Listening to a preacher recently, he spoke about spiritual transformation, he alluded to the reality that the scriptures do not say “Be ye transformed by the removal of your mind”. Recent posts on this blog have shown the catastrophic results of a form of Christianity that does not do a deep work of transformation. J. M. Njoroge is deeply concerned at the effects of a Gospel that is a mile wide in terms of numbers of adherents, but only an inch deep in terms of how it has impacted a culture. Indeed Mark Noll has written a book on this tendency in North American expressions of Christianity with the book called “The Scandal Of The Evangelical Mind”. In it he says: ”the scandal of the Evangelical mind is that it doesn’t have much of one’. Echoing this thought, Ravi Zacharias a renowned apologist says that “We in the West think that Christianity is an amputation of the brain”.
Clearly in the West there is growing vocal resistance to religion and the Christian worldview, and as the scriptures assure us “Judgement begins in the House of God” That is, we should look closely at ourselves, examine ourselves and ask the question: “Is there any justification for this renewed and potent criticism of Christianity which has sometimes manifested itself in violence, as exemplified by recent events in Charleston, South Carolina?” Personally I found the vitriol disturbing in the comments following an article about "Bible In Schools" recently in an online version of the Northern Advocate. The article was headed: "Place for religion is in history and arts". There is no doubt in that person's mind where religions belong is there? Is the recent attack which left Buddhist statues in pieces symptomatic of a rising anti religious sentiment?
We need to take seriously this whole idea of just what the public perception of the Church is. Sad to say one doesn’t have to look far to find good reason to see why secularists lump Christianity in with the many other religions that seem to be more of a burden on the world than part of the solution. In attempting to be even-handed in our self examination it is all too easy to say that those that give Christianity a bad name are not in fact Christians, they are wolves in sheep’s clothing or they are cultural Christians, religious or traditional Christians that are not in a living relationship with their God. They are “legalists” or “pseudo-Christian liberals” or any number of other labels. Is that yet another example of worming our way out of personal responsibility? But what of Evangelicalism? This word is supposed to represent those who are in a living relationship with their Lord,, those who claim to be “born again”.
Professor J.P. Moreland gives a call to Christians to recognize the fundamental shift
in the public perception of Christianity
in the public perception of Christianity
What is the spiritual state of Evangelicalism today? Well if those mentioned at the outset of this piece are truly measuring the pulse of Evangelicalism- we have much to be concerned about. How do we change this? What are the secrets of deep personal transformation?
I think a simple illustration will suffice. Like all born again Christians I started my journey with the Lord being firmly indoctrinated with certain principles. I use the word “indoctrinated” in a good sense, something hardly admitted today. While we see no problem of teaching our children to learn their times tables by rote, by singing them until they are etched into our memory, mostly people think of indoctrination in a pejorative way, in a negative sense. Why do we think it a good thing to indoctrinate with these mathematical mysteries? Because they are ineradicably true, because they are absolutes that are true for all people, in every place and for all time.
Clearly then if we feel the same way about the truth of the Gospel, should we be ashamed of teaching our kids these things? Is there any truth in the idea that religion in school can act as an inoculation against the real thing? Is there a way of teaching it that children relate to it in the same way we relate to the fairy tale of Cinderalla? Yes it teaches good things like be nice to your sister, and that nastiness ought not to be repaid in kind, but the story of Cinderella leaves no doubt in childrens minds that it is a fairy tale. By allowing secular authorities the power to gut Christianity of the abosolute truth claims of the resurrection, allowing it to be sanitized has it been reduced to a moral story of no more significance than a fairy tale? Divorcing it from spiritual absolutes does it indeed act like getting a dose of a dead vaccine? Aside from the good reports of some that go on to take an active part in Christian life, what has it done for the majority? But these are question for another post.
What are these early fundamental principles we get indoctrinated to? Read the Bible, pray and join up with a Bible believing Church that we felt comfortable with, get involved. Along with that might be any number of other considerations subsumed under those main headings.
