7 What Difference Does Christianity Make?
What Difference Does Christianity Make?
I hope that if you have gotten this far in the book, you have recognized perhaps for the first time just who Jesus is and what it means to be a Christian. You have realized that Christianity has not failed you; God has not failed you. It may be that the church has failed you, since it is comprised of human beings just like you, people who often fall short of their own standards and do not always live up to the beauty of their faith and of their Savior. Perhaps your expectations of Jesus and of Christianity were false. But still you are asking yourself, "What difference does it make if I am a Christian or not?"
The difference it makes to you, if this is true, is easy to predict. Without a Savior, there is no one to save you from yourself, no one who knows you completely yet loves you unconditionally. There is no one to guide you through the deep waters and rough seas of life, no one to give you strength and courage to meet each day and face each disappointment, no assurance of an advocate who will plead your cause, no faith to believe that justice for you will ultimately be accomplished. There is no one to welcome you home at the end of life, to open their arms to you and say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." Life is meaningless and purposeless, the monotony of the moments scratched out every day from the poor soil of existence and ending with no hope of a future.
But there are also ramifications for our society if those who have found it difficult to believe in God turn away to live their lives as if he doesn't exist. The words of William Blake and the haunting sentiments of William Wordsworth come to
mind in these days when so many seem to have lost their ability to remain faithful to their belief:
Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau; Mock on, Mock on; 'tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind, And the wind blows it back again.1
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men.2
There is a payback for mocking the eternal, for jettisoning God's commands and stepping over the boundaries he has placed for us as individuals first and then for the societies and cultures of which we are a part. Something of huge proportions has happened in the West. Thomas Friedman's recent book on world economics, The World is Flat, states that the weight of economic strength in the world has leveled the playing field. In my view, Friedman is half right. "Flat" may be an appropriate description in terms of the West's productivity, gross national product, disposable income, and all the other calibrations that economists measure. But there is also a different scale. In the context of moral self-perception, the world has dramatically tilted. Seen for years by the East as a culture in decay and demise, deserving what likely lies ahead for it—a fate echoed in the classic sermon by Robert G. Lee, a famous preacher of years gone by, called "Payday Someday"—the West is
increasingly seeing itself that way.
What difference does it make if we walk away from our belief in the gospel message? What difference does it make which society is on top at the moment and which culture is in decline? Is it not just the shedding of worn-out skin? As my professor at Cambridge used to say, "What are these churches now but monuments to what we once believed." I have news for him. The ramifications of such a change in the worldview of the West will not only change the West; it will change the world and will cost more than any gain that could be imagined.
Of that I am certain. In the context of our Western nations and of the world, the more pointed question for our times is a question with fearsome ramifications: If not Christianity and the Christian worldview, what other worldview will take its place? It is a question that self-titled "lapsed evangelicals" or "lapsed Christians" must ask of themselves: Is the simplistic notion that the Christian faith is irrational and that naturalism is rational itself rational?
Years ago, Francis Schaeffer gave a simple illustration to demonstrate the conundrum of naturalism, which can offer a materialistic explanation for only some of what it sees. He imagined two glasses of water—glass A and glass B. Suppose that when you leave the room glass A has two ounces of water in it and glass B is empty. When you come back into the room you find that glass A, which had two ounces of water in it, is now empty, and glass B, which was empty before, is now full.
The obvious conclusion is that someone came into the room while you were gone and poured the two ounces of water from glass A into glass B. But glass B now has more than two ounces of water in it; in fact, it's filled to the brim. More explanation is needed. It may still be true that someone poured
the water from glass A into glass B. But where did the remaining water come from? There was not enough water in glass A to explain the water in glass B.
Now suppose that a wealthy man were to come to you and propose that you build a house for him of the finest quality that money can buy. He is leaving on a trip and may be gone for a few years, but he would like you to build the house in his absence so that it is ready for him upon his return. He tells you that from time to time he will send an agent to check on the progress of the house. Your integrity and reputation are on the line. He will make sure you are well paid. You agree to his conditions, the man sets out on his trip, and the building project begins.
Sometimes you have to admit it would be tempting to pocket some of the advance cash and cheat on the quality. You could build a nice little nest egg for yourself, and the man would be none the wiser. He's been gone a long time now. Will he even know enough about the job you are doing to fully appreciate it, or would he get as much enjoyment out of something that looked good on the outside but was not as substantial as it should be? Could you spend his money on the things that dress up the house and make a good impression, but skimp on the things that make the house a firm, safe structure?
As time goes on and you continue to build, materials are stolen from you by irresponsible subcontractors and tradesmen, and you substitute inferior product. Finally the house is completed. You have successfully camouflaged what is substandard, and the house looks exactly as the man had requested. You alone know that the foundation is a bit precarious because each of your subcontractors were playing
the same charade as you, trying to get more than what was due them by putting in less than they had promised.
One day, there is a knock on your door. You open it to see that the man standing before you looks somewhat familiar.
You're not sure if you've met him before. He tells you he is the brother of the man for whom you have built the house. He tells you that his brother's return is delayed because of other responsibilities. But he tells you that because you have waited so long for his brother's return and have worked so hard on the house to make sure it is everything he had asked for, his brother is giving the house to you. It is now yours, completely paid for. It is his gift to you and your family, and if there is any money left over from building the house, it is yours too.
These two illustrations sum up the predicament with which we now live in the West, with similar ideas permeating the East. Naturalism seems to have become the reigning worldview, and we think we can explain all of the contents in the glass before us. But the unexplainable extra ounces still haunt us. We can explain matter, but we can't explain why we think in the categories that we do if everything ultimately comes from matter. We have convinced ourselves that we have everything we need and that our minds and our skills will get us through any difficulty we encounter. But we have picked our own pockets. The house we have built with such promise is crumbling because we have cheated on the foundation.
Do you remember Biosphere 2? Biosphere 2 started as a dream. It was built in Arizona during a span from 1987 to 1991.
Of immense size, this 3.15 acre spread was an audacious effort to build an ideal biosphere with scientifically engineered precision. "Everything" was planned, calibrated, researched, and thought through to achieve a perfect, hermetically sealed
world, a perfect, man-made enclosed ecological system within which to explore the complex web of interactions within life systems. It included an agricultural area as well as human living/working space so that the interactions between humans, farming, technology, and the rest of nature could be studied, allowing scientists to monitor the ever-changing chemistry of the air, water, and soil contained within. It also explored the possible future use of closed biospheres for colonizing space and to glean the scientific ramifications of such an effort without harming the earth's atmosphere. The health of the human crew was monitored by a medical doctor inside and a medical team outside (even with all the combined knowledge and expertise, they couldn't get by without a medical team on the outside). A little ironic, I think, for a "closed system," a system that purports to be able to sustain itself without help from the outside—and telling of the dogmatic insistence of many that our own universe is a "closed system" that does not need God in order to sustain itself.
