But for a few brief moments a minor feeling of being abandoned takes over. It can be an eerie, scary sensation. The thought of being totally left alone, without backup or support, can be an off-putting experience. Perhaps we all go through this at times.

One movie which quite impacted me in this regard was Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Without giving too much away (for those who have not yet seen it), it is about a young boy, David (really a robot) who fully bonds with his human mother. When she abandons him in the woods, he spends the remainder of his time frantically searching for this mother whom he (it) so deeply loves and misses.

For some reason this film really powerfully moves me, often having me in great bouts of tears. The idea of being abandoned, especially by the one who should love you the most, is excruciating to bear. Sadly it happens quite often in real life. Many people are the walking wounded, feeling abandoned, unloved, unwanted, orphaned.

For some this has actually happened, with parents gone missing for one reason or another. For others, it may be more an emotional, social, psychological or spiritual sense of abandonment. Regardless of how close one may be to one’s family, we may all have sensed this feeling at some point.

Marx tried to put this into a bigger picture, and famously spoke about alienation. Of course he got the cause wrong while getting the condition somewhat right. He put alienation all down to economics, the class struggle, the owners of the means of production, and so on.

He felt that if we can get the economics right (destroy the capitalists, liberate the working class, create a classless society, etc) we could create the New Man, and the sense of alienation and conflict would disappear. He was fundamentally wrong of course, since he did not go far enough in his analysis.

He was quite right that we are all in a state of alienation, but the root problem is much deeper. We are all ultimately alienated from our very life source – God himself. And because of this most fundamental alienation (brought about by sin and self-deification), we are alienated from everything else as well.

Thus in our fallen condition we are alienated from one another, from the world around us, and from ourselves as well. Broken, fractured and alienated lives are the only possible result of such a state of affairs. Thus we all find ourselves with a sense of abandonment.

But it is we have who have abandoned God, not the other way around. He created us to have a close, personal love relationship with him. But we have all chosen to turn our back on him. We have snubbed his love, spurned his majesty, renounced his fatherhood, and rejected his deity.

Thus we all live in a constant state of abandonment and alienation. Sure, we have all found various ways to seek to cope with this situation, and try to get by. But there is only one way to overcome this alienation, and recover from this self-imposed abandonment.

That way has been made possible by God’s son, Jesus Christ. He came to restore us to a love relationship with our heavenly Father. The orphanhood and abandonment that so paralyses us and distorts who we are and who we were meant to be can be overcome by returning to God through Christ.

That is the real revolution that needs to take place. It is not capitalism or managers that prevent us from experiencing whole and complete lives. It is our sin and selfishness which is keeping us from being whole people. It is sin which is keeping society fractured and individuals frustrated.

The longing to go home, to return to our place of origin, has been noted by many. Writers, artists, singers and poets have all concentrated on this theme. English writer and Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton did a great job of describing it in the beginning of his wonderful book, Orthodoxy.

He begins his 1908 classic by describing an Englishman who went on a sailing adventure to discover new lands. He sets out, but eventually gets disorientated in some storms, but finally spies land. He is exhilarated at the prospect of discovering new territory, yet seems somehow to be on quite familiar ground.

And he is, since he has in fact ended up returning to England. Chesterton presents this as a picture of our spiritual journey back to Christ. On the one hand it is a glorious, new and exciting adventure. But on the other hand, we are simply returning home – just where we were always meant to be.

That is indeed how life is. We have all become lost, disorientated, alienated and orphaned. We seem abandoned and aimless. Yet when we come back to God, we come back to where we were supposed to be all along. We are no longer lost, abandoned or alienated.

We are found, welcomed back into God’s family, and made friends again. The sense of being a cosmic orphan, of being spiritually abandoned, is replaced with joy, fellowship, acceptance and above all, a grand sense of homecoming. ‘I once was lost, but now am found’.

Every one one of us, because we are made in God’s image, and intended to be in right relationship with Him, has a deep father-hunger in our souls. We either fill that with God himself, or we will spend our lives looking for cheap and ultimately unfulfilling substitutes.

Our cosmic sense of abandonment can readily be dealt with, if we let God have his way. But if we don’t then there will one day be a genuine case of abandonment – divine abandonment. He will not strive with us forever, and he will not keep open his arms of love forever.

But while he does, let us all run to them. It is the safest, warmest and most tender place to be. But if we reject those open arms of love, then we decide our fate – an eternity of abandonment and alienation. The perpetual grief, emptiness, longing and searching which young David felt in the film AI will be experienced forever by those who reject the outstretched, nail-pierced hands of Christ.

The choice is ours. Let us chose wisely (although it seems so very obvious which option to choose).

[1111 words]

The Fountainhead appeared in 1943, while Atlas Shrugged came out in 1957. Both were major vehicles to promote her thinking. She was an atheist and a radical libertarian, who hated all forms of collectivism and championed ‘the virtue of selfishness’. Indeed, she produced a work of non-fiction in 1964 by that title.

She was as influential as she was controversial, and those on the right are deeply divided concerning her views. Anarchists, radical libertarians and many secularists adore her and her work, while social and religious conservatives are quite alarmed by her.

Indeed, while I support many of her concerns about statism, big government, and collectivism, other major features of her worldview I find quite appalling. So too have many other conservatives. In fact, Rand herself was quite happy to repudiate any suggestion that she was a conservative.

Many have written critically of her views. A book-length treatment appeared back in 1974 offering a careful Christian assessment of her philosophy, theology, ethics and politics (John Robbins, Answer to Ayn Rand). He offers a detailed critique of the philosophy of Objectivism, and finds it seriously wanting.

Others have noted various negative aspects of her work. Back in 2004 Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker wrote an important volume entitled Architects of the Culture of Death. In it they discuss 23 key players, including Darwin, Nietzsche, Sanger, Marx, Sartre, Galton, Kinsey, and Singer.

Rand also gets an entire chapter. The authors point out that her philosophy is entirely focused on the individual, and that altruism in any form is viewed as the major enemy of individualism. They point out how her extremist creed is really untenable and unliveable.

And it is unlovable as well: “Rand, of course, is a dedicated enemy of Christianity. But her particular brand of selfishness, which presupposes that everyone in society is a Nietzschean Superman, makes her an enemy of love. Her writing represents an unrelenting high-mindedness that is far too Olympian for any mere mortal to live by.”

Australian writer John Ballantyne has just penned a piece examining three radical libertarians: Rand, Murray Rothbard, and Walter Block. He says this: “Atheists Rand and Rothbard had no concept of the sacredness of human life and were resolutely in favour of abortion-on-demand. Rand despised conservative American President Ronald Reagan for his opposition to abortion. She declared: ‘An embryo has no rights’.”

He goes on to say, “radical libertarians – or anarcho-capitalists as they are proud to call themselves – are as much agents of social decomposition and enemies of Judaeo-Christian civilisation as are atheistic Marxists and French postmodernists.”

Benjamin Wiker has again written a chapter on Rand, this time in his new volume, 10 Books Every Conservative Must Read. In it he also examines four others, plus “one imposter”: Atlas Shrugged. Says Wiker: “Too often conservatives make the mistake of thinking that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This is a dangerous principle.

