No Tolerance for the Real Jesus

There are many postmodern, agnostic and progressive “Christians” who are attempting to redefine the Gospel and the words of our Lord. Here is a statement by one of them followed by my response:

“I actually believe the very confidence and comfort you preach to be a far cry from what Jesus taught.”

Biblical Criticism and the Betrayal of the Gospels

We are a product of our culture, and we tend to underestimate this fact. Ironically, this is perhaps even more true of those of us with advanced degrees. After all, we have spent more time conforming to societal/professional expectations and seeking the approval of our colleagues.

This seems to be especially true in the world of biblical/textual scholarship, where we spend our efforts trying to understand the Bible from a scholarly perspective. Sadly, our cultural conformity often escapes our awareness and leads us in an unbiblical direction.

For example, the skeptics, noting the verbal similarities among the Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke – charge that they are not independent accounts of the life of Jesus, but reflect the fact that these Gospels have borrowed from each other. (Actually, Luke admits that his Gospel is the result of his investigations of various eyewitness accounts.)

The more conservative scholars have countered that the Gospels represent the corporate oral traditions of a vast body of eyewitnesses, and this would account for their many verbal similarities.

However, both of these groups overwhelmingly fail to reason from the fact that the Gospels are not just the word of man but also the Word of God (1 Thess. 2:13). In other words, while the Bible-believing scholars believe that the Bible is the Word of God, this truth is often absent from their defense of the Gospels. Instead, they seem to exclusively treat the Bible as the word of man.

Jesus’ commission of His Apostles stands in direct opposition to this misguided emphasis. He informed them that their teaching ministry – at first oral and then written – would be the product of the Spirit, who would reveal all things to them:

• “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” (John 14:26)
• “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.” (John 15:26-27)
• “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.” (John 16:12-14)

In view of these teachings, the word of the Apostles – and they had been eyewitnesses from the beginning – was not primarily their own word (1 Peter 1:9-11; 2 Peter 1:19-21) but the Word of the Spirit. He would teach them all truth and remind them of everything.

Our research methods determine research results. If we start with methods that only take into account the humanity of the Bible, the findings will only reflect a human Bible. Although Scripture is partially amenable to human analysis, it also comes from above. As such, it is not amenable to further analysis. Instead, when we analyze it as if it is merely man’s word, we betray the teachings of Jesus and our faith.

The March of Western Insanity and its Appeal

Criticism of the Christian faith is becoming both increasingly outlandish and fashionable – so fashionable that reason no longer matters.

• A Parti Quebecois (PQ) candidate [Louise Mailloux] who said baptism and circumcision were equivalent to rape is being defended by party leader Pauline Marois as a “supporter of our charter on religious neutrality.” 

• Mailloux compared Christian baptism and Jewish circumcision to rape since she said a child’s religion is forced upon him or her at birth. 

Equating baptism and circumcision with rape is monstrous! Such an equation obscures and denies the horrors of rape, reducing it to a mere familial ritual. It claims that rape involves a trauma no greater than that of baptism.

In contrast to this insane equation, both my daughter and granddaughter requested baptism without any adult prodding. Have you ever heard of anyone requesting to be violently raped?

Although I don’t believe in infant baptism, I still feel compelled to defend this practice against the charge of “rape since… a child’s religion is forced upon him or her at birth.” If this is rape, then all forms of childhood training are rape – teaching values, potty training, wearing cloths, going to the doctor, eating, speaking, … everything! Consequently, it is impossible to not rape one’s child! This, of course is madness. Of course, when the government takes and educates our children, this is not rape!

Nevertheless, Marois defends Mailloux by virtue of her “religious neutrality”:

• “Her writings are eloquent, I respect her point of view,” said "She is a supporter of our charter on religious neutrality and we appreciate her support.”

There is nothing neutral about Mailloux’ stance! She has equated Christian and Jewish practice to rape. Do hospitals also rape the newborns by circumcising them? By performing operations? By feeding them intravenously? By forcing medication upon them?

It seems that she reserves her vitriol for religion. However, she too is just as religious. After all, what are value statements if not religious? They are not science. Science tells us what is and not what ought to be. The latter is the role of religion, whether the religion invokes a higher being or not. How then can this political party claim neutrality and then, from its alleged pinnacle of neutrality, demonize those the regard as religious rapists?