Costing millions of dollars and at a size comparable to two and a half football fields, it remains the largest closed system ever created. The sealed nature of the structure contained two representative biomes, a 1,900 square meter rainforest, an 850 square meter ocean with a coral reef, a 450 square meter mangrove wetlands, a 1,300 square meter savannah grassland, a 1,400 square meter fog desert, a 2,500 square meter agricultural system, a human habitat, and a below-ground technical infrastructure. Heating and cooling water circulated through independent piping systems and passive solar input came through the glass space frame panels covering most of the facility. Electrical power was supplied from an onsite natural gas energy center through airtight penetrations. At the
end of it all, the difference between the hopes and the reality of the biosphere experiment is one word: embarrassment.
The first mission group, Mission 1, had a crew of eight people and ran for two years—from 1991 – 93. Following a sixmonth transition period during which researchers entered the facility through airlock doors and conducted research and made system engineering improvements, Mission 2—with a crew of seven people—was carried out from March 1994 to September 1994. One month into the second mission, a severe dispute within the management team over the financial aspects of the project led to their ouster from the Biosphere by federal marshals. Four days later, two members of the original team deliberately vandalized the project. After a shuffling of the members of the team and severe rifts among them caused by allegations of bringing in supplies from the outside and tampering with the data, the two-year "experiment in selfsufficiency" looked less like science and more like a $150 million dollar mistake, and the mission itself ended prematurely, a failure by definition.
The rest of the story reads like a plot within a plot, with all kinds of undisclosed and under-the-radar activity. Let me just say that even had the experiment succeeded, it would have proved that it took intelligence to bring this about (which was not their goal).
I visited this site and heard firsthand some of the goingson that plainly violated the plans and strictures under which the biosphere was to operate. I don't doubt the commendable efforts and perhaps even the goals of such an attempt, but this experiment proved to be a colossal flop. Clearly the experiment was unable to create that perfect sphere and environment, but a key factor in its failure and demise was what lay within the
corruption of the human heart, even to the point of vandalizing the controlled environment. In all of our efforts to conquer outer space we have never come to terms with the inner space within each of us.
So as I bring to a close my response to the feeling on the part of some that Christianity has failed them (and the charges against Christianity that are implied), I want you to consider the irrational ends to which the worldview of the skeptic will lead—ends that put at risk the very existence of humanity.
A MESSAGE TO THE CHURCH
Many of the charges made by some people I have spoken with have a tragic truthfulness to them. They had tried church and found it wanting. They found the church in many ways to be uninformed, unrealistic, and terribly judgmental. If those of us who claim to be Christians do not listen to this criticism, we do so at our own peril. The twin extremes that face us, as I see it— either to be totally complacent about our faith and not deal with sin or to ostracize and condemn anyone who makes a mistake in practicing their Christian faith—risk compromise of fatal proportions. If one person shouts "Fire!" we can excuse him for being mistaken. If two shout "Fire!" it might be wise to take note. If large numbers scream "FIRE!" we would be deaf or irrational to not respond. The church of today must listen before speaking.
That said, by virtue of my work I have visited scores of churches in numerous countries and have found many who have listened and taken note. I have been in a small gathering in China where scholars meet to discuss Christianity. I have
spoken in very large churches where the message is clear and the methods are wise. There are many fine pastors and leadership teams who have carefully thought through the questions of our time and are doing a commendable job in their churches. Those demonstrating theological integrity with methodological relevance are the ones I salute during this time of such challenges. So this is not an evaluation of all of Christendom. My challenge is directed to church leaders and members who have either lost the message or resorted to methods that have compromised the message—or both.
Sadly, some churches exist to entertain their audiences with limitless distractions so that they come for the pleasure of enjoying good entertainment in the presence of "good people."
I do not intend any sarcasm here. In a world that seems to think entertainment and humor are only to be found by being vulgar or profane or disparaging toward someone, the kind of wholesome and healthy delight that such a church offers is genuinely needed in our times. God is not against entertainment. Unlike the animal world, he has created us to laugh and cry, though there is no premium placed on crying.
Laughter and happiness are necessary, especially when most of the daily news we hear is grim.
The problem with trying to worship by such means is that in the end we become no different from the "good" person who has disavowed the gospel; in fact, the private life of this thoroughly entertained Christian may actually be worse than his skeptic counterpart. So what is the point of making this wholesome entertainment the focus of the church when the fragmentation within the church is equal to that outside the church?
Many times I have heard Christian young women say that
the Christian young men they meet in church and spend time with are no better than those who claim to have no belief in God—and, in fact, they say some are worse than those outside.
Sadly, pornography, sensuality, monetary irresponsibility, and dishonesty are equally constant realities in both camps. I even know Christian businessmen and women who tell me they will not hire another Christian because of how they have been exploited by their Christian employees in the workplace—those who expect to be cut some slack for not doing their share of work "because we are brothers in Christ."
This pathetic irresponsibility makes people cautious of those who wear their faith on their sleeves and extremely suspicious of their spiritual talk. Broken marriage vows and business contracts are not exclusively seen beyond the walls of the church; sadly, they are equally prevalent among believers. For this kind of believer, going to church for good entertainment is at best an exercise that puts them in a safe place where they can hear nice things about how nice we are and how nice we should be.
How and why have we failed to produce believers who possess strong characters and exercise self-discipline? There is both a good news and bad news side. The good news is that this "flawed product" is not a new phenomenon in our day.
The early church experienced every one of the struggles we face in the church—perhaps even more. Reading the New
Testament epistles gives us a catalog of vices that existed within the church that leaves us wondering what was going on in the name of the church and of Jesus. As we meet the disciples and leaders of the early church in the pages of the New Testament, we see bickering, distrust, greed, parochialism, betrayal, even murder—even though they were in the closest
contact with the most perfect life ever lived. Any psychologist would declare these men to have been totally unfit for the task.
If they had been subjected to leadership testing with all of our present-day methods, I doubt even one of them would have passed. It is absolutely the most amazing thing that Jesus selected them and put up with them.
And if you look at the patriarchs, my word! Even Abraham, the "father of faith," who is claimed by three of the world's great religions, embarrasses us at times. Isaac and Jacob fare no better. David, the greatest and most spiritually minded king, left a trail of blood and infidelity in his wake.
