Forms of the World Spirit

t is comfortable to accommodate to that which is in vogue about us, to the forms of the world spirit in our age. This accommodation has been deadly-in the loss of twelve million human lives over the last ten years by abortion. But it does not stop with questions of human life; it is just as evident on virtually every other issue which has been made fashionable by the secularist mentality of the day.

The Socialistic Mentality

Thus in another area we find that a large section of evangelicalism is confusing the kingdom of God with a socialistic program. This too is sheer accommodation to the world spirit around us. A clear example can be found in a newsletter published by a leading evangelical magazine. In a recent issue the newsletter featured the work of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), their social strategy, and their critique of society. As ESA explains:

Summarized briefly, this critique claims that the social problems Christians in this nation are most concerned about (i.e., crime, abortion, lack of prayer, secular humanism, etc.) are important, but are actually symptoms of much larger problems-unjust social structures in the United States-which underlie these legitimate Christian concerns.

The obvious answer, then, is to attack the causes of the disease so the symptoms will go away. ESA spends much of its educational effort trying to acquaint biblical Christians with crucial areas of basic injustices in society and the need to change these for the better.

What are these basic "unjust structures"? ESA believes that most of them (but certainly not all) stem from poverty and the maldistribution of wealth, both on the national and international levels.'

Do you understand what is being said here? Remarkably, ESA is saying that "unjust social structures" and in particular "the maldistribution of wealth" are the real causes of evil in the world. According to ESA it is these things (e.g., unjust social structures/maldistribution of wealth) which cause "crime, abortion, lack of prayer, secular humanism, etc." Just on a factual level this is foolish. There is crime at all levels of society irrespective of wealth; abortion is supported most strongly by the wealthy. And does ESA really believe that changing economic structures would solve the problem of "lack of prayer"? Here the gospel has been reduced to a program for transforming social structures. This is the Marxist line. It does not mean that those who take this position are Communists. But it does mean they have made a complete confusion of the kingdom of God with the basic socialistic concepts. In back of this stands the Enlighten ment idea of the perfectibility of man if only the cultural and economic chains are removed.2

But think further what this means theologically. What has happened to the fall and sin? ESA seems to be saying that changing economic structures is the means of salvation for modern man since only this deals with the basic "causes of the disease." Ironically their program is not radical enough! The basic problem is that of the fall and sin and the heart of man. The basic problem is much deeper than social structures, and by not recognizing this ESA ends up with an understanding of salvation which is very different from what the Scriptures teach. Sin is the problem, and there is no greater sin than modern man's willful defiance of God and his laws both in the area of ideas and actions.

The socialist mentality as promoted by Evangelicals for Social Action and others, and endorsed by much of the evangelical world, is based upon a double error. First and foremost it is wrong theologically, fundamentally distorting the meaning of the gospel. But it is equally wrong in its naive assessment of the redistribution of wealth and its consequences. The answer is not some kind of socialistic or egalitarian redistribution. This would be much more unjust and oppressive than our own system, imperfect though it is. To understand this all we need to do is look at the repressive societies which have resulted from attempts to radically redistribute wealth along socialistic or egalitarian lines. Every attempt at radical redistribution has wrecked the economy and the culture of the country where it was tried, and every Marxist revolution has ended in a blood bath. It has left the people with less, not more, as well as putting them under a totalitarian government. In this respect the comments of economist and historian Herbert Schlossberg are very helpful. Schlossberg points out the "hatred in principle" in the statements of the opinion-makers of the day who call for socialistic redistribution:

The hatred revealed in such statements is all that can be expected in a society that has institutionalized envy and uses the term social justice to describe a system of legalized theft. That should alert us to the cant in the old fraud that property rights can somehow be separated from human rights and are inferior to them. There are no societies that are cavalier toward property rights but which safeguard human rights. The state that lays its hand on your purse will lay it on your person. Both are the acts of a government that despises transcendent law.

Those who think they will replace the competition of capitalism with the cooperation of socialism know nothing of either. . . . Soviet "cooperation" cost by 1959 some 110 million lives. The alternative to free economic activity is not cooperation but coercion.3

I would ask you to think back once again to the illustration of the watershed at the beginning of the second chapter. There I mentioned how the snow lying side by side when it melted would end up a thousand miles apart. And we saw how, in the case of Scripture, two views which seemed at first to be fairly close end up in completely different places, with disastrous consequences both for theology and the culture in which we live. Now when we consider evangelical accommodation to the socialistic mentality, we really find the same thing happening. With its call for justice and compassion it sounds at first like it is the same as, or very close to, what Scripture teaches on justice and compassion. Those advocating the socialist mentality try to use all the right evangelical words and avoid any red-flag socialistic rhetoric. But what they are in fact talking about is "another gospel." And when we look more carefully at what is involved, we find that the socialist mentality ends up in a completely different place, with disastrous consequences theologically and in terms of human rights and human life. A socialistic program is not the answer.4 And when a large section of evangelicalism begins confusing the kingdom of God with a socialistic program,5 this is sheer accommodation to the world spirit of this age. Our response must be confrontation-loving confrontation but nonetheless confrontation. A line must be drawn.

