Another way to say the same thing is that we must recognize the ineradicable antithesis
that lies between Christian thinking and non-Christian thinking. They are based on
different presuppositions, different heart allegiances, and they lead in different
directions. There is no least common denominator that can reduce them to a common
"fraction." This is not to say that Christians think better than non-Christians
do; they don’t. It is not to say that we cannot learn a great deal from
non-Christians; we can. It does not give us the slightest justification for failing to
make use of the research of non-Christians. After all, there is only one created world,
and they work in it with God-given abilities just as we do. Frequently they have spent
large amounts of time and effort studying the creation that we should have learned about
ourselves but have been woefully remiss about even investigating. Nor does the ‘grand
canyon’ that opens up between Christian thinking and non-Christian thinking give us
the slightest ground for feeling superior or for depreciating the work of secular
scholars. It does mean that we need to be very careful to put what we learn from them into
a different framework than theirs. It means we have to learn to know our own framework for
Christian thought far better than we usually do today. In the end the antithesis is real
and unbridgeable. We can talk across the wavelengths; we cannot find a common wavelength.
We must talk across the gap, but the recognition that it exists and it rooted in differing
heart allegiances is a clarifying factor in our discussions. When we push non-Christians
back to the roots of their own thinking, we put them in a position where it is very
possible they will be gripped by the Holy Spirit and brought into the kingdom of Christ.
C.S. Lewis has caught the heart of what I am trying to say in an incident in The Silver
Chair. In Underland, Puddleglum has stamped on the witch’s fire and destroyed
much of its enchantment. Now, his brain cleared by the pain in his foot, Puddleglum says
to the witch,
"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and
sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself . . . in that case, the made-up things seem a
good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours
is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one, and that’s a funny
thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if
you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world that licks your
real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on
Aslan’s side even if there isn’t an Aslan to lead it . . ." (see footnote
1)
As 20th century Christians, we are going to have to stamp, with a good deal of pain, on
the bewitching fire of scientism and find our way out into the real world by the grace and
guidance of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.
LEARN TO THINK CHRISTIANLY
The second component in a Christian response to the great modern myth is that
Christians must learn to think Christianly. Let us deal briefly with (1) what this means
and (2) how it can be done.
A discussion of what it means to think Christianly could be handled much better in a whole
book than in a few paragraphs. But paragraphs are all we have here, so let me outline
briefly four of the basic elements where a Christian mind differs profoundly from a
secular one.
The first is its understanding of the Word of God. Even Christians often stumble here.
They do so in their effort to protect God, though He is quite able to protect Himself.
They assume - even though the Bible contradicts this - that the Word of God is the Bible
and the only Bible. Thus, they turn the Bible from a means into an end and make it an
idol. For the Bible is the means by which God addresses and calls upon us to answer Him.
It is, of course, an inspired, infallible, authoritative and totally unique book. It is
the written Word of God. But, as the Bible itself abundantly testifies, the Word of God is
much bigger than the Bible. It is the way God made the world, upholds it, and - it having
been cursed because of man’s sin - redeems it (Genesis 1; John 1; Hebrews 1:2-3;
Colossians 1:20; etc.). It is the means by which God declares His love to us and calls us
to love Him in return. It is alive and awesomely powerful (Hebrews 4:12). It is not
something which we can manage (as in Bible mastery months in Sunday School!), but
something which is meant to master and flow through us (2 Thessalonians 3:1). It is the
means by which God joins us to Jesus Christ (James 1:18; Peter 1:23) and thereby brings us
into all the wealth which Christ has died to provide for us (2 Corinthians 8:9). An
awareness of the nature, the work, and the message of the Word of God are the place where
Christian thinking has to begin.
A second component in the Christian mind is an awareness of the revelatory quality of
creation. Creation has not only been made by God’s speaking; it was made to talk to
us about Him. Romans 1:20, Psalm 19, Psalm 8:1, and many other passages attest to this.
The spell that the modern myth has cast upon us makes it very difficult for us to
"read" the creation in this fashion. It appears to us, as to the secularists,
principally as a vast resource to be possessed or as full of dangers to be warded off.
Neither view comes anywhere near its essence. God is addressing us in the creation every
day and every hour. Most of the time we are totally deaf to what He is saying and so fail
to give Him the response of love, worship, and service to which we are called.
