CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 6
Worldliness
Whether we see this as the judgment of God (which surely it is) or the inevitable results of social chaos makes little difference. Unless the mentality of accommodation within the evangelical world changes, this is surely what we can expect. This will certainly mean that the fiction of a united evangelicalism will have to be faced with honesty, and some will have the courage to draw a line-drawing a line lovingly, and drawing a line publicly. There must be loving confrontation, but confrontation. This also means not accommodating to the form that the world spirit takes today as it rolls on with no limits, claiming to be autonomous. In contrast to this, the Bible offers true freedom with form and a way of life which meets the deepest human needs. The Bible gives not just moral limits but absolutes and truth in regard to the whole spectrum of life.
This next sentence is crucial. To accommodate to the world spirit about us in our age is the most gross form of worldliness in the proper definition of the word. And unhappily, today we must say that in general the evangelical establishment has been accommodating to the forms of the world spirit as it finds expression in our day. I would say this with tears-and we must not in any way give up hoping and praying. We must with regret remember that many of those with whom we have a basic disagreement over these issues of accommodation are brothers and sisters in Christ. But in the most basic sense, the evangelical establishment has become deeply worldly.'
Confrontation
All that I have said in my book The Mark of the Christian and in the preceding chapters of this book must stand.' We must indeed give a practical demonstration of love in the midst of the differences. But at the same time God's truth and the work of Christ's church both insist that truth demands loving confrontation, but confrontation. And know that it is not as if we are talking about minor differences. The differences are already there in the evangelical world, and trying to cover them over is neither faithfulness to truth nor faithfulness to love.
There are three possible positions: 1) unloving confrontation; 2) no confrontation; and 3) loving confrontation. Only the third is biblical. And there must be a hierarchy of priorities. All things may be important, but all are not on the same level of needing confrontation at a given time and place. The chasm is: not conforming to the world spirit of autonomous freedom in our age, and obedience to God's Word. And this means living in obedience to the full inerrant authority of the Bible in the crucial moral and social issues of the day just as much as in the area of doctrine. Obedience to God's Word is the watershed. And the failure of the evangelical world to take a clear and distinctively biblical stand on the crucial issues of the day can only be seen as a failure to live under the full authority of God's Word in the full spectrum of life.
Yes, there must be balance and holiness standing together with love. But that does not mean constant and growing accommodation and compromise-moving along step by step, fitting into the world's position in our day. It does not mean pretending that there is such a thing as a unified evangelicalism. Evangelicalism is already divided at the point of the watershed. And the two halves will end up miles apart. If truth is indeed truth, it stands in antithesis to nontruth. This must be practiced in both teaching and practical action. A line must be drawn.
The Weapon of Connotations
Now we come back to where we started this part of the book, with names and issues: I used to shift away uncomfortably when I was called a "fundamentalist," because of the negative connotation which had become attached to it. But now it seems that as soon as one stands in confrontation against that which is unbiblical (instead of accommodation), as soon as one takes such a stand, one is automatically labeled "fundamentalist." That is the way Kenneth Woodward used it in Newsweek-as a putdown. And when Bible-believing Christians who are brothers and sisters in Christ get taken in this way by the connotation of words, it is much sadder.3
Let us also think of the term "The New Right." There is an extreme right to be leaned against. But this term "The New Right" too has become a term with a negative connotation and is used as a putdown. When one examines this, it too is usually not defined and often seems to refer to anyone who-is ready to stand against the slide in our day rather than going along with accommodation. But note. If it is fair to talk of "The New Right" and the religious "Right Wing," then it must be equally fair to speak of the religious "Left Wing"-concerning those within evangelicalism who have accommodated to the dominant form of the world spirit of our day. I have not done so, for I dislike the name-calling attacks which some have used, instead of dealing with facts and content as I have tried to do. But if I had used "Left Wing" to discredit what I have been describing, it would not have been unfair.
I would say again there must be balance. Our country never was fully Christian, but it was different from that which grew out of the world view of the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution. And up until the lifetime of many who will read this book, it was vastly different than it is today-because there was the clear influence of a Christian consensus or ethos. Certainly what I have stressed many times is correct: merely being conservative is no better than being nonconservative per se. Conservative humanism is no better than liberal humanism; authoritarianism from the left is no better than authoritarianism from the right. What is wrong is wrong, no matter what tag is placed on it.
But with the term "The New Right," as it is often used today-and too often by Christians-it seems to mean that on all the issues we have spoken of in this chapter, there is a willingness to take a stand (even to have balanced and loving confrontation) rather than the automatic mentality of accommodation. And if this is so, we must not shy away from the issues merely because some would use the weapon of connotations against us, especially when these terms can have the possibility of meaning something quite different when analyzed. A sensible person must conclude that all such terms can mean different things as used in different ways. And then we should go on hoping that our brothers and sisters in Christ who should know better will not use the wrong connotations, without proper definition and analysis. This is the case whether we do or do not care to use any of these terms in regard to ourselves. We are to reject what is wrong regardless of tags, not fearing proper confrontation regardless of the tags then applied.
May Day
In closing this chapter, I would ask each one reading this book one final question. If the Christians in this country, and the evangelical leaders in particular, had been in Poland over the last few years instead of in the United States, would they have been on the side of confrontation or on the side of accommodation? Would they have marched in great personal danger in the Constitution Day protests and in the May Day demonstrations? Or would they have been in the ranks of acceptable accommodation? The Polish government is great in using terms with adverse connotations as weapons: "hooligans"; "extremists"! They know how to use names to shut up the people.
I cannot be sure where many Christians in this country would have marched in light of the extent of the accommodation in our country-where there are no bullets, no water cannons, no tear gas, and most rarely any prison sentences.
It does seem to me that evangelical leaders, and every evangelical Christian, have a very special responsibility not to just go along with the "blue-jean syndrome" of not noticing that their attempts to be "with it" so often take the same forms as those who deny the existence or holiness of the living God.
Accommodation leads to accommodation-which leads to accommodation...