Three Great Weaknesses

But here again we must be careful and have a proper balance. In taking a stand against the socialistic mentality, we need to be careful not to baptize everything in America's past. This is something which I have stressed over the years beginning with my earliest books and lectures, but it needs to be repeated again. There never has been a golden age in the past. There is no age we can look back to, including the Reformation, or the early church, or early America, that was perfect or fully Christian. There were great weaknesses which as Christians we must reject and then work to redress, and I would mention three of these here.

First there is the matter of race, where there were two kinds of abuse. There was slavery based on race, and also racial prejudice as such. Both practices are wrong, and often both were present when Christians had a stronger influence on the consensus than they now have. And yet the church, as the church, did not speak out sufficiently against them. Sadly, Americans indulged in the lie that the black man was not a person and could therefore be treated as a thing. It is remarkable that exactly the same argument was used in the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 to legalize abortion. One hundred and fifty years ago the black man could be enslaved because he was not legally a person; in the last ten years twelve million unborn children have been killed because the Supreme Court decided that they are not persons. As Christians, by identification with our forebears, we must acknowledge this wrong and twisted view of race and beyond this make every effort to eliminate racial prejudice today. We can be grateful for Christian men like Shaftesbury, Wilberforce, and Wesley who, on the basis of the biblical view that there are absolutes, could say that these evils and injustices are absolutely wrong. But we can hardly sit in judgment of past generations if the same lie is used in the wanton destruction of human life today.6

Second, there is the question of the compassionate use of wealth. As I have stressed in the past, this means two things: first, making it with justice; and then using it with real compassion. As a matter of fact, I have said a number of times and places where I hope it counted that I think when Christians get to heaven and they speak of how much they gave to missions, to build schools, and so on, that the Lord is going to tell them it would have been better if they had had less money to give and had made their money with justice.

Third, there is the danger of confusing Christianity with the country. In this area I have stressed first that we must not wrap Christianity in our country's flag,7 and second that we must protest the notion of "manifest destiny" that would permit our nation to do anything it chooses. We are responsible for all that we do and all that God has given to us, and if we trample on his great gifts we will one day know his judgment.'

The Devaluation of History

After acknowledging these grave weaknesses, we must nonetheless recognize that Christianity did in fact have a profoundly positive influence in shaping this country. When historians devaluate too far the Christian influence in founding the country it is neither good history nor honoring to God for the good things which came out of this influence and especially out of Reformation Christianity. There was a massive amount of biblical knowledge in the country in that day which existed in general and especially out of the Great Awakening. This did have a profound influence, and many secular historians agree that there was a general Christian consensus or ethos.

But this is not to be so foolish as to think that all the founders of the United States were Christians. They were not. Everyone knows, for example, that Jefferson was a deist. But even as a deist he knew that a God existed, and this made a drastic difference in how he understood the world. In particular it meant that Jefferson grounded the concept of inalienable rights in the Creator. Even if the concept was defective in Jefferson's case, for example, there is a drastic difference between this and the ideas of the Enlightenment, which produced the wholesale slaughter of the French and Russian Revolutions. Or there is the example of John Witherspoon, the Presbyterian minister and president of what is now Princeton University and the only pastor to sign the Declaration of Independence. He was not always consistent in his thinking, as none of us are. But it is most striking to note what the issue was when, in a sermon, Witherspoon openly named and attacked Thomas Paine, the "Enlightenment man." Witherspoon directly challenged Paine's Enlightenment views concerning the perfectibility of man, contrasting this with the biblical view of the fall and the lostness of man and therefore the lack of perfection in all realms of government.9 Witherspoon was not always correct in his political views. But his Christianity did make a difference in his understanding of the political realities of the day.

But there are those within evangelical circles today who would, under the guise of scholarship, belittle all of this and act as though the Christian consensus was always in a total muddle. Just how far this can be taken may be shown by the example of one Christian historian who carries the muddle all the way back to the Reformation itself. Thus he writes:

[Schaeffer's] confusion rests on his inability to see Protestantism as the religious form of Renaissance humanism. To be sure, Protestants said that their consciences were informed by the Bible, on which authority alone rested ("sola scriptura"). Yet we all know of Protestant inability to agree on what the Bible said, or even on what kind of a book it is.