Wolterstoff, quoting Schmemann, carries this idea a step farther and so discloses how
grievously poverty-struck Christians have become in their view of the world because the
great modern myth has cast its sickening spell over them.
"Thus, says Schmemann, the world is a sacrament, of God. Both in its totality as
cosmos and in its becoming as history, it ‘is an epiphany of God, a means of His
revelation, presence, and power. (It) truly ‘speaks’ of Him and is in itself an
essential means both of knowledge of God and communion with Him, and to be so is its true
nature and ultimate destiny;’ correspondingly, ‘worship is truly and essential
act, and man an essentially worshipping being . . . The very notion of worship is based on
an intuition and experience of the world as an ‘epiphany’ of God, thus the world
- in worship - is revealed in its true nature and vocation as ‘sacrament."
Wolterstoff continues by explaining what Schmemann means by secularism.
The secularist, he says, "quite often accepts the idea of God. What, however, he
emphatically negates is precisely the sacramentality of man and world. A secularist views
the world as containing within itself its meanings and the principles of knowledge and
action . . .. (He rejects) the primordial intuition that everything in this world itself
not only have elsewhere the cause and principle of the existence, but are themselves the
manifestation and presence of that elsewhere, and that this is indeed the life of their
life. . .’ " (see footnote 2)
When one thinks of the normal curriculum of Christian day schools in the light of the
Biblical revelation of the nature and purpose of creation, one realizes that we are only
barely across the frontier of true Christian education, if indeed we are that far.
A third major component of a Christian mind deals with the nature and task of man. It is
not only that man has been created and so is dependent upon God. It is that man has been
created in a very special relationship to God. He bears the image of God. He is intended
to "know" God. "And this is life eternal, that they should know thee, the
only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." Both the Hebrew and
the Greek words for knowing carry a strong active sense of interpersonal relationship in
which there is both positive approach and positive response. The word "know" is
used commonly of sexual intercourse. Man is a being intended to be sensitive to the
approach of God as that occurs even in the creation, and to respond to God by bearing the
"fruits of the Holy Spirit." It is this image relationship, however damaged it
may be through sin, which is the essential reason why we ought to respect other people,
both in our thought about them and our actions toward them. So Jesus can say. " . . .
whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me." (Matthew
25:37-40). It is by means of fulfilling the second great commandment, to love our neighbor
as ourselves, that we are enabled to fulfill the first, to love God with all our hearts.
The awareness of man’s image nature and its intended covenant relationship to God
transforms all human relations. It is a fundamental component of a Christian mind.
The other side of this component is the task of man in the world. The modern myth has
reduced the task to one of conquering the world by means of increasingly complicated
technological inventions. The goal is power. Man strives to subjugate all
"nature" to his own ends. The problem is that all nature includes other humans
and that the only norm for acceptable activity in relation to nature has become the
pleasure of the power seeker. The modern myth has vaporized a transcendent God with the
laser beam of its natural light of reason. Might is right, and no holds are barred.
Over against this view stands the Biblical concept of man’s task. He has been put in
the world by God to understand it, shape it, use it and enjoy it, all within the
parameters of the two-fold law of love to God and man. He is a steward whose mandate is to
dress and keep the garden of the creation. Nothing is, nor ever can be, his own in any
strictly independent sense. In all things he is the servant of God. To be that, he must
become the servant of his fellow man in the full range of his activities. And the key to
servanthood is love. The implications for politics, business, research, education, and all
the other aspects of modern activity are simply staggering. But here again we encounter
the suffocating poison-gas of the modern myth which puts human occupations under the
competitive law of the jungle, excepting only, if it excepts at all, the private religious
aspects of an individual’s life.
A final fundamental component of a Christian mind is its view of knowledge. For the
Hebrews, knowledge always involved the recognition of God’s immediate activity within
the creation and the obligation to respond to the loving, gracious God of the covenant.
Knowledge was responsible. For the Greeks, knowledge was a matter of rational abstraction.
