rise and fall of the modern world The modern world was formed and dominated by a number of key forces. Scientific rationalism gave us the autonomous rational person observing, analyzing, discovering, conquering the natural world. This produced a confidence that we could explain and eventually control everything. The Industrial Revolution produced unparalleled economic growth in the West and lifted living standards to undreamt of heights. Along with things like modern medicine and the growth of technology, it led us to develop the idea of unstoppable progress. The philosophy of liberal humanism placed humanity at the centre of all things. We were basically good. If we applied enough will and education and created the right environment, we would not only overcome all our problems, but create a glittering kingdom of prosperity, freedom and happiness. In the modern world, of course, there was no need for the transcendent. A scientific breakthrough a day would push the chaos away. In any case, scientific knowledge was about facts, and facts are objective and value free. But beliefs are subjective and therefore private. So God was relegated the private world as unnecessary and irrelevant. The modern world had its media icons. An icon for continual scientific progress was Star Trek - 'boldly going where no one has gone before'. The icons for the glittering kingdom were the Brady Bunch or the Cunningham family in Happy Days - ideal families in a prosperous, progressive world. Yes, there were occasional problems, but nothing that either Mr. Spock or a family conference with some timely advice from dad couldn't fix. But then things started to come unglued. The ordered and explainable world of the Enlightenment no longer seemed so orderly. We began to suspect it may even be chaotic, random, anarchic. It certainly didn't seem to make as much sense as it once did. Rationalism and materialism explained God away, but at least we felt that we, humanity, had the answers. Suddenly we weren't so sure. The optimism had gone. The collapse of the grand visions like Burocommunism; the emergence of old tribal hatreds in places like Yugoslavia; rising Third World debt and the failure of many Third World development schemes; the environmental crisis; AIDS; economic uncertainty; rapid change; high unemployment; the failure of the UN to keep the peace; the uncontrolled growth and degradation of the world's megacities - all this creates a sense of failure and hopelessness. Our media reinforces this sense of anarchy and senselessness. We watch on the TV news horrific scenes from Rwanda or Bosnia, then we're suddenly switched to a 90-second ad for the latest car. The juxtaposition of images leaves us with a feeling of absurdity. For those of us living in this media zoo, where brilliant and controlled technology reports the chaos and consumerism of an uncontrolled world, it produces a new nihilism. So autonomous reason, it would seem, has brought as many nightmares as bright visions. Modern culture is exhausted. It may not lie down and die tomorrow, but its heart and soul are in a terminal condition. Forces feeding postmodernism Several other forces have fed the development of postmodernity. The world has come to the city. From the '60s to the '90s we've seen an unparalleled avalanche of people moving into the cities of the world. These cities have expanded to the point where they are mind-boggling. Greater Mexico, for example, has 21 million people. The modern city is a giant multiracial, multicultural, pluralist supermarket of ideas, cultures and beliefs. It's an exciting and fascinating place. But all of this puts enormous pressures on any remnant of uniform culture and any common vision of reality. In fact, the modern city is producing a new tribalism as we fragment into subcultures. These vast cities are tied together by the electronic media, which have created an explosion of information. We're now in an unregulated marketplace of ideas and belief systems, all available on the electronic shelves. This makes it difficult to accept any of them as absolutely true. A new ideology In this soil grows a new ideology. It teaches that truth, meaning and reality are just social constructs, developed by particular social groups through their language and cultural symbols. There is no objective truth. This is more than simple relativism. Postmodern ideology rejects all 'meta-narratives' - all big stories that claim to explain all other stories. There is no one story that explains all the individual stories. At its extreme theoretical edge, the 'deconstructionists' argue that societies are inherently oppressive and their language and texts are developed to keep people in line. Every text must be interrogated for its hidden repressive ideas. Language does not reveal objective truth. It constructs 'truth'. All of this has massive implications for the way people view any written text. If language is incapable of disclosing any objective meaning, we are left at the mercy of the presuppositions of the latest revolutionist. The media and the electronic information network Thanks to the media it's now possible to create a global culture - to have everyone wearing baseball caps and eating McDonalds. But the media have a preoccupation with the surface of things, with the packaging, the 'wrappers', of consumer society. Style replaces substance. Technique replaces content. Effect replaces integrity. And in the end, the wrapper is the reality. The media also provide a powerful tool for postmodernism to reconstruction reality for ordinary people. In Media Virus, Douglas Rushkoff makes the point that the media machine is now so ubiquitous and rapid in the dissemination of ideas, images and information that an even or an idea can attach itself like a virus to the media's circulatory system and be pumped through society in minutes. It can invade the cell of the cell of the prevailing ideas of that system with its own DNA and begin to change the current ideas. An example of what Rushkoff is describing was the beating of Rodney King. Someone with an amatuer video camera recorded it, and in a matter of hours it was around the globe. The effects of postmodernism All this can profoundly change our feelings or perceptions of the world. But the emergence of postmodernism is affecting general culture in other ways as well. For a start, relativism reigns. As Shirley MacLaine expressed it, "The truth is not an obstacle for someone like me, for we all create our own reality". This attitude is now deeply embedded in the minds of most people. Second, postmodernism