In his triumphalism, Schaeffer cannot see the ironic and tragic in the Protestant movement, because he refuses to see it as an aspect of the humanist movement itself. In his various works Schaeffer repeatedly invokes the Reformation as the answer to the problem of humanism, when in reality it is part of the problem.10

Do you understand what is being said here? The significance of the Reformation is completely devalued and subordinated to humanism. The Reformation and the Reformers' view of sola scriptura-the Bible as the sole basis for Christian truthis thrown out completely. Everything the Reformation stood for is swallowed up in a morass of synthesis and relativity. Exactly the same line is taken by the relativistic, non-Christian, secularized historians of our day. This is not a dispute over the facts of history; in fact, many non-Christian historians would disagree with this radically disparaging view of Reformation ideas. What we have here is the infiltration of thoroughly secularized thinking presented as if it were evangelical scholarship. Yes, we must stand against those who would naively baptize all in the past and that would wrap Christianity in the country's flag. But we must equally stand against those who would accommodate to the world spirit of this age under the guise of scholarship, and in the process not only distort the facts of history but Christian truth as well."

Academic Infiltration

Sadly we must say that in the area of scholarship the evangelical world has not done well. In every academic discipline the temptation and pressure to accommodate is overwhelming. Evangelicals were right in their rejection of a poor pietism which shut Christianity up into a very narrow area of spiritual life. Evangelicals were right in emphasizing the Lordship of Christ over all areas of culture-art, philosophy, society, government, academics, and so on. But then what happened? Many young evangelicals heard this message, went out into the academic world, and earned their undergraduate and graduate degrees from the finest secular schools. But something happened in the process. In the midst of totally humanistic colleges and universities, and a totally humanistic orientation in the academic disciplines, many of these young evangelicals began to be infiltrated by the antiChristian world view which dominated the thinking of their colleges and professors. In the process, any distinctively evangelical Christian point of view was accommodated to the secularistic thinking in their discipline and to the surrounding world spirit of our age.12 To make the cycle complete, many of these have now returned to teach at evangelical colleges where what they present in their classes has very little that is distinctively Christian.

Note that this criticism is not a call for intellectual retreat and a new anti-intellectualism. Evangelical Christians should be better scholars than non-Christians because they know that there is truth in contrast to the relativism and narrow reductionism of every discipline. But too often Christians have naively entered the academic world with a glassy-eyed fascination and left their critical judgment and Christian truth behind.

The battle we are in rages most intensely in the academic world. Every academic discipline has dominated secularist thinking-especially in the behavioral sciences, the humanities, and the arts. Part of our task as Christians is to carefully understand and study these areas-but then to respond critically from a distinctively Christian point of view. But note, as I pointed out in the preceding chapter, this involves two things: 1) being truly Bible-believing; and 2) facing the results of the surrounding wrong world view with loving, but definite confrontation. Please do not take this lightly. We cannot retreat and shut Christianity up to a narrow view of spirituality; but in the totally secularistic academic world the dangers and the temptations are profound. It is very difficult to live in this world as a college or university student for four years or longer and not become infiltrated by the surrounding world view. And if one is a teacher, the dangers go far beyond this with the overwhelming pressure to compromise one's thinking in order to gain scholarly respectability within disciplines dominated by secularist thinking.

And for those who are professors at evangelical Christian colleges, the responsibility is awesome. Yes, you must clearly and carefully present the full range of learning in your discipline. But this is barely the beginning of your responsibility. Will you then go on to explain the points at which there are fundamental conflicts between the ideas in your discipline and biblical truth? Or will you-in the name of academic freedom, or tolerance, or neutrality-let it all slip by without confrontation? This is not the way the world works. The Marxist sociology professor at the secular university is not interested in neutrality, but will make sure that his ideological position gets across in the classroom. Again I would say, in the area of academic scholarship the evangelical world has often failed to take a clear stand. This of course has not been true of everyone, and we can be thankful for those who have taken a stand. But there has been and is a growing accommodation to the spirit of the age as it finds expression in the various disciplines. And because of this, how many will have come to our schools looking for the bread of life, and leave with only a handful of pebbles? This danger is present in the colleges which are thought of as the best Christian colleges. The problem is not future but present.

False Prophecy

Accommodation, accommodation. How the mindset of accommodation grows and expands. It can be seen once again in the new evangelical call for participation in the World Council of Churches (WCC). It is ironic that just when the secular press was exposing the hypocrisy of the WCC and severely criticizing it, evangelical leaders and influential evangelical publications were praising it. Because it shows such remarkable perception, I will quote at length from Time's article entitled "The Curious Politics of Ecumenism":

To many conservative Christians in Western Europe and the U.S., the World Council of Churches, an umbrella organization for 301 Protestant and Orthodox denominations with more than 400 million members, appears to be an ecclesiastical clone of the United Nations. Responsive to the growing influence of churches in the Third World, the council has seemingly evolved into a forum for relentless denunciations of the sins of American policy and capitalism. Meanwhile, the WCC has what some critics call a see-no-evil policy toward Communist regimes... .