“Sometimes the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy. Stalin, for instance, was our ally in the war against Hitler, but he was certainly not our friend. For this reason, we need to be very clear about where Rand went wrong, and this will include some important illumination from her private life.”

Indeed, her personal life was a mess, and hardly an example to be held up for anyone. As Ballantyne writes, “Ayn Rand lived in an open marriage. Both she and her husband were repeatedly unfaithful to each other. During her marriage, Rand conducted an affair with one of her intellectual disciples, Nathaniel Branden, a famous psychotherapist best known today for promoting the psychology of self-esteem.”

He continues, “Rand’s ideology, although seeming to extol human freedom, in fact advocated misanthropy, greed and narcissism. Some of her writings remind one of that terrible scene in Shakespeare when Lady Macbeth summons the powers of darkness to divest her of any conscience and compassion.”

But back to Wiker and his new book. He lists three main features of Rand’s thought which of necessity led her to break away from the conservative movement. The first was her rugged, gung-ho atheism. The second was her ‘ethical’ system based totally on selfishness. The third was her distorted view of capitalism.

“Her defense of the free market was based on the idea of a few heroic Nietzschean figures satisfying their creative and pecuniary impulses; it was not based on the conservative understanding of the free market as primarily about freedom for families and communities to provide for themselves in their own way, unhindered by government interference.”

He summarises her philosophy this way: “Rand presents false dichotomies, either-or choices between two extremes: either collectivism or individualism, either living entirely for the state or living entirely for oneself, either complete self-sacrifice to the point of annihilation or complete selfishness to the point of narcissism. She flees the first extreme and embraces the second.”

Wiker notes how absolutely radical her individualism is, and how “it runs dead against the obvious fact of human existence (pointed out by Aristotle) that human beings are social by nature, and moral and economic life begins in a family.”

He concludes his chapter with these words of wisdom: “It should be clear that conservatism is not narcissism; it is not worship of selfishness; and Objectivism, as Rand would tell you herself, is certainly not conservatism at all.”

I am a Christian first, then a conservative. It should be apparent to those who have followed my writings that I am not a radical libertarian, nor an anarchist, nor a believer in the gospel of self. While many conservatives have embraced Rand and her beliefs, I for one cannot and will not.

http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/2010/09/the-chilling-creed-of-the-radical-libertarians.html

[986 words]

Leftists like to use passages such as this as an argument for socialism, that is, government-enforced redistribution of wealth. They claim this was the intent of Moses, and that it is a stinging condemnation of capitalism. Ron Sider for example said in his 1977 volume, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger:

“Actually, it might not be a bad idea to try the Jubilee itself at least once. It has been somewhat more than fifty years since the people of God divided their capital equally among themselves. We could select 1980 as the Jubilee year… In 1980 all Christians worldwide would pool all their stocks, bonds, and income producing property and business and redistribute them equally.”

At least it seemed to be a call for voluntary wealth redistribution. But plenty of other religious lefties have been quite happy to use the coercive power of the state to push these schemes. (It should be noted that in later revised versions of his book, Sider did move away from some of his more radical and naive support for socialism.)

And modern day activists want an international Jubilee, in which all Third World debts are cancelled. This and other radical proposals have all been gleaned recently from this one chapter. Whether they are in fact reflective of the original intent of the legislation remains to be seen.

So what is this text all about then? While a shorter but similar passage can be found in Deut. 15, I will confine myself to the text in Leviticus. A number of points can be made about this. The first and most obvious point is that this text really has nothing at all to do with socialism or the statist redistribution of wealth or property.

The whole intent of the legislation is to restore private property to its original owners. Private property is of course the very basis of the free market system – not socialism. It is presupposed everywhere in Scripture, including the Eighth Commandment against theft (Ex 20:15).

When Israelites found themselves in financial difficulties, they could sell themselves into indentured servitude, or sell off their properties. In both cases, the Jubilee Year reaffirmed the freedom which God had called His people to enjoy, as was so powerfully expressed at the Exodus.

Thus this legislation provides for the return of lands to their original owners. These lands could not be permanently disposed of. See Numbers 36:9 as example about this command to Israel. The original division of tribal lands had to be maintained.

That private property is assumed here (although God is the ultimate owner of course) is quite clear. As Derek Tidball comments, “This legislation endorses the legitimacy of the private ownership of property, especially when it is invested in the family.”

He continues, “Although there is a recognition that some land is in common ownership, this is the exception rather than the rule. As Robert North points out, while socialism says that none shall own property, the message of Leviticus is that none shall lose property.”

John Jefferson Davis offers some useful remarks here: “Leviticus 25 is not really concerned with income equalization but with the restoration of leased family lands.” He reminds us that “the incomes earned prior to the Jubilee were retained by the most recent owner.” He then makes this important point:

“The provisions of Leviticus 25 were intended to safeguard equal opportunity for Israelites to earn income without destroying the incentives to work and invest through normal economic activities. Unlike many modern welfare programs and systems of progressive taxation, the Jubilee laws, by allowing retention of income earned from the land, did not destroy the incentives to work and invest, which are essential to the economic well-being of a society.

“Notice also that Leviticus 25 is not a program of ‘expropriation’ or seizure as, for example, in the case of certain Latin American programs of ‘land reform.’ In the Jubilee laws, there is compensation for land restored to the original owner.”

He continues, “The intent of the Jubilee legislation was to preserve the broad ownership of property in Israel. When the prophet Micah looked forward to the blessings of the messianic age, he envisioned not vast collective farms operated by the state, but a society with ‘every man under his vine and under his fig tree’ (Mic. 4:4).”

And the legislation is quite restricted as well, pertaining only to slaves and those with land outside of walled settlements. And it did nothing to help immigrants who were without an original allotment of land. So this was not at all a major scheme of radical “social justice” but a rather limited endeavour.

Finally, all this was possible because of the original land allotment to the tribes of Israel. Thus how this might be applied to any other nation or group is hard to see. And it needs to be pointed out that we have no record in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Year of Jubilee actually ever having been carried out. If it seemed difficult to carry out there, how much more difficult to carry it out in a nation other than ancient Israel.

Davis offers this overview of Old Testament law and the poor:  “The Mosaic provisions place a ‘safety net’ under the poor, but do not represent any attempt at a wholesale redistribution of income or general restructuring of society. These provisions created no administrative bureaucracies. On the contrary, the aid passed rather directly from, for example, the owner of a field to the needy gleaner.”

Also, unlike the modern coercive welfare state, “the Mosaic provisions concerning the poor operated through moral suasion. Generosity to the poor was commanded, but that was to be a willing response to the grace of God.”

And economic levelling – so much a desire of the religious left – is not part of this legislation. As David Chilton notes, “In biblical law, the first-born son receives twice as much as the other sons (Deuteronomy 21:17). As my second son will be happy to inform you, that is a significant inequality. Moreover, a father has the right to disinherit an ungodly son and pass an inheritance along to a godly servant (Proverbs 17:2).” So much for the Greens’ death taxes!

Concern for the poor is high on the biblical priority list. But how exactly that is to be achieved is another matter altogether. Calls for socialist or welfare state redistributionism can be appealed to, but they find little warrant from Leviticus 25. Such calls will need to find other biblical sanction, if it can in fact be found in Scripture at all.

