How the Addition of One Idea can Create a Worldview Tsunami

Our thought-life is all-powerful. If I think that my mailman intends to shoot me, this will profoundly affect the way that I feel towards him and behave. It will affect my words and my future plans, and perhaps even exert a long-lasting effect upon the direction of my life.

As such, our thoughts and beliefs are not merely the boat’s rudder; they are also its engine and sails. This principle also pertains to our worldview – our philosophy or theology of life – and we all have one, or several.

The atheistic poet turned Christian, W.H. Auden, wrote about the inevitable implications of secular-liberal thought in 1940:

• The whole trend of liberal thought has been to undermine faith in the absolute…It has tried to make reason the judge…But since life is a changing process…the attempt to find a humanistic basis for keeping a promise, works logically with the conclusion, “I can break it whenever I feel it inconvenient.” (Humphrey Carpenter, A Biography)

Without transcendent moral absolutes, convenience, not reason, reigns. Without these truths to feast upon, reason is a naked beggar living in a vacuum. It’s like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle without its pieces. In the absence of absolute moral truth, the persuasive appeal of convenience becomes irresistible.

Even the modification of just one theological truth can create a paradigm shift redefining all other truths, like adding “not” to a sentence – “God is not holy and righteous.” This simple addition changes the entire meaning of the statement.

There are many examples of this. For instance, there is a great resistance, even in the church, to distinguish between “us and them,” “saved and unsaved.” Removing such distinctions is very appealing and even convenient in our professional and multi-cultural world. Where people hope to create bridges of common cause among all peoples, such distinctions have become politically unacceptable, even repugnant. Emergent Church pastor, Doug Pagitt, puts it like this:

• We are connected to each other as well. Christians like to talk about community, yet the dualistic [us-them] assumptions surrounding our theology make it almost impossible for us to experience true community. As long as we hold on to “us” and “them” categories of seeing the world, we live behind a barricade that prevents us from joining in with God and others in real and meaningful ways. And it doesn’t really matter who we decide “them” is – the non-Christians, the sinners, the liberals, the conservatives, the Jews, the Catholics, that weird church on the other side of town. Division is division, no matter how righteous we want to make it sound. (A Christianity Worth Believing, 91-92)

However, Pagitt is merely creating another division – this time between Emergents and Evangelicals. The Emergents have become the “we” and the Evangelicals are the “them.” More importantly, this one modification – removing Biblical distinctions – has the power to reformulate the entire Christian faith.

If there are no “us – them” distinctions, then many Biblical teachings must be either reinterpreted, ignored or simply rejected. However, these distinctions are an integral part of the Gospel – God’s purposes, our own identity and understanding of the world in which we live.

For example, Jesus taught that the “we” are set apart from the rest of the world. We are the “children of God” (Mat. 5:9; John 1:12) and the “light of the world” (Mat. 5:14).

Even as I write this, I do so with tinge of embarrassment, knowing that this represents pure arrogance in the eyes of the Emergent Church – “How can you think that you are more favored than others. It’s these kinds of distinctions that create prejudice and warfare!”

However, these are the very distinctions that the Bible has always made. The Israelites had been the people of God (and from the perspective of God’s future plans for Israel, they still are).  Indeed, arrogance was a danger, and therefore, God guarded against this danger by warning that Israel was no better than other peoples. If anything, they were least (Deut. 7, 9). If they performed better, it was only because God had enabled them to do so (Deut. 8:17-19). However, to whom more was given, more was also expected. Therefore, Israel was judged with the stricter judgment.

We find these distinctions throughout the Bible. Although God’s people were chosen from among the dregs of society (1 Cor. 1:26-29), He would raise them up. However, He would never allow them to forget their humble and broken beginnings.

“Us – them” distinctions were always a part of Jesus’ preaching. Those who reject Him “will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life" (Mat. 25:46, 41; 13:42, 50).

“Us – them” distinctions – those who are with God and those against - are part of the fabric of the entire Bible, and we are required to heed these distinctions. Paul warned that God’s people mustn’t forget about this distinction:

• Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? (2 Cor. 6:14-15)

When we forget this distinction, we place ourselves at great peril. Therefore, a believer was warned against marrying an unbeliever (1 Cor. 7:39). Likewise, church discipline was applied to those who professed Christ and not those on the outside (1 Cor. 5:13).

While the “us – them” distinction has separated, it has also joined together. It has been the awareness of the lost-ness of the great masses of humanity along with of the blessedness of Christ, that has impelled Christian missions, and missions has done much to improve the world. The late theologian B.B. Warfield wrote:

• Hospitals and asylums and refuges for the sick, the miserable and the afflicted grow like heaven-bedewed blossoms in its path. Woman, whose equality with man Plato considered a sure mark of social disorganization, has been elevated; slavery has been driven from civilized ground; literacy has been given by Christian missionaries, under the influence of the Bible. (The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield)

Outreach requires an “us – them” distinction. However, this is the main point – if we want to eliminate the “us – them” distinction, we must also eliminate many other essential distinctions, and, ultimately, jettison the entire Gospel.

If we have to throw away the “saved – unsaved” distinction, then the eternal “punishment – reward” distinction must also be eliminated. Consequently, we would then be compelled to adopt universalism – the salvation of everyone!