Solomon, revered as the wisest man who ever lived, left us the best proverbs by which to live, yet he didn't apply them to himself.
Unfortunately, this affirms to us the bad news—that our inherent personality weaknesses and character flaws stalk us most of our lives. If we do not have a road map to correction, recovery, and change, we will only move from failure to catastrophe and ultimately to the destruction of future generations. The Scriptures give us not a formula for perfection but a way to address our weaknesses and find healing and wholeness. It is the individual choices we make and the selection of our leaders that will put us back on the road of hope and blessing.
So to every charge that those inside the church are no better than those outside the church, the Bible has never taught otherwise. As we have seen, even our heroes in church history may not fare well when put under the critical lens of a skeptic. The Bible reminds believers that we in the church—of all people—must be aware of our own shortcomings. We of all people should be gracious and forgiving of those who fall
short of God's standards; we of all people must understand how far we are from what God intends us to be and learn to allow him to conform us to the image of his Son, both in our speech and in our walk; we of all people must learn to be patient with those for whom the journey is still rough.
At the root of the problem with churches that are program driven and lack substance is the appearance of change without teaching people how to think correctly. The church has a responsibility toward believers and unbelievers alike to teach people how to apply the truths of Scripture to their own lives and to ultimately impact society. There is a world of difference between how the gospel works and how every other belief system works. Christianity is not a political theory. It is not even a cultural theory. It is, at its root, all about changing the heart of each man and woman, boy and girl, so that we begin to think God's thoughts and act in accordance with his character.
Think about this. Politics works from the top down, whether we talk about capitalism, Communism, or Fascism. All three begin with an ideology of how a nation should be set up, and the citizens of that nation are governed accordingly. Each system has its own ideologies and rules. This is also true of most religions. Islam is a political and legal theory. In fact, many scholars believe that the history of Islam shows that it began as a political vision and leveraged the "supernatural" to that end. The Pact of Umar in early Islamic conquests of Christian countries clearly made Christians second-class citizens. It is amazing that Muslim scholars actually see their actions as benevolent. From restricting the height of church steeples to the propagation of the message of Christ, Islam put its thumb down hard on Christians. Hinduism also operates from the top down as a way of life for a community in which the
individual has little value. So whether we talk of politics or religion, there is a trickle-down effect.
Not so with Christianity. Jesus' resistance to political power was a remarkable caution about top-down belief systems. In the gospel message, the beginning of change occurs in the heart of each individual. This heart change makes a difference in the home, then in the community, and ultimately in the nation—and in turn it shapes the future of a cultural ethos. Eventually, from the overflow of the values of such a society, a ripple effect takes place in cosmic proportions, not because it is imposed from the top but because God has changed the hearts and minds of his people. This is the difference with Christianity. The gospel was never intended to be a political theory that would dictate how societies should be structured.
We must appreciate the wisdom of such belief. The leadership appointed by a people is intended to lead from the moral values and framework by which a people have been identified—a dynamic that will either build or threaten the future. First, the people appoint the leader, then the leader is commissioned to guide the nation according to the values that the people hold. If the leadership fails to do so, the society has begun its journey down the road to destruction. In the microcosm of the church, failure has come not from the people but from the leadership that has led the people into disregard for and even disbelief in the very authority that brought them into being.
Shortly after I came to Canada in 1966, I saw a sign outside a small home that read "Theological Books for Sale." I knocked on the door, and the elderly woman who opened it was obviously surprised to find an Indian at her door. (That
tells you how long ago it was!) "These are Christian books, you know," she said. "That's why I am interested in seeing them," I responded. And so she let me in. It was a small library of a couple thousand volumes. "My husband was a pastor," she told me, "and he has passed away. My church is not interested in his books, and so I'm trying to sell them to somebody who would respect this material and treasure its teachings." When she found out I was a follower of Jesus
Christ, she was thrilled that I was interested in buying the books. She noticed the books I was choosing, books by men such as G. Campbell Morgan, F. B. Meyer, and so on. "They were among my husband's favorites," she said. Then she added these sobering words. "To watch the death of belief in my church and denomination is the worst kind of death to witness. I never ever dreamed of the day that our leaders would be leading us away from the very teaching that established our churches in the first place. We are truly like sheep betrayed by the shepherds."
The departure of so many church leaders from the teachings of Jesus has led to a kind of death. The handwriting is on the walls of our homes, our communities, and our nations.
Solomon, Jeroboam, Rehoboam—one after the other—led their people into seductive and false beliefs. Gradually, they believed things about God without believing God himself, until child sacrifice became the preferred act of worship. Once the Book of the Law was lost, generations passed before it was found again, lost in the debris of the house of God. Mourning a similar degradation, Jesus wept over his beloved city: "O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem,…how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you
desolate" (Matthew 23:37-38).
Do you see the parallels in our day? We have mistaken attendance at church for success and are blind to the desolation within. It is the role of church leadership to sense the heart of God and lead the people toward God—not to build big churches that become monuments to their skill at tickling the ears of those who gather and to their ability to give people what they think they want so they leave feeling satisfied that they have "gone to church."
Capitalism has no more potential for good than any other system of government if the leaders are heading in the wrong direction and have stolen from the people their most fundamental God-given value, their essential human worth. The reason for all the bloodshed in the world is that somebody somewhere has deemed ideology more valuable than human life. This is the endgame of rationalism, where ideas are more important than people. In this kind of environment, the most violent idea wins the day. And the church that has forgotten its purpose and lost its message will have no influence for good in society.
The truths by which we were intended to live are proved within the microcosm of the church. This is where the church must take note and ask hard questions of itself, for without the combination of theological integrity and methodological relevance, our churches will also be a vestige from "once upon a time."
AND FORGIVE US AS WE FORGIVE
Meeting people where they are hurting is a vital aspect of our
call to reflect God to the society in which we live, and the single word that best describes the gospel message is forgiveness. Understanding what it means to both offer forgiveness and receive forgiveness is the difficult part of learning mercy. At the beginning of this book, I mentioned a woman who had left her church because she had been effectively cast out. She told us that, to her shame, she had begun an adulterous affair. But even more painful than her horror of what she had done and the pain she had caused her family and friends was that the church never forgot it and never let her move beyond it.
I understand that we in the church have a difficult path to walk in the presence of sin. At what point do we accept something without compromising the message? How do we teach the narrow path of righteousness without becoming legalistic? But surely there is a way to differentiate between someone who trivializes evil and thumbs her nose at God and someone else who stumbles, falls, and seeks to be restored, not just into fellowship with God, but into fellowship with God's people.