[1165 words]

In the culture wars, this takes place quite often. The battles are too big for us to forever quarrel amongst ourselves while we let the other side get away with murder. The battles over abortion, same-sex marriage and the like must be tackled, and often Christians and non-Christians will need to come together to fight these issues.

Francis Schaeffer for example was quite willing to promote this concept. He felt some of the crucial battles of the day – such as abortion – were far too important to not seek some form of cooperation. It had to be carefully entered into. This is what he wrote back in 1970:

“Christians must realize that there is a difference between being a cobelligerent and an ally. At times you will seem to be saying exactly the same thing as the New Left elite or the Establishment elite. If there is social injustice, say there is social injustice. If we need order, say we need order. In these cases, and at these specific points, we would be cobelligerents. But do not align yourself as though you are in either of these camps: You are an ally of neither. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is different from either – totally different.”

As another example, I am involved with a family council, with many different groups taking part. Indeed, it includes all sorts of various religious groupings. We meet primarily to defend marriage and family. We are not there for some ecumenical pow-wow, or to argue theology. We are there to take on some present challenges. It is a temporary and strategic alliance for limited ends and purposes.

This has worked wonderfully on the international level. For example when radical feminists, pro-aborts and homosexuals are trying to push something, say at the UN, it is often a coalition of pro-life and pro-family groups, along with the Muslim voting bloc, and the Vatican, that have combined and successfully defeated such initiatives time and time again.

And of course co-belligerency is by definition a short-term working together for strategic purposes on specific issues. It has nothing to do with compromising, or abandoning one’s beliefs, or with swearing a blood-oath, etc. One may disagree violently with another group’s theology, but can still work together on a limited project.

This was a very helpful strategy for William Wilberforce as he fought the slave trade. He was willing to work with others – be they non-Christians, or those hostile to Christianity – to achieve a good outcome on the slavery battle. In so doing he did not compromise his faith, water down his beliefs, or form unholy alliances.

Scripture does warn in the Old Testament about the dangers of unholy alliances. That term usually refers to Israel making a military pact with a pagan power for security reasons, instead of relying on Yahweh’s divine protection. That seems far different from a Christian having a loose relationship with a non-believer to achieve a particular end.

In the New Testament there are also warnings about really substantial alliances. The main passage is 2 Cor. 6:14: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” It seems that something like marriage between a believer and a non-believer would be an obvious application of this. But some radical Christian separatists will use this verse on just about any and every attempt at co-belligerency.

Indeed, whenever there is a case of believers working with non-believers, there are plenty of critics who emerge to blast the whole enterprise. A recent example of this was the large rally just held at Washington DC in which conservatives came together to reclaim America. Led by conservative heavyweight, Glenn Beck, it featured other heavy hitters, including Sarah Palin.

Glenn Beck of course is a Mormon, so theologically he is far removed from biblical Christianity on a number of key areas. (And let me say right now that I am not now going to get into a major debate about this. There are plenty of existing websites out there where the Mormon-Christian differences are being debated. So no comments here please on this particular issue.)

There would have been all sorts of people at the rally: Christians, Mormons, non-Christians, perhaps secularists, those of other religious traditions, and so on. But critics are already complaining about all this. As just one example – of many – one Christian who is obviously not very keen on the idea of co-belligerency penned a piece about this entitled “Most of the Church is So Pitifully Weak that a Mormon Can Now Lead God’s People”.

But what does he mean by “lead God’s people”? We have all sorts of non-Christian leaders. Is that always wrong? Was Churchill a biblical Christian? Yet I am glad he led England and the free world against the Nazis. Is a columnist like Andrew Bolt a Christian? Yet I am quite thankful that in so many ways he is fighting the good fight, often on behalf of Christians.

And it depends on just what he is getting at here (not having read his article). If he means by this that plenty of Christians are so biblically and theologically illiterate that they would have no idea where a Mormon and a biblical Christian differ, then I would certainly agree.

But if his point is that no Christian should have attended this rally, and if they did, they were dupes, deceived, or working with the devil, then I disagree. The truth is, we are in a sense cobelligerents every day of our lives. We live in a world full of non-believers, and we mix and intermingle with them all the time.

For example, we might buy bread from a Hindu baker, or buy insurance from an atheist salesman, or work with a Muslim colleague, or go to a football game surrounded by secularists, cultists, and what have you. We do deals and make purchases and do agreements with non-Christians all the time.

Yet for the most part no one complains about this. We would have to pull out of the world altogether if we were so worried about this sort of ‘contamination’. And again, all this is quite different from some formal alliance or agreement, such as marriage. It is just part of living in a non-Christian world.

But the separatists still complain. For example, they have berated the Manhattan Declaration and the Canberra Declaration. But both were pitched broad enough so that people of good will from differing religious traditions could get on board, although it is clear that both particularly and unashamedly uplift Christ and Christianity.

So I for one do not see a major problem with Christians going along to a patriotic rally, even if Glenn Beck was a major player in making it happen. If it were held at a Mormon church, then I would probably stay away. If it in anyway involved me compromising my theological convictions, or compelled me into some binding alliance, then I would stay out.

But the truth is, in these culture wars, if we first come up with a long list of criteria and beliefs that we have to check off before we work with someone else, we will very soon be down to a club of one. I have disagreements with all sorts of people at times – even close colleagues. But if I demanded complete agreement on every point, then I would be really quite lonesome. And I don’t even agree with myself all the time!

So we need to learn to work together with others wherever possible, bearing in mind the bigger war we are in. Some issues are too important for us all to pull into our own little bunkers, hurling abuse and scorn at one another. Some issues are just too vital and must be tackled.

To work with a non-Christian on a temporary cause such as stopping or slowing down the abortion holocaust seems perfectly justifiable. I am not getting into bed with that person; I have not signed my life away to that person; and I have not abandoned any biblical convictions to work with that person.

If it ends up saving the lives of some unborn babies, then it was a worthwhile activity, a justifiable case of co-belligerency. It may not always be clear when such informal working relationships can be entered into. We must be thoughtful and prayerful about all such endeavours.

But I for one am not all that thrilled with the theological purists and separatists who so insist on keeping uncontaminated from those they consider to be unclean – whether rightly so or not – that they end up doing little for the Kingdom, except digging their own bunkers deeper, and proclaiming their own purity.

There are of course grey areas here, and Christians may well come to differing conclusions about how all this works out in practice. But I will tend to work with most anyone, on at least limited and short-term projects, where very important issues need to be addressed.

I think the battle over slavery was one such issue. The war against marriage and family may well be another, along with the right to life cause. While it may be challenging to always maintain theological and Christian distinctiveness at times, there may well be a case for working with others on some issues affecting the greater good.

So my advice would be, if theological orthodoxy and personal integrity can be maintained while being a co-belligerent, then it may be permissible to enter into such short-term arrangements. But each believer must be fully persuaded in his own mind.

[1660 words]

Let me begin by saying that traditionally there have been several main views of justice. Let me concentrate on just two: retributive justice and distributive justice. The former goes back at least to Aristotle and means simply, “to each man his due”. It has to do with giving people what they deserve. Thus we speak about ‘just deserts’ and so on.