However, this worldview tsunami doesn’t stop there. If we reject the “heaven – hell” distinction, then we have to reformulate the very nature of God. Hence, He can no longer be righteous and punitive. Instead, God must simply be indiscriminate-love, and salvation then becomes an entitlement program. We become entitled to salvation without any consideration of our response.

Well, if God is just love, and His righteous nature doesn’t require punishment for sin, what then do we make of the Biblical judgments, like the worldwide flood? A God who is just “love” would have no reason to bring such a horrific judgment!

Besides, if God is just “love” and His righteous nature need not be propitiated by the atoning work of Jesus, then the Cross was unnecessary, and therefore, it represents the worst case of cosmic child abuse, as the atheist claims.

Of course, it could be argued that after the Cross, God no longer required any form of retribution, and therefore, all are saved and going to heaven. However, this will bring about other, equally deadly, worldview tsunamis. If God is our role-model, and He has washed His hands of any form of judgment, then we too must do likewise. We have to give every student an “A” and every criminal his liberty – an absurdity.

Besides, such a tsunami contradicts Scripture, which requires faith-repentance as the condition of salvation and punishment for those who refuse.

Is this revelation offensive to humanity. Admittedly so! However, the more important question is this: “Is it true?”

When we begin to button our shirt with the wrong button, every subsequent button will be out-of-place. It is also this way with our theological starting points. One wrong idea can throw all the others out-of-kilter and birth many unintended consequences.

What are the consequences? It’s hard to tell. However, there have been many failed utopian schemes. What starts out looking so loving and accepting can turn into a house of horrors, as the various communist experiments have so amply demonstrated.

If the Emergent Church or others who believe that removing essential distinctions can build better communities and nations, could demonstrate but one such enduring community or nation, we might have reason to regard their formulation with some credulity. However, we are still waiting.

Cultural Renewal, the Church and Tim Keller

In the wake of mass defections from the church, especially among the youth, the question of the church has received renewed interest: “What is the church and what is its role?” Consequently, more radical definitions are gaining attention – “an instrument for cultural renewal,” “a conversation,” “a protective place of nurturing.”

Despite the many definitions regarding the mission of the church, Scripture is remarkably consistent. The church is the Body of Christ, created out of the Gospel and for the Gospel.

Jesus likened the Kingdom of Heaven to the good seed of the Gospel, which, when sowed in the right soil, produces a great harvest (Matthew 13). His Great Commission directed His disciples to sow this seed of the Gospel:

• Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. (Matthew 28:19-20) 

Making disciples depended upon spreading this Good News. Growth and maturity required the same truth-food:

• To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31-32)

Embracing the Gospel had profound consequences. This is partially why the post-resurrection church devoted themselves to the teachings of the Apostles (Acts 2:42; 4:33). Paul committed the Ephesian elders "to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.” (Acts 20:32)

By the Spirit, the Word of the Gospel can transform us and provide a bounteous inheritance. It both saves and edifies. Therefore Paul warned that any real growth had to be according to the Gospel of our Lord (1 Cor. 3:11), which required diligent protection.

The implanted Gospel is transformational and therefore should also affect the fields in which it grows. The Gospel has already transformed society. Former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Dominic Lawson, in a review in the Sunday Times of Niall Ferguson's new book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, carries a quote from a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in which he tries to account for the success of the West, to date:

• “One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world.

• “We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had.

• “Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system.

• “But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful.”

 The Gospel and salvation carry powerful implications. Therefore, I cannot fault pastor and writer Tim Keller too strongly in stating:

• The whole purpose of salvation is to cleanse and purify this material world.

• The whole purpose of salvation is to make the world a great place.

• God sees this world as not a temporary means to salvation…But salvation is a temporary means to the end of this material creation, to the renewal of creation.

• Saving souls is a means to an end of cultural renewal. (Spoken at an “Entrepreneur’s Forum” sponsored by Redeemer PCA: http://cityofdeception.com/tim-kellers-social-justice/#more-67) 

We are not only saved to enjoy and worship our Savior forever; we are also saved for the great privilege of serving. The second Great Commandment highlights our responsibility to our fellow human beings, to love our neighbor as ourselves. One way to do this is to protect our environment – both physical and vocational.

Keller is correct to insist that the Gospel and salvation have a purpose. When we truncate the Gospel by forgetting this purpose, we make the church seem irrelevant and loose our influence within a society that fails to see our influence.

Keller correctly points out that if our concern is evangelism, we should be interested in cultural/societal renewal. It often happens that when the transformational power is brought to bear upon society that eyes will open and mouths will cease spewing forth their invectives.

However, Keller goes too far in a number of ways. To say that the “whole purpose of salvation is to make the world a great place,” misses much of the big picture – our own transformed lives, proclamation of the Gospel, the New Heavens and the New Earth, and our relationships with others and with our Savior.

