Category: Evangelism

One of the first acts of God’s post fall grace was His placing enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman (Gen. 2:15). If not for this act of grace “the seed of the woman” — those who belonged to God — would forever have been joining league with the seed of woman in rebellion against God to the point where the righteous seed would completely disappear. Even with the enmity placed between these two competing seeds we see the constant inclination of the seed of the woman to cast off their allegiance to God. From the “sons of God” (“seed of he serpent”) taking for themselves the daughters of men (“seed of the woman”) for wives to the flood to Babel we constantly read of the tendency of the “seed of the woman” to negotiate away the gracious enmity that God placed between themselves and the “seed of the serpent.”

Many are those who have appealed to “common grace” as a doctrine which allows us to negotiate away God’s gracious enmity. However, as I understand the Kuyperian development of the doctrine of common grace this doctrine was developed so as to account for how believers and unbelievers could work together to advance a common culture on the terms of a preexisting Christian worldview. However what we are finding increasingly today is the doctrine of common grace used as a means to explain how Christians and pagans can work together to build a common culture on the terms of a preexisting pagan modernist worldview. The doctrine of common grace is one thing when it is invoked in order to explain how Christians can work with non-Christians in order to advance a common culture on the terms of a preexisting Christian worldview. The doctrine of common grace is quite another thing when it is invoked in order to allow Christians to negotiate away God’s gracious enmity in order that modernists and Christians might build a common culture on the terms of a preexisting non-Christian worldview.

That contemporary Christians are negotiating away God’s graciously placed enmity are everywhere to be seen. In the denomination that I am affiliated with it can be seen in the push in some quarters to normalize homosexuality, in the recent acceptance of the Belhar confession, and in the attempt to water down the form of subscription. In the larger culture we see the attempt on the part of Christians to negotiate away God’s graciously placed enmity in the reality that contemporary Christians are so relaxed about how the current State is seeking to currently ascend to the most high in order to seize the scepter of God and His Christ. A Christian people who were fully invested with the gracious enmity of God against the “seed of the serpent” would be in visible and constant tension with the current State since it is constantly revealing itself as being occupied and controlled by the “seed of the serpent.”

What shall we say of this negotiating away of God’s gracious enmity that we find in the Church today? Whether we find this enmity negotiated away through pelagian or gnostic theologies that have crept into our fellowships or whether we find this enmity negotiated away through the homosexualization and feminization of our fellowships what shall we say of this negotiating away of God’s gracious enmity?

I believe what we must say is that God has, for some time, entered into judgment against the Church and as that judgment has fallen upon the Church it has rippled across our culture and people. God’s judgment has been to turn us over to our own negotiating away of enmity between ourselves and our enemies. The only cure for this is repentance.

However the repentance that is called for is a repentance that will firmly reestablish the enmity that has been negotiated away. Such a repentance has to be characterized by a repentance in our thinking for a repentance that will reestablish God’s gracious enmity is a repentance that must find the intellectual reasons why the enmity that we have negotiated away must be reestablished. So, the repentance that we stand in need of is not the kind of repentance that is going to be found in your typical Arminian – Pentecostal revival setting as it is the case that repentance found in those settings are most commonly associated with an affectation of the emotions absent a radical change in thinking.

God’s graciously placed enmity between God’s enemies and God’s people. God’s people have historically negotiated that enmity away. Common grace is a doctrine that is often used to justify negotiating away God’s enmity. Signs are abundant that the contemporary Church continues today to negotiate away God’s enmity, especially as seen in its refusal to be at enmity with the current serpent state. Ultimately, all of this is indicative of God’s judgment against the Church — a judgment that ripples across the culture as a whole. The cure for this is a repentance characterized not primarily by the affectation of the emotions but rather characterized by the affectation of the intellect. Historically such repentance has been found especially among Reformed Churches.

“Failure to distinguish between the gospel and all the effects of the gospel tends, on the long haul, to replace the good news as to what God has done with a moralism that is finally without the power and the glory of Christ crucified, resurrected, ascended, and reigning.”

