There is a trope out there that Bible-believing Christians stand side by side with tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists. Supposedly Q-Anon has become the oracle of choice for deplorables like us. We are scoffed at, mocked, assumed to be card-carrying members of the Flat Earth society. That trope exists because the world, that system of ideology and institutions that is hostile to Jesus Himself, is dreadfully wrong on the nature of humanity and the wisdom of God’s design of the world.
Because we Christians still carry with us the dying embers of the enlightenment we too, contra God’s Word, see unbelievers as neutral pursuers of the truth. We’re willing, if we tend toward the fundamentalist side of the evangelical spectrum, to concede that the world is often wrong. They err in their thinking when they affirm that the unborn are just blobs of cells. They made a wrong turn in the moral reasoning that leads them to embrace socialist ideologies. They simply misinterpreted the muddy evidence on the whole creation/evolution issue. The trouble is, we are not only wrong on how often and how badly they are wrong but we are wrong on why they are wrong.
The reigning folly of the world is what it is not because they are more stupid than we are but because they are just as wicked as we once were. You don’t end up not only affirming but enforcing “Men can get pregnant” by forgetting to carry the one in a math problem. You get there by embracing high handed rebellion against the Maker of men and women, the One whose image we all bear. You don’t end up elevated to the highest court in the land when you, with the whole world watching, affirm that you don’t know what a woman is unless the whole world is in on the lie.
Romans 1 teaches us that those still in their sins reach the conclusions they reach because God has judged their rebellion by giving them over to depraved minds. To put it another way, we’re skeptical not because we are especially susceptible to conspiracy theories but because the God who made all things, who knows all things, who not only can only speak the truth but speaks truth into existence, tells us not to listen to them. We’re skeptical because we’re supposed to be. The believer is the one called to state the obvious, that the emperor’s ensemble is nothing more than his birthday suit.
Sadly, our skepticism too often falls short. The more we reject the folly of the world, the more the world rejects us, calling us fools. We want to treat their thinking errors as just that, mere miscalculations. The truth is their lies lead to babies being murdered, and children being butchered because of sexual confusion. They are not just wrong, but evil. They are not just lovers of pleasure but lovers of death (Proverbs 8:36). Make no mistake. We are called to love our enemies. We are called, however, to love them enough to let them see us as their enemies, simply for telling them the truth.
Why do we call it good? Every human event in the history of the creation involved either God handing out justice, which is to be celebrated, or demonstrating grace, which is to be celebrated. Every event save the one we call good. There, a human man who had no evil in Him, who had done no wrong, suffered not just the indignity of a public humiliation, not just the physical torture of death by crucifixion but the wrath of almighty God poured out upon Him for the guilt of all His children. While the rest of the world is tied in mental knots trying to answer their question as to why bad things happen to good people we know that only happened once, and He volunteered. Only once did not just a bad thing but the worst thing imaginable happen to not just a good man but the greatest man. And we call it good.
We call it good because it was good. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him (Isaiah 53: 10). This event, the darkest event ever, was pleasing to our Father. He did not take a fiendish, sadistic delight in it. Instead He took delight in manifesting the glory of His plan to redeem us, unworthy rebels that we were. Isaiah helps us understand two truths that we think oppose each other. First, that it was the Father’s wrath. Most assuredly it was. Our redemption, however, isn’t something the Son wheedles out of the Father. The Father didn’t begrudgingly accept His Son as the substitute. He sent Him, because He loves us. Which means, second, that He delighted to do so. In the same manner Jesus suffered immeasurably. The agony was unfathomably real. But He went through it joyfully, because He loves us.
It has been said, and wisely so, that at the cross justice and mercy kiss. By the cross God is both just and our justifier. The debt is paid, the punishment doled out. And by it we, in union with Him, are declared to be righteous, while we are yet in ourselves unrighteous. Because we are in union with Him on the cross, our sin becomes His, His punishment becomes ours and we walk together out of the tomb as heirs of all things and into the new creation. Just as justice and mercy kiss, so too do the Father and the Son. Just as we are in union with the Son, so the Son and the Father are in unity together. One purpose, one plan, one emotive response to His people.