Besides, if cultural renewal is to be our goal, Keller fails to give sufficient attention to the mighty outpourings of the Spirit, which have transformed society. Indian Scholar Vishal Mangalwadi writes about the powerful revival, nurtured by the preaching of John Wesley and George Whitefield:

• The biblical revival affected the lives of politicians. Edmund Burke and William Pitt were better men because of their Bible-believing friends. They helped redefine the civilized world…Perceval, Lord Liverpool, Abraham Lincoln, Gladstone, and the Prince Consort, among others, acknowledged the influence of the Great Awakening. The biblical revival, beginning among the outcast masses, was the midwife of the spirit and character values that have created and sustained free institutions throughout the English-speaking world. England after Wesley saw many of his century’s evils eradicated, because hundreds of thousands became Christians. Their hearts were changed, as were their minds and attitudes, and so society – the public realm – was affected. (The Book that Made your World)

• The following improvements came in a direct line of descent from the Wesleyan revival. First was the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of the industrial workers in England. Then came factory schools, ragged schools, the humanizing of the prison system, the reform of the penal code, the forming of the Salvation Army, the Religious Tract Society, the Pastoral Aid Society, the London City Mission, Muller’s Homes, Fegan’s Homes, the National Children’s Home and Orphanages, the forming of evening classes and polytechnics, Agnes Weston’s Soldier’ and Sailor’s Rest, YMCAs, Barnardo’s Homes, the NSPCC, the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, the Royal Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the list goes on. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people behind these movements were Christians.

Perhaps even more troubling is what Keller omits from the game-plan. When we send troops into battle, we not only instill them with a transcendent vision for what they can accomplish, but also the dangers and hardships they will have to endure along the road. Jesus warned His troops:

• "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: 'No servant is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.” (John 15:18-20)

However, this kind of warning seems to be noticeably absent from Keller’s marching orders. Instead, there is little warning about the devices of the enemy, and there is little acknowledgment that they are enemies of the Gospel (Rom. 8:5-8).

 

Keller is not alone in minimizing certain “distasteful” Gospel truths – truths that portray the radical distinction between the saved and the unsaved. Emergent Church pastor, speaker and writer, Doug Pagitt, puts it this way:

• We are connected to each other as well. Christians like to talk about community, yet the dualistic [us-them] assumptions surrounding our theology make it almost impossible for us to experience true community. As long as we hold on to “us” and “them” categories of seeing the world, we live behind a barricade that prevents us from joining in with God and others in real and meaningful ways. And it doesn’t really matter who we decide “them” is – the non-Christians, the sinners, the liberals, the conservatives, the Jews, the Catholics, that weird church on the other side of town. Division is division, no matter how righteous we want to make it sound. (A Christianity Worth Believing, 91-92)

Although I have never heard Keller to speak in this extreme manner, the absence in his teaching of any “dualistic assumptions”  – saved vs. unsaved, children of light vs. children of darkness (1 Cor. 2:14; John 3:19-20), new creations (2 Cor. 5:17) vs. children of the devil (John 8:41-44), Body of Christ vs. the world –  is deafening. 

To operate in the world, we have to understand the world. The New Testament is filled with warnings about the wicked heart of man, the resultant false teachings of the world, and the threat they pose to the church (Mat. 7:15; Mark 8:15; 13:5-6; Col. 2:8; Titus 1:9-11; Rev. 2:2, 14).

Consequently, cultural renewal without the necessary Gospel-truth-tools becomes a ticket to assimilation. Many go forth from Keller’s church armed with the idea that if they can just love enough, the world will see the light and want Christ. However, it was the world that crucified the Christ, the perfect model of love.

There is little appreciation of the fact that salvation is a supernatural gift to us who dwell in abject darkness and are enemies of God (Rom. 8:5-8; 5:9-10). Consequently, without being born again, the world will merely become more arrogant and hardened to the Gospel in the midst of their improved environment. This means that we should be very guarded in our optimism about changing the world.

However, the Redeemerites are ill-equipped to deal with this reality. They go forth as the unarmed Russian troops had during the First World War as they stormed the German invaders, hoping to pick up a fallen gun as they bravely made their charge. Redeemerites fail to perceive the radical distinction between saved and unsaved and face an enemy they cannot see or understand. They think that if they simply party with the world, they will be accepted and the world will accept their faith. Instead, it is more likely that the salt will loose its saltiness.

As an example of social renewal, Keller admits that we cannot simply join the Harvard faculty and expect to change it. However, he suggests an alternative – we can create a “think-tank” to influence them.

However, as long as Christians remain ill-equipped, the influence runs in the other direction. We send our Christian youth to the university, even many “Christian” ones, and they return as secular clones, either lost to the church or so badly compromised that they are almost indistinguishable from the secular world. Meanwhile, they are convinced that they have been enlightened and therefore look down on Evangelicals.

Evangelism – the proclamation of the Gospel – also seems to be conspicuously missing from Keller’s program. Understandably, it can be argued that since the Gospel has been so thoroughly discredited in the West, we first have to earn the right to be heard. This is reasonable, but this doesn’t seem to be part of Keller’s strategy. Instead, he pejoratively refers to evangelism as “increasing the tribe” – in other words, the in-group, the “us vs. them” mentality.

Instead, Scripture refers to the proclamation of Gospel as central and indispensable:

• That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome. 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. (Romans 1:15-16)

It is sad that we have become ashamed of the Gospel, because of all the contempt poured out upon it. However, it is hubristic to think that we can change society without its proclamation. Besides, such an expectation would place an intolerable burden upon us to look and act better than others so that they will want what we have.