This is the “logic” of the day. It need not be logical, just socially acceptable or politically correct. Can civilization survive on such a junk-food diet of hypocrisy? I don’t see how!

While I am surprised to see how quickly Western Civilization is plummeting into insanity, I shouldn’t be. This has all been prophesied. Jesus proclaimed this verdict on humanity:

• “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” (John 3:19-21)

Nor is this a victimless verdict or a costless love:

• “All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them.” (John 16:1-4) 

These are the fruits of the darkness of evil and the delight of the Western Elites.

Confessions: Struggling to Truly Trust in God

It seems that when we most need to trust in our Savior, trust says, “hasta luego, baby,” abandoning us to our torment. I presently face the prospect of losing all my teeth, and I don’t know which way to turn. I try to trust that the Lord will guide me, but I am experiencing obstacles. I reason within myself, “God has let others down – How can I know that He won’t let me down also?” In light of this concern, can I truly embrace His promises like:

• Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 4:6-7)

However, instead of peace, I have been experiencing torment. I sought God to understand how I could fully trust Him in light of the disappointments I see among Christians. While many of the brethren reaffirm that they have found God completely trustworthy, I remain haunted by those few cases where I can find no redeeming explanation for their tragedy. I’ve repeatedly asked my Lord for wisdom in this area, but it seemed that none was forthcoming.

Perhaps I was not yet open to the wisdom that He was giving me. I was repeatedly reminded of the famous passage from Proverbs 3:5-8:

• Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones.

Perhaps I have been leaning too much to my own understanding. I had been allowing my understanding – “insisting” that I first have to have an answer to my question before I would commit myself to fully trusting Christ – interfere with trust. Consequently, instead of finding “nourishment to [my] bones,” I was reaping the torment of fear.

While our Lord promises that He will liberally grant wisdom (James 1:5), He doesn’t guarantee that He will answer our every question. Peter had asked Jesus about the fate of John. Jesus answered hypothetically: ““If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me” (John 21:22). And even with only this minimal response, the disciples misunderstood Jesus and concluded that Jesus would return before John died. Clearly, we cannot handle certain knowledge, even glorious knowledge.

Years ago, before I knew Christ, He encountered me in the midst of a pool of blood. I was dying from a horrible chainsaw injury. In an instance, He revealed Himself to me. Suddenly, I knew that He was love, power-to-the-highest, and that He would see me through this debacle. I was so certain of what He had revealed that when my surgeon informed me that I would have to immediately begin exercising my half-cut-off wrist, I blew him off, certain of this unknown God’s sovereignty over my life. Even though I had been correct about His sovereignty, I made a wrong assumption – that my efforts didn’t matter at all. As a result of this, I lost the mobility of my hand.

We cannot handle some knowledge without it mishandling us. Therefore, in His wisdom, Jesus withholds it from us until we can handle it. Instead, faith and trust must be our source of light and evidence (Romans 11:1). This certainly doesn’t mean that wisdom and evidences are for naught. God gladly provides us with evidences (Acts 1:3; 2:22; Deut. 4:34-38; Exodus 4) and encourages us to seek wisdom.

However, there are doors that wisdom alone cannot open. I had been standing in the dark outside of one such door, demanding an answer before I would step into the light of trust. God had been giving me an answer, but I wasn’t hearing it.

God had also been giving Job such an answer, but Job too was having a hard time hearing it. The prophetic Elihu tried to bring his problem home to him:

• Why do you complain to him that he responds to no one’s words? For God does speak—now one way, now another—though no one perceives it. (Job 33:13-14).

Why wasn’t Job perceiving God’s answer? I think that, often, it is because we think more of ourselves – our own righteousness and reasoning – than we ought. Consequently, we are not always receptive. Job was convinced that God had treated him unjustly. Consequently, he was only responsive to proving that he had been righteous. He therefore required a divine confrontation to knock some sense into his head. God had asked him a series of questions regarding what he knew and what he could do (Job 38-41). It soon became apparent that Job failed on every account. If Job could not answer any of God’s questions, why did he feel confident in his indictment of God? The conclusion was inescapable – Job lacked the wisdom and knowledge by which to bring any indictments against God! Job therefore confessed:

• “You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:3-6)

There is nothing the matter with wisdom. However, when we have too high of a regard for our own “wisdom,” we lose receptivity, like a dirty pair of eyeglasses. Job had had too high regards for his own reasoning. Ironically, this prevented him from trusting in God and hardened him against hearing. However, God mercifully chastens us with our own opinions to show us how our pride and its prickly fruit cost us:

• “He [God] may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings, to turn them from wrongdoing and keep them from pride, to preserve them from the pit.” (Job 33:16-18)

The more we trust in ourselves, the less we trust in God. Unless our Lord chastens us, it is inevitable that we will lean to our own tragic and depressing understanding, and with this, away from God’s comforting understanding.