I recall a mother calling me one day, greatly upset, and sharing a choice her daughter had made that caused the parents to wonder if they could still have anything to do with her. The story was heartbreaking. They had raised her in a completely different way from the lifestyle she was practicing and was about to seal in a union. I could hear the desolation in the mother's voice and felt it was almost impossible to give her advice that would be incontrovertible. So I advised her that no matter how she chose to respond, she consider doing so in such a way that the daughter she loved so much would not be cut off from her love, her voice, and her reach.
The balance was a delicate one, for if this mother pushed her daughter away, she risked exposing her to other voices and other loves that would appear to be more caring but actually lead her farther away from the One who cared for her most—
God himself. If she condemned her daughter, she would probably lose her to a place beyond the reach of her parents. I cautioned her that whatever she did, she should make certain that her daughter understood that her mother loved her and would always be there for her.
There are times when the Father waits for the son to return. But there are also times when the husband goes and stands in line in a brothel to buy his wife back and love her, as Hosea did with his wife, Gomer. The gospel is an invitation to a relationship, not a legal summons to a hearing.
I know of a tenderhearted, gifted, and capable Christian young man. During his college years, most of his friends were a year or two ahead of him. By the time he reached his senior year, they had all graduated and he had been left behind. Even though he was part of a Bible study group, that final year was difficult for him spiritually. Beyond anything his family could have anticipated, he developed a friendship that soon became serious with a young woman who had a very different worldview—one of gurus, mysticism, and pantheistic meditative techniques. Under her influence his personality began to change, and he gradually became almost noncommunicative with his family, not responding to them with his normal affection.
His father flew to the town where his university was located and checked into a motel nearby. He told his son he was there for him and would be around for several days. The father suggested they meet for dinner every evening. Every
evening, the young man had dinner with his father, but it was obvious to the father that he was there only because it would have been rude for him to not show up. After a few days the father returned home, having no more hope than when he had gone.
The boy came home for spring break, which happened to coincide with his father's birthday. At dinner in a restaurant, the other children presented gifts and cards, but the young man said he had left his gift for his father at home and would give it to him later that evening. The father wondered if the son was telling the truth, or if he just didn't care anymore. And sure enough, back at home there was no gift or card, and his son said nothing. But as the father headed for bed that night, he found a card on his pillow. Opening it, he read, "Dearest Mom and Dad, I am so sorry to have hurt you so much. You were right and I was wrong." From there his son began to unfold how he had lost his way, saying in his own words that he had somehow felt that as a Christian, he was missing out on so much and wanted to experience the world. "But I tried life apart from God," he wrote, "and it doesn't work." With that he proceeded to share the news that he was ending his relationship with this girl, that as much as he loved her, he realized he loved the Lord more. The angels in heaven experienced no greater joy that night than the parents of that young man.
It would have been easy for this father to cut his son off.
It would have been easy to heap guilt on his head and say things that would have made life miserable for him. A parent in this situation can't think of anything that can bring the result they are aching to see, and they entertain all kinds of emotions they never could have predicted. But the young man would
never have responded to that approach. Instead, it would have pushed him farther away, probably farther than he himself wanted to go, until the way back would have seemed almost impossible. It was because he knew how much his parents and his family loved him and how deeply they were devoted to him
—and because of the great mercy and faithfulness of God— that victory in the life of this young man was won.
Isn't the church an extension of the family? Can we not find ways to love that will keep within reach the one who is faltering? Are there not ways to minister to someone who needs healing, rather than having a spirit like Jonah's, which declares in effect, "You are beyond God's reach. He is going to destroy you, and I, for one, am glad of it!"?
As I write this, two major stories made it onto the front pages of the newspapers. The first is the death of Michael
Jackson at fifty years of age. His is the truly tragic story of a gifted but immature entertainer whose life was one tangled web of searching for himself. It is telling to see the opinions of people about what they thought of him, ranging from unvarnished hostility to an unapologetic admiration bordering on worship. One does not even have to be buried before the world pours out its judgments of castigation or exoneration.
We have become a culture in which we take the prerogative to act as judge and jury before there has even been a trial.
Even more telling is the story of the governor of South Carolina. By his own admission, he has broken the hearts of his family and his friends by becoming involved in a foolishly illicit relationship. As I read his admission and thought of the heartbreak, my heart went out to the ones hurting the most— his wife and his children. This cruel world that celebrates relativism will still burn someone of a different political stripe at
the stake for their violation of a moral absolute, and those who despise conservatives, accusing them of judging others, display the venom of duplicity when they, too, stand in judgment on those same conservatives. Someone has said that the charge of hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue.
But it is not enough that this governor has admitted to what he has done. The public has become so unfeeling and so heartless that a South Carolina newspaper decided to print emails between the governor and the other party. The glee with which this has been done as they celebrate the fall of someone they have perceived to be a moralizer is incredibly sad. What has become of our society when someone else's tragedy has become entertainment to everyone else?
I think of the talk show host David Letterman. He was ruthless in his comments about the moral stumbles of a young teenager, the daughter of a political candidate from "the other party." Ah! Her story was like throwing him a juicy bone to chew on and spit out. Yet, when his moral duplicity is uncovered, his "confession" is nothing more than a comedic routine because "the show must go on."
This is the point: The world accuses the Christian church of judging others harshly, but when they sit as judge, they are equally harsh, cruel, and merciless—unless you buy into their ethos, in which case you are free to live as you please. Both the religious and the not-so-religious extract their pound of flesh when they are in a position to do so. But only the body of Christ, the church, has a Savior whose body was broken and whose blood was shed to bring pardon and healing to the bruised and broken, the fallen and defeated. Only the church that understands the message of forgiveness will reach out to
those around it rather than condemning them. And if the church does not reach out, it is a church on which many will turn their backs and never return. Thornton Wilder said, "In love's service only the wounded soldiers can serve."3
People make mistakes and stumble. People struggle with failure and defeat. People long to do what is right but often fail.
More often than not, people know the truth and still violate it, hoping they will reap more friendly dividends than they do.
And when they are in the throes of some defeat, they are most tender, and those moments of hurt and disenchantment and struggle can become critical for reshaping and redirecting their lives.
