choices

Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” But the people did not answer him a word.

1 Kings 18:21 NASB

One of the defining characteristics of our current culture is confusion. Our culture is confused about male and female, with an overwhelming push to accept gender dysphoria. I’ve been asked to give my preferred pronouns in interactions with my doctor and with my bank. Frankly, my doctor should know my sex by now. There is confusion regarding wearing or not wearing masks, getting or not getting the COVID vaccine, locking down or not locking down our society. Confusion concerning the push for and against Marxism in our culture and in our churches. We are confused about whether police should be funded or defunded.

Our culture has never seen this level of confusion regarding Truth and what is true. If there ever was a time the people of God needed to speak with clarity, it is today. If we as Christians ever needed to be bold and precise regarding what is true, we are there.

I going to borrow from and acknowledge gratitude to a presentation by a pastor at a recent conference*. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I had plagiarized any portion of this devotional.

Contrary to our confused culture, God always speaks clearly. His words are always understandable. He has never mumbled. If we look into the Old Testament record of God speaking, we see His words and meaning are always crystal clear. The writer never has to add, “we weren’t really sure what God said at this point.” God spoke clearly, plainly, without confusion.

An important doctrine we don’t often hear about is the perspicuity of Scripture. Simply, this means that Scripture is clear in its meaning and is understandable. Both the understanding and the meaning of Scripture may require a bit of work and careful study. However, Scripture, as the breathed-out word of God is always clear and understandable.

Photo by Egor Kamelev on Pexels.com

 Let’s correct a misunderstanding of God speaking to us. Have you ever heard anyone state something like this: “God is so far above us, so much more intelligent, that His speaking to us is like me trying to speak to an ant. He is saying all the things we need to hear, we just can’t understand because we are too simple.” The view of God expressed by this idea or thought is, frankly, heretical. It is a man-sized view of God. Here’s some news. You’re not God. He is. God can speak to an ant in a way the ant can perfectly understand what God intends for the ant to know what God is saying. God is able to speak ant. You aren’t. You are not God. He is. So, when God speaks to us, He is fully perfectly able to speak precisely in way that we are able to completely understand the message. Unless, of course, we choose to not listen.

You and I have been equipped to speak the truth. And in doing so, we are equipping our students. If there ever was a time when teachers need to teach what is true, right, good, it is today. And, to teach what is true, we must convictional-ly know what is true.

So the first thing is to know when we are at the moment of decision. Over the past several years, we have been in those moments of decision without recognizing the deeper decisions being made. We thought the decision was “should we meet in person or virtually?” and “do we need to wear a mask or not?” and “should we get a vaccine, or not?” and “should we require everyone else to do as I choose, or not?”.

Listen. None of these were or are the real questions. Nor were and are they the ultimate decision. They can feel like it. They can even masquerade as the most important decisions. They are important questions. Each representing a moment of decision. However, we must remember they spring from and are inextricably linked to a deeper, foundational decision. That decision, that moment of choice is this:

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If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.

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This confusion of our culture is the outcome of their worldview. It is an unacknowledged clash of worldviews.

The pastor I referenced at the beginning* helped me to understand that our current culture’s worldview is no longer postmodern, or even post-postmodern. It is a neo-paganism. That paganism is in full conflict against all of the other worldviews. That is part of the cause of the confusion.

This new paganism is monist, or pantheist. It places god as fundamentally inside our world. An integral part of the creation. This pagan culture sees itself as the creation or outcome of the god that is both part of the culture and a creator of that culture. This is the dominant world-view in our culture.

Just like all religions, this new paganism makes a truth claim. And that truth claim is to define what is true. Unlike modernism, or secularlism, or even post-modernism, these new pagans will not tolerate any other truth claims. They are now the sole source of what is true.  In their world, you must acknowledge and agree with their truth or you will be punished until you convert or eliminated so that you do not bother them anymore. Paganism will not tolerate the Truth of Christianity. They will not coexist.