Instead, we are a motley crew. God has chosen the rejects of this world so that boasting would then become difficult (1 Cor. 1:26-29). As hard as I try, I must admit that many unbelievers look better than me and perhaps in this life, they always will. This is partially because our impressions are limited to the mere appearance of things (1 Sam. 16:7). Consequently, if my evangelistic hope rests upon the superiority of my character, my hope is a false one – one that will be disappointed.

Instead, our hope is in the proclamation of Gospel and the Spirit who validates it in those who are being saved. Through this, we are a “sweet smelling savor,” but this miraculous savor seems to be exclusively associated with the presentation of the Gospel (2 Cor. 2:14-17). Therefore, if we trust in God, we are constrained to trust in His methods, even if despised by the world. To go beyond what is written (1 Cor. 4:6) in this regards – to place our hope in other methods – is to place our hope in ourselves. This is a hope that will suffer a hasty demise.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t engage in social projects. However, we must do so with right expectations, preparations and methods. If we want to have a sanctifying influence on this world, we cannot dismiss Jesus’ means of sanctification:

• You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. (John 15:3)

• Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:17)

What then is the church? According to Paul, it is “God's household…the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). Above all else, the church is about the ministry of the Gospel!

The Church and its Growing Appetite for Pantheism

The West has embraced pantheism with a full-body embrace. Champion of the environment, Al Gore, stated:

• “Our religious heritage is based on a single earth goddess who is assumed to be the foundation of all life…all men have a god within. Each man has a god within because creation is God.”

For Gore, it is not enough that God created nature that radiates with His wisdom and artistry. Instead, nature is actually God. Everything is God and any distinction must be eliminated.

Why does he go to such a pantheistic extreme? Perhaps Gore expects that if we deify nature, we will also care for it better. However, if everything is deified, then the toxic waste dump is also deified along with every rape, kidnapping and beheading. To deify everything therefore is to deify nothing. It also serves to eliminate any distinction – right from wrong, just from unjust, love from hate - that has built enduring and thriving societies. After all, according to pantheism, everything is God, and God is in every action, even genocide!

Leonard Sweet, a leader in the Emergent Church, also strives to eliminate distinctions:

• For people who understand the Gaia hypothesis, which posits that the earth behaves like a living system and, indeed, that living things regulate earth’s environments, it is not craziness to suggest, as some electrical engineers have argued, that scientists who like their equipment get better results than those who don’t. …--when food, plants, animals, and machines are seen as part of us, and we of them. (Quantum Spirituality, 238)

We are our machines and our machines are us, and we are all God. In a pantheistic world, reason has no part. In fact, it is the enemy. It shows us that we are not our machines. They can be thrown onto the dump heap, and we can go on our merry way.

Reason must be eliminated. It raises embarrassing objections. Reason is eliminated in a variety of ways. We often hear the claim that reason or thinking obstructs the work and experience of God. Professed Christian psychologist, David Benner writes:

• It is a state of active receptivity that opens us up to the sacred. This is exactly how the contemporary Quaker author Douglas Steere understand prayer, describing it as “awakeness, attention, intense inward openness.” Sin, in his view, is anything that destroys this attentiveness. The greatest threat to attention is thought. (97-98)

Prayer is no longer interpersonal – a plea to our Savior. Rather, it is something we do to ourselves – a form of masturbation, a substitute for relationship. We’re in control – the captain of our own ship.

Of course, the big enemy is thought. It raises troublesome questions. While these mystical practices insist that if we are to experience God, we must get our minds out of the way, reason asks, “What is it that I am really experiencing? Can I coerce God into my desired experience through techniques and manipulations? Is God amenable to such things?”

Likewise, the Bible insists that we shouldn’t close down our critical faculties:

• Test everything. Hold on to the good. (1 Thes. 5:21)

The popular Christian mystic, Richard Foster, shares Benner’s warnings against thinking:

• Imagine the light of Christ flowing through your hands and healing every emotional trauma and hurt feeling your child experienced that day. Fill him or her with the peace and joy of the Lord. In sleep the child is very receptive to prayer since the conscious mind, which tends to erect barriers to God’s gentle influence, is relaxed. (Celebration of Discipline, 39)

Once again, the “conscious mind” is the culprit. According to Foster, God has many blessings for us, but He just can’t penetrate our mental barriers. However, Foster’s wimp-god is not the God of the Bible, who declares that there is nothing that he can’t do (Gen. 18:14) and that we cannot erect any barriers against Him. The doors He opens, no man can shut, and what He shuts, no one can open (Rev. 3:7).

Instead, the Bible is consistent in its denunciation of sin and the refusal to believe – the one thing that separates us from God.

Foster’s God is also passive, permissive, and perhaps even pantheistic. He allows us to channel him and his healing benefits through our imagination, as if He lacked any will and character of His own. According to Foster, it seems that the main barriers to spiritual growth and blessing are our minds and our failure to use Foster’s techniques.