Professor Wilfred McClay of Tulane University wrote the following after attending the funeral of a friend:
Where the rest of us had been stunned into reflective silence, awed, chastened by the reminder of the slender thread by which our lives hang, the minister had other things in mind…He did not try to comfort the family and friends. Nor did he challenge us to remember the hard words of the Lord's Prayer, "Thy will be done." Instead he smoothly launched into a well-oiled tirade against the misplaced priorities of our society in which billions of dollars were being poured into "Star Wars" research while young women were left to die on the operating table. That was all this minister had to say. His eulogy was, in effect, a pitch for less federal spending on defense and more spending on the development of medical technology…
I am willing to concede for the sake of argument that the minister may have been right in everything that he said. All of these considerations are beside the point.
Nothing can alter the fact that he failed us, failed her, and failed his calling by squandering a precious moment for a second-rate stump speech and by forcing us to hold our sorrow back in the privacy of our hearts at the very moment it needed common expression. That moment can never be recovered.
Nothing that religion does is more important than equipping us to endure life's passages by helping us find meaning in pain and loss. With meaning, many things are bearable. But our eulogist did not know how to give it to us. All he had to offer were his desiderata. For my own part, I left that funeral more shaken and unsteady than before. Part of my distress arose from frustration that my deepest thoughts (and those of others around me, as I later discovered) were so completely unechoed in this ceremony and in these words. But another part of my distress must have stemmed from a dark foreboding that I was witnessing another kind of malpractice, and another kind of death.4
The church is prone to one extreme or the other in her responses to the world—either legalism that destroys the wounded, or relevance that has no substance and is relevant to nothing. And when the deepest struggles of a person's heart are left "unechoed" or unaddressed, the minister and the members of the church have fallen short of their calling.
MEETING NEEDS WITHOUT TRUTH
I have mentioned that the church must know its purpose before
it can be effective and that it must believe its message and reflect its Savior. Now I want to talk about what the church must affirm if we are going to have an impact on our communities and on our societies. What do we need to believe about what we claim to believe in order to be believed?
Most of us have heard the proverbial story of four blind people touching different parts of an elephant—an ear, the trunk, the tail, a leg—and coming up with different conclusions about what they were touching. This story is supposed to teach us that truth looks different from different vantage points. I am reminded of a research student who wrote a thesis paper about the fly. He extracted one leg from the fly and asked the fly to jump from one hand to the other. The fly jumped.
(Insect lovers, please bear with me for a moment.) He removed the second leg and repeated the command. The fly jumped again. He pulled out the third leg and told the fly to jump. Once more, the fly jumped. He yanked out the final leg and commanded the fly to jump one more time. This time the fly did not jump. The student promptly wrote down his conclusion:
When you pull out all four of a fly's legs, it loses its hearing.
A deduction based on false assumptions leads to an invalid conclusion, and we simply cannot base conclusions on impeded judgments or limited assumptions. In the earlier illustration, the reason we know they were touching an elephant is that someone who was there could see and knew what an elephant looked like.
The Western church in the recent past—and especially in the last decade—has fled from the authority of what Jesus said and taught. In its place we have built a whole new world of Christian spirituality based on individual needs and on definitions that have no source and are based on feeling rather
than actuality. The church is supposed to be a community of "called-out ones." We are supposed to be able to transcend the immediate and the material present to lift our sights to the way God has defined our destiny and being. That is what the entire message of the gospel is based on. We are not a community of self-referencing entities. We define ourselves on the basis of a semitranscendent relationship with God.
In my computer bag, I carry a tiny thumb drive. It is the size of my little finger. On that thumb drive are all my books and all the illustrations, anecdotes, and arguments I have collected over almost forty years of ministry. It slips into one of my pockets, and when needed, within minutes I can pull out almost anything you ask for from my writings. But there is something different about this thumb drive and me. Even though it contains everything I have written, it is not me. My will, my longings, my hungers, my passions, my spiritual commitments can never be imparted to that little piece of technology.
Just as that little instrument is a reflection of me, Christians are meant to be accurate reflections of the God we worship, who has made us in his image. But we are not God.
Faced with the incredible challenge of technology and especially the enchantment of the visual, in the last few decades the church has entered into a time of high risk for the imagination. Every advance in technology puts a greater challenge on the value of humanity and the personal touch.
This is especially true because we are prone to the error of focusing on alleviating the symptoms of our malady—the outward signs of a society that has turned its back on God— and missing the cause or the disease itself. It is easier to treat the symptoms than to identify and rectify the cause. It is also
easier to respond to our feelings toward God or the worship of God than to learn how to think right thoughts in the right way.
Because of this, programming has become the buzzword for attracting crowds. The techniques have become more sophisticated, the message has become more simplistic, and the means have gradually eclipsed the ends.
I have often wondered this: if the visual through which we gain most of our enchantment today is truly as persuasive a means as we claim it to be, why did Jesus not wait to come to earth until the camera had been invented? Wouldn't it have made more sense to show the miracles, especially with highdefinition television available, and let the feeding of the five thousand play itself out on the news rather than just writing about it? Even the news has become a show, and we live in great danger as we find ourselves at the mercy of our fleeting enthrallment span and our collective short memory for news—a dramatic event a day. Instead of "give us each day our daily bread," it is now "give us each day our daily thrill," because the shelf life of thrills is directly proportional to the latest invention or latest story.
In a day's span we move from horror in the streets of Iran to the infidelities of an absent governor to the death of a pop icon to thousands of pages of legislation that legislators don't have time to read before voting—all in a few minutes. The show is all-important, and the news producers choose the stories they will feature based on what will elicit the greatest response from the audience. Perhaps, on second thought, if Jesus had come during our time, his message would have made no greater impact on society than it did then, even though his message would have been available to so many more people.
Feeding four thousand people wouldn't have been enough to
warrant continued coverage in the news; he would have had to feed five thousand the next day and then ten thousand the next. Even that would eventually become boring. The means have definitely eclipsed the ends.
As I travel, I find myself in places that make me ponder deeply what it means to really live. With each passing year, I begin to wonder whether those of us who live in the wealthy part of the world actually understand life less than those who must by necessity live in dependence for their daily bread. And how has the church reacted to all this? By and large, abysmally. Our buildings and holdings become bigger, grander, more sophisticated, yet we feed people only snippets of truth.
We visit needy spots and establish budgets for the hurting and suffering as a momentary response before our lives and attentions return to the high-speed pursuit of the next thrill.