D. A. Carson
Thelimos

I couldn’t agree with this quote more. However, as D. Marty Lloyd Jones used to teach one can fall off the razor’s edge of truth on both the left side and the right side. Dr. Carson has given us a proper warning regarding falling off one particular side of the razor’s edge of truth. The reality that Dr. Carson would have us to be aware of is, is the danger of failing to distinguish between the gospel and all the effects of the Gospel. However, there is another warning that needs to be raised against another danger and that is the danger in failing to articulate the reality that the Gospel does have effects and consequences.

If we were to frame it in similar ways to Dr. Carson we might say something like this,

“Failure to articulate to the Church that the Gospel has effects tends, on the long haul, to replace the truth that because we have been raised with Christ we are to walk in newness of life, with an anti-nomianism that is finally without the power and the glory of Christ crucified, resurrected, ascended, and reigning.”

I am more than willing to admit the danger of which Dr. Carson speaks. There is a great danger in the Church today to exchange the Gospel for moralism. However, I wonder if those who are so excited to raise their voices in warning against moralism will also raise their voices in warning against anti-nomianism.

We must remember Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd Jones warning that one can fall off the razor’s edge of truth in two different directions.

“Because he was known as a hard worker and a devout Muslim, a young man got a good job herding cattle for wealthy families in his West African village. The families fed and paid him well. He liked the job and it helped him and his family members survive.

But then something happened. The young man started to talk with friends and others about Christianity—a religion about which he had known very little. He began to pray and reflect. One day, although he was frightened to make the move, he became a Christian.

At first he was happy and relieved. But then a group of Christians from another area told him that he needed to stop going to the mosque, stop fasting during Ramadan, and start speaking out against Islam.

The young man did this, but it didn’t go over well in his village. His friends turned against him. He lost his job. His wife was taken from him. He was attacked and beaten. Soon he was ostracized and not able to participate in the life of his village. In despair, he moved away.

Only later, after talking to other Christians, did he realize that he could have acted differently. These Christians told him that people had not been ready to hear his testimony. Following the first group’s advice had driven people away and made it harder for anyone to talk about Christianity. If the young man had kept his new faith “under the radar,” over time he might have been able to help others to consider becoming Christians.”

That this is being advocated as a new approach to evangelism is mind boggling. Are they actually advocating that the convert to Christ should have continued attending Mosque? Are they actually suggesting that the convert to Christ should have continued to celebrate the pagan holiday Ramadan? Are they saying that the convert was wrong for speaking out for Jesus? Are they actually teaching that when we are opposed for the sake of the Gospel we should shut up?

This article from the CRC Banner makes my head hurt.

In the previous post we looked at different variations of Collectivism as it incarnates itself in political and economic arrangements. In this post we want to make the case that it is no more possible to be a Satanist and a Christian than it is to be a epistemologically self conscious collectivist and a Christian at the same time. This is absolutely key to emphasize at this time since there are those in the Reformed world who seem to suggest that it is of no moment or matter whether or not one is a socialist or whether or not a country is socialistic. I wish some Reformed Theologians would stick to theology proper and give up broader political analysis.

Collectivism exists. It exists everywhere. It is not an imaginary bogeyman that right wing nut case Christians have invented so they could have windmills to tilt at. Indeed, the notion that collectivism is the figment of hyper active imaginations could only be advanced in a cultural setting that is drenched in collectivism. We are so saturated with collectivism we don’t even see collectivism anymore as collectivism. Instead of seeing collectivism as collectivism we tend to see it as just the way things are. Collectivism has become the constant hum in the background of our thinking that help us keep time in all of our endeavors. Because this is true our vision of what it means to be “Christian” as been cast in collectivist terms. Christians are so collectivistic / socialistic in their thinking that they don’t realize that the current danger that is greatest to the Christian faith right now is one form of collectivism or another.

For proof of this I ask the reader how many sermons he has ever listened to that deal with the idolatry of collectivism in one form or another? Has the reader ever heard a sermon attacking the idol of collectivism in education? In government? In economics? Has the reader ever heard a sermon exposing the consequences to a people who fall in worship of the idol of collectivism? Has the reader ever heard a sermon that clearly posits the anti-thesis between the authority of the idol of collectivism and the authority of King Jesus? Has the reader ever heard a sermon revealing how the idol of collectivism tries to provide a salvation that only Jesus can bring? The greatest danger to the Church and to Christianity today is the idolatry of collectivism and yet we have some of our best and brightest in the Reformed world pooh poohing the necessity to speak to this subject in our pulpits.