In The Signature of Jesus, Brennan Manning echoes the same message:

• “The first step in faith is to stop thinking about God in prayer…” “Contemplative spirituality tends to emphasize the need for a change in consciousness…we must come to see reality differently.” “Choosing a single, sacred word…repeat the sacred word inwardly, slowly, and often.” “Enter into the great silence of God. Alone in that silence, the noise within will subside and the Voice of Love will be heard.” (quoted from Ray Yungen, A Time of Departing, 83). 

Manning’s advice directly contradicts Scripture, which never advises us to “stop thinking about God.” His recommendation for using a single word (or mantra) represents Eastern contemplative practice. Instead, Scripture prescribes the very opposite:

• Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly…But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper. (Psalm 1:1-3)

According to Scripture, blessedness is a matter of relationship – staying in close contact with our Savior and avoiding sin, not thinking about God.

Manning also violates the teachings of Jesus:

• And when you pray, do not keep on babbling [on a single word or phrase] like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. (Matthew 6:7) 

Evidently, Manning thinks that paganism and its manipulations and meaningless “babbling” are superior to Jesus’ teachings. He emphasizes the fact that prayer is a matter of talking to Another – our Maker and Redeemer. Fundamentally, it is not about a “change in consciousness,” but the acknowledge of our dependence upon our Savior!

Pantheists deride dualistic thinking – the separation of the thinker from the rest of reality. If instead reality is all one, the only thought that we have is what we share with everyone else. Therefore, we cannot talk about the “me-them” distinction, if we are all one. (Of course, the pantheists can’t logically maintain this stance. Whenever they say anything, they are making distinctions using dualist thought. We are also talking to another,  distinct person. Simply to say that some are enlightened and some aren’t or one thought is wrong and another is right is dualistic!)

Emergent Church pastor, speaker and writer, Doug Pagitt, puts it this way:

• We are connected to each other as well. Christians like to talk about community, yet the dualistic [us-them] assumptions surrounding our theology make it almost impossible for us to experience true community. As long as we hold on to “us” and “them” categories of seeing the world, we live behind a barricade that prevents us from joining in with God and others in real and meaningful ways. And it doesn’t really matter who we decide “them” is – the non-Christians, the sinners, the liberals, the conservatives, the Jews, the Catholics, that weird church on the other side of town. Division is division, no matter how righteous we want to make it sound. (A Christianity Worth Believing, 91-92)

Nevertheless, it is dualistic thinking that keeps my marriage going. I try to maintain a sharp distinction between my wife and my neighbor’s wife. To remove all distinctions is to remove real and committed relationships. There is an essential distinction between my children and grandchildren and other children. It’s a human reality, and any attempt to wrest away children from those who love them has always been met with tragedy. Just think of the communist experiment!

However, distinction does not obliterate our responsibilities before all humanity. It affirms it! I respect other marriages because I respect my own. I acknowledge my responsibility towards the children of others because I acknowledge my own responsibility. However, there are concentric circles of responsibility and commitment starting with the most intimate. We must honor, cherish and care for our father and mother. However, because of this essential relationship, I feel for other families.

If instead all distinctions are removed, barriers eliminated and everything leveled – parents with children, husbands with wives – we violate our God-designed selves and everything is degraded.

Even Pagitt creates “us-them” distinctions between his brand of religion and that of the Bible. There is just no escaping it. Anyone who wants to eat must distinguish between food and the one who consumes the food. Dualism is inextricably built into reality.

Emergent Church guru and writer, Brian McLaren, has also stated that dualistic thinking is what is wrong with the church (not his church, of course):

• Religious communities often take a short-cut to building a strong group identity -- by defining themselves in opposition to others. Muslims, atheists and gays are high-profile "others" which can be scapegoated to build a strong "Christian" identity. (Huffington Post Religion Blog, 2/19/03)

McLaren doesn’t seem to see that he too is scape-goating. However, his whipping boy is the Bible-believing church. However, truth always excludes, distinguishing itself against what is untrue. Likewise, justice must set itself against what is unjust. Life demands such distinctions.

Prior to this, McLaren wrote:

• Christians have been taught to see in "us vs. them" terms for centuries, and it will take time to reorient faithful people in a new direction -- "us with them," working for the common good.

Although I make a distinction between his wife and my wife - "us vs. them"- this doesn’t prevent us from working or vacationing together - "us with them." In fact, it is our mutual respect for certain barriers that makes our friendship possible.

Why can’t (or won’t) McLaren and the other Emergents and mystics acknowledge this reasonable fact, that reality is multi-faceted? Reality is not just comprised of universals and commonalities. There are necessary distinctions that must be made between ideas and even people. If this isn’t so, then let’s just open the prison doors and give every student an “A!”

This hatred of distinctions often takes the form of a hatred towards Christianity. Lynn White, Jr., Professor of History at the University of California, claims,

• “…As we now recognize, somewhat over a century ago science and technology…joined to give mankind powers which…are out of control. If so, Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt….Our science and technology have grown out of Christian attitudes toward man’s relation to nature… No new set of basic values has been accepted in our society to displace those of Christianity. Hence we shall continue to have a worsening ecological crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.”