is "blurring the distinctions". This is best illustrated by contemporary film. Take the question of right and wrong. Compare the old detective story, where the cops of the FBI get the baddies in the end, with Pulp Fiction or The Silence of the Lambs. Good is no longer strong enough to contain evil. Male and female are blurred, as in films such as Orlando or The Crying Game. Alien and Total Recall also blur the gender boundaries. In Blade Runner the distinction between real people and androids is blurred to the point where you're forced to ask, Who are the real people? The brilliant special effects in films like Robocop and the advent of virtual reality games have begun to blur the nature of reality in people's minds. The third effect of postmodernism is that dissatisfaction with rationalism and material has led to a new search for the transcendent. The mystical, the mysterious, the magical - it's every where, from New Age books to fairy shops. Bono of U2 expressed it well: "the material world is not enough. We had a century of being told by the intellectuals and the intelligentsia that we are all two-dimensional creatures; that if something can't be proved it can't exist. That's over now. Transcendence is what everybody in the end is on their knees for - running at speed towards." Another effect of postmodernism is that eastern mysticism, environmentalism and element of extreme feminism have converged to resacralise nature. The Judeo-Christian distinction between God and nature has dissolved. Postmodernism also involves a loss of hope and idealism. Have you notices that the most dominant trend in popular fashion and music has been retro? Fifties and '70s music revivals; gothic grunge and '70s hip in clothing. Why all the nostalgia? Why are we remaking the past? Have we lost our belief in progress? Yes. The sixth effect is that the quest for truth is turned inward to the personal world of subjective experience. The generation under 30 are the children of the most divorced, most mobile parents ever. All the traditional carriers of meaning and value have been destroyed - family, community, work, and religion. The pace of change is so rapid that there seems to be no fixed points. Where do you go to find meaning and value? The answer of Generation X is 'within' - into the narrative of my story. When all meta-narratives have been rejected, only my own story seems authentic. Fertile ground for the gospel What are we to make of this disintegration of modern culture and the emergence of postmodernism? It would be easy to respond apocalyptically, as some postmodern writers themselves do. W.B. Yeats' poem The Second Coming is frequently quoted in postmodern literature: Things fell apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. We, however, have been instructed by our Lord not to guess the future but to get on with extending the kingdom now. In fact, I think we need to see this generation in Western culture as a time of great opportunity. There are four reasons for this. Firstly, when all the meta-narratives are breaking down, a vacuum of meaning develops. That is fertile ground for the Gospel. Second, the human longing for the transcendent guarantees that the need for hope and some moral imperative will, in the end, overpower nihilism. People simply cannot live with nihilism forever. Third, the chaos and absurdity of the world leads to a longing for good news, and we've got good news. Fourth, extreme deconstructionism may lead some to a search for an authentic and dangerous Gospel stripped of its Western philosophical trappings and institutional clothes. The postmodern world is not unlike the first century world of the New Testament. Judaism was in crisis; the religions of the Graeco-Roman world were tired and without moral integrity. There was a growing fatalism, cynicism and loss of hope in pagan culture. Remember Pilate: "What is truth?" Sounds distinctly like a postmodernist! In ground the Gospel was planted and the church grew. To many in those days the Gospel was either intellectually foolish or an offensive stumbling block in its claims about Christ crucified and risen. But to those whom God called, it was the power and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1-2). This tells us the Gospel is effective in any culture, especially in one like ours. We must not lose our nerve
The Truth
Introduction People are loosing faith in systems to give them hope, meaning and significance. They have taken responsibility for their own spirituality and have gone in search of their own truth and their own reason for living. In this postmodern age where we are bombarded by an abundance of information we are less likely to subscribe to any one single religion. People who are searching for truth are likely to for their own belief system from the bits and pieces that we glean from the many philosophies and religions that are on offer. "'For this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.' 'What is truth?' Pilate asked." (John 19:37 & 38) Even Pilate, one of the great Roman rulers of Jesus' time, wasn't sure of what truth is, neither are we today. Truth does not change, but our culture does, and so the way we communicate the message of Jesus to people must also change. We must teach the radical, dangerous Truth of the Gospel to each new generation so that they can share it with the next generation in a way that is relevant. In a world without revelation truth is relative. It comes down to one person's word and experience against another's. In the face of this lack of absolute truth many have given up looking for an absolute truth and live by what they know to be true from their experience. Christianity though claims to posses revelation from outside this world. This revelation is the Bible and Jesus, the Word in human flesh (John 1). There are many similarities between Christianity and the truth that people have discovered by looking at God's creation. There are also some unique things about Christianity that we only discover from listening to God's revelation. Christianity says that God created in God's image in a perfect state. We chose to go our own way and fell from that state of perfection. Through Jesus we can be brought back into that perfect state and be with God for eternity. Many of today's popular philosophies and religions are based on the concept of positive evolution. That is, we came from nothing and are continually improving until we get to a state of perfection. These philosophies assume that God is either not there or not interested in us. In doing this we eliminate