The latter term is a more recent concept, and has to do with equality of outcome, and redistributing certain goods, including wealth, to ostensibly help out the less fortunate. It is what is often meant when the left – both secular and religious – speak about social justice.

At the risk of oversimplifying matters, it seems that the notion of retributive justice is more closely aligned with biblical notions of justice, while distributive justice is further afield from Scriptural principles. But this can hardly be defended adequately in a brief article, even in a most superficial fashion.

We would need to closely examine biblical terms such as justice, righteousness and the like. We would need to look at contemporary economic options as well. And we would need to study the historical record to see whether wealth redistribution has in fact worked, and really helped the poor. But let me tease things out just a bit more here.

Equality of opportunity is one thing, but equality of outcome is quite another. To enforce equality of outcome, you have to treat unequals equally, which is neither fair nor just. Given that we are all different (not equal in talents, giftings, motivations, etc), you have to use unequal treatment to get equal results. Many have written on this obvious point. Dr Mark Cooray is as good as anyone here.

In 1988 the Australian law professor wrote an important book entitled, The Australian Achievement: From Bondage To Freedom. While the entire volume is quite helpful, I draw your attention to ch. 20: “Equality of Opportunity and Equality of Outcome”.

Says Cooray, “Equality of opportunity is best expressed in the phrase – career open to talents. No arbitrary obstacles should prevent people from achieving those public positions which their talents fit and which their values lead them to seek. Neither birth, nationality, colour, religion, sex nor any other equivalent characteristic should determine the public opportunities that are open to a person – only talent and achievement.

“Thus, equality of opportunity simply spells out the concept of equality before the law. And it has meaning and importance precisely because people are different in their genetic and cultural characteristics, and hence both want to and can pursue different careers. It is important to note that such equality of opportunity does not present any conflict with freedom. Quite the opposite. Equality of opportunity and freedom are two facets of the same basic concept.”

He continues, “Equality of outcome is a radically different concept. Equality of opportunity provides in a sense that all start the race of life at the same time. Equality of outcome attempts to ensure that everyone finishes at the same time. To slightly change what the Dodo said in Alice in Wonderland, ‘Everybody must win and all must have prizes’. That is the goal of radical socialism. Everyone must be a winner, everyone must be equal. Socialists do not really point towards absolute equality but they point to vague ideas of fairness and justness.”

Such policies decrease equality and stymie economic growth: “This is not merely because they directly attack equality of opportunity in the sense of freedom to pursue an interest or vocation, but because by destroying incentive they inhibit that individual initiative which has been responsible for modern economic progress, growth and development. Modern economic development has systematically raised the lot of the ordinary man to a level of prosperity undreamed of in past ages, when such prosperity was confined to a few.

“This development was the direct result of individual initiative and endeavour within a system which allowed individual incentive and free activity. By directly impinging upon individual incentive and free activity, egalitarian policies and programmes actually inhibit the process of economic growth and development, thus inhibiting the only mechanism in history by which inequality has been systematically, successfully and continuously ameliorated on a large scale.”

Jewish commentator Michael Medved has just penned a piece on similar themes. He begins this way: “For more than a hundred years liberals and conservatives have been arguing over the true meaning of justice. The left emphasizes just outcomes – seeking smaller gaps between rich and poor, and a comparably dignified standard of living for all members of society.

“The right stresses just procedures – making sure that individuals keep the fruits of their own labors and remain secure in their property, without seizure by their neighbors or by government. Liberals accept unequal, potentially unfair treatment by government in order to achieve fair results; conservatives accept unequal, potentially unfair results so long as every citizen receives fair and comparable treatment by government.

“These arguments have raged for generations without definitive resolution, but that doesn’t mean that both sides are right, or that the questions that divide them offer no final answers. In fact, key Biblical passages provide a strong indication that conservative concepts of economic justice comport far more closely to the religious and philosophical foundations of western civilization.”

He explores various biblical texts, and draws upon some commentary by Jewish thinkers: “For instance, a key passage in the Book of Leviticus (19:15) declares: ‘You shall not commit a perversion of justice; you shall not favor the poor and you shall not honor the great; with righteousness (Tzedek) shall you judge your fellow.’ Amazingly, the Bible warns us not to ‘favor the poor’ even before we’re instructed ‘not to honor the great,’ because partiality for the unfortunate counts as an even stronger human temptation.

“And what about all the Biblical demands, in both Old and New Testaments, to show compassion to widows, orphans and the poor? Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi), the 11th century giant who became the most influential of all Torah expositors, explains that the verse in Leviticus draws an all-important, eternal distinction between charity and justice: ‘Do not say that since the wealthy man is obligated to help the poor one, it is proper for a judge to rule in favor of the poor litigant so that he will be supported in dignity. The Torah insists that justice be rendered honestly; charity may not interfere with it.’

“In other words, assistance for the destitute remains an individual obligation on God-fearing individuals, but should not bring a tilt to the law to favor the less fortunate. It is no coincidence, surely, that this crucial verse in Leviticus appears just two sentences away from the most famous declaration in all the Bible: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (19:18). This famous line makes clear that the same God who wants us to deal kindly with our fellow human beings, also requires that we respect and honor ourselves.

“You don’t demean or damage yourself for the sake of your fellow; the Bible consistently backs the conservative supposition that we help others best when we help ourselves. If such Biblical passages strongly support the conservative conception of justice, then why are so many churches, synagogues and divinity schools filled with outspokenly liberal clergy?”

As mentioned, far more needs to be said about this difficult subject. But this may help to clear up some muddled thinking, and help us to be clearer on what biblical justice is all about. It is at least far more than the usual notions of social justice being peddled today. And it certainly is more than just state-enforced wealth redistribution.

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/cooray/btof/chap20.htm
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelMedved/2010/09/01/which_side_is_god_on

[1335 words]

Christian atheism? Yep. I refer to a book title I have just heard of. It is a new book by Pastor Craig Groeschel called The Christian Atheist. I have not purchased it yet, but I like his concept, and will likely go out and grab it. I believe his point is this: there are all sorts of people who are Christian in name, but not in reality.

Plenty of people talk the Christian talk, but the lives they are living are much more like that of your garden variety atheist. There is a major disconnect, in other words, between the Christian talk and the Christian walk. That at least seems to be what he is arguing in his book.

Since I cannot now procure a copy (it is too late at night for any local Christian bookstores to be open), let me write about what I think he has said, or maybe should have said. I like this concept: Christian atheism. It seems to pretty well describe so much of today’s church scene.

There would be plenty of examples of this. Consider the issue of trusting God for our every need. There are zillions of passages in Scripture speaking to this theme, and plenty of believers will rightly rejoice in the fact that our God is Jehovah Jirah, our provider.

We see so many examples of this not only in the narrative portions of Scripture, but throughout church history. Yet when it comes down to our everyday lives, do we actually really believe all this stuff? Do we actually live it? Have we actually ever been in a position where God had to come through, otherwise all was lost?

I suspect for most believers, we have things too nicely tied up in this regard. We have our regular salary, we have our little nest eggs, and we have our social security or superannuation. We have our stocks and bonds, and we can always mortgage the home if things get really tight.