The WCC's sixth assembly at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, which was attended by 838 delegates from 100 countries as well as thousands of visitors, did nothing to dispel the suspicions of anti-Western bias. For example, a committee headed by William P. Thompson, one of the two top leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.), was responsible for drafting last week's formal statement on Afghanistan. Working closely with delegates from Soviet churches, the committee produced a muted document that asked for withdrawal of Soviet troops as part of an overall political settlement; that was one of the few times the U.S.S.R. has been named specifically in a political declaration by the WCC. But the statement also said in effect that Soviet troops should be allowed to stay in Afghanistan until such a settlement is reached, and recommended that aid to the anti-Communist Afghan rebels be cut off. Thompson's committee also produced a harshly worded attack on U.S. Central American policy. The document praised "the life-affirming achievements" of the Nicaraguan government; Cuba was mentioned not at all.

Bishop Alexander Malik of the Church of Pakistan, a union of Anglican and Protestant bodies, demanded that the Afghanistan statement be sent back to committee for a suitable injection of candor: "If any Western nation were involved, I am sure we would have jumped on it with the strongest language available in the dictionary. The U.S.S.R. has committed a great aggression upon a neighbor, and it must be condemned." Malik's recommendation was rejected after Russian Orthodox Archbishop Kirill warned that any stronger statement would present "terrible difficulties" for his church and would be a "challenge to our loyalty to the ecumenical movement."

This was vintage WCC politics. The council is willing to risk further damage to its image, not only because many Western church leaders agree with the attacks on the policies of the U.S. and its allies, but also because silence is supposedly the price that must be paid to keep Soviet bloc churches in the council. This pragmatic-some would say shortsighted-approach also prevents the WCC from addressing the plight of religious believers in the Soviet Union. The most dramatic event of the last assembly, in Nairobi eight years ago, was the publication of an open letter from two Soviet dissidents, Father Gleb Yakunin and Lev Regelson, claiming that the council had been silent when "the Russian Orthodox Church was half destroyed" in the early 1960's, and pleading for action against Soviet persecution."

Later the same article turns to the topic of witnessing and evangelism. Here Time notes that

There was a flurry of excitement at the assembly involving a nonpolitical document titled "Witnessing in a Divided World." Bishop Per Lonning of the Church of Norway (Lutheran) called it a "dangerous setback," because it showed a "lack of missionary urgency" and did not emphasize the uniqueness of Christianity. Agreeing, the delegates voted nearly unanimously for a revision, but in dealing with a bushel of political statements on everything from nuclear arms (yes to a freeze) to Palestinian rights (an emphatic endorsement), they never had a chance to act on the rewritten statement."

Now contrast this with what our own evangelical leaders and press reported. An article in Christianity Today stated:

Evangelicals have been delighted with the new WCC statement on Mission and Evangelism, which shows influence of evangelical theology in its strong call for proclaiming the gospel and personal conversion to Christ....

Subjectively, this was one of the great spiritual experiences of my life. We are dealing with intangibles, but I must report that I have never been among so many supernaturally courteous, gracious Christian people [i.e., the WCC delegates].... Everything seemed dignified by the presence of the Spirit. The only arguments I had in Vancouver were with my fellow evangelicals....

The majority of evangelicals who caucused at the assembly were also enthusiastic, so much so that they produced a statement commending the World Council and inviting evangelicals to add their gifts to the process."

This report went on to discount any Marxist influence, to minimize the Council's being "fuzzy about the uniqueness of salvation in Christ," to defend the Council's call for unilateral disarmament, and in general tried to find some way to make everything that happened at the Vancouver Assembly sound palatable.

Is it possible that the writer of the Christianity Today report was at the same WCC Sixth Assembly meeting that Time was at? One would think that he would have had at least as much insight into the Assembly as a secular magazine such as Time. Again we see that the world often does understand better than an accommodating evangelicalism. It is hard to imagine how this observer could come away with such a naively favorable reportespecially if we consider some of the other things that happened at the Vancouver Assembly.

As an example of how far the accommodation has gone, 200 evangelicals, many of whom are prominent leaders in the evangelical world, signed the statement commending the WCC and calling for more evangelical participation. One of the few evangelical leaders at the Assembly who did not sign the state ment endorsing the WCC was Dr. Peter Beyerhaus, a professor at the University of Tubingen in Germany. In an alternative statement, Dr. Beyerhaus, who has been a long-time observer of the WCC, reported on the Assembly as follows:

To see history in a materialistic context is the chief characteristic of Marxist ideology which in the form of the "Theology of the Poor" has found entrance even into the mission documents of Vancouver....