Its product was facts. Its relation to the practical life situation was minimal or
non-existent. Knowledge in the secularized modern world of scientism conforms to the Greek
paradigm. Truth is made up of factual statements, not of lived-out awareness. In the Bible
truth must be done to be known. "If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk
in the darkness, we lie and do not the truth." (1 John 1:6). Truth is a Person, Jesus
Christ (John 14:6). All so called "truths" carry that label only insofar as they
point to Jesus Christ in whom all things "hold together." (Col. 1:17) The
meaning of any thing or event in creation or history is ultimately to be found in its
being revelatory of God. And since we bear His image, we are to hear His voice in all the
"facts we encounter and the knowledge we have, and we are to answer Him as we handle
our experience in love to our neighbor and so to Him. This is a radically different kind
of knowledge from that known in the secular world. The problem is that it is hardly known
among Christians either, except in the rarified atmosphere of unusually pious or spiritual
life.
These, then, are some of the basic ways in which a Christian mind differs from a secular
mind. If the church is transformed by the renewing of its mind, the contrast between the
two minds will become apparent all the way through life and through culture.
The question is, how can this awakening take place? That is the second part of this aspect
of a Christian response to the modern myth.
One way is for all Christians, and not just intellectual ones, to learn to think
Christianly. To do this, they must develop a Christian worldview and begin to look at all
of life and life’s relationships in the light of it. There are books to be read,
tapes and videotapes to be used, and study materials that can help. Small study groups, in
which Christians read together and stimulate each other with their questions and insights,
must spring up throughout the church if we are to develop the level of awareness that is
necessary to make any effective resistance to the spell of modern myth.
Perhaps the most crying need in the effort to awaken today’s church is the need for
Christian scholars who have the gift and calling to give leadership in the increasingly
complex and difficult areas which are coming to light through the "knowledge
expansion" of our time. In virtually every area except theology and ethics, there is
today a great vacuum of Christian thinking. We have simply not done our homework. We have
been content to leave research in most areas to the non-Christian. It is no wonder, then,
that we are poorly equipped to do radically Biblical thinking in psychology, economics,
political science, etc. Some of the wealth of the western church must be funneled into
associations or institutions where gifted, faithful Christian thinkers can do
ground-breaking work in all the areas of research in order to develop distinctively
Christian alternative ways of thought.
FLESH OUT CHRISTIAN ALTERNATIVES
There is one more aspect to a Christian response to the modern myth. It entails
practical, concrete efforts to demonstrate what the Christian mind says theoretically
about the Biblical norms for Christian thought and life. If the Christian mind is to
become an effective antidote to the secularization of culture, it will have to be done in
order to be truly known.
We are not without examples of leadership here. John Perkins of the Voice of Calvary
Ministries is a shining example. Wayne Anderson, the subject of R. C. Sproul’s Stronger
Than Steel. demonstrates in the book and in his subsequent wide-ranging consulting
activity, that there is a Christian approach to labor-management relations which is
powerful and beautiful in its difference from the typical approach. Tom Sine’s book, The
Mustard Seed Conspiracy, is replete with practical suggestions that ordinary
Christians can carry out. So is Tony Campolo’s book, Ideas for Social Action,
a Youth Specialties compendium for young people.
In banking and construction, in education and business, in research and politics, we must
develop practical projects that demonstrate that a Christian mind makes a difference in
the life style and the life goals of Christians. Probably one of the major reasons why
young people feel disillusioned by the church today is that it has not given them a vision
and challenge which are demanding enough of them. Christ claims lordship over the entire
universe, including this sin-bent planet. He claims to have redeemed "all
things" by His sacrificial death (Col. 1:20). If His professed people do not
demonstrate the meaning of these claims by developing models in every field of human
endeavor which testify to a totally distinctive world view, who will do so? Isn’t
this a significant part of what our Lord had in mind when he commanded us to "occupy
till I come" (Luke 19:13)? Whether we are successful or not is not our concern. The
effort must be made, and we are the ones who must make it. We are a beachhead in the midst
of enemy territory. Within the boundaries of that beachhead we must erect visible
evidences of the implications for human life that are bound up in the saving lordship of
Jesus Christ. Thus we shall show that we are beginning to awaken from the spell of the
great modern myth.
Editor: Al Greene
Alta Vista College
Footnotes:
1. Lewis, C.S. The Silver Chair. Collier Books, 1970. P. 159.
2. Wolterstoff, Nicholas. Until Justice and Peace Embrace.
Eerdmans,
1983. P. 150.