Like many other “babes in Christ” nursing on the ”milk of the Word” I developed certain habits. It became a source of secret pride, marking all the scriptures that “spoke” to me in a personal way. It became a mark of spirituality to have a dog-eared, tattered Bible with covers falling off, pages curled and darkened with the sweat of hours of fingering through its leaves. My King James Bible with black leather and gold edged rice paper took on sentimental value. It was my friend and companion. For some, pink and yellow highlighter featured on numerous verses, or pencilled underlines or red pen flourished on its pages. I imagined time lapse photography capturing in all its glory the march of spirituality as these signs grew like spreading lichen across the hallowed pages from Genesis to Revelation. These showed all the marks of qualifying as disciples. But where was I at the end of all this? Was I truly transformed, had self been truly dethroned? How deep was it true of me that I was indeed a new creation?
Then I began to think more about how the Bible speaks to us. For instance how does the Bible appeal to so many people of such varied and colourful backgrounds? It has been well documented that Christianity has had unparalleled success in being able to relate to people no matter what their ethnic background, prior religion, social status, historical setting, worldview, gender, age, geographic location, indeed any criteria that can be distinguished- the Bible is Universally appealing.
How does that happen? Of course on one level it would be easy to dismiss it by saying “Well of course that would happen, it’s the Word of God isn’t it?” Why wouldn’t He be able to speak a Universal language? Why shouldn’t we expect to be able to relate to it? And all of this is quite true. But I wanted to know more.
The reality is that these sixty six books were written by more than forty different authors. Does that have a bearing on it? If these people were especially chosen to bear the stamp of divine approval then surely there would be some design in who God chose to be the vessels of his word?
Most Christians go wrong not on what they believe but on what they don’t believe. We cannot be faulted for being merciful, but to the person who makes an absolute out of mercy, the whole idea of justice gets somewhat neglected doesn’t it? Those who love justice to the exclusion of mercy, don’t appear to have as many verses underlined on forgiveness or the idea that love covers a multitude of sins. Those who love grace unlimited tend to frown upon those who trumpet the necessity for good works. And those of whom history books have been written chronicling the Protestant Work Ethic cannot understand the parable where the man went into the labour market and hired a man at the end of the day who received the same reward as those who had laboured throughout the hot day from early morning.
So we see then, that there are strong tensions that are set up within its pages. We also are aware that we come to its pages with brokenness. With backgrounds of warped thinking, we overemphasize and we under emphasize what we do not relate to. We are unbalanced. We are not fully integrated people. We are perhaps dimly aware of our lack of objectivity, we know bias is real, and we see it in others but by its very nature we do not see it in ourselves.
And that’s why we underline our verses. They speak to us because we warm to those values that we have been accustomed to favouring in our minds. We resonate with them. I like that word "resonate". Have you ever seen an experiment with resonance? Here is one I really like because I imagine myself as a vessel consecrated to our Lord.
This is a clear illustration of how when we are "in tune" we resonate as vessel's to the sound of the master tuner. But our biases, our cracked nature, our predilection for emphasizing some aspect of goodness at the expense of other aspects mean we resonate only within the narrow range of one particular tuning fork as is clearly shown. Imagine then if we were, as Christ demonstrated, resonationg with all of the whole range of God's goodness.
Our underlined habits are literally a picture of who we are and what figures prominently in our psyche. Perhaps they tell us more about ourselves than about God, if we are willing to listen. I hasten to add that this is all good in as far as we find affirmation in the Bible and comfort in that we can approve what good things are therein.
The danger is in staying there. In never being challenged by those verses that are neglected in their black on white juxtaposition on the page, yet have left no lasting impression on our hearts and minds. Or worse have been explained away by a theology we have framed so that we can make a god in our own image. Our underlined verses are thus the god we make ourselves. If you really need to understand the almost irreparable damage that this can do to us watch this video that clearly shows the reality of those deep ruts of the mind and their ability to cripple our personalities. Habits long learned are habits that require surgery, not aspirin.
But we must take this treasure seriously, it is not there merely to affirm our humanity, to congratulate us on what good we already ascribe to. It is there to transform us into what we could not be by ourselves. It is written to be a fountain of life that would not come naturally, and yet if we give it full sway in our lives I am confident that this transformation happens so “naturally” that we are tempted to think it is indeed our own doing. It is not... It is written so that the chief cornerstone can build a house that stands on a solid foundation, its walls are true and square, under its shelter the poor, the weak, the downtrodden and the prisoner can take refuge.
Perhaps it's high time we took another look at those scriptures we have never underlined. Examine passages that we don't understand, in the light of those writers who have written passionately about them. Let them speak to us. Perhaps we should listen carefully to those whose theology differs strongly from our own.
