1 Finding The Point Of Tension
COMMUNICATING TO ONE OF MY KIND
Communication means that an idea which I have in my mind passes through my lips (or fingers—in most art forms) and reaches the other person’s mind. Adequate communication means that when it reaches the recipient’s mind, it is substantially the same as when it left mine. This does not mean that it will be completely the same, but that he will nevertheless have substantially realized the point I wish to convey. The words that we use are only a tool for translating the ideas which we wish to communicate; we are not trying to convey merely a succession of verbal sounds.
Because we must use words in order to communicate ideas, there may be several language problems. The most obvious one arises between different language groups. If we want to speak to a man, we must first learn his language.
Another problem is that of time. In the course of history language changes in meaning; words may not have the same meaning today as they did in an earlier age. Language naturally changes its meaning as time passes, and this is uniquely true today with the great differences above and below the line of despair.
A further language barrier comes as we try to talk to people of a very different social background from ourselves, for example, those in the deep slums.
In none of these cases do the language problems solve themselves automatically. If we wish to communicate, then we must take time and trouble to learn our hearers’ use of language so that they understand what we intend to convey. This is particularly difficult today for us as Christians when we want to use a word like God or guilt in a strictly defined sense rather than as a connotation word, because the concepts of these words have been changed universally. In a case like this, either we must try to find a synonymous word without a false connotation, or else we have to define the word at length when we use it, so that we make sure our hearer understands as fully as possible what we are conveying. In this latter case we are no longer using the word as a technical word, in the sense that we assume a common definition.
I suggest that if the word (or phrase) we are in the habit of using is no more than an orthodox evangelical cliché which has become a technical term among Christians, then we should be willing to give it up when we step outside our own narrow circle and talk to the people around us. If, on the other hand, the word is indispensable, such as the word God, then we should talk at sufficient length to make ourselves clear. Technical words, if they are used without sufficient explanation, may mean that outsiders really do not hear the Christian message at all and that we ourselves, in our churches and missions, have become an introverted and isolated language group.
As we turn to consider in more detail how we may speak to people of the twentieth century, we must emphasize first of all that we cannot apply mechanical rules. We, of all people, should realize this, for as Christians we believe that personality really does exist and is important. We can lay down some general principles, but there can be no automatic application. If we are truly personal, as created by God, then each individual will differ from everyone else. Therefore each person must be dealt with as an individual, not as a case or statistic or machine. If we would work with these people, we cannot apply the things we have dealt with in this book mechanically. We must look to the Lord in prayer, and to the work of the Holy Spirit, for the effective use of these things.
Furthermore, we must remember that the person to whom we are talking, however far from the Christian faith he may be, is an image-bearer of God. He has great value, and our communication to him must be in genuine love. Love is not an easy thing; it is not just an emotional urge but an attempt to move over and sit in the other person’s place and see how his problems look to him. Love is a genuine concern for the individual. As Jesus Christ reminds us, we are to love that individual “as ourselves.” This is the place to begin. Therefore, to be engaged in personal “witness” as a duty or because our Christian circle exerts a social pressure on us is to miss the whole point. The reason we do it is that the person before us is an image-bearer of God, and he is an individual who is unique in the world. This kind of communication is not cheap. To understand and speak to sincere but utterly confused twentieth-century people is costly. It is tiring; it will open you to temptations and pressures. Genuine love, in the last analysis, means a willingness to be entirely exposed to the person to whom we are talking.
The one before us is our kind. The Bible teaches that there are two humanities; yet looking at it another way, there is only one humanity. There are two humanities in the sense that there are those still in rebellion against God, and there are those who have returned to God through Jesus Christ. But this should not dull us to the fact that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.” This does not just mean that the whole human race is biologically one, in the sense that we can reproduce together, but that we are all descended from Adam as a common ancestor. Thus, emotionally as well as intellectually, we must look at the man before us as our kind. This man is our counterpart; he is lost, but so once were we. We are one flesh, one blood, one kind.
Finally, as we consider how we are to communicate to man, we must bear in mind that we are speaking to him as a unit. We are not merely dealing with just one part of him called the “soul” in an attempt to get that to heaven. We are conscious that the Bible teaches the unity of the personality. So as we try to communicate in this wholeness this must be reflected in our attitude, as well as in what we say.
LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS
We can look now at some of the general principles to guide our communication with twentieth-century man.
Let us remember that every person we speak to, whether shop girl or university student, has a set of presuppositions, whether he or she has analyzed them or not. The dot in the diagram represents a person’s non-Christian presuppositions; the arrow points to what would be the logical conclusion of those non-Christian presuppositions.
If a man were completely logical to his presuppositions, he would come out at the line on the right. If he arrived there in thinking and life, he would be consistent to his presuppositions.
But, in fact, no non-Christian can be consistent to the logic of his presuppositions. The reason for this is simply that a man must live in reality, and reality consists of two parts: the external world and its form, and man’s “mannishness,” including his own “mannishness.” No matter what a man may believe, he cannot change the reality of what is. As Christianity is the truth of what is there, to deny this, on the basis of another system, is to stray from the real world:
Every man, therefore, irrespective of his system, is caught. As he tries intellectually to extend his position in a logical way and then live within it, he is caught by the two things which, as it were, slap him across the face. Without indicating that his psychology or philosophy is correct, Carl Gustav Jung has correctly observed that two things cut across every man’s will—the external world with its structure, and those things which well up from inside himself. Non-Christian presuppositions simply do not fit into what God has made, including what man is. This being so, every man is in a place of tension. Man cannot make his own universe and then live in it.