a personal God from the picture and do it our own way, in our own strength, with no need for God or his love and grace and forgiveness. God's revealed Truth gives meaning to the questions of why morals? Why love? What is worth living for? And how can I know God personally? In a way that no option does completely. What did Jesus mean when He said, "I Am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) Was He for real, or was that just a truth for the moment as some people claim today? Are there many other ways to know and please God, or was Jesus for real when He claimed to be the only way to God? Why do you believe what you believe? Do you know enough about your faith to defend it or share it with someone who believes something contradictory? Why don't you believe what they believe? Is it just tradition for you or have you looked at it seriously? Have you checked out the other teachings to know how your faith is different? Below is a discussion of some of the things about Christianity that make it stand alone. Have you heard of the 'New Age Movement'? What do you understand by the term? Lately more and more people are seeking meaning in their lives. People have grown disillusioned with the things that were meant to satisfy the previous generation and going in search of a truth and a meaning of their own. Most of the growing movement in spirituality called the New Age is not really new at all. Much of it is taken from eastern religion and modern philosophy and psychology that tries to explain our existence outside the framework of a knowable and personal God. Without God in the picture we become the centre of our world. "What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could 'be like gods' - could set up on their own as if they had created themselves - be their own masters - invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history - money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery - the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. "God designed the human machine to run on Himself... God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. "The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free." (CS Lewis, Mere Christianity) Paul's introduction to his letter to the Romans describes the result of living apart from God's revealed truth. "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. In the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith." "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator - who is forever praised. Amen." (Romans 1:16-25) What are the good things about this 'new' movement in spirituality? There are many shared truths between Christianity and the New Age Movement. "Postmodernists" no longer put their faith in science and technology to solve our problems and bring advancement and wholeness to humanity. This new philosophy encourages people to take responsibility for finding solutions to their problems and search for the truth, and a meaning and significance that works for them. By undertaking this search many people have discovered a lot of God's truth and incorporated it into their lives. In coming to this point we also acknowledge hole in our hearts that needs to be filled by the Transcendent. Like the Greek philosophers in Athens (Acts 17:22-36) people are already on the road of their search for a spirituality that will bring them meaning. This road is sometimes a road that is not unlike the Christian road. In what ways does the New Age Movement differ from Christianity? The New Age's fundamental difference with Christianity is its lack of recognition of Jesus as God. New Agers give Jesus a lot of respect but group Him and His teachings in with all the other religious greats of history. The following quote from popular author James Redfield characterises the respect that many people have for Jesus without calling him God. "I watched as one person came to the earth dimension remembering almost all of his Birth Vision. He knew he was here to bring a new energy into the world, a new culture based on love. His message was this: the one God was a holy spirit, a divine energy, whose existence could be felt and proven experientially. Coming into spiritual awareness meant more than rituals and sacrifices and public prayer. It involved a repentance of a deeper kind; a repentance that was an inner psychological shift based on the suspension of the ego's addictions, and a transcendent "letting go," which would ensure the true fruits of the spiritual life.' (James Redfield, The Tenth Insight) CS Lewis' responds well to this line of thinking which groups Jesus with one of the many good religious leaders. "Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world, who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips. "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level of a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (CS Lewis, Mere Christianity) In what ways do you see this shift in spirituality affecting our society? Science originally started out as a means of understanding the way God created the universe. They believed that because a reasonable and logical God created the universe, the universe could be understood in a reasonable logical way. In time though, we decided that we could explain everything with science and no longer had need for God. A similar thing has happened with religion and philosophy. Before this divorce of church and state, religion and philosophy were the same thing. Now religious leaders and philosophers leave each other alone. Religion teaches the revealed truth from the Bible, while the philosophers formulate reasons for our existence without any revelation from outside of this world. Without the context of the Devine Being, total freedom from religion leads to an absence of meaning or any basis for a moral society. While nihilism (a total rejection of all existing principles, values and institutions) gives us freedom from controlling powers and people who abuse authority, at the same time it strips us of any absolute meaning, significance and ultimate reason for living. How does this change affect the way people view and receive Christianity? On one hand, many people today don't believe in an over-arching God who brings meaning and order to the world. Postmodernists don't expect to find a logical, absolute answer to the big questions of life. This makes it hard for Christians when they come with the Answer to people who weren't looking for an answer to start with. On the other hand many people are already on their search for meaning so all Christians need to do is