Speakers who represented traditional Christian doctrines [were featured] side by side with others who expounded radical beliefs incompatible with orthodox biblical convictions. One outstanding example was Dr. Dorothee Solle. She denounced the biblical concept of God and His Lordship, speaking of a "god-movement," and even encouraged her listeners to write "new bibles."

Other speakers encouraged women to make their female experience the starting point of developing a profoundly new theology in which the reverence for the biblically revealed God as our Father is changed into the cult of god-mother.

Non-Christian religions are presented as ways through which Christ Himself gives life to their followers and also speaks to us as Christians. The fear of many that the WCC could move into an increasing syncretism is confirmed by the inclusion of Indian mythology in the worship program ... and by the explicit statement by a leading WCC official ... that an evangelistic revival endangers our dialogue with other religions.

The credibility of the WCC's claim to be a prophetic voice decrying the oppression of human rights is damaged once again by the political one-sidedness in which such violations are pointed out only in the nonMarxist world, while serious offenses by socialist states, whose ecumenical representatives are applauded by the Assembly as passionate advocates for peace and justice, are dealt with mildly or passed over in silence. This applies particularly to the harassment of the churches and the persecution of confessing Christians in these areas.

The decisive shortcoming of the Assembly is the lack of a truly biblical diagnosis of mankind's basic predicament: our separation from God through our sin, and of the biblical remedy, our regeneration by the Holy Spirit through repentance and personal faith in Jesus Christ, resulting in the transformation of our present life and in our everlasting fellowship with God. A rather optimistic view of the human nature and our capability to help ourselves is once again leading to a universalistic view of redemption.16

Dr. Beyerhaus' statement includes much more than this, all giving evidence of the fundamental incompatability of the WCC program and philosophy with historic, Christian orthodoxy. But note carefully. The issue here is not even whether or not we should be in a denomination which is a member of the World Council. This is a matter of individual conscience (though I could not be in such a denomination). Rather, the real issue concerns discipline as one of the true marks of a true church. And here we now have evangelical leaders abandoning the principle of discipline concerning even the central doctrines of the faith, and calling for evangelicals to be content to remain in denominations which are permanently pluralistic-with a mixture of Bible-believing Christians and those holding even the most extreme views of liberal theology. Having given up any idea or any hope of ever using discipline to purify the church, any amount of heresy and untruth is accepted as normal in the church of Christ. Dr. Bey- erhaus' conclusion is very much to the point: "All these observations contribute to our apprehension that the WCC is in danger of becoming a mouthpiece of false prophecy to Christianity.""

The New Utopianism

It is interesting to note that within the WCC agenda there is a whole catalog of issues on which the World Council has "come down on the wrong side," and with which the evangelical world has increasingly accommodated. One that I would mention in particular is related to the proper need for Christians to stand against tyranny-from whatever side it might come, right or left. This includes the tyranny that exists in the Soviet bloc, and the extended tyranny that exists around the globe because of the natural expansionist philosophy of Marxism and the Soviet Union. And note that the Soviet system is totally based on the same view of final reality which under the name "humanism" is producing the destruction of our own country and our own culture.

This of course also needs balance: I would say again that our country was never perfect-our country was never perfect, and now it is certainly less perfect. It has been years since I have prayed for justice on our country; I pray only for mercy. With all the light we have had and the results of the biblical influence, and then to have trampled on what we have had-we deserve God's judgment. However, this cannot cause us to forget that the Soviet position is even further down the road. Loving our neighbor as we should means, first, doing all we can to help those persecuted by that system now (and especially never minimizing the persecution of our Christian brothers and sisters in the Soviet bloc); and second, not assisting the spread of this oppression to other countries when failing to remember that we live in a fallen world, we then support the contemporary vogue of utopian views on disarmament.

The Bible is clear here: I am to love my neighbor as myself, in the manner needed, in a practical way, in the midst of the fallen world, at my particular point of history. This is why I am not a pacifist. Pacifism in this poor world in which we livethis lost world-means that we desert the people who need our greatest help.

Let me illustrate. I am walking down the street and I come upon a big, burly man beating a tiny tot to death-beating this little girl-beating her-beating her. I plead with him to stop. Suppose he refuses? What does love mean now? Love means that I stop him in any way I can, including hitting him. To me this is not only necessary for humanitarian reasons: it is loyalty to Christ's commands concerning Christian love in a fallen world. What about that little girl? If I desert her to the bully, I have deserted the true meaning of Christian love-responsibility to my neighbor. She, as well as he, is my neighbor.