It is not possible to be a epistemologically self-conscious simultaneous supporter of collectivism and Christianity because these two faiths are set in antithesis to one another. In the former, autonomous man in his corporate expression through the mechanism of central planning (a euphemism for sovereignty if there ever was one) seeks to take up the sovereignty of God, while in Christianity man recognizes that only God is sovereign. In collectivist arrangements the state is seeking to be the institution that provides redemption from the sin of want and austerity for its worshipers — and in doing so the collectivist state, as god, redefines both what sin and salvation is. In Christianity, on the other hand, only Jesus can provide redemption from sin — and as such both sin and redemption as defined biblically. In collectivist arrangements man is considered as mass and the individual is lost. In Christianity each man is created with the image of God imprinted upon them and thus has value.

Edmund Opitz has seen this clearly:

“As History’s vice-regent, the Planner is forced to view men as mass; which is to deny their full stature as persons with rights endowed by the Creator, gifted with free will, possessing the capacity to order their own lives in terms of their convictions. The man who has the authority and the power to put the masses through their paces, and to punish nonconformists, must be ruthless enough to sacrifice a person to a principle…a commissar who believes that each person is a child of God will eventually yield to a commissar whose ideology is consonant with the demands of his job.

And so, Opitz concludes, “Socialism needs a secular religion to sanction its authoritarian politics, and it replaces the traditional moral order by a code which subordinates the individual to the collective.”

In collectivist arrangements the state owns the children and so all children must be “educated” in the matrix of the state. Further, in collectivist arrangements it is by education that individuals and society experience regeneration. In Christianity however God owns our children and the parents are stewards of God to raise their children in the way of God’s new and better covenant of grace. Further, regeneration in Christianity is a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit quite apart from the state’s educational matrix. In collectivist arrangements the ultimate value is the glory of the state for in the state we live and move and have our being. In Christianity the ultimate value is the glory of God for in God we live and move and have our being. In collectivist arrangements the state is the ultimate authority and any god must submit to the state, while in Christianity God is the ultimate authority and the state must submit to God. In collectivist cultures the state uses guilt as a means of manipulating the people and atonement is achieved sado-masochistically, while in Christianity Christ takes away our guilt so that we do not have to involve ourselves in purges of self-atonement. In collectivist arrangements the state is the creator, giver, and arbiter of human rights, while in Christianity God is the creator, giver, and arbiter of all that is inherently human and all that comes from being human. In collectivist arrangements coercion is the foundation of exchange and commerce while in Christian arrangements the golden rule is the foundation of exchange and commerce.

Collectivism is to the church today what Gnosticism was to the church in the second century, which is to say it is a subtle heresy that gains so much traction in the Church because it is such a quality counterfeit. In point of fact much of what collectivism is, is Christianity sat on its head. It is Christianity through and through with its own doctrine of sin, regeneration, redemption, and glorification. It has its own church, its own sacraments, its own savior and priests and confessionals and catechism and hymns. The place it differs from Christianity is that it puts man on God’s throne and seeks to throw God out of his universe.

Because all of this is true one cannot be both a committed collectivist and a Christian at the same time and anybody who suggests that collectivism is of no moment or matter that it should be addressed by Christian pastors in Christian Churches is at best a fool and at worst an enemy of the Cross.

“Anyone who has done any thinking, even a little bit, knows that it is painful. It is hard work-in fact the very hardest that human beings are ever called upon to do. It is fatiguing, not refreshing. If allowed to follow the path of least resistance, no one would ever think. To make boys and girls, or men and women, think-and through thinking really undergo the transformation of learning-educational agencies of every sort must work against the grain, not with it….