show them how Jesus completes the truth that they have already discovered on their search. Why do you believe that there is a God? "We want to know whether the universe simply happens to be what it is for no reason or whether there is a power behind it that makes it what it is." (CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p32) "Is there a God" is probably the biggest question that people will consider in this life. Their response to this question will affect how they live the rest of their lives. Romans 1:20 says that we can see that there is a God by looking at his creation. "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." We can understand that God is there and who he is from looking at His creation. Evolutions vs Creation and the Moral Argument The concept of Evolution is central to much of New Age philosophy. New Agers draw their conclusions about life from looking at themselves and the world around them. They are not looking outside this realm for an infinite-personal Creator God. Christians look at themselves and see that we are both moral and personal beings. With the help of God's revelation through the Bible we draw the conclusion that we were created by a moral and personal God rather than merely evolved from impersonal and amoral matter. There is a "...Something that is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong. I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know - because after all the only other thing we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions." "We have two bits of evidence about this Somebody. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, then I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is the Moral Law which He has put into our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You could find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built. Now, from this second bit of evidence we conclude that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in right conduct - in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness." (CS Lewis, Mere Christianity) Can we really believe the world came about with no input from God? "But in fact no-one can hold this consistently: that everything is chaotic and irrational, and there are no basic answers. It can be held theoretically but it cannot be held in practice, because you would have to have absolute chaos and the problem is twofold, so one cannot in practice hold the concept of absolute chaos. The first reason the irrational position cannot be held consistently in practice is the fact that the external world is there and it has form and order... and man conforms to that order and so you can live within it." "The second possible answer in the area of existence is that all that now is had an impersonal beginning. This impersonality may be mass, energy or motion, but they are all impersonal, and all equally impersonal. So it makes no basic philosophic difference which of them you begin with.... The great problem with beginning with the impersonal is to find any meaning for the particulars." (Francis Schaeffer, He is There and He is Not Silent) Without a personal Creator God we are just hoping that we have meaning and significance. Why the Judeo-Christian view of God? "He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end by loving himself better than all." (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) It is good for Christians to look around at what others believe. Not only will this give them the ability to share Jesus from a common ground, it also gives Christians a more confident faith because they have seriously evaluated it against other options. If you look though you will also find that there is an a logical and intelligent argument for the Judeo-Christian view of God. "Morals under every form of pantheism have no meaning as moral, for everything in panyeverythingism is finally equal." "But once we consider a personal beginning, we have another choice to make. This is the next step. Are we going to choose the answer of God or gods? The difficulty with gods instead of God is that limited gods are not big enough. To have an adequate answer of a personal beginning, we need two things. We need a personal-infinite God (or an infinite-personal God), and we need a personal unity and diversity in God. "You can search through university philosophy, underground philosophy or filling-station philosophy - it does not matter which - there is no other sufficient philosophical answer to existence, to Being, than the one I have outlined. There is only one philosophy, one religion, that fills this need in all the world's thought - the East, the West, the ancient, the modern, the new, the old. There is only one philosophy, one religion, that fills the philosophical need of existence, of Being, and it is the Judeo-Christian God - not just an abstract concept, but rather that this God is really there. He really exists. There is no other answer, and orthodox Christians ought to be ashamed of having been so defensive for so long. It is not a time to be defensive. There is no other answer. "Beginning from the impersonal there is no final absolute and there are no final categories in what has always been concerning right and wrong. Hence, what is left may be worded in many different ways in different cultures, but it is only the relative: that which is sociological, statistical, situational; nothing else. You have situational, statistical ethics - the standard of averages - but you cannot have morality." "...beginning with the impersonal, there is no explanation for the complexity of the universe or the personality of man. As I pointed out in the previous chapter, it is not that Christianity is a better answer, but that if you begin with the impersonal, in reality you do not have an answer to the metaphysical questions at all. The same thing is true in the area of morals. If you being with an impersonal, no matter how you phrase the impersonal, there is no meaning for morals." (Francis Schaeffer, He is There and He is Not Silent) Romans 2:13-15 says that God's Law is written on the hearts of men. In The Abolition of Man CS Lewis goes through the teachings of many ancient teachings and shows how what he calls the 'Tao' is present in all religions and philosophies. There is a common theme of justice and goodness that is consistent with the Ten Commandments. People through time seem to have come up with their own moral law. The unique thing about Judeo-Christian philosophy is that the laws for living do not stem from guesswork, they are revealed directly from