We have, in the Second World War, the clearest illustration anyone could ask for on this point. What about Hitler's terrorism? There was no possible way to stop the awful terror in Hitler's Germany without the use of force. There was no way. As far as I am concerned, this was the necessary outworking of Christian love in the fallen world as it is. The world is an abnormal world. Because of the fall, it is not what God meant it to be. There are many things in this world which grieve us, but we must face them. We never have the luxury of acting in a merely utopian way. Utopian schemes in this fallen world have always brought tragedy. The Bible is never utopian.

We all grieve at any war, and especially at the prospect of nuclear war. But in a fallen world there are many things we grieve over but must nevertheless face. Since World War II, Europeans more than Americans have wanted the protection of nuclear weapons and have demanded this protection. We have arrived at a crazy place, with a wild proliferation of nuclear weapons on both sides. Clearly there must be discussion here, and reduction of this capability if possible. But the fundamental factor has not changed: Europe, even more today than in Winston Churchill's day, would be under the threat of Soviet military and political domination if it were not for the existence of NATO's nuclear weaponry.

In connection with this, it is interesting to note the recent comments of Yves Montand, the French left-wing movie actor. Montand, incidentally, is the husband of Simon Signoret who has been known as the voice of the left for thirty-five years in France, and who has been deep in leftist political activity in Europe. In light of this, Montand's recent statement is remarkable: that the present peace movement and peace demonstrations are more dangerous than Stalin himself.

Unilateral disarmament in this fallen world, especially in the face of aggressive Soviet materialism with its anti-God basis, would be altogether utopian and romantic. It would lead, as utopianism always has in this fallen world, to disaster. It may sound reasonable to talk of a freeze at the present level, or to say, "We won't ever use atomic weapons first." But if we think it through, either of these equals practical unilateral disarmament. It must not be forgotten, in this connection, that a freeze does not impose constraints on existing weapons; no present guarantee of safety would be achieved by such a measure.

One can understand the romanticism of liberal theologians in these matters, since liberalism does not agree with the biblical stress on the fallen nature of this world. One can also understand the pacifism of the "peace churches": they have always taken Christ's command to individuals to turn the other cheek and misguidedly extended it to the state. They ignore the God-given responsibility of the state to protect its people and to stand for justice in a fallen world. Both of these points of view are understandable; but both are mistaken. If they carry the day and determine government policy, then the mistake will become a tragedy.

But when those who call themselves evangelical begin to troop along in the popular, unthinking parade of our day, and begin to be romantic and utopian, it is time to speak openly in opposition. If we accept accommodation at this point, how can we say we love our neighbor?"'

The Feminist Subversion

There is one final area that I would mention where evangelicals have, with tragic results, accommodated to the world spirit of this age. This has to do with the whole area of marriage, family, sexual morality, feminism, homosexuality, and divorce. I bring these together as one topic because they are all directly related and indeed all are part of one of the most significant aspects of human existence.

The Biblical Pattern. Why are marriage and these related aspects of human sexuality so important? The Bible teaches that the marriage relationship is not just a human institution, but rather it is in fact a sacred mystery which, when honored, reveals something about the character of God himself. Thus we find the man-woman relationship of marriage is stressed throughout the Scriptures as a picture, an illustration, a type of the wonderful relationship between the individual and Christ, and between the church and Christ. Thus, Ephesians 5:25-32 reads:

Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church-for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church.

Notice how the Word of God very carefully intertwines this description of the normative marriage relationship with the description of the church's relationship to Christ. The two ideas are so fused that it is almost impossible to separate them even with, as it were, an instrument as sharp as a surgeon's scalpel. Thus we read in Ephesians 5:21-25 and 33:

Nor is this an isolated passage, for we find the same image of bride and bridegroom repeatedly in the Old and New Testaments. (See, for example, John 3:28, 29; Romans 7:1-4; Jeremiah 3:14; 2 Corinthians 11:1, 2; and Revelation 19:6-9.)

Thus the husband-wife relationship in marriage, and the relationship of the individual and the church to Christ are inti mately related. Just as there is a real oneness between the human bride and bridegroom who really love each other, and yet the two personalities are not confused, so in our oneness with Christ, Christ remains Christ and the bride remains the bride. This great understanding of the way Scripture parallels the human man-woman relationship and our union with Christ guides our thinking in two directions. First, it makes us understand the greatness and the wonder and the beauty of marriage; and second, it helps us to understand profoundly something of the relationship between God and his people and between Christ and his church.

Shattered Lives. Now what has happened to this beautiful picture of marriage in our generation? It has been destroyed. And we must say with tears that the destruction has been nearly as complete in our own evangelical circles. If we look at many of our evangelical leaders and at much of our evangelical literature we find the same destructive views on divorce, extreme feminism, and even homosexuality as we find in the world. Just how far the situation has gone among evangelicals in the area of divorce is illustrated clearly by the following observations and quotes provided by Os Guinness:

For instance, a Christian conservative writes that the break-up of his marriage was a sad but "healthy new beginning for each of us in our own way." And he continues that he was called by faith like Abraham to leave the security of marriage to embark on a spiritual pilgrimage toward emotional authenticity.