Now don’t get me wrong. All this has its place. We are called to be good workers, to be good stewards of the wealth we have, and to not be irresponsible with our worldly goods. The Apostle Paul for example could warn us about those who do not look after the needs of their own household. Such a person “has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim 5:8).

So yes, perhaps most believers will be regular wage earners, will have their 40 hours of paid work each week, and will struggle with the usual cares of life: paying the bills, taking care of the mortgage, and just trying to stay afloat. But do we really take seriously passages such as Matt. 6:33: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well”?

In verses 25-34 in this chapter, Jesus makes it quite clear that we should not be worried about such things as where our next meal will come from, or how we will be clothed. Yet how many of us take Jesus seriously here? I realise of course that there is a very fine line here between faith and presumption.

It is easy to carp on and on about living on faith, yet live a reckless and irresponsible lifestyle. Yet I think all of us can learn a few lessons here. Maybe it would be a good idea to let go of so many of our earthly security blankets, and in fact put God to the test, and see if he means what he says.

I am not saying we should all go out and quit our jobs and see what happens. Indeed, God will speak to each of us differently here. But perhaps you know of a friend who has a pressing financial need. Maybe what he needs is the same amount you now owe for this month’s bills.

Most believers would automatically assume they must hang on to the money to pay the bills, and simply pray for their needy friend. How many however will help the brother in need, and trust God to make up for the shortfall? We tend to have far too much security in our own schemes and plans, and have never really been forced to totally trust God for even our basic everyday necessities.

One other obvious example of Christian atheism would be in the way we do church. Today most churches are into Christian bling, big time. We have all the latest razzamatazz and gadgets. We have the strobe lights and smoke machines. We have all the high energy rock bands, the black stages, the disco look, etc.

We do all this to be trendy, to be relevant, to draw a crowd. Now there may well be a place for much of this. But have we ever thought that maybe the best drawcard we need to concentrate on is the Holy Spirit, and not all the gimmicks, marketing techniques, and showmanship? Maybe it is God we so desperately need, not all the entertainment.

Maybe it is the need of the hour for church leaders to get down on their faces before God, ask for his forgiveness, seek his face, and cry out for his mercy and his revival. That would do a whole lot more good than dreaming of new trendy techniques and campaigns to bring in a crowd and keep the masses happy.

And we have all the tricks to keep our young people entertained as well. We have the pizza nights and the volleyball games and the game playing and the video nights and the rock concerts and the adventure outings, and so on. We bend over backwards to keep our young people amused and interested.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I think the hardest job in the world is to be a youth leader. We do not just have a handful of kids who are hyper, impatient, and prone to ADHD. We have an entire generation of kids who are struggling with attention deficit disorder.

Thus it is a real job to keep their attention and interest. But maybe a fresh dose of the Holy Spirit is what we need, instead of more entertainment, more amusements, and more gimmicks. Indeed, can you imagine the early church looking at secular marketing techniques and sales strategies to bring in the crowds?

They didn’t need any of that. That had the one sure-fire drawcard: lives fully enveloped by the Holy Spirit. They were 100 per cent sold out for God, and they were on fire with the Holy Spirit. That was all they needed. They did not need to turn their church meetings into pale imitations of worldly entertainment centres.

While I do not mean to belittle what so many churches are seeking to do nowadays, I must say I have to side with people like A. W. Tozer and Leonard Ravenhill in all this. They seemed to have it right. Let me provide a quote from each. Tozer said,

“It is now common practice in most evangelical churches to offer the people, especially the young people, a maximum of entertainment and a minimum of serious instruction. It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction is God. One can only conclude that God’s professed children are bored with Him, for they must be wooed to attend a meeting with a stick of striped candy in the form of religious movies, games and refreshments.”

And Ravenhill said, “Young people come to our churches and what are they seeing? I went to a church not long ago – they got thirty acres. So what are their plans with it? They want their own football field and tennis courts. Dear God, do children go to church to learn to play tennis? God help the preachers! Why can’t we get them spiritual so they want prayer and revelation and the Word of the Living God? The young people come inside the church but there’s no glory.”

As I say, I need to go and get a copy of Groeschel’s book, and see if it is as good as it sounds to be. If we are indeed on the same wavelength here, then I will need to give it a glowing review. But whatever he actually says, I think the point remains: those of us who talk the Christian talk had better start to walk the Christian walk. Otherwise we are doing more damage to the cause of Christ than a Richard Dawkins or a Christopher Hitchens ever could.

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Os Guinness is one observant Christian who has long charted these worrying trends. In one book he has a challenging chapter on this “triumph of the therapeutic” which plagues much of Western Christendom. Says Guinness, “The overall story of pastoral care in the United States has been summed up as the shift from salvation to self-realization, made up of smaller shifts from self-denial to self-love to self-mastery, and finally to self-realization. The victory of the therapeutic over theology is therefore nothing less than the secularization and replacement of salvation.”

Craig Gay has written an incisive book entitled The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It’s Tempting to Live As if God Doesn’t Exist. In it he echoes the thoughts of Guinness: “In effect, the modern therapeutic disposition mortgages eternal destiny for the sake of comfort. It reverses Jesus’ question about the prudence of gaining the world at the cost of one’s soul (Matt. 16:26) and asks instead: What good will it be for someone to gain his ‘soul’ and lose this world?”

James Davison Hunter noted in 1983 that American evangelicalism had gone through a major shift in the latter half of the twentieth century. It has tended to downplay self-denial, sacrifice and suffering while fulfillment, happiness and emphasis on self were stressed. “Subjectivism has displaced the traditional asceticism as the dominant attitude in theologically conservative Protestant culture.”

David Wells has written a number of books on these and related themes. In a recent book he devotes most of his discourse to this theme of the triumph of the self in modern culture. Says Wells, “Much of the Church today, especially that part of it which is evangelical, is in captivity to this idolatry of the self. This is a form of corruption far more profound than the lists of infractions that typically pop into our minds when we hear the word sin. We are trying to hold at bay the gnats of small sins while swallowing the camel of self. . . . The contemporary Church is whoring after this god as assiduously as the Israelites in their darker days. It is baptizing as faith the pride that leads us to think much about ourselves and much of ourselves.”

Or as he says elsewhere, “This kind of self-fascination is by no means an excrescence of an otherwise robust sector of religious life. It is at the very center of evangelicalism.”

Charles Colson is another astute observer of culture. He put it this way: “Outwardly, we are a religious people, but inwardly our religious beliefs make no difference in how we live. We are obsessed with self.” And elsewhere he adds that “much of the church is caught up in the success mania of American society. . . . Suffering, sacrifice, and service have been preempted by success and self-fulfillment”

The remarks of Christian sociologist David Lyon could also be mentioned. In a penetrating analysis of the intersection of postmodernism and religion entitled Jesus in Disneyland, he speaks of the “sacralization of self”. He too is aware of the transformation of religion where the “idea of making up your personal bricolage of beliefs, choosing what fits and what does not, appears to be a popular mode of religiosity or spirituality today, especially in North America.” While some may think he is referring to the New Age movement here, he especially has in mind the evangelical church.