the Creator. The Ten Commandments were handed down from God, written on tablets of stone (Exodus 34:28). Later Jesus came in person to fulfill the Law (Matthew 5). How do we explain the problem of sin if God is good and worthy of our worship? "...if we say that man in his present cruelty is what man has always been, and what man intrinsically is, how can there be any hope of a qualitative change in man? You can have quantitative change, but you can never have qualitative change... If God has made man as man now is, then this is what man is, and there is no hope of finding any place from which real qualitative change could come. "At this point we must recognise a second possibility; that man is discontinuous with what he has been, rather than continuous with what he has been. Or, to put it another way, man is now abnormal. We now come to another choice, that god changed him, or made him abnormal. But if God made him abnormal then He is still a bad God. But there is yet another possibility, and that is, that man created by God as personal has changed himself, that he stands at the point of discontinuity rather than continuity not because God changed him but because he changed himself. Man as he now is by his own choice is not what he intrinsically was. In this case, we can understand that man is now cruel, but that God is not a bad God... This is precisely the Judeo-Christian position. "There was a space-time, historic change in man. Man, made in the image of God and not programmed, by choice turned from his proper integration point at a certain time in history... if it (man's cruelty) is an abnormality, there is a hope of a solution. It is in this setting that the substitutionary propitiatory, death of Christ ceases to be an incomprehensible concept." "... we can have a real ground for fighting evil, including social evil and social injustice... We can fight evil without fighting God, because God did not make things as they are now and as man in his cruelty has made them." "...we can have real morals and moral absolutes, for God now is absolutely good, with the total exclusion of evil from God. ...it is God Himself and his character which is the moral absolute of the universe." (Francis Schaeffer, He is There and He is Not Silent) Why sin and pain? The major problem of humanity is that to have finite beings that can really love they must also have the capacity to choose to love or not to love. Why did God let sin happen if He knew it was going to happen? Our time on earth can be seen as a period where we learn to appreciate God for all He is, His justice and His grace. Without experiencing God's justice and grace our eternity in heaven would never have the same depth of meaning. We would not understand how high and how wide and how great is the love of God without being a part of this sin and redemption story (see Romans 8). "Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having." "If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will - that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings - then we may take it it is worth paying." (CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p 50) What does 'sin' mean? Genesis teaches us that we are created beings put here to enjoy relationship with our Creator and the other created beings. Adam and Eve decided they could go it alone without God. They figured they were big enough to look after themselves. "We don't need you" they said, "we are going to do it our way, independent of You". This going it alone without acknowledging God in our lives. How would you explain to a non-believer why you believe what you do? Moral right and wrong is at the heart of many religious philosophies. When Christians understand what people believe they can show them how Christ is the natural conclusion, the completing Cornerstone, of their philosophy. Paul went to Athens (Acts 17) with a healthy respect and appreciation for the existing religions and philosophies. He looked at their gods and saw the similarities between them and Jesus. All he had to do was say, "Hey guys, you know how you are looking for this, this, and this in a god! Check out Jesus, He's got all that and more. This God isn't just one created by our imaginations, He's for real, He is the God who created the world but reaches into our world and wants to be a part of our lives and save us from ourselves." The problem for some people though is that Jesus demands worship with our whole lives. He replaces us with Himself on the throne of our lives. Many people don't want to make that step of submission. Is truth absolute or relative? If the world evolved (i.e. chance plus time) we can have no assurance of anything absolute. Without anything absolute to base your beliefs on you can end up anywhere. Without a logical, rational Creator God who speaks from outside of the fishbowl we can be sure of nothing. Because Christians believe in a rational, logical God who created gravity and mathematics we can go about learning about our world and ourselves, confident that what we will find is logical and fits together with the other truth that we have learned. "We all learned the multiplication table at school. A child who grew up alone on a desert island would not know it. But surely it does not follow that the multiplication table is simply a human convention, something human beings have made up for themselves and might have made it differently if they had liked? I fully agree that we learn the Rule of Decent Behaviour from parents and teachers, and friends and books, as we learn everything else. But some of the things we learn are mere conventions which might have been different - we learn to keep to the left of the road, but it might just as well have been the rule to keep to the right - and others of them, like mathematics, are real truths." (CS Lewis, Mere Christianity) The following parable demonstrates how we all have our own opinions on what is true, but need an Outsider who can see the big picture to tell us what is truly true. How Nasrudin created Truth "Laws as such do not make people better," said Nasrudin to the King; "they must practice certain things, in order to become attuned to inner truth. This form of truth resembles apparent truth only slightly." The king decided that he could, and would, make people observe the truth. He could make them practice truthfulness. His city was entered by a bridge. On this he built a gallows. The following day, when the gates were opened at dawn, the Captain of the Guard was stationed with a squad of troops to examine all who entered. An announcement