Another writes, "I hope my wife will never divorce me, because I love her with all my heart. But if one day she feels I am minimizing her or making her feel inferior or in any way standing in the light that she needs to become a person God meant her to be, I hope she'll be free to throw me out even if she's one hundred. There is something more important than our staying married, and it has to do with integrity, personhood, and purpose."

The ultimate in refinement are the disingenuous ones who claim to be separating out of faithfulness to Christ! Once this would have meant a Christian husband or wife left by the non-Christian partner because of the faith itself. Now it often means a Christian divorcing another Christian over a Christian issue.

Would you have thought, for example, that a commitment to a simple lifestyle could ever lead to divorce? Yes, one writer urges today, "The split finally comes when one recognizes that this kind of conscience can't be compromised. There are levels of importance and urgency in biblical morality. And Jesus' driving concern for the coming of the Kingdom, as a counter to the culture, far outweighed his concern for the maintenance of family structures. There can be as much sin involved in trying to perpetuate a dead or meaningless relationship as in accepting the brokenness, offering it to God, and going on from there." Disobeying Christ out of faithfulness to Christ! The irony is exquisite.19

Yes, there must be balance here too. We must have compassion for the divorced person-and for all of those in the whole range of relationships that are shattered by divorce. But under the guise of love, much of the evangelical world has abandoned any concept of right or wrong in divorce and any pretext of dealing with divorce according to the boundaries established in the Scriptures.

Subversive Influence. And we cannot talk about divorce without speaking immediately about extreme feminism, for this certainly is one of the largest influences contributing to divorce today. It is interesting to note what the editor of one magazine which calls itself evangelical says about feminism:

For years, the right has argued that feminism threatens to corrupt Western values and to undermine American institutions. I have never understood their concern; I thought they were just afraid of change.

But increasingly I suspect they are correct. Feminism, at least in some forms, is profoundly subversive.

That's why I like it.20

This evangelical editor is right at least in one sense. The world spirit of our age espouses an extremely strong and subversive feminist view which teaches that the home and family are ways of oppressing women; that personal fulfillment and career must come before one's marriage and the needs of children; that housework and child care are demeaning; that it is a waste of one's talents to be a full-time homemaker. All of this, of course, has had a devastating effect upon the family, but just as much upon the whole of society as those who have grown up with deprived family relationships live their shattered lives in the world.21

The key to understanding extreme feminism centers around the idea of total equality, or more properly the idea of equality without distinction. Here again we must have balance. The Bible does not teach the inequality of men and women. Each person, man or woman, stands equally before God as a person created in his image, and at the same time as a sinner in need of salvation. And because of this, each person, whether male or female, has at the same time both an infinite equality of worth before God and one another, and a total equality of need for Christ as Savior. But at the same time, this equality is not an equality of monolithic uniformity or "sameness" between men and women. It is an equality which preserves the fundamental differences between the sexes and which allows for the realization and fulfillment of these differences; but at the same time, it affirms everything that men and women have in common-as both being created in the image of God, and as complementary expressions of his image. Thus we must affirm two things simultaneously: because men and women are both created in the image of God there is a common equality which has enormous implications for all of life; and because men and women are both created with distinctions as complementary expressions of the image of God, this has enormous implications for all of life-in the family, in the church, and in the society as a whole. And in this wonderful complementarity there is an enormous range of diversity. But at the same time, this is not freedom without form. The Bible gives enormous freedom to men and women, but it is freedom within the bounds of biblical truth and within the bounds of what it means to be complementary expressions of the image of God.

In balance, it must also be emphasized that because we are all fallen, men have often corrupted their place by turning it into tyranny. It is part of the husband's responsibility to see that, as far as possible, the wife is fulfilled. This too is part of the biblical form.

In contrast to this marvelous balance, the world spirit in our day would have us aspire to autonomous absolute freedom in the area of male and female relationships-to throw off all form and boundaries in these relationships and especially those boundaries taught in the Scriptures. Thus our age aspires not to biblical equality and complementarity in expressing the image of God, but a monolithic equality which can best be described as equality without distinction-that is, without taking into account any differences between men and women and how these affect every area of life. In the end equality without distinction is destructive to both men and women because it does not take into account their true identity and the distinctives as well as the commonalities that are bound up in what it means to be man and woman.