Years ago when I studied at Cambridge, the renowned thinker, Arthur Peacocke, who was then the director of the Ian
Ramsey Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion in Relation to Science and a member of the faculty of theology at Oxford, made an astounding statement:
To be truly "evangelical" and "catholic," the church of the next millennium will need a theology that will necessarily have to be genuinely liberal and even radical—particularly in its relation to a worldview everywhere shaped by science. For Christian theology to have any viability, it may well have to be stripped down to newly conceived essentials, minimalist in its affirmations; only then will it attain that degree of verisimilitude with respect to ultimate realities which science has to natural ones—and command respect as a vehicle of public truth.5
I wonder if Mr. Peacocke wanted us to interpret his statement minimally, or did he want us to take to heart what he said with such forceful intention?
"Minimalist in its affirmations"—isn't that the world we now have? Minimalist in our affirmations, our marriage vows, our contracts, our commitments, the paying back of our debts, our plea bargains; minimalist in our trust of each other, our tolerance of other people's weaknesses, our understanding of each other's values, our ethics, our hope for the future.
Isn't this the church we now have? This is the lie we have believed, a lie that has led us to a religion with minimalist affirmations. It is no longer the calling of the church to inform the world but the calling of the world to inform the church.
Thus, from some pulpits now we hear profanity—because people are more comfortable with such language than they used to be and have come to expect it in conversation. We consistently overwhelm the audience with a barrage of the visual, which is supposed to serve as their spiritual food.
Eventually, the distinction between the believer and the unbeliever is a minimal one, reduced to a single affirmation: I believe in God and you don't.
Social theorist Ernest Becker wrote many years ago:
Today religionists wonder why youth has abandoned the churches, not wanting to realize that it is precisely because organized religion openly subscribes to a commercial-industrial hero system that is almost openly defunct; it so obviously denies reality, builds war machines against death, and banishes sacredness with bureaucratic dedication. Men are treated as things and the world is pulled down to their size. The churches subscribe
to these empty heroics of possession, display, manipulation. I think that today Christianity is in trouble not because its myths are dead but because it does not offer its ideal of heroic sainthood as an immediate personal one to be lived by believers. In a perverse way, the churches have turned their backs both on the miraculousness of creation and on the need to do something heroic in this world.6
Becker is right. By losing our appreciation for the miracle of life itself, we have turned to the heroics of display and abandoned the true heroism of lives lived for the glory of God.
This, to me, is the loss that has made the gospel unbelievable to people. Many efforts by the emergent church are nothing more than a surrender to a postmodern epistemology garbed in the terminology and methodology of "spiritual relevance."
What Biosphere 2 was to the scientific world, much of our church entrepreneurship is to the spiritual world. Breaking free from any strictures, we have built a worldview that is a hybrid of naturalism and spirituality. Torn between these various factions, we have vandalized the truth, denying some aspects of it and distorting others in order to accomplish our own goals.
For some, the appeal has been prosperity. They believe not only that they can ask for anything—but that they have a right to receive it. Others are tempted to use Christianity as an opportunity to display or exercise their talents, even if they don't really fit the message. Still others are moved to speak what is popular and what people want to hear rather than the truth because it makes them feel good about themselves and assures an audience. The result? Our youth are left in the
middle ground between a materialistic worldview that borrows spiritual talk to soothe their needs and a spiritual worldview that is actually quite materialistic.
So what is the solution? If the problem isn't with God but with the church, what do we do with the church? In a long conversation with Mal colm Muggeridge before he died, I asked him why he didn't go to church. He seemed a bit embarrassed and then said, "I am not quite able to take that which is so much of the soul and institutionalize it." My heart beat a little faster as I tried to respond to this man I so respected and who, by his own admission, was so fatally fluent. I could so sympathize with what he was saying: I have often wondered even in ministry at what point the structure overrides the substance. At what point does your calling become your job?
Such dangers will always lurk beneath the surface. But the answer cannot be to jettison the institution that Jesus established for the propagation of the ultimate truth about life.
It was his idea that we gather as a community—the bedrock of where the truth of the gospel transforms lives and from where it is propelled into the wider community. The solution to the failure of the church is not found by abandoning it.
Where, then, do we go from here? What is the way back?
A BLUEPRINT FOR THE WAY BACK
There is a time to pull away from the cacophony of voices and the clutter of ideas and search one's soul. As the old Irishman said to a man who asked him for directions, "If that's where you want to go, this is not where I would begin." In plain
English, "You are so far off the track that you will have to go back even farther before you can start moving forward." In that spirit I ask you now to come away for a while and to think through carefully what all this means for you and for all who come after you. This is absolutely essential.
I was talking to the principal of a seminary in Bethlehem in Israel about the singular loneliness of Palestinian Christians, people whose faith is homeless. Their fellow Palestinians reject them because they are Christians and not Muslims. Western
Christians are often not quite sure where to place these Christians in the grand scheme of things. They are a bit uncomfortable with them and reject them in a subtle way because of the covenant promises to the Jews. And the Jews reject them because they are Palestinians, a people with whom they are on constant alert. They belong nowhere, to no community. "We really are orphaned from the world," he said. I attended a service among them. I let the tears flow as I realized that for them, the person of Christ is all they have, and they cling to him with the utter certainty that he will not let them down. I asked the leader what form of ministry he found most effective with such a congregation. He told me it was their
"desert ministry."
Every few weeks, he takes a handful of his people who are struggling with particular issues, and they drive into the desert.
They mount camels and go deeper into the desert to a secluded spot. There they pitch their tents and spend about three days.
"When you're alone in God's creation with nothing to interrupt your thoughts, it is amazing how easy it is to listen to the voice of God," he said. During those three days they study the Scriptures, pray, talk together, and try to resolve their deepest concerns. The world looks different from the desert. He has
found that in those alone times, great victories have been won.
The most profound commitments are made when a person is alone. I propose three glories, three supremacies, and three excellencies you need to come to terms with. If you have struggled with your faith, if you feel that Christianity has failed you, take a deep, personal look at what you are called to as a Christian, according to the Scriptures, and then evaluate once again who has failed.
Three Glories God has spoken in the glory of his creation. Do not get bogged down in how he did it. Accept that it is a universe of incredible order and beauty. One cannot escape the detail and the fine-tuning of the Creator's hand. To take the issue of "how" to the point of so much contention is to make it something it was never intended to be. "The heavens," states
David, "declare the glory of God" (Psalm 19:1). Simply put, the presence of God is manifested even in the created order. Its vastness and intelligibility speak of the grandeur and of the specific complexity that God has put into this world. Just one flame off the sun's surface is forty times the dimension of the earth. Yet, in a single life he has placed the power of intelligence and of the will. God created the world; humanity has created its cities. Look at the contrast, and see where our problem really lies.