• “By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects…The spirits in natural objects, which formerly had protected nature from man, evaporated” (Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Garrett de Bell, editor, The Environmental Handbook: Prepared For The First National Environmental Teach-In (New York: Ballantine/Friends of the Earth Book, 1970, 21-25)

The West and all other societies make a sharp biblical and legal distinction between humanity and the animal world. Our laws protect humans before all else. While we can eat animals, we can’t humans. We put animals in zoos, but there is not one nation on the earth where innocent humans are kept in zoos. We marry fellow humans, not animals, at least, not yet.

While I appreciate White’s acknowledgment of the influence of the Christian faith on the sciences, his distinctions are far from accurate. While science has given us a greater ability to contaminate nature – and admittedly, Christianity has exerted a tremendous influence on the development of science – this phenomenon doesn’t reflect the teachings of the Bible.

Creation is God’s creation, and we are to admire and preserve it as such. Love also requires that we maintain it for the benefit of others. In contrast, even in the pagan societies that hold the world as sacred, where everything is sacred, nothing is really sacred. This becomes obvious when we investigate the actual practices of pagan societies.

In Whence the Noble Savage, Patrick Frank, writes:.

• “The Southwest [USA] is dotted with finds of people killed en masse…These indications of war, violent deaths, mutilations and cannibalism are form tribal societies that experienced no European or modern contact, thus contradicting the idea that peoples who were free from European influence lived relatively peaceful lives.” (Skeptic Mag. Vol 9, #1, 2001, 54-60)

• “Hawaiians drove to extinction at least 50 species of birds…By the time Europeans arrived, North America was a manipulated continent. Indians had long since altered the landscape by burning or clearing woodland for farming and fuel…Within 1500 years after occupation by Native Americans, for example, North America lost 73% of all large animal groups. About 39 genera were obliterated. Australia lost every type of vertebrate larger than humans following the appearance of the Aborigines…When the Maoris arrived in the late 13th century, the result was the rapid extinction of the moas, other flightless birds, and half of the terrestrial vertebrates.”

Frank concludes:

•   “All this emerging evidence for incessant human warfare from the earliest days, for ancient mutilation and massacre, for cannibalism, for ecological destruction, and for massive faunal extinctions sounds the death knell for the noble savage myth. Human societies have evidently and with negligent abandon despoiled the environment and engaged in pervasive warfare and murder as far back in time as we can detect.”

Why then this love-affair between the post-Christian West and Eastern pantheistic mysticism? We have rejected our Christian roots in favor of the idea of a non-distinct, mushy oneness, one that allows us to maintain our former lifestyles. Eliminating any form of distinction, any “us vs. them,” has become a moral crusade. However, such crusades merely replace the “us vs. them” with a new set of scapegoats and a deep grave for all its victims.

True Religion must be Inclusive: Christ according to Doug Pagitt

My friend brought me to visit an artist in her studio. He assured me, based on a prior conversation with her, that she was interested in dialoguing about Christ. However, point-blank, she told us that she wasn’t interested in such a conversation: “Christianity is just too exclusive for me!”

What did she mean by this? Christianity demands belief in the Gospel, and any who don’t believe, who are unable to accept this revelation, are excluded.

This requirement opposes what people are looking for today. They want a religion that will unite all people, uphold our common humanity and eliminate any “us-them” distinctions. Emergent Church pastor, speaker and writer, Doug Pagitt, puts it this way:

• We are connected to each other as well. Christians like to talk about community, yet the dualistic [us-them] assumptions surrounding our theology make it almost impossible for us to experience true community. As long as we hold on to “us” and “them” categories of seeing the world, we live behind a barricade that prevents us from joining in with God and others in real and meaningful ways. And it doesn’t really matter who we decide “them” is – the non-Christians, the sinners, the liberals, the conservatives, the Jews, the Catholics, that weird church on the other side of town. Division is division, no matter how righteous we want to make it sound. (A Christianity Worth Believing, 91-92)

According to Pagitt, a Christianity that makes distinctions and excludes is not the true Christianity. Therefore, say “goodbye” to the initiation rite of baptism, church discipline, and  even confronting others about their sins – whether they be rape, infanticide, or domestic violence. (Following this logic, the Catholic Church was correct to not distinguish between the pedophile priests and the faithful ones!) Surrender distinctions between the just and the unjust, the resurrection of the righteous and the resurrection of the unrighteous, and the saved and unsaved! Perhaps also we will soon be required to foreswear such distinctions as “my wife” and “his wife,” “my son” and “my daughter,” and even “my son” and “my father!”

However, we must continue to make distinctions. If we believe in any truth, we have to distinguish it from what is not true. If we believe in justice, we have to oppose injustice and those who commit it. If we believe that God is love, we have to oppose those who teach that He is not love.

Truth, therefore, is exclusive. It excludes those ideas that are not truth. Goodness is also exclusive. It excludes those behaviors that tear people down.

Any conversation is impossible without making distinctions. Pagitt certainly engages in his own “dualistic assumptions,” even as he denies it. He opposes dualism with his own brand of dualism. He is very ready to distinguish his Emergent thinking from that of the traditional church. This too is dualistic!