Interestingly it was the earlier secular analyses by social observers like Reiff and Lasch that paved the way for later evangelical critiques. Back in 1966 Philip Reiff released his The Triumph of the Therapeutic. There he states that faith after Freud has made a remarkable journey: “Religious man was born to be saved, psychological man is born to be pleased.” A little over a decade later Christopher Lasch spoke of this “therapeutic sensibility” with prophetic insight: “The contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden era, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security.”

Other secular assessments could be noted. Back in 1985 Robert Bellah and his colleagues observed in their influential Habits of the Heart the “tendency visible in many evangelical circles to thin the biblical language of sin and redemption to an idea of Jesus as the friend who helps us find happiness and self-fulfillment.” And in 1987 Allan Bloom could write, “The self is the modern substitute for the soul.”

In fact, way back in 1958 this trend was noted. Two sociologists did a study of popular inspirational literature from 1875 to 1955. They concluded their survey this way: “The [evangelical] literature presents a man-centered rather than a God-centered religion. It is preoccupied with power, success, life-mastery, and peace of mind and soul and not with salvation in the other sense of the term.”

Thus both secular and Christian critiques of modern culture have noted this drift to self. If the Christian subculture is guilty of unwarranted appeal to self, it is in many ways simply reflecting the wider secular culture, of which it is a part. As Wells reminds us, “This fascination with self is not a uniquely Christian or uniquely American phenomenon; it is the calling card modernity leaves behind wherever it goes.”

A good indication of this drift to self in the church can be seen in any contemporary Christian book store. The shelves are filled with books devoted to self. Titles abound on such themes as how to lose weight for Jesus, how to overcome self-doubt, how to improve self-image, how to find inner healing, how to achieve peace of mind, how to achieve self-realisation, how to find fulfillment and success, prosperity and peace. Indeed, the “how to” type of book seems to be proliferating in Christian publishing circles. I would estimate that books which offer such an anthropocentric emphasis far outnumber books which rightly emphasise the theocentric. Bubble-gum religion has replaced serious theology.

Now there is a place for self-improvement and self-help books. But ultimate self-improvement comes from a right relationship with God, not a fixation on self. My critique of Christian bookstores could also be extended to many sermons heard in our churches, seminars and conferences being offered, and Christian magazines and videos. The point is, self dominates in contemporary Christianity. And when anything other than God predominates, it becomes idolatry.

Turning the tide

So how do we respond to all this? In one sense, the answer is as simple as it is obvious. We just need to start taking Jesus at his word, and start doing what he said. And what did he tell us to do? Consider Mark 8:34-35: “Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it’.”

There you have it. The gospel is not about feeding on self, gorging self, flattering self, or cuddling self. It is about denying self, even putting it to death. Until this message is rediscovered and once again proclaimed, we will see the church continue to hemorrhage to death, unable to make its mark on the surrounding culture.

The contrast between today’s weak, anemic and self-fixated Christianity and that of the early church could not be more pronounced. The early disciples turned their world upside down (Acts 17:6).  Today’s church, in contrast, is being turned upside down by the world. And so many believers either do not know about this, or do not care.

Leonard Ravenhill was right to exclaim: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a few men like Paul? He said, ‘I’m dead!’ Dead to self… dead to ambition… dead to feelings… dead to be offended… dead to be flattered… dead! Paul died to everything!”

Or as A.W. Tozer remarked, “When will Christians learn that to love righteousness it is necessary to hate sin?  That to accept Christ it is necessary to reject self?  That to follow the good way we must flee from evil?  That a friend of the world is an enemy of God?  That God allows no twilight zone between two altogethers where the fearful and the doubting may take refuge at once from hell to come and the rigors of present discipline?”

I conclude with a final insight from Os Guinness: “The cross of Jesus runs crosswise to all our human ways of thinking. A rediscovery of the hard and the unpopular themes of the gospel will therefore be such a rediscovery of the whole gospel that the result may lead to reformation and revival.”

Let it be so.

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A God who commands fear and trembling has been replaced by a God who exists to meet our needs and serve our desires. One can find many examples of this, but one representative case can be found in aspects of the “Health and Wealth Gospel” and parts of the Word of Faith Movement. These movements tend to suggest that God is under obligation to meet our every need, to prosper us, and to pamper us. We can have anything we want if we simply “name it and claim it”. Such a gospel is attractive to many because it puts few or no demands on believers, while it turns God into a celestial servant who exists to do our bidding.

Such developments in evangelical Christianity have a debilitating effect. As Donald McCullough puts it, “reverence and awe have often been replaced by a yawn of familiarity. The consuming fire has been domesticated into a candle flame, adding a bit of religious atmosphere, perhaps, but no heat, no blinding light, no power for purification”. He continues, the “worse sin at the end of the twentieth century has been the trivialization of God”.

This domestication of God is of course simply idolatry. The prophets warned about such dangers. When Jeremiah denounced the false idols of his day, he could just as well have been speaking about the contemporary church. “Jeremiah pictures a tame god, a user-friendly god, who exists by human manufacture, is at human disposal, and is under human control.” God has become for many believers a mate to hang around with instead of a sovereign Lord to be bowed down to. We have taken God for granted, lost sight of his holiness, and presumed upon his offer of fellowship.

Indeed, in many respects this trend in Christianity is a good reflection of our modern hedonistic “me-first” culture. But is a poor reflection of the gospel message. We are here to serve and worship our Lord, not to see what temporal and material benefits we can weasel out of Him. As Michael Horton reminds us, “We exist for his pleasure, not he for ours; we are on this earth to entertain him, to please him, to adore him, to bring him satisfaction, excitement, and joy. Any gospel which seeks to answer the question, ‘What’s in it for me?’ has it all backwards. The question is, ‘What’s in it for God?’”

Oral Roberts University professor Charles Farah echoes this idea, noting that this type of theology “represents an unwitting return to the old liberal theology that exalts man at the expense of God. A man-centered theology must ultimately fail, because truth finally triumphs; and the truth is, God is not here for our convenience, we are here for His purposes”.

The rise of ‘fake’ Christians

I mention all this because of a recent article describing how American teens are becoming pseudo-Christians, based on a pseudo-gospel, resulting in a generation of young people thinking they are followers of Jesus when they are nothing of the sort.

It all comes down to spurious gospel which is selling us a manageable, domesticated God. This is how the CNN story begins: “If you’re the parent of a Christian teenager, Kenda Creasy Dean has this warning: Your child is following a ‘mutant’ form of Christianity, and you may be responsible. Dean says more American teenagers are embracing what she calls ‘moralistic therapeutic deism.’ Translation: It’s a watered-down faith that portrays God as a ‘divine therapist’ whose chief goal is to boost people’s self-esteem.

“Dean is a minister, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and the author of ‘Almost Christian,’ a new book that argues that many parents and pastors are unwittingly passing on this self-serving strain of Christianity. She says this ‘imposter’ faith is one reason teenagers abandon churches. ‘If this is the God they’re seeing in church, they are right to leave us in the dust,’ Dean says. ‘Churches don’t give them enough to be passionate about’.”

The article continues, “Dean drew her conclusions from what she calls one of the most depressing summers of her life. She interviewed teens about their faith after helping conduct research for a controversial study called the National Study of Youth and Religion.