God has spoken in the glory of his law. None of us like the concept of law because none of us like the restraints it puts on us. But when we understand that God has given us his law to aid us in guarding our souls, we see that the law is for our
fulfillment, not for our limitation. The law reminds us that some things, some experiences, some relationships are sacred. When everything has been profaned, it is not just my freedom that has been lost—the loss is everyone's. God gave us the law to remind us of the sacredness of life, and our created legal systems only serve to remind us of the profane judgments we make.
God has also spoken in the glory of the incarnation, when "the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us"—"the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). God entered human history in Bethlehem in the form of a child. Today, instead of being a bustling, vibrant community, the streets of Bethlehem are barren, devoid of commerce. Shop after shop is boarded up, and lawlessness prevails. The streets and walls of Bethlehem reflect the fate of all of us in our personal lives when we reject him. And our personal spiritual state will ultimately be reflected in the state of our communities and our world.
These are the three glories I ask you to dwell on, to reflect on, and to learn from as you seek to know what God has revealed and consider what he principally speaks through, and whether indeed he has failed you. God is the Creator—he has created our universe and has created us to be the complex, marvelous creations we are; God is the Revealer—he has revealed his character to us; and God is the Embodier—our physical world, the moral world, and the human world are all a reflection of who he is. These are the realms in which he has spoken, though in thinking we understand how the physical world came to be—and making that the measure for life—we have impugned the authority of the moral world and the human world, and the world we see bears no resemblance to the world
God declared good.
In his recent book Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Thomas Friedman takes a look at what we have done to the world. In an instructive section, he talks about our insatiable appetite to destroy and plunder and never to replenish:
The waters around the 17,000 islands of the Indonesian archipelago hold 14 percent of the earth's coral reefs and more than 2,000 coral reef fish species… We often forget that "corals are both plants and animals," [Mark Erdmann, a marine biologist] added, "and the main thing they provide is shelter and structure and substrate, like trees in the forest—no more trees: no more leopards or orangutans; no more corals: no more fish." But runaway development and both dynamite and cyanide fishing have imperiled many of Indonesia's coral reefs, which provide the critical habitat for fish and other reef animals. A Western diplomat in Jakarta who follows biodiversity issues told me that one Indonesian fishing fleet company had informed him that in the year 2000, 8 percent of its catch from the waters around Indonesia were small baby fish, and by 2004 that number was 34 percent. As this diplomat put it, "When you are into one-third babies, the end is near."7
What neither the diplomat nor Friedman added is that this may well be a metaphor of what we are doing to ourselves by desacralizing life. Creation, the law, and humanity (the incarnation) bear God's imprint. How we navigate through this is given to us in three other glorious truths.
Three Supremacies When Paul is in prison, he writes to Timothy, telling him, "Do your best to come to me quickly…Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry…When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments" (2 Timothy 4:9 – 13).
Several years earlier, Paul had had a serious disagreement with John Mark and had sent him home. Now as he spends his final days in prison, he asks young Timothy to bring Mark with him to Paul. There is a touch of tenderness here as we hear the need of the older Paul, and it is obvious that reconciliation has taken place—a reconciliation not in name only but in a restored and valued relationship between Paul and Mark. Following this request, he asks Timothy to bring him his cloak, his books, and most of all his parchments.
Paul points us to the three supreme trusts given to us by God: (1) to guard and care for our bodies, these temples of God
—a trust symbolized by the cloak; (2) to guard and care for our minds— a trust symbolized by the books; we read and study and thereby inform our minds; and (3) to guard and care for our souls—a trust symbolized by the parchments, the Scriptures; we read and study and apply the Scriptures and allow them to nurture and guide our souls. If we are to understand the world and the God who made it, the church as an institution and each one of us as individuals within it must guard these three individual trusts. Any one of these held in imbalance will distort our growth.
Three Excellencies
From the three glories through which God has spoken and the three supremacies we must guard in order to live a balanced life, we move to the three excellencies that make a meaningful life possible. In his great chapter 13 in his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes, "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love" (verse 13).
These are the elements of life without which it is impossible to live. Faith is that aspect which is built on a relationship between the truth we know and the truth we have yet to learn, as we enlarge our knowledge into the unknown.
Hope casts a long shadow, even in times when it seems to have disappeared. But then comes the greatest—love. Think about this: The only way any of this is true is if God exists.
Love is the supreme value and the supreme expression in a world where so often hatred seems to have won the day. In the certainty of God's existence, the imperatives of faith, hope, and love follow.
These three—the glories, the supremacies, and the excellencies —are all derived from the ultimate reality of God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This relationship between these three—the ultimate reality of the triune God—is as mysterious as it is profound. From this God comes his call to us who are his children to live in the world and not be of it, to honor him and to respect our fellow human beings, and to respect honest questions without abandoning our faith when the going gets tough.
What difference does the reality of God make in our lives, our relationships, and our society?
Some years ago, the movie The Emperor's Club, starring Kevin Kline, came to the theaters. It is the story of a class of
young men who receive special instruction in classical literature. Once a year, a tradition in the school is to hold a competition and find out which boy has mastered the material most thoroughly. The three finalists, dressed in togas, are on the stage before the student body, and the teacher conducts the test by asking the questions that invariably require completing a quote or referencing a source.
One of the finalists comes from a privileged background as the son of a United States senator and is rather used to making life suit him. He has found a way to cheat throughout the entire proceedings, and the audience—without knowing what is going on—cheers him on to beat his mild-mannered, well-studied competitors. The teacher knows what is happening and the student knows he is under suspicion, but because of the prestige of the boy's father, the headmaster does not allow the teacher to disqualify the boy.
The years go by, and the young man who had cheated has become a successful businessman. He owns a country club, so he contacts the teacher and asks him if he would like to do a rematch at his country club with the two other contestants, both in different lines of work. The teacher sets to the task, the arrangements are made, and the stage is set. A distinguished audience has gathered, and the challenge begins.
Once again, however, when he begins to smell defeat, the man resorts to a back-up plan to ensure a win. And once again, the teacher senses the setup but can't identify how it is being done. The businessman wins, and the evening is over. The disappointed and disillusioned teacher uses the restroom before leaving the club, and his former student comes in and begins a heavy-handed challenge to the teacher. He knows
that the teacher knows he has cheated again, and he aggressively tries to justify not only what he has done but the values he lives by. "What's the difference?" he asks. "What difference does it really make?" The teacher gives him a last look of regret and is about to walk out when the sound of a flushing toilet is heard from one of the cubicles. The door opens, and a little boy walks out—the little son of the businessman. He glances in his father's direction, a look of deep, deep betrayal and pain on his face, and walks out of the restroom into the night. No words are spoken.