was made: "Everyone will be questioned. If he tells the truth, he will be allowed to enter. If he lies, he will be hanged". Nasrudin stepped forward. "Where are you going?" "I am on my way", said Nasrudin slowly, "to be hanged." "We don't believe you!" "Very well, if I have told a lie, hang me!" "But if we hang you for lying, we will have made what you said come true!" "That's right: now you know what truth is - YOUR truth!" Movies like The Trueman Show and The Matrix demonstrate that people no longer accept everything they see as truth. They also demonstrate the fact that we cannot necessarily believe what we see. Truth is relative unless it is from an outsider's point of view who can see everything and tell us how things really are. In The Trueman Show Trueman Burbank lives inside an idealistic world created by Christof to advertise products. It is not until he acknowledges his need for somthing more and goes on a search for truth does he find out how the world really is. The interesting thing is that the only way he can understand who he is and what it all means if for Christof to reveal the truth to him. The Matrix totally challenges the premise that we can believe what we see. It is not until Morpheus tells Keaunu Reeves' character what is really true that he can get on with living his life and being what he was meant to be. How can you know 'true truth'? Christians believe not only in a God who is there, but a God who has spoken. By listening to Gods revelation of Himself can know true truth. God has spoken to his people through His prophets and when He came to earth in the form of Jesus Christ. When Jesus came to earth we could see and feel and personally know the Truth (John 19:37). "... the infinite-personal God, the God who is Trinity, has spoken. He is there, and He is not silent. There is no use having a silent God. We would not know any thing about Him. He has spoken and told us that He is what He is and that He existed before all else, and so we have the answer to the existence of what is." (Francis Schaeffer, He is There and He is Not Silent) We are finite beings. We are kidding ourselves if we believe that we can know the whole truth. The particulars of Scripture will never be 100% clear to us. If we could know everything with 100% certainty we would be God. In the movie Patch Adams if you substitute the word "Doctor" for "Pastor" and "hospital" for "church" for you can see a great parable of the church or any other man made institution for that matter. The church has claimed to posses the truth, rather than personally know the truth (Jesus). Although Christians should hold firm to some of the non-negotiables of Christianity, I believe that our role is to point the way to Jesus, not an institution or a group of people, as being the embodiment of all truth. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. 1 Timothy 3:16 says that the mystery of godliness is great. Christians believe that there are three revelations of God and His truth to us; 1. Creation, 2. the Scriptures and, 3. Jesus incarnate. 1 Corinthians 13:10 says that for now we only know in part. When we see Jesus face to face we will know in full. Many people today have rejected our presentation of the truth as simplistic. Christians need to encourage people to take their own journey with Jesus and get to know him personally on a deeper and deeper level each day rather than simply telling them to believe this, this and this and that'll be enough. Like Patch Adams we need to continually rediscover the essence of the truth and living it in our every day lives. Romans 12:2 says that we should be transformed by the renewing of our mind. We need to think through what we do and whether we do it because it is tradition or whether it is really us living out the truth that God has revealed to us. Christianity needs to continually reconsider the relevance of what they do and how they present the truth if they are to avoid extinction. What can we be sure of? We have to be humble enough to admit that we don't know everything. There are some core truths though that the Bible is very clear on. "It was because the infinite-personal God who exists - not just an abstraction - made things together, that the early scientists had courage to expect to find out the explanation of the universe. The God who is there made the universe, with things together, in relationships. Indeed, the whole area of science turns upon the fact that He has made a world in which things are made to stand together, there are relationships between things. So God made the external universe, which makes true science possible, but He has also made man and made him to live in that universe. He has not made man to live somewhere else. So we have three things coming together: God, the infinite-personal God, made the universe; and man, whom He made to live in that universe; and the Bible, which He has given us to tell us about that universe. Are we surprised that there is a unity between them? Why should we be surprised? "So He made the universe, He made man to live in that universe, and He gives us the Bible, the verbalised, prepositional factual revelation to tell us what we need to know. In the Bible He not only tells us about morals, which makes possible real morals instead of merely sociological average, but He gives us comprehension to correlate our knowledge. The reason the Christian has no problem of epistemology is exactly the same as the reason why there is no problem of nature and grace. This is, the same reasonable God made both things, namely, the known and the knower, the subject and the object, and He put them together. So it is not surprising if there is a correlation between these things. Is that not what you would expect? "What I am saying is that the Christian view is exactly in line with the experience of every man, but no other system except the Judeo-Christian one - that which is given in the Old and New Testaments together - tells us why there is a subject-object correlation that one does and must act on. Everybody does act on it, everybody must act on it, but no other system tells you why there is a correlation between subject and the object. In other words, all men constantly and consistently act as though Christianity is true. Everybody in the world acts that way. "Let me draw the parallel again. Modern men say there is no love, there is only sex, but they still fall in love. Men say there are no moral motions, everything is behaviouristic, but they all have moral motions. Even in the more profound area of epistemology, no matter what