“The study, which included in-depth interviews with at least 3,300 American teenagers between 13 and 17, found that most American teens who called themselves Christian were indifferent and inarticulate about their faith. The study included Christians of all stripes – from Catholics to Protestants of both conservative and liberal denominations.

“Though three out of four American teenagers claim to be Christian, fewer than half practice their faith, only half deem it important, and most can’t talk coherently about their beliefs, the study found. Many teenagers thought that God simply wanted them to feel good and do good – what the study’s researchers called ‘moralistic therapeutic deism’.”

That is not a bad phrase. The triumph of the therapeutic in Christian circles has been much commented on. As but one example, Os Guinness nailed it when he said, “The overall story of pastoral care in the United States has been summed up as the shift from salvation to self-realization, made up of smaller shifts from self-denial to self-love to self-mastery, and finally to self-realization. The victory of the therapeutic over theology is therefore nothing less than the secularization and replacement of salvation.”

And deism is a pretty accurate description of the God many believers – and not just teens – follow today. He is more like an absentee landlord or a celestial Jeeves, than the personal infinite God of the universe who makes demands of us, not least of which is to die to self and make Him lord.

We think God is simply there to meet our every beck and call. We treat him like a heavenly bellboy, always ready and eager to do our bidding. We have forgotten that our God is high and exalted, a consuming fire that we dare not trifle with.

That is why we so desperately need to reclaim a right understanding of who God is, and once again proclaim an uncorrupted gospel. As always, Tozer is worth quoting here: “The decline of the knowledge of the holy has brought on our troubles. A rediscovery of the majesty of God will go a long way toward curing them. It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate. If we would bring back spiritual power to our lives, we must begin to think of God more nearly as He is.”

And again: “The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men. This she has not done deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic. The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us.”

This trend of a manageable deity may be more significant than many other worrying recent trends. Until the church regains its respect for and awe of the creator of the heavens and the earth, it will present an anaemic and unimpressive deity to a god-starved world. Such a god will command no respect, and merit no worship and reverence. The need of the hour is for the church to reclaim its first love, and to denounce its careless and flippant version of true Christianity.

If not, we are at risk of losing a whole generation of young people who knew not Jesus.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/27/almost.christian/index.html?hpt=P1#fbid=um-MOPiMHwi&wom=false

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Indeed, both lists feature around 20 vices (21 in Romans, 19 in 2 Timothy) which quite accurately characterise unrepentant sinners, and a culture which has rejected Christ and has declared, “We will not have this man to rule over us”.

Commenting on the list found in Romans, James Montgomery Boice says this: “To study a list like this does not mean that every individual is equally guilty of each vice or that there have not been periods of history when they have been either more or less prominent. But, at best, these are all just below the surface of our respectability, and they quickly become apparent whenever you cross our sinful human nature or scratch the surface.”

Or as John Murray says, “as we scan the whole list, we cannot but be impressed with the apostle’s insight into the depravity of human nature as apostatized from God, the severity of his assessment of these moral conditions, and the breath of his knowledge respecting the concrete ways in which human depravity came to expression.”

John Stott says this of the Timothy list: “All this unsocial, antisocial behaviour … is the inevitable consequence of a godless self-centredness.” Indeed, fixation on self is the bottom line of all this evil. When self becomes god, there is no end to depravity and evil.

In fact, one of the common features of such lists is the predominance of hedonistic, sensual, bestial sins. The flesh is being catered to in a major way, and anything that pleases the senses and makes us feel good is indulged in without limit or constraint.

Thus people have become ‘lovers of self,’ ‘lovers of pleasure,’ and so on. They engage in ‘depravity’ and even ‘invent ways of doing evil’. Sensualism, sensuality and hedonism become the defining features of a culture intent on rejecting all divine restraints, and devoted to unbridled lusts and self-indulgence.

The biblical writers are not alone in noting this downward spiral. Concerned commentators have also analysed these worrying trends. For example, in 1996 Harold O.J. Brown wrote a valuable volume called The Sensate Culture. In it he described contemporary culture’s insistence on worshipping the fleshly, the sensual, and the material.

He draws heavily upon the work of the Russian-born sociologist Pitirim Sorokin who taught at Harvard University for many years. He especially draws upon his 1941 volume, The Crisis of Our Age, and his 1956 book, The American Sex Revolution.

Brown notes that Sorokin described societies as moving through three phases. The first is the ideational, in which the emphasis is on spiritual truth and values. The last is the sensate, in which interest lies only in the material and the sensual.

Between these two is the idealistic, which contains elements of each of the other two. Sorokin – and Brown – make the case that we in the West are now well and truly in the sensate stage. “It seeks the imposing, the impressive, the voluptuous; it encourages self-indulgence.”

Brown continues, “Sensate culture and sensate art go beyond simple materialism in that materialism merely defines matter as the only reality; the sensate mentality becomes enthusiastic about it. Western culture, as we shall show, is in the last stages of the sensate phase, or, to use Sorokin’s expression, it is a late, degenerate sensate culture.”

He offers this warning: “Sadly, as the experience of ancient Rome showed and as modern sensate cultures are again coming to see, a culture cannot long endure when there are no higher standards for human behaviour than the appetites and tastes of the moment.”

Both Brown and Sorokin were Christians, so the picture is not totally bleak. As Brown says, “On the one hand, we need to understand the full extent of the crisis in which we find ourselves, and not make the mistake of trivializing it, as though it could be resolved by making a few changes here and there. . . . If we do recognize the seriousness, we will wear ourselves out with adjustments and cosmetic changes, thereby making the disaster unavoidable.

“On the other hand, we must not make the mistake of seeing the present crisis as hopeless and therefore fail to make the kind of changes that could save us from a fiery ordeal.” Indeed, what can we learn from history here? Brown offers the following insights and questions:

“Modern sensate Western culture has not been in existence quite as long as the sensate culture of ancient Rome was before the impact of Christianity caused its great shift, but things move faster now. May we expect the kind of constructive renewal that created medieval Christian civilization out of the ruins of pagan Rome and the barbarian invasions? And if so, where will it come from? Does Western Christian Civilization have the resources to renew itself, or has it entered a late, degenerate phase from which it cannot recover?”

I find these questions to be not only extremely incisive, but vitally important for the church to grapple with today. Can we withstand the sensate invasion, or have we in fact become too much a part of the problem? One time radical and Black Panther activist Eldridge Cleaver rightly stated in the 60s, “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem”.

My very great fear is that so much of the church today seems more a part of the problem than part of the solution. The sensate culture has invaded the churches big time, and it seems that we are losing the war time and time again. There are numerous signs of this to choose from.

Let me offer just one minor, but representative, example. A while ago I spoke at a public meeting of believers on biblical worldview matters, and a number of people signed up to be part of my work in Christian activism. A week or two later one gal wrote back saying she wanted to end her involvement.

I replied and said yes I could do that, but pointed out that she was the one who signed up, and only just recently. She replied, ‘yeah, I was caught up in the emotion of the moment’ or words to that effect. I was dumbfounded. I did not reply again, but what I could easily have said was this:

“Since when does a Christian life run on feelings or emotions? What do your passing emotions have to do with anything in the Christian life? Not just signing up to join a cause, but praying, reading God’s word, worshipping, doing what is right in God’s eyes… All this is an act of the will, not the stuff of mere feelings.”