Even his language implies those verbotten distinctions. He contrasts “true community” with community which is not true and makes those unacceptable distinctions – just as he is doing. There are those who “live behind a barricade” of judgmentalism and those who don’t. There are those who cause “division” and those who don’t, namely Pagitt and the Emergent Church.

How do we cause division? Pagitt cites this example:

• She’d been taught that unless her theology was right, unless her life and belief conformed to a model that would appease the unmovable God, she was a failure as a Christian. (107)

This is a gross misrepresentation. Instead, each of us is “a failure as a Christian.” That’s why we must live by confession and repentance. Consequently, we depend upon His mercy in everything!

But isn’t it a bit imperialistic, unreasonable and arbitrary of the Bible to insist that our “theology [be] right” for everyone else? Okay, we need to make distinctions, but it seems so unfair and unjust that God would require us to believe a certain way and then damn us to hell if we don’t or can’t.

Pagitt hits at the core of what he sees as the unreasonable exclusiveness of the Christian message:

• I’m not sure I would have been interested in the Christian faith if the story on the stage had been about a removed God who needed to be placated with a blood offering before he was willing to cross the chasm and participate with humanity. (98)

Clearly, Pagitt has little taste for the heart of the Gospel – sacrificial atonement. Therefore, he has affirmed a more popular brand of Jesus:

• Jesus was not sent as the selected one to appease the anger of the Greek blood god [his pejorative description of the God of the Bible]. Jesus was sent to fulfill the promise of the Hebrew love God by ending human hostility. It was not the anger of God that Jesus came to end but the anger of people. (194)

Interestingly, Pagitt’s new-found faith not only violates the New Testament but also the Old, from which he claims support. Even in the Old, our Lord always required a redemption or payment for sin (Psalm 130:8), even a human payment:

• But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all…and he will bear their iniquities. (Isaiah 53:5-11)

Besides, we have to ask, “What does Pagitt’s god look like? One who does not require a pay-back for sin? Is humanity best served by a permissive god, one who does not guarantee ultimate justice, the just payment for man’s inhumanity to man?”

Pagitt claims that “It was not the anger of God that Jesus came to end but the anger of people.” However, if God is not angered by our inhumanity towards our fellow human, why then should we be? Isn’t God supposed to be our role model? If God is permissive towards sin, why should not we also be so!

Instead, we cannot separate God’s zeal for justice from our own. If God is above punishing, why then shouldn’t we be above it? Unless they go together, any coherent legal or moral system falters. Instead, perhaps we should tear down the prison walls?

However, we have to return to another question: “Is the requirement of faith in such a God an arbitrary and unjust requirement, especially if educated and thoughtful people are unable to believe it? Doesn’t this requirement also establish an unacceptable “us-them” distinction that illegitimately divides humanity?”

There is a pervasive misunderstanding about the nature of Biblical faith. It is often assumed that faith represents a blind leap into the darkness, one without any evidential support. However, if this is the case, God cannot blame anyone for not having such a faith. The world is filled with various belief systems – Hindu, Islamic, Secular… If there is no evidence or reason to choose one faith over the other, then there can be no blame assigned to someone who chooses the wrong faith. Besides, Biblically speaking, ignorance is an adequate defense (John 15:22, 24).

However, we are not ignorant. Instead, in many ways, we are wired to believe in God and His truths (Rom. 2:14-15). Besides this, the world has been designed in such a way that we can’t plead ignorance. It bears such a profound divine imprint that we are without any excuse (Rom. 1:18-20).

This particular revelation is not a New Testament invention. We find this very same message revealed throughout the landscape of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Proverbs tell us that God’s truths are so ubiquitous that it’s as if they are even crying out to us in the crowded and noisy marketplace:

• Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech. (Proverbs 1:20-21)

The truths about God are ubiquitous – found even in the streets and public squares. Consequently, we are without excuse if we fail to believe.

If this is so, why then don’t people hear wisdom’s voice? It is not a matter of their inability to conjure up enough faith. Instead, they don’t want to hear this persistent voice:

• "How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you. But since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke, I in turn will laugh at your disaster.” (Prov. 1:22-24)

Why are people unwilling to hear the Gospel? It is not that we are unable to hear. Instead, we delight in things contrary to God’s revelation. We therefore reject Him and His voice. There is also another reason. “We would not accept [His] rebuke.”

What is His rebuke? His indictment of us – our denials, justifications, and rationalizations! All wisdom must begin with the instrument - us. Seeing micro-organisms requires a microscope with a clean lens. Seeing other galaxies requires a telescope with a clean lens. Similarly, knowledge and wisdom must begin by exposing and addressing the filth on our lens.

Jesus explained our blindness in terms of a log in our eye (Mat. 7:1-5). The log blinds us and must be removed before we can see clearly.

Wisdom must first point the finger at us to expose our blindness and sinfulness. It is only after we see these and confess them that we can see others. However, wisdom is painful. It unmasks our self-presumptions. Therefore, we hate it:

• Since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord, since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them. (Prov. 1:29-32)

Faith is not something that requires a blind leap of faith. Instead, it asks us to open our blinds to the light, which He has made so apparent – that we are sinners who need a Savior.