The Bible takes this point a step further when it says that, even in hell, a man cannot be consistent to his non-Christian presuppositions: “If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou [God] art there.” Man will be separated from communion with God in hell, but no one is going to be able to form hell to make their own universe in a limited area. Man there will still be in the universe of God. Hence, even in hell, a man cannot be consistent to his non-Christian presuppositions.
In this present life it is the same. It is impossible for any non-Christian individual or group to be consistent to their system in logic or in practice. Thus, when you face twentieth-century man, whether he is brilliant or an ordinary man of the street, a man of the university or the docks, you are facing a man in tension; and it is this tension which works on your behalf as you speak to him. If I did not know this from the Word of God and personal experience, I would not have the courage to step into the circles I do. A man may try to bury the tension and you may have to help him find it, but somewhere there is a point of inconsistency. He stands in a position which he cannot pursue to the end; and this is not just an intellectual concept of tension, it is what is wrapped up in what he is as a man.
TORN BY TWO CONSISTENCIES
Christian apologetics do not start somewhere beyond the stars. They begin with man and what he knows about himself. When a man is lost, he is lost against all that there is, including what he is. Therefore, when he stands before God in judgment, God, in order to point out how false his position has been, will only need to refer to what he as an individual has known of the external world and “mannishness.” As far as morals are concerned, man will only have to be judged according to the standards he himself has laid down in condemning others, for, as Paul makes clear, he then proceeds deliberately to break even his own standards.
Hence, the person before you is not in a vacuum. He knows something of the external world, and he knows something of himself.
Every person is somewhere along the line between the real world and the logical conclusion of his or her non-Christian presuppositions. Every person has the pull of two consistencies, the pull towards the real world and the pull towards the logic of his system. He may let the pendulum swing back and forth between them, but he cannot live in both places at once. He will be living nearer to the one or to the other, depending on the strength of the pull at any given time. To have to choose between one consistency or the other is a real damnation for man. The more logical a man who holds a non-Christian position is to his own presuppositions, the further he is from the real world; and the nearer he is to the real world, the more illogical he is to his presuppositions.
THE TENSIONS ARE FELT IN DIFFERING STRENGTHS
We have said that every person, however intelligent or lacking in intelligence, has stopped somewhere along the line towards the consistent conclusion of his own position. Some people are prepared to go further from the real world than others in an attempt to be more logical to their presuppositions. The French existentialists Camus and Sartre exhibited this:
Sartre said that Camus was not sufficiently consistent on the basis of their mutual presuppositions. The reason for this was because Camus never gave up “hope,” centered in random personal happiness, though it went against the logic of his position. Or as was stated when Camus received the Nobel prize, because he never gave up the search for morals, though the world seemed to be without meaning. These are the reasons why, of the two, Camus was more loved in the intellectual world. He never got the real world sorted out, as we have seen from his book The Plague, but he was nearer to it than Sartre.
Sartre was correct to say that Camus was illogical to their presuppositions; but as we saw before, he could not be consistent either. When he signed the Algerian Manifesto, taking a position as though morals have real meaning, he too was being inconsistent to his presuppositions. Thus Sartre was also in tension.
Each person may move up or down the line at different times in their lives, according to their circumstances, but most people more or less stabilize at one point. Every non-Christian, whether he is sleeping under the bridges in Paris or is totally bourgeois, is somewhere along the line.
This is not an abstraction, for each of these persons is created in the image of God, and thus is in tension because within himself there are things which speak of the real world. Men in different cultures have different standards for morals, but there is no one who does not have some moral motions. Follow a modern girl through her day. She may seem totally amoral. But if you were to get to know her you would find that, at some point, she felt the pull of morals. Love may carry different expressions, but all men have some motions of love. The individual will feel this tension in different ways—with some it will be beauty, with some it will be significance, with some it will be rationality, with some it will be the fear of nonbeing.
Man today seeks to deflect this tension by saying that he is no more than a machine. But if he were no more than a machine, he would find no difficulty in proceeding step by step down the line to the logical conclusion of his non-Christian presuppositions. Man is not a machine, however, even if he says he is.
Suppose that a satellite were put into orbit around the earth with a camera that was able to photograph everything on the world’s surface. If this information was then fed back to a giant computer that did not need programming, it might calculate that everything behaved mechanically. But the final observer is not a computer but the individual man. There is always one person in the room who does not allow everything to be seen as machinelike; it is myself, the observer, because I know myself.
Christians must be careful at this place. Though the Bible says men are lost, it does not say they are nothing. When a man says he is a machine or nothing, he makes himself less than the Bible’s view of fallen man.
Therefore, the first consideration in our apologetics for modern man, whether factory-hand or research student, is to find the place where his tension exists. We will not always find it easy to do this. Many people have never analyzed their own point of tension. Since the Fall man is separated from himself. Man is complicated, and he tries to bury himself in himself. Therefore, it will take time and it will cost something to discover what the person we are speaking to often has not yet discovered for himself. Down inside of himself man finds it easy to lie to himself. We, in love, looking to the work of the Holy Spirit, must reach down into that person and try to find where the point of tension is.