The darkest day is that day when the One who first said, “Let there be light” and the One who is the Light of the World together joyfully rescued us to the everlasting praise of their glory. That is why we call it good.
There are any number of ways that cultural confusion always walks down the aisle with relativism. Divorce, in this instance, isn’t an option. If, for instance, we all agree that there is no such thing as right and wrong, then what do we do with, say, people who like to torture animals? Or, better yet, what do you do with people who like to hijack airplanes and kill thousands of people? After all, jihad against Americans is “right to them.” How can we object, when all we object against is objecting?
The same is true theologically. Time was that even those outside the church were interested if not worried about the proliferation of various cults. But how does a nation that holds this truth as self-evident, that no religion is more or less true than another, distinguish between a religion, or a faith-group on the one hand, and a cult and cultists on the other hand?
The broader culture won’t draw the line at the doctrine of the incarnation or the Trinity. (Indeed, many inside the church won’t make that their line in the sand either. Several of the most influential “evangelicals” of the past fifteen years have denied the doctrine of the Trinity.) So where will they draw the line?
The mark of a cult, in the minds of the West in the twenty-first century, isn’t the assertion of gross error, but the gross error of assertion. Respectable religion is that religion that is held loosely, that may, if it must, assert this belief or that, so long as it does not deny any other assertion or belief. Rome gets a pass because both John Paul II and Benedictus affirm that there are many pathways to heaven, that what counts is sincerity.
The sad truth, however, is this same thinking has found a home in the church. We don’t determine something is a cult by the doctrines it affirms, but the way in which it affirms its doctrines. The distinguishing mark of the cult is authority. How far we have come. Once cults were defined by a failure to submit to an objective standard. Now a cult is that place that affirms the existence of an objective standard. Which ought to help us understand the true nature of our culture’s embrace of relativism.
Relativism isn’t merely an errant philosophical understanding of epistemology and ethics. It isn’t a mere wrong turn in someone’s sincere journey looking for the truth. It isn’t a silly, yet benign, embracing of folly. It is instead a false religion. Irony of ironies, it comes with a confession of faith, and law written in stone. The confession is this, “All confessions are not true.” The law affirms this, “Thou shalt not affirm anything.” Failure to keep the law will bring forth at least social ostracism, and at worst, jail time. And no religion has proponents with greater evangelistic zeal. They will not stop until everyone affirms in unison that each of us constructs our own reality. They will tolerate no intolerance, except of course their own.
They are winning. Already, according to George Barna’s polls, more than 50 percent of people who describe themselves as evangelical Christians, affirm as true the claim that there is no objective truth. That number will surely climb, as the rest of us more and more get marginalized first as fundamentalists, then as extremists, and finally, as cultists. Our calling, however, isn’t to paint ourselves as reasonable. We don’t whip out our relativist credentials, and insist that we are no danger to the reigning religion. We confront the false religion. We tear down the stronghold. We take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. We do this, because we fear no man; we fear God.
Our calling is to believe this objective truth, that those who are persecuted for His name’s sake, are blessed. Our calling is to confess that name before men, not as an option, not as God-to-me, not as something true in my heart. No, we must confess that Christ is Lord over all, that He speaks all truth, and that we must obey — right away. To put it another way, we must confess before men that He is the way, not a way, the truth, not a truth, and the life.
Just for the elect. This truth is hard for some people for what seems like a good reason- It shows God treating people unequally. If Christ’s atoning work covers only some people, doesn’t this somehow make God unfair, treating one group of people one way, and another group of people another way? If people end up in different places, some in heaven and some in hell, then we can either attribute the difference to how God acts in our lives, or in how we act in ourselves. The latter choice has a great deal going for it. It absolves God of the charge of treating people differently. And no one in hell, of course, can complain about being there. They are there by their own doing.