What should we do? What we cannot do is say to this culture, “you’re right! You need a voice just like everyone else. I apologize that Christianity has been stifling your voice because we have not acknowledged our own position of privilege”.

Our students as well as our colleagues need us to acknowledge we are a people of privilege. This privilege is not of our own doing, it is the work and gift of God. It is a privilege to receive the Truth from God. For Him to so freely give His Truth to a people so unworthy of it. So, there is no pride in this privilege. Instead, we have the indwelling Spirit of God that is an incredible gift. And it is freely available to any who repent and confess as we have done. Having the truth available that we can know, and have communion with the God who can be known and is known is an incredible privilege. Because it is not one we earned or deserve, we confess this gift with humility. But, we must confess it, nonetheless.

This is not a privilege that gives us position in the world. In reality, the world, the neo-paganist religion will increasingly see us as a threat. That’s only because the truth of God is a threat to the lies of the world.

You and I have been equipped with the Truth. Let’s fulfil our purpose by making the decision to follow God and boldly speak His truth regarding life, our purpose, His reality, personal sin, the need for personal repentance, the Gospel.

Let me conclude by recalling the words of John while he was writing from the Island of Patmos:

To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this: “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.
He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.’
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.'”

Revelation 3:14-22 NASB

*(Dr. Jared longshore, June 14, 2021, Founders Conference “Be It Resolved”, “The New Religion and the Need for Resolution“) Associate Pastor, Grace Baptist Church, Cape Coral, FL

Does It Matter? The Seatbelt Analogy

Does the Issue of Young Earth vs Old Earth matter?

Very often, when I speak with pastors or lay-leaders in a church about whether Genesis is real – containing real history or real events that occurred in real space and time – they respond by stating it doesn’t matter to the bigger picture. To them, there are many other ministry needs, or ministry interests, that consume their time.

Does it matter? Consider “the Seatbelt Analogy”

Ignoring seat belts, or claiming they aren’t important to the operation of a car doesn’t make them unimportant to the operation of the car. Refusing to acknowledge the importance of seat belts doesn’t make any subsequent crash less fatal.

In May, 2015, Dan Bewley, a science writer at Science is OK (Oklahoma science blog) posted the picture (edited for use in this blog post) and noted,

“Climate change is important to me. Helping promote a better understanding of evolution is important to me. But this is the most important story I have ever written. See that picture below? My wife and son were in that car when it was struck last week. My wife was wearing her seatbelt and my 9-year old son was in a booster seat.”

Both survived.

In spite of overwhelming evidence that seatbelt use increases survivability in an accident by nearly 50 percent, people still refuse to wear seatbelts. When used correctly, wearing a seat belt reduces the risk of fatal injury to front seat passenger car occupants by 45%, and risk of moderate-to-critical injury by 50%.

In the state of South Carolina, for 2016, there were 59 traffic fatalities in which seat belts were available to be used. Of those who died, 24 (40%) were not wearing seat belts.

Why? You can group all of the reasons under one statement: They don’t (or didn’t) think it matters.

The facts – seat belt use matters. Proper use of seat belts as they were designed to be used reduces injuries in an accident. Seat belts are important.

The facts – the events in Genesis can be placed in real history in a real space with real events. That matters. It matters to the proper use of the rest of Scripture.

The Events in Genesis are Real

It matters to our identity,

our understanding of knowledge,

our view of humanity,

and, it matters to the Gospel.

“I was afraid, because I was naked…”

This is Part II in a series. Although it isn’t essential to read Part I first, you may find it helpful.

Consider the history of sin entering the cosmos. In Genesis 3 we have both the history of events, and the Gospel reveal. God initiated contact with the now rebellious, fallen, and sinful man. God knew Adam had sinned. God wasn’t just wandering through the garden and couldn’t find the man He had created. God purposefully entered the garden and called out to Adam. The question God asked wasn’t because God needed to fill in missing knowledge. It was in part to reveal to the man what man no longer had. The man came out of hiding and replied:

And [Adam] said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”           Genesis 3:10

God replies to Adam with a question that, as always, contains much more than you or I can imagine it to contain. God isn’t asking a question that He doesn’t know the answer to. Just as God knew where Adam was when He asked, “Where are you?”, God’s purpose in asking the next question is to bring the man into understanding. To cause man to know the consequences of his actions. So that he could know his thinking had changed, and to know why he was now thinking differently.