Tragic Consequences. I have dwelt at length on this because it is an absolutely crucial point. To deny the truth of what it means to be male and female as taught in the Scriptures is to deny something essential about the nature of man and about the character of God and his relationship to man. But this denial has equally tragic consequences for society and human life. If we accept the idea of equality without distinction, we logically must accept the ideas of abortion and homosexuality. For if there are no significant distinctions between men and women, then certainly we cannot condemn homosexual relationships. And if there are no significant distinctions, this fiction can be maintained only by the use of abortion-on-demand as a means of coping with the most profound evidence that distinctions really do exist.

Again we see that an idea which sounds at first so close to a genuinely biblical idea ends up in a completely different place. The idea of absolute, autonomous freedom from God's boundaries flows into the idea of equality without distinction, which flows into the denial of what it truly means to be male and female, which flows into abortion and homosexuality, and the destruction of the home and the family, and ultimately to the destruction of our culture. Once more we must say sadly that the evangelical world has not done well here. There are those who call themselves evangelicals and who are among the evangelical leadership who completely deny the biblical pattern for male and female relationships in the home and church. There are many who accept the idea of equality without distinction and deliberately set aside what the Scriptures teach at this point.22 And there are others who call themselves evangelical and then affirm the acceptability of homosexuality and even the idea of homosexual "marriage. "23

Bending the Bible. But note: this cannot be done without directly denying the authority of Scripture in the area of sexual morality. This is not a dispute over a matter of interpretation; it is a direct and deliberate denial of what the Bible teaches in this area. Some evangelical leaders, in fact, have changed their views about inerrancy as a direct consequence of trying to come to terms with feminism. There is no other word for this than accommodation. It is a direct and deliberate bending of the Bible to conform to the world spirit of our age at the point where the modern spirit conflicts with what the Bible teaches. Another example of this in the area of homosexuality, by an author who calls herself an evangelical, is the following:

It's true that some Christians insist that homosexuals can change how they feel-indeed that they should change. But other Christians have begun questioning that notion-and not just capriciously but after careful Scriptural, theological, historical, and scientific study.24

Perhaps unwittingly this author has given a concise description of how accommodation works. First one starts questioning, based upon what the world about us is saying, then one looks at Scripture, then theology, then scientific study-until finally what the Scriptures teach is completely subjected to whatever view is currently accepted by the world. The above author's conclusions reflect this in a remarkably creative way: homosexuality is similar to "handedness." That is, some people are righthanded and some people are left-handed; some people are heterosexual and some people are homosexual. And one is just as good as the other.

It is hard to imagine how far these things have gone. Evangelicalism is deeply infiltrated with the world spirit of our age when it comes to marriage and sexual morality. Few would go so far as the extremes mentioned above. But there are many who quietly tolerate these views and in practice, if not in principle, view the biblical teaching on marriage and order in the home and church as quaint anachronisms which are culturally irrelevant in the modern world. For some the accommodation is conscious and intentional; for many more it involves their unreflective acquiescence to the prevailing spirit of the age. But in either case the results are essentially the same.

Believing God's Word. Why is this whole area of marriage and sexuality so important? First, because the Bible says that it is and speaks in the strongest terms about those who violate what God has established in this area:

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9, 10)

And again speaking specifically about homosexuality:

...God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. (Romans 1:26, 27)25

God condemns sexual sin in the strongest language. This is not to say that sexual sin is worse than any other sin. And to be consistent with what the Bible teaches, we must take a strong stand against every kind of sin. At the same time, we can never forget that God very strongly condemns sexual sin and he never allows us to tone down on the condemnation of that sin.

Why is this point so important? The first reason, of course, is simply because God says so. God is the Creator and the Judge of the universe; his character is the law of the universe, and when he tells us a thing is wrong, it is wrong.

Second, we must never forget that God has made us in our relationships to really fulfill that which he made us to be, and therefore a right sexual relationship is for our good as we are made. If we do not follow God's pattern for marriage and sexual morality, it will be destructive to us personally and for our society as a whole.

Third, the denial of God's pattern for marriage and sexual morality shatters the meaning of God's relationship with his people as illustrated in the Scriptures' teaching on marriage and sexual morality. It is not just a matter of what is right and wrong on a human level; it is a denial of the truth of God and his relationship to his people. If we do not follow God's pattern, we destroy the true picture of what a Christian individually and as part of the church is.

Finally, we must say that this applies in particular to the order within the family. As we have seen already, the Bible paints a beautiful picture of the relationship of husband and wife in marriage, likening this to the relationship between Christ and the church:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church-for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:21-33)

This is not oppression, as so many today even in the evangelical world would have us believe. It is a beautiful picture of what marriage should be, but equally of the love of Christ for the church. To reject this not only destroys the marriage relationship, but it equally destroys the truth of Christ's unchanging love for the church and the authority of the Bible in the area of sexual morality.

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