Our consideration of the content of the Christian mind has ranged through two major areas so far: first, the way reality is, and second, what human life and culture are like. Under the first topic we discussed these points: Reality is Created, Reality is Flawed, Reality is Redeemed in Christ, God is for Real, and Creation is Revelatory of God. Under the second we discussed the point that Man Is God’s Image Bearer. We now continue to discuss what human life and culture are like in a Christian perspective.

(7) Life Is Whole

A Christian mind is aware that life is whole. It is not susceptible to partition into two areas, a "spiritual" and a "natural" compartment. Like Christ’s garment, it is woven without a seam.
We are accustomed to thinking of our spiritual lives – our worship, devotions, prayer. Bible study, and witnessing –as directed by the Word and Spirit of God and under the lordship of Christ. But the rest of life – even though we are quick to assert that Christ is Lord of all – often operates in practice on a different wavelength. We manage our businesses according to the best management theory. We do our research by means of scientific method, which claims rigorously to exclude any element of faith or revelation. We conduct our politics in terms of the democratic way of life and educate our children in the American public schools because education, like politics, is part of the "natural" area of life. Caught up in the "consumer" way of life, intent upon perpetrating American economic growth patterns, and committed to the defense of an absolute right to private property (an idea which would have seemed strange indeed to an old Testament Israelite who held his land as a trust from God), we find it difficult to realize that in ways like these we may be denying in practice that lordship of Christ which we endorse so enthusiastically in our creedal theory. Secular/sacred, value/fact, theology/science, faith/reason, spiritual/natural – these are dualisms in which we live with little sense of inconsistency.
Yet they are inconsistent. When the Scriptures say that in Christ "all things hold together" (Col. 1:17 ARV, margin) they insist that His rule makes a difference in business management practices, in household finance and upkeep, in scholarship, in every facet of our lives. When they say, "do all to the glory of God" (I Cor. 10:31), they are telling us that it is possible to please God by the mind-set out of which we perform even the most routine, ordinary tasks of everyday life. It is not that we may not utilize the insights of non-Christian experts; it is that the mind-set into which we receive those insights should be holistic and Christ-centered. It should be one which sees creation as revelatory of God, recognizes the calling of God to serve Him in all our handling of creation, and seeks to fulfill the "royal law of liberty" (love to God, neighbor, ands self) in all that we do.
The reason for rejecting a dualistic way of life is that all of life is religious. "Secular" is really, as one writer has suggested, a "spiritual" word! The "natural" area of life is just as "spiritual" as the spiritual area, because all of life for humans is religiously directed.
The source of life-direction for each human being lies in the heart, that central citadel of selfhood that the Bible emphasizes as being of paramount importance. "Keep thy heart will all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." Proverbs 4:23) More fundamental in the Biblical discussion of man than soul/body or spirit/body is the concept of the heart as the secret center of humanness, the pilot house which selects and follows a particular course through the sea of life. It is there that God constantly bears witness to Himself through creation, Scripture, and/or Christ, though more often than not the witness is disregarded because of the wreckage sin has wrought in us. Hence the anguished cry of the psalmist, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." (Psalm 51:10) And hence the delightful comfort of the new covenant promise that God will put his law into our inward parts and write it on our hearts. (Jer. 31:33). Life is whole, and it is all lived out of the heart.
One of the rich rewards of holistic concept of life is that it brings peace. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee; because he trusteth in thee." (Is. 26:3) "In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Jesus Christ." (Phil. 4:6-7) the promises apply just as truly to economic thoughts, engineering thoughts, as to theological or "spiritual" ones. For example, the Sermon on the Mount is proposing a new and radical economic theory when it says, "Seek ye first His kingdom and His righteousness (justice) and all these things (economic needs) will be added unto you." The Christian mind is one that recognizes the integrity of life rooted in Jesus Christ who, as the Word of God, has made, upholds, and renews all things. (Col. 1:20)