Adam was naked before he sinned. He didn’t become more naked after he sinned. Adam was aware he was not wearing any physical clothing before he sinned. He didn’t just suddenly become aware of some extra sinfulness present in being without clothes. The sin didn’t cause Adam to suddenly realize his body needed to be covered. Here’s what transpired:

[God] said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”          Genesis 3:11

God is not just acting out the role of the offended rule enforcer. He’s not gleefully about to hand out punishment for no other reason than, you know, “Adam broke the rules and those who break rules have to be cast out.” Adam wasn’t some new-born baby-like intellect that needed to be taught right-and-wrong like all children. Adam was created with intelligence and rationality. God had previously instructed Adam in right and wrong. He was fully aware that rebellion against God had consequences. Ironically, those of us who are now six thousand years later in experience and knowledge often deny that rebellion has consequences. And that’s the point.

If you ask six Christians followed by a seventh how we should minister to the culture you will get seven times seventy opinions. The culturally-conscious mega-church pastor is convinced that essential and appropriate contextualization means starting Easter Sunday service with “Highway to Hell”. Across town, his covenant-theology brother is confessing the necessity of detailed exegesis even in the absence of any cultural application. They are both considered fools by the “Science Guy”. The culture presses on without being affected.

Since we, as Christians, have access to not just good ideas, but truth that is life changing, why is our ministry increasingly rejected by the world? It is because, as Dr. Al Mohler, President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and one of Christianity’s foremost cultural appraisers notes, Christians are in an epistemological crisis.

To our shame, most Christians don’t know what epistemology means. Our loss of knowledge is strolling along blissfully hand-in-hand with our lack of understanding as to why the culture, and at times even our churches, are unaffected by the Gospel.

Epistemology – not a word most Christians use every day. Ironically, not even a word most Christians have ever used. Hence, part of the crisis. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and of knowing. It is an attempt to answer the question of “How do we know truth and what is true?” It is the mental drawer in which humans place our understanding of how belief occurs and the rationality for defending those beliefs as true. It is where we keep the theory by which we explain why it is OK to believe the Genesis account of creation is historically and scientifically accurate. That same place that explains why it is rational to confess that Jesus was born of a virgin and rose from the dead. It is how we can defend the necessity and value to the culture of marriage defined by a husband (male) and wife (female) in a life-long covenant.

The Christian’s epistemological crisis is we do not know why people think the way they think, and why we must think differently. We observe the culture rejecting what seems to be obvious truth, even what some would call self-evident truth, and don’t know why or how to change the culture. We emphasized cultural conscious and cultural sensitivity in our attempt to minister to the culture, and found the culture simply rejected our attempts at an even greater level.

The culture — yep, the one that is in rebellion against God – that one – has claimed the high ground of intellectual influence. And there are a lot of Christians who believe that’s OK.

It is not.

Of all the criteria we would identify that defines a Christian, thinking should be high on that list. We are renewed, changed. The sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit is effective and ongoing at changing us. What part of “us”? What part of me the individual is being renewed by salvation? My soul? Yes. My body? Not yet, but will be. My mind? The way I think? My skills at reasoning and coming to the truth? Yes! With the new knowledge that God is Sovereign, purposeful, capable, and self-revealing, I can now submit my reasoning to the revealed Truth He has given.

Christians should be on the high ground of intellect, leading the culture in developing and applying knowledge across the disciplines. For the sake of those who will be regenerated by the Gospel, and for those who will still reject the Gospel, but live in this world, we should be seeing a transformation of the culture that comes from the common grace of the Gospel.