This is so abundantly obvious, not only from the Scriptures but also from our lives. We know that something is the matter with us. Our shame and guilt speak persuasively about this fact. Whenever we are accused of wrongdoing, we immediately attempt to justify ourselves.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis observed that even the atheists who don’t believe in any absolute laws, react as if they exist. Instead of merely responding, “Who cares about your non-existent moral laws,” he will respond by defending himself. He intuitively knows that he has violated a moral law, and knows that he has sinned. Nevertheless, he will suppress this knowledge and try to justify himself. He knows that he is morally culpable to the God in whom he does not believe.

Consequently, we always have to be right (Prov. 21:2), and we convince ourselves that we are right (Prov. 16:2; 24:12). I too had convinced myself that my conflicts were always the fault of the other. Consequently, my wife and I could never resolve any of our disagreements. However, in our beloved darkness, we stumble and fail to come to any reconciliation – either with man or with God. “The complacency of fools will destroy them” (Prov. 1:32).

Countless surveys and psychological experiments have confirmed this same finding – that we love the darkness of self-delusion rather than the light (John 3:19-21). We have the truth but hate and reject it.

Entire volumes have been written to demonstrate this fact. Psychologist Shelley Taylor writes:

• The evaluations people offer of themselves are also typically more favorable than judgments made by others about them. For example, when people’s descriptions are contrasted with the descriptions of them offered by their friends or acquaintances, the self-descriptions tend to be more positive. Typically, we see ourselves in more flattering terms than we are seen by others. (Positive Illusions, 11).

To demonstrate the ubiquity of this hatred of self-truth, she offers many other examples throughout her book:

• When two people have written a book together and are asked to estimate how much of the book they are personally responsible for, the estimates added together will typically exceed 100%. The same feature characterizes more mundane tasks. Asked to estimate how much of a contribution they make to the housework, adding together husbands’ and wives’ estimates of their own efforts produces a total that greatly exceeds 100 percent. (18)

We are willfully blind in the direction of self-promotion. We do not want to see our sins and failures and have assembled a variety of “self-protective” mechanisms.

Some have even attempted to defend self-delusion as a necessary psychological tool. The late novelist, Andre Gide remarked:

• Each one of us has his own way of deceiving himself. The important thing is to believe in one’s own importance.

However, believing in our self-importance requires that we filter out the counter-evidence. Nevertheless, we need to believe in something. Generally, it is in ourselves and our mastery over our lives. However, we cannot believe in ourselves and, at the same time, acknowledge that we are damnable sinners who need a Savior. Only one set of beliefs can reign.

However, the suppressed awareness of our inadequacy festers at the core of our being.

Consequently, our lives revolve around the futile and ongoing attempt to prove that we are okay. However, we find that we are never able to. However much money, success or approval we have accumulated, we remain dissatisfied. Why? Because these vain efforts fail to address the deeper problem – our alienation from God and self! Consequently, in order to gain some temporary relief from deep-seated shame and guilt, we may even attempt to punish and maim ourselves.

Intuitively, we know that a price must be paid for our sin. Intuitively, we demand punitive justice for not only others but also for ourselves. Not believing in the Savior, we attempt to pay justice’s price with our own lives.

For this perspective, faith isn’t an act of blindness but of courage to face the painful truth. It’s not a running from evidence, but a willingness to engage it!

In contrast, Pagitt denies that God’s has a holy character – one that He has also wired within us - that must be satisfied - propitiated. Instead, he has re-created Him in his own image to be tolerant of everything. Pagitt refuses to acknowledge the Creator-creation, the Sanctifier – sinner, distinction. In doing so, he refuses to acknowledge that our sins have alienated us from our God and that we must be reconciled through the sacrifice of the Messiah.

It is because of this distinction that the entire Old Testament cries out to Israel to confess their sins so that they can come to God and receive His mercy:

• And if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. (Proverbs 2:3-5)

The Gospel – the knowledge of God – is there for the taking. It is available to all who sincerely seek. The Gospel is inclusive of everyone (John 3:16), but not in every way or of everything. Our God has His standards, and we also have them.

In fact, the notion that God accepts everything and every idea is an absurdity. I am not free to treat others in any way I please. When I am invited to their home, I must respect their household rules. Why then should we expect that God is so vacuous, flat and insipid that any relational overture is okay with Him?

For years, I had been interested in God, but I demanded that He fit into my specifications. For one thing, since I am ethnically Jewish, He couldn’t have anything to do with Jesus Christ. Consequently, I wasn’t making contact. It never occurred to me that if God is God, the Creator and Sustainer of this universe, He might have something to say about the grounds for our relationship.

In fact, He has a lot to say about it. I was calling-the-shots. I failed to see myself as the beggar. This beggar was in effect saying, “I only receive 20 dollar bills.” The hubris! The hubris of the assumption that we can come to God in any manner we so choose! Instead, Jesus taught that we had to come to our Father as needy little children, willing to accept His grace in the form He offers it.

However, no one seeks for a cure who feels he lacks a disease. Pagitt doesn’t acknowledge his disease and consequently thinks that he can call-the-shots.

More seriously, we reject the idea of a holy and righteous God. Instead, according to our modern perversion, the marketplace now demands a god who will not only accept everyone but also everything – every excuse, denial, rationalization and every behavior, no matter how lethal.