The problem is, we have an entire generation of believers who more or less live their Christian life this way. Instead of doing what is right simply because it is right, they run their lives based on their emotions at the moment;  their fleeting feelings. They are sensate, in other words, instead of spiritual.

But there are many more worrying indicators of the church’s embrace of the sensate culture than just this. For example, Christian researcher George Barna has shown over and over how modern evangelical churches are basically just as worldly, sensate and carnal as the surrounding culture.

His research shows that the churches are by and large filled with the same vice lists that we find in the secular culture: pornography addiction, abortion, homosexuality, easy divorce, greed, materialism, consumerism, and so on. Instead of resisting the surrounding sensate culture, and turning it around, it seems that the church is the one which has been influenced by it.

Brown asks whether the Western church has the resources, inclination and desire to turn things around, or whether it will fatally succumb to the sensate culture. To be honest, I do not know the answer to that one. It may well be that the church in the West will self-destruct, devoted as it is to self, sensuality, and sin.

But even if it does self-implode, God is not finished with planet earth. He is actively moving in the developing world, with church growth making leaps and bounds in Asia, Africa and Latin America. If the Western church will not get the job down, and fight the good fight, then God is quite capable of raising up for himself a people who will get the job done.

The church in the West is quickly forfeiting its role in God’s greater redemptive purposes. If that is the case, God can easily move off shore and continue his work of establishing his Kingdom. And that he is doing. I for one, however, would like to see the Western church get its act together, and join God in the great end-time harvest.

Whether we do or not is entirely up to us. But “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).

[1546 words]

Thus it is worth looking at this concept in more detail. And with such terminology, a cursory understanding of the original languages is certainly in order. In Hebrew there a number of terms used. The main noun is yira or mora, and the main verb is yare.

In the New Testament the main Greek term is phobos and phobeo (noun and verb respectively). Context of course in large measure determines how we understand the terms. There is fear of death, fear of man, fear of the unknown, and so on. Here we are concentrating on the fear of the Lord.

Eugene Merrill says this about the terminology: “While the normal meaning of fear as dread or terror is retained in the theological use of the terms, a special nuance of reverential awe or worshipful respect becomes the dominant notion.”

Tremper Longman seeks to summarise the biblical data: “‘Respect’ may not do justice to the gravity of the word, though ‘fear’ may connote an unhealthy dread. Still, the object of fear is the Creator of all, the one who is sovereign over his creation. Those who experience fear in his presence know their rightful place in the universe. An English word that may be a candidate for translation is ‘awe,’ understood as veneration of the sacred.”

There are numerous references to the fear of God in Scripture. It is true that in the NT, our relationship with Jesus enables us to be called friends by our Lord. But as C.S. Lewis reminds us in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Aslan (the Christ figure) is not tame, or safe:

“‘Is – is he a man?’ asked Lucy. ‘Aslan a man!’ said Mr. Beaver sternly. ‘Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion, the Lion, the great Lion.’ ‘Ooh,’ said Susan, ‘I thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.’ ‘That you will, dearie, and make no mistake,’ said Mrs. Beaver; ‘if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.’ ‘Then he isn’t safe?’ said Lucy. ‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver; ‘don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the king I tell you’.”

While we can have a personal love relationship with God because of what Christ has done for us, the Creator/creature distinction never becomes inviolate. We still approach him with all the awe and reverence that the King of the Universe is due.

Those who do not come to God through Christ have only a genuine terror of the Lord to deal with. As one author notes, “Although there is a desirable reverential fear of God, the Bible also portrays God’s actions as being causes of terror, especially – but not only – for those who do not trust in God.”

Or as Merrill states, “There are, thus, two sides of the fear of the Lord – that which produces awe, reverence, and obedience, and that which causes one to cower in dread and terror in anticipation of his displeasure.”

It may be worth looking at just one particular passage to round out this discussion. Consider Philippians 2:12: “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Leaving aside the contentious issue of working out one’s salvation (but see verse 13 for the full context), what is this ‘fear and trembling’ all about?

Gordon Fee offers this commentary: “If the whole universe of created beings is someday (soon, from their perspective) to pay homage to their Lord, then they themselves need to be getting on with obedience (= working out their salvation) as those who know proper awe in the presence of God. One does not live out the gospel casually or lightly, but as one who knows what it means to stand in awe of the living God.”

G. Walter Hansen nicely ties together the various NT themes about fear in relation to this passage: “Although believers are repeatedly commanded to ‘fear not’ (see, e.g., Luke 1:13, 30; 2:10; 5;10; 8;50), assured that God has not given ‘a spirit of fear’ (2 Tim 1:7), and informed that ‘perfect love casts out fear’ (1 John 4:18), fear and love are still paradoxically united in Christian experience.”

Yes, the blend of love and fear, even if hard to reconcile, are indeed the twin components of the believer’s walk with God. As A.W. Tozer puts it, “The love of Christ both wounds and heals, it fascinates and frightens, it kills and makes alive, it draws and repulses, it sobers and enraptures. There can be nothing more terrible or more wonderful than to be stricken with love for Christ so deeply that the whole being goes out in a pained adoration of His person, an adoration
that disturbs and disconcerts while it purges and satisfies and relaxes the deep inner heart.”

Or as Tozer says elsewhere: “Christ can never be known without a sense of awe and fear accompanying the knowledge. He is the fairest among ten thousand, but He is also the Lord high and mighty. He is the friend of sinners, but He is also the terror of devils. He is meek and lowly in heart, but He is also Lord and Christ who will surely come to be the judge of all men. No one who knows Him intimately can ever be flippant in His presence.”

John Stott put it this way: “The fear of God is a profound respect for His holiness, which includes a fear of the consequences of disobeying Him. It shouldn’t scare us out of our wits; it should scare us into them.” Quite so. And R.C. Sproul offers this perspective:

“We are called to fear God, and Luther described that fear, not as a servile fear, like that of a tortured prisoner for his tormentor, but as a filial fear, similar to that which we have for a parent whom we love and do not want to disappoint. It is not that we fear the loss of certain privileges or other punishment, but that we do not want to displease the parent.”

I conclude with more wise thoughts from the pen of Tozer, as he discusses ‘The Terror of the Lord’:

“No one can know the true grace of God who has not first known the fear of God. . . . The presence of the divine always brought fear to the heads of sinful men. Always there was about any manifestation of God something that dismayed the onlookers, that daunted and overawed them, that struck them with a terror more than natural. This terror had no relation to mere fear of bodily harm. It was a dread consternation experienced far in toward the center and core of the nature, much farther in than that fear experienced as a normal result of the instinct for physical self-preservation. I do not believe that any lasting good can come from religious activities that do not root in this quality of creature-fear. . . . The effort of liberal and borderline modernists to woo men to God by presenting the soft side of religion is an unqualified evil because it ignores the very reason for our alienation from God in the first place. Until a man has gotten into trouble with his heart he is not likely to get out of trouble with God.”

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