a man says, actually, every moment of his life, he is acting as though Christianity were true and it is only the Christian system that tells you why you can, must and do act the way you do, and there is no other way." "In epistemology we know the thing is there because God made it to be there. It is not an extension of His essence, it is not a dream of God as much Eastern thinking says things are. It is really there. It has a true objective reality, and we are not surprised to find that there is a correlation between the observer and the observed because God made them to go together. They are made by the same god in the same frame of reference. God made them together, the subject and the object, the knower and the known, and He made them in the same frame of reference. The Christian simply does not have a problem with epistemology. And every man lives as though it is true, regardless of what he says in his epistemological theories. The Christian is not surprised that the tree is there, and he is not surprised that he cannot walk through it, because he knows the tree is really there." (Francis Schaeffer, He is There and He is Not Silent) Because the Christian believes that God created the world he can believe that the world is really there and that he is really there in the world. Because God created it in a reasonable, logical fashion the Christian can get on with living, making the decisions and judgements of life in a reasonable, logical manner. "Being a Christian and knowing that God has made the external world, there is no confusion for me between that which is imaginary and that which is real. The Christian is free; free to fly, because he is not confused between his fantasy and the reality which God has made." (Francis Schaeffer, He is There and He is Not Silent) If God is the origin and the cornerstone of our existence then everything flows from Him. One would hope that such a God would give us some idea of how to live in His world. "So we find, therefore, that the bible gives a propositional factual revelation of God in norms both for the inward and outward man. The inward man, according to the Bible, is not autonomous, any more than the outward man is autonomous... Every human problem... arises from man's trying to make something autonomous from God, and... as soon as anything is made autonomous then nature eats up grace." "The inward areas of knowledge, meaning and values, and the inward area of morals, are bound by God as much as the outward world." (He is There and He is Not Silent) Without God's revelation we have no basis for love or grace or any action or meaning in our lives. Without God we just hope that our lives have some meaning, with no foundation for that hope. "Man's attempted autonomy has robbed him of any certain reality. He has nothing to be sure of when his imagination soars beyond the stars if there is nothing to make a distinction between reality and fantasy. But on the basis of the Christian epistemology, this confusion is ended, the alienation is healed. This is the heart of the problem of knowing, and it is not solved until our knowledge fits under the apex of the infinite-personal, triune God, who is there, and who is not silent. When it does, and only when it does, there simply is no problem in the area of epistemology." (He is There and He is Not Silent) Not only do we have the written Word of God, the Word came and lived among us. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-14) How does humanity find meaning? "The dilemma of modern man is simple: he simply does not know why man has any meaning. He is lost. Man remains a zero." (Francis Schaeffer, He is There and He is Not Silent) Christianity (based on the Bible) says that we were created by God for a purpose. That purpose is to have a relationship with God. The amazing thing about God is that He is not a solitary, independent being. He is Trinity; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Relationship and love have always existed. God came to a point where He wanted to share that relationship so He created humanity in the same way that a man and a woman start a family to celebrate their love for each other. The following is a list of things that the Bible says about us that gives us meaning and a hoppe for living. Spiritual Identity I am accepted
I am secure I am significant (Excerpt from 'The Bondage Breaker' by Neil T Anderson.) People try to say this sort of thing about themselves that God has said about us. Without any external revelation it is all just hoping and making it up as you go along. Without this revealed meaning (i.e. what God has said about us) we are left to guess at how we got here and what we are meant to do. One of the more popular options is that we evolved from pond slime for no particular reason. Ephesians 2:10 tells us that "we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." New Agers believe that they are to continue loving actions until the universe increases its vibratory state to the point where we break into another realm. "If we refuse - as most humanists do - to believe that life began with a personal Creator, then all talk of people as more than impersonal, complex machines amounts to nothing more than satisfying delusion. For something impersonal to give birth to something personal is as reasonable as expecting a rock to evolve into a dog. To speak of value for persons without a living, personal God as the ultimate beginning is folly." "Our personal needs for security and significance can be genuinely and fully met only in relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ." "In biblical Christianity, it is the Person of Jesus Christ (not ourselves) who fills the spotlight, and He graciously beckons the audience to find eternal fulfillment by becoming lost in His glory. "(Larry Crabb, Marriage Builder) Christians do not find meaning in themselves, but in their relationship with and celebration of Jesus, the God and the Creator of the universe. Does it really matter what you believe? Why or why not? Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." (John 14:6-7) "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." (Matthew 11:27) Jesus is saying here that He is the physical and spiritual embodiment of the Truth. He is the Truth, and without knowing Him through what He has revealed of Himself we cannot be on the Way or live the life that we were created for. Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44). Since the beginning the devil has mixed truth with the lie to deceive. As long as people eventually die without encountering salvation through Jesus then he is happy (Matt 12:22-30). Why is the truth so important? Jesus said "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free." (John 8:38). In 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 Paul says that the lawless person will perish "because they have refused to love the truth and so be saved". They "believe the lie" and will be condemned if they have believed the lie and not the truth. Romans 12:2 says, "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Only by filling our minds with the revealed truth in the Bible can we know how to act in a way that is meaningful in this world. Titus 1:1 says that the knowledge of the truth leads to godliness. If there is an absolute truth to be known then it is important that we know it and live by it so that our lives have significance in this world. Things are worth a lot more and have more meaning if they are used as their maker intended them to be used. What do you think of the statement 'no amount of evidence can make someone have faith'? "'The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your forefathers when he said through Isaiah the prophet: 'Go to this people and say, "you will be ever hearing but never understanding, you will be ever seeing but never perceiving." For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would hear them.'" (Acts 28:25-27) "One reason many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you're feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?" (CS Lewis, Mere Christianity) We like to make up our own gods that fit the way that we want to live. The New Age Movement says, 'Take what you want from here, and a bit from here, mix it up and you've got your own version of god and your own philosophy by which to live your life.' Jesus is not like that. He comes in and lays down the ground rules for life so that we can live it to the full (John 10:10). No matter how much you argue with some people they will not have faith. People will not naturally admit their sin, repent, accept forgiveness and live the rest of their lives as a living sacrifice to God (Romans 12:1). "Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." (John 3:18-21) The only thing that will really bring people to the point of repentance is prayer and the Holy Spirit. We can argue with people to a point but only God can give them the faith that they need to believe. It is their choice to accept or reject the call of the Holy Spirit. Rejecting the call of the Holy Spirit to Jesus that call is the only unforgivable sin (Matthew 12:31). What makes Christianity unique? Many New Age theories stem from the concept of positive evolution. That is, humanity came from nothing and is constantly improving to the point of eventual perfection. The New Age Movement removes responsibility for our sin. Along with evolution comes the concept of Karma - what goes around comes around. This philosophy says that what you are now can be attributed to, or blamed on, your past life. What you are in the next life is dependant on what you do here and now. Others see God as either non-existent or uninvolved with humanity and end up viewing themselves as a god or a part of god. If you are god then you're not responsible to an absolute God. You can do whatever you want. Most people, even if they say they believe there is no God, don't seem to live in total anarchy or hedonism with no respect for the world or other people. They still seem to want to live by the moral law that is written on their hearts (Romans 2:15). If we believe that we are evolving towards perfection we have no need for Jesus or any form of salvation from outside of ourselves. In contrast, Christianity says that we were once perfect and fell from that state of perfection through our own choice and that we can turn around and except Jesus' offer to bring us back to that perfect state. Only Christianity deals with this problem of guilt from outside ourselves. Only Christianity has both Law and Grace. Jesus tells us that we can never do enough to please God in our own strength, but by accepting His gift of forgiveness we can have the fellowship with God for which we were created for and then live our lives in a response to this gift (Romans 11:33 - 12:2). Jesus claimed to be the embodiment of the Truth. He continually prefaced His statements with "I tell you the truth". He claimed that the words He spoke were than just his opinion, they are true Truth. "For this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me." (John 18:37) Jesus is the Truth that can be known! Some Definitions True - corresponding to the actual state of things. Radical - Absolute - complete, perfect, or unlimited.New Age Movement - the current movement in spirituality which encourages individuals to put together their own system of belief that suits them. Epistemology - the study, investigation or theory of knowledge. Humanism - a concern with human ideals or interests rather than abstract or theoretical subjects (i.e. without God).Objectivism - the belief that knowledge should be based on external realities rather than personal feelings. Modernism - the belief that we can know all things through the scientific method and solve our problems through the application of this knowledge in technology.Postmodernism - the disillusionment with modernism that occurred when people realised that science and technology weren't going to solve all of our problems. This resulted in less certainty in a knowable absolute truth and a swing towards subjectivism where all knowledge is relative to the individual.Subjectivsim - the belief that the mind can know only things related to itself and that there can be no objective test of truth.Evolution - the slow, continuous process of change in the characteristics of organisms from one generation to the next. Hedonism - the belief that happiness or pleasure is the chief aim in life.Existentialism - any of various systems of thought emphasizing the loneliness of the individual, and his or her freedom and sole responsibility in making personal choices.Pantheism - the belief that God and nature, or the universe, are the same. Nihilism - a total rejection of all existing principles, values and institutions. Recommended Reading Mere Christianity, CS Lewis He is There and He is Not Silent, Francis Schaeffer The Abolition of Man, CS Lewis The Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield How then Shall We Live, Francis Schaeffer A Ready Defence, Josh McDowell -used by permission of the author |
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