(8) Life Is Service To Some God or Other

Closely allied to the concept of the wholeness of life is the Biblical revelation that all of life for each one of us is lived in the service of some god or other. We are accustomed to thinking of institutional church life as service to God. So we speak of ministers or missionaries as being in "full time Christian, or kingdom, service." But the Bible does not limit service in this way. Jesus said a person can not serve both God and mammon. The implication is that one must serve one or the other. Paul echoes the concept when he says in Romans 6:16, "Know ye not, that to whom ye present yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" He is not talking of cultic or "religious" service in the narrow sense; all of life is service either to the true God in Jesus Christ or to some false god of our own choosing.
This understanding shed light on the Biblical proscription of idolatry. Modern Christians sometimes think that idolatry was an Old Testament problem that 20^th century people are not troubled with. The neglected witness of the New Testament to the problem ought to have abolished such a thought pattern. One reason why it hasn’t is probably our definition of idolatry. As Roper has pointed out in Biblical Foundations of Radical Discipleship, idolatry is presented in the Bible more in terms of service than of worship. (cf. For example, Joshua 24:14-15). In that light the modern world suddenly teems with false gods – progress, evolution, the autonomous human intellect, technology, free enterprise, democracy, communism, etc. These are forces to which men look for the solution of their life problems. This poses the danger of Old Israel before the captivity. They worshipped Jehovah and the idols at the same time and did not feel the strain (cf Jer. 44:15-19). The same thing can happen today if we live dualistically.
When God made man and woman, he put them in the Garden of Eden with the command to "dress it and keep it." (Gen. 2:15) This command elaborates on that of Genesis 1:28, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over everything that moveth upon the earth." So far from being withdrawn when the first parents sinned, the command is repeated in Psalm 8 and again in Hebrews 2. It is man’s task in the world. He has been placed here to conserve and to give shape to the created earth. He is God’s representative, God’s image bearer, charged with bringing out of the created world, both physical and non-physical, all that he can bring in love to God, his neighbor, and himself. He is to do this as a prophet who understands and explains what life and the world are all about in Biblical perspective, a priest who brings healing among men and offers up the praise which puts words and music to the unspoken praise of all created things, and a king who builds a civilization in the service and to the honor of God, the Creator-Redeemer. This task is not accomplished merely by going to church, reading the Bible, or saying our prayers. We do it in our marrying, family rearing, farming, manufacturing, in our governing, our communicating (the media), etc. NonChristians do these things in response to gods of their own choosing (Rom. 1:25). Christians are called to do them within the confines of the redemptive beachhead that Christ has established in the world – His kingdom. When He began His ministry, He proclaimed the arrival of the kingdom. When he had risen form the dead and was ascending to heaven, He proclaimed it anew in the Great Commission: "all authority has been given unto me, in heaven and on earth," now, go . . . and make disciples!" Our cultural and social activities are to be as much a proclamation of the Gospel as our sermons, Dualism has robbed us of this vision and so has robbed the church of much of its power.
This point is clarified by the Biblical mandate to confess Jesus as Lord (Romans 10:9-10). In yet another instance of living dualistically, we have reduced this confession to something that we say about what we believe. But the Bible doesn’t let us off so easily. It says we are to witness our confession, as Christ did (I Timothy 6:13, cf. Vs. 11-16). And the word for "witness" is the word from which we derive the English word "martyr." Witnessing and confessing, then, have much more to do with our lives than with our words. This is why John says we are to love, not in word or with the tongue, but in deed and truth (I John 3:18). It also shows why James propounds his famous alternative, " . . . show me thy faith apart from thy works, and I by my works will show thee my faith.," We confess Christ in our socio-economic lives, in our political lives, in our educational and working and recreational lives more effectively and believably than we do with our words. So Goudzwaard says,

"Socioeconomic life is always a kind of confession in the sense of making known, or even unconsciously betraying, what a person’s life is all about, what he really lives for, and where the meaning of his life lies. Whether we want to or not, everyone – Christian and non-Christian – makes a confession in this way. No one can live without a lord, and no one can refrain from making confession." (see footnote 1)

All of which is to say that our lives are lived in the service to some god or other, and it is important that the god we profess with our lips should be the same god that we really serve with our lives – in all their social and cultural dimensions.
The importance of this concept is emphasized by the Biblical revelation that people become like the gods they serve. We are familiar with this idea in the Christian context of being foreordained to be conformed to Christ’s image (Romans 8:29) and of being like Him because we see Him as He is (I John 3:2), but perhaps we are not so aware that these Biblical promises are part of a deeper principle in God’s creation, i.e. that people always come to be like the gods they serve. The Christian’s conformity to Christ is not an automatic thing; it is the product of a life lived in the worship and service of Christ! By the same token, people who worship and serve idols get to be like the gods they serve (Psalm 115:8; 135:18). Hence we must not be surprised if putting our trust in modern technological system leads to our feeling like mere cogs in the machine. Nor should it shock us when people who put their final trust in reason (" I have a right to happiness") find it difficult to maintain their marriages. As Goudzwaard pointed out,

" . . . When human intellect and our own ratio (reason) become our deepest source of trust and knowledge, we will ultimately rationalize ourselves as well. Then the love for our husbands, our wives, and our families might well disappear because it cannot stand the test of rationality. Marriage and family are, after all, not qualified by reason but by troth and fidelity." (see footnote 2)

Putting our trust in progress, technique, etc. Finally takes its toll, "They that make them shall be like unto them; yea, every one that trusteth in them." (Psalms 115:8)

Editor: Al Greene

Alta Vista College

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