What difference does it really make that a man cheats and lies to succeed in life? It makes all the difference in the world between a father and his son, between the present and the future.
What difference does our departure as the church from the truths of Jesus' teaching make in the context of the big picture? What difference does it make if you give up on Christianity? It makes all the difference in the world for you and for how you live your life—but not only for you; it makes all the difference in the world for your relationship with the One who made you and this world, who has given you the standards, the rules, by which life is to be lived, the One who gave himself for you so that you could have fellowship with the Father and a future beyond time. It makes all the difference in the world for future generations and the world they will live in.
Let me say this as gently but as seriously as I can.
Secularism will not win the day. Atheism will not win the day.
Radical Islam is gradually pushing down the walls of secularism in the West because secularism has no foundation.
Its walls are built from inferior materials. They may look good
on the outside, but inside they are hollow and have no staying power. Radical Islam knows this. We may think our enlightened culture or our technology will withstand their onslaught, but they will not. One of the leaders in the Middle East recently said in a cavalier manner, "Why are we resorting to terrorist acts? We don't need to. Give us another thirty years or so, and the West will be ours. We will take it without an army." This is not a hollow boast. Do you remember when the Soviet Union made a similar boast—that they would not need to fire a shot to win the West because our decay would weaken us so much from within that our walls would crumble and they would be able to just walk in? It is interesting that both these worldviews have recognized that our greatest weakness is ourselves.
Fortunately for us, time ran out for the Soviet Union. Islam has all the time in the world. They are prepared to wait. They have been waiting for almost thirteen hundred years since they were turned away by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours. What's a few more years?
What difference does it really make? It does make a difference. It does matter. It matters to the very freedom of our expression of who we are, who we worship, what we believe, and what we hope for as we look to the future.
It is Christianity that has kept the Western world intact, that has created the environment and the impetus for the success the West has known. It is generations of men and women—fathers and mothers—who drew their strength from God and believed in his ultimate purpose, who built on the foundations others had laid before them, even when it didn't make sense and they didn't see the answers to their prayers they so deeply desired. It is Christians who have stood in humility before the Lord as representatives of their nations, for
whom God has blessed these Western nations.
In any situation when Christianity is evicted, I have absolutely no doubt that a radical form of totalitarian religious belief will take over. I have sat with leaders in other parts of the world who have voiced their perplexity that we in the West don't see this reality staring us in the face. The birthrate alone tells the future. We are being outnumbered in that category by nearly eight to one. The handwriting is on the wall. Only
Christianity, only the gospel of Jesus Christ that gives us the enormous privilege of sacred freedom without imposing faith on anyone, is strong enough to preserve our freedom and our dignity. Those who mock this faith will find themselves before long under the oppression of an ideological domination that uses religion to gain political and cultural dominance.
The choice for you, if you are among those who think Christianity has failed you, is either to look at Jesus Christ himself and trust God to carry you through the struggles you experience and to bring you to a place of contentment and victory, or to turn your back on this loving Savior, using the failures of the church to justify your unbelief, and to face a meaning less, purposeless existence without any guide to bring you into a future in the presence of God himself—and, sadly, to be brought under the scourge of a freedomless worldview that imposes its belief on all.
THREE TESTIMONIES FROM PRISON
I want to pull it all together with the stories of three men, each of whom had his doubts, his struggles, and his triumphs. The first is John Bunyan, who wrote the immortal The Pilgrim's
Progress in 1670 during one of the two occasions on which he was imprisoned for his faith. This book has been translated into two hundred languages and has been read by millions, having never gone out of print since its first publication. It traces the journey of the man Christian from the beginning of his search all the way to his goal—the Celestial City. He is told to keep his eye on the light and not allow himself to be distracted or waylaid. Along the way he encounters several interesting characters, who either help him in his journey or try to prevent him from reaching the Celestial City: Evangelist, the Interpreter, the Formalist, Hypocrisy, Timorous, Legality,
Worldly Wiseman, Mr. Sagacity, Lord Hate-good, Pliable, and a few more. He stops and learns valuable lessons at the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, Hill Difficult, House Beautiful,
Doubting Castle, the Enchanted Grove—you get the picture, even if you haven't read the book. Bunyan did not write much in the way of hymns, but the one he did write is "He Who Would Valiant Be," and each stanza ends with the words "to be a pilgrim."
Exactly one hundred years after Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, John Newton was born. He was never imprisoned for his faith, but he imprisoned others because he had no faith. He became part of the slave trade as the captain of a slave ship, even though he had personally experienced the horror of being abused, flogged, and enslaved. Caught in a terrible storm, trying to steer his ship to safety, he cried out to
Christ to save him. He then dedicated the rest of his life to two pastorates, and his influence in history is undisputed. He was part of the Evangelical Awakening, and his impact on William
Wilberforce to fight the slave trade is a remarkable story. The best known among the many hymns he wrote is "Amazing
Grace." One of the stanzas begins, "'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear / and grace my fears relieved."8
It is the grace of God that prompts the right kind of fear and brings the right kind of peace. The story of Newton is that of a man who cast doubt to the wind and held firm to the precious knowledge of the grace of Jesus Christ.
One of Newton's parishioners was William Cowper; in fact, Cowper was his music director. Cowper was not imprisoned, nor did he imprison anyone, but he lived as a prisoner of his own mental torment in repeated bouts of depression. His story reads like a roller-coaster ride to the Celestial City, more often in the Slough of Despond than in the Enchanted Grove. Newton touched Cowper's life, and together they compiled the famed hym-nbook Olney Hymns: In Three
Parts. Cowper's best-known hymn is "God Moves in a Mysterious Way," in which one stanza reads,
Blind unbelief is sure to err And scan His work in vain; God is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain.9
If you have struggled with some aspect of Christianity and still struggle, don't think you are alone. Others have traveled the same road and have eventually found their way back to joy in their relationship with God. My daughter says
that God has the best GPS system. He will bring you back onto the right road, like Christian in The Pilgrim's Progress. God's grace along the way will teach you what to fear and what to embrace as you put your trust in him to one day make it all plain to you.
Yes, fellow pilgrim, there are challenges to our belief. Yes, there are dark nights of the soul. Yes, there are questions that may haunt us until we see Jesus face-to-face. But the light of Jesus Christ will carry you through and put your feet on the solid ground of truth and hope. He has done it for others; he will do it for you. And one day you will hear him say to you,
"Well done! Well done!"