How could I trust in God in view of certain tragedies that I couldn’t reconcile with such trust? I had unconsciously assumed that if I couldn’t reconcile trusting in God with these “tragedies,” I couldn’t really trust in God. In this, I had been placing too much trust in my understanding. I was committing the same fallacy as I have often accused the atheists of making. I would tell them:

• Just because you fail to find a purpose for suffering, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t one. Instead, it is just possible (understatement) that God’s wisdom might be greater than your own.

In fact, God often warns us that He will place us in situations where our understanding will fail us – like when He asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Gen. 22) - and where our faith must be exercised to a greater extent:

• Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12-13)

These trials turn us away from a self-trust and a self-focus to a God-only preoccupation, and I know that I – and you too – need trials. Without them, there is a great risk that we will become too comfortable in this world and will not “be overjoyed” when He comes back for us. Lord, thank You for the trials!

Let the World Go to the Dogs as Long as I am Right

The historian Arnold Toynbee declared that great civilizations are destroyed from within. No surprise! We see indications of this all around us. Here is one small indication from the Center for Disease Control:

• There are currently about 110 million people in the U.S. living with a sexually-transmitted disease (STD)… According to the CDC, up to 20 million new STD infections occur every year — these include hepatitis B, HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, HPV, and chlamydia. Half of these new infections are among young people between the ages of 15 and 24. So the prevalence among young people is quite high.  

Some of these diseases will result in irreversible damage and infertility. Clearly, STDs have become epidemic, but where is the outcry? Why isn’t the Western media raising the alarm against these exploding dangers, especially in light of the very evident failures of “safe-sex education” interventions?

We are so concerned about providing our youth with ample food, education and healthcare but remain silent as they destroy themselves sexually. Why? It seems that we are stubbornly committed to sexual freedom, but does sexual freedom equate with sexual satisfaction? Not at all: 

• In the mid 1970’s Redbook Magazine published a ‘Sexual Pleasure Survey’, showing the preferences of 100,000 women. This survey concluded that "sexual satisfaction is related significantly to religious belief." If the media have successfully ‘brain-washed’ you your immediate thought following on from this statement is that religious people must, of course, enjoy sex less than irreligious people; right? Wrong: "With notable consistency, the greater the intensity of a woman’s religious convictions, the likelier she is to be highly satisfied with the sexual pleasure of the marriage. . . Strongly religious women seem to be more responsive [and] more likely than the nonreligious to be orgasmic every time she engages in sex." (Tim & Beverly La Haye - The Act of Marriage, p9.) 

• American Christian Councillors Tim and Beverly La Haye undertook a survey of mainly Christian couples (3,377 people - 1,705 women and 1,672 men), which indicated, in line with the Redbook Survey, that "Christians maintain a higher enjoyment level in the intimacy of their love life than the population in general." (P210). The La Hay’s Survey showed that, generally speaking, Christian couples enjoyed sex more than couples with any other religious beliefs: "The women in our survey reported a 10 percent higher degree of sexual enjoyment, greater frequency of lovemaking experiences per month, and a more active part in [sex] than their "strongly religious" counterparts [in the REDBOOK Survey], likewise scoring much higher in these same areas than the average "non-religious" woman in the REDBOOK Survey." (P211). 

Former atheist, Patrick Glynn, adds:

• A 1978 study found that church attendance predicted marital satisfaction better than any other single variable. Couples in long-lasting marriages who were surveyed in another study listed religion as one of the most important “prescriptions” of a happy marriage. (God: The Evidence, 64)

However, it is so hard to admit that we have been wrong and that those we have disdained – our “mortal enemies” - have been right. It is a loss-of-face that few can sustain. Let our families, our children and our civilization rot as long as we are right!