Not only must we honestly announce that pain and work are the irremovable and irreducible accompaniments of genuine learning, not only must we leave entertainment to the entertainers and make education a task and not a game, but we must have no fears about what is “over the public’s head.” Whoever passes by what is over his head condemns his head to its present low altitude; for nothing can elevate a mind except what is over its head; and that elevation is not accomplished by capillary attraction, but only by the hard work of climbing up the ropes, with sore hands and aching muscles. The school system which caters to the median child, or worse, to the lower half of the class; the lecturer before adults-and they are legion-who talks down to his audience; the radio or television program which tries to hit the lowest common denominator of popular receptivity-all these defeat the prime purpose of education by taking people as they are and leaving them just there.”

Mortimer Adler
Invitation to the Pain of Learning

Adlerian Psychology is utter tripe. I just wanted to get that out of the way before I made commentary on this quote.

In God’s providence the article that this quote came from was sent to me after spending a day studying the history of psychotherapy and propaganda in America. In that study I was introduced to Edward Bernays (1891-1995), considered one of the most influential men in America in the 20th century. Bernay’s propaganda techniques emphasized bypassing people’s reason and manipulating them by going after their unconscious fears. Now, I give no tuck to the Freudian idea (Bernays was Freud’s nephew) of the “unconscious,” but Bernays’ used that idea to transform America’s political conversation as well as its approach to advertising. What I think was really happening in Bernays’ work was not the capturing and manipulation of unconscious fears but rather Bernays was using symbols that were already packed with a great deal of a-priori conscious but un-articulated meaning that Americans embraced. By manipulating symbols Bernays was able to bypass the explicit nature of communication for a implicit communication and thus created a whole new era of social manipulation in the fields of advertising and political conversation. In short what Bernays was doing is he was taking the symbols of America that non-epistemologically self conscious Americans embraced and he was playing with them to achieve mass propaganda and mass manipulation.

The cure for Bernays’ manipulative technique, which is still a tool that is used to manipulate, is found in Adler’s quote. The reason that Bernays could succeed is that Americans don’t want to engage in the hard working of thinking — and if that was true in early 20th century America (Bernays hayday) how much more true is it today. Only the hard work of thinking can aid Americans in seeing through the smoke and mirrors legerdemain that modern propagandists (and their name is legion) use to continue to manipulate people.

As long as we continue to be a people who think that education should be “edutainment” (a combination of entertainment and education) and that reading should be FUNdmental (a recent slogan to get kids to read) or that our news should be “infotainment” (a combination of entertainment and information) we will continued to be cork-screwed as a people. Thinking and education is hard work, as Adler tells us and anybody who doesn’t realize that or that can’t accept that is testifying that they are not educated nor do they spend any time thinking.

To finish, I also want to use this quote to make a couple of points about the Church.

First, all that money you are paying your minister is being paid to him so he can engage in the hard work of learning God’s truth and thinking God’s thoughts after Him. He isn’t being paid to be a social butterfly or a CEO of a growth industry. He isn’t being paid so he can be one of the entertainers who give you “relgiotainment,” and he is not doing his job if he doesn’t make your head hurt by insisting that you think. Part of the reason the Church is floundering is that Bernays’ techniques have come into the Church. The Church has become a propaganda center where people are manipulated into supporting a product that can’t give what it promises.

Second, if you have a Pastor, who makes you break out your dictionaries then break out your dictionaries and thank God for him. It is true that the Pastor has a responsibility to help you understand. He should take the time to explain thoroughly difficult concepts and words but he should explain them as if he is explaining them to adults. As such you must do the work of helping the Pastor help you understand. The Church in America has spent the last 100 years serving as a co-dependent upon the School systems dumbing down of America. The only way that this dumbing down process is going to be reversed is if Pastors quit talking baby talk in the pulpit. Remember, Adler’s words, “nothing can elevate a mind except what is over its head; and that elevation is not accomplished by capillary attraction, but only by the hard work of climbing up the ropes, with sore hands and aching muscles.”

Laymen if you want to see through the manipulation and propaganda that is going on in this culture you must learn how to think and be willing to do the hard work of thinking. One way to aid you in this is to find a Church and Pastor that is willing to treat you like adults and who are already engaged in the hard work of thinking.