The first choice, however, has three things going better for it. First, it means some people will actually go to heaven. Given the scope of our sinfulness, were God merely to make our salvation possible, (which is itself a limitation of the atonement) and then dependent upon our natural obedience to His call, none would come. Dead people do not respond to the call to repentance, unless they are first made alive.
The second advantage is that this is what the Bible teaches. Consider, for instance, Jesus’ High Priestly prayer. If it is incumbent upon God to treat all men the same, would it not be incumbent on Jesus to pray for all men the same way? What, then, are we to make of this- “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours” (John 17:9). Here Jesus explicitly denies praying for those who are not His, while affirming that He prays for those who are His. Now if Jesus is unwilling to pray for those who were not chosen, on what grounds can we claim that He suffered the wrath of the Father for the sins of those for whom He would not pray? Remember that God explicitly affirms His liberty to treat some people differently than others- “For He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion’” (Romans 9:15). What we try to free God from, the accusation that He treats some people one way and others another God proudly affirms.
There is a third serious problem with the notion that Jesus died for all sins of all people. Hell. If Jesus atoned for all sins, for what are the sinners in hell suffering? Those who seek to “protect” God’s integrity by arguing He must treat us all the same end up, accidentally, affirming that God punishes the same sins twice, once on Calvary and again in hell. Some might object in turn that the sinners in hell are being punished for their unbelief. But that too is a sin, and thus would have already been punished. If all sins have been atoned for, they can’t be punished.
God owes man nothing save damnation. What He chooses to give, outside of damnation, is all of grace. Which means in turn that He treats His elect one way, and the reprobate another. All to the everlasting praise of His glory.
So Luther responded when queried about his love for God. He was honest enough to admit that while God is altogether lovely, Luther was a sinner, and his response to God showed it. We can have a love/hate relationship with that which matters to us for one of two reasons, or a combination thereof. In Luther’s case God doesn’t change, but Luther does. Sometimes, however, the object of our love changes while we don’t. Sometimes that which we love behaves in an unlovely way, and our love flees. Still worse, sometimes that which we loved changes so radically that love is difficult if not impossible.
I love my country, for at least two reasons. First, it is my country. It is good and right and proper that we should have an affection for that which is closest to us, even if that thing is not the best. Though it pains me to say so truth dictates I confess that this year at least the Pittsburgh Steelers are not the best team. This doesn’t mean, however, that my commitment and affection ought to transfer to the Rams. I love the Steelers because they are mine, and I love my country because it is mine.
Second, my country began as an experiment in liberty. The founding principles of limited government, of freedom of religion, of self-sufficiency, these resonate with me. Many of our founding fathers were true heroes, seeking sagely to apply God’s wisdom to the question of proper government. I still believe in those principles.
Which in turn drives part of why I often don’t love my country. Too often, naïve Christians see modern America through the lens of our history, and miss the hard truth that our nation, both its government and its citizens, have turned their backs on those founding principles. We have become a nation with intrusive government, officially endorsed secularism, and a cradle to grave welfare state. Our money has become debt, and our debts are being repudiated. Our culture has become a moral cesspool, and our children spend their days in state institutions where the state’s instructors may not mention Jesus’ name.
All of which pales in comparison to our great evil. We live in a country where nine justices, chosen by presidents of both parties, approved by Senators from both parties, have determined that mothers may kill their unborn children at will. That, of course, is bad, wicked, Nazi-like government. The government, however, does not kill any of those children. My country is not just its government, but its people. Those people, a million of them every year, kill their unborn children. The rest of us know all about it. We know it happens in our neighborhoods, every day. Yet we go to bed each night wondering about this sale at the mall, that big game over the weekend, the latest release from this band. We honestly don’t care. Is this a country worthy of being loved? Apart from the fact that it is ours?
We live in what once was a great country, which has now embraced a great evil. We love it for its being ours, while we mourn what it has become. We seek a better country.
