Posted on 07/21/2006 10:33:59 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Yesterday I talked about the Spiritual Activism Conference in Washington, D.C., and the trouble its participants had coming up with any meaningful objectives. The problem, I suggested, was that the majority of the religious left cannot tolerate the idea of the authority of Scripture. In fact, in the effort to be “progressive,” they seem committed to putting as much distance as they can between themselves and the Bible.
Sadly, this isn’t just a problem for liberals. Some evangelicals these days are saying that truth is only knowable if you experience it. But if you believe that, it throws the Bible out, which is, after all, revealed propositional truth. Liberal or conservative, if you weaken the Bible as your authority, you give up more than just some ancient set of dogmas and rules. You give up joy, excitement, the very heart of the Christian faith. You lose what I call the thrill of orthodoxy—the exhilaration of experiencing and living out eternal truth that has been lived through the ages.
Let me give you a little example of what I mean by that. My wife, Patty, and I once visited St. Paul’s Cathedral, one of the most beautiful churches in England. We walked into the church, which today seems to be more like a massive museum than a church. People were milling about everywhere. Patty and I both felt impressed that we should go and sit in a pew and pray. We sat down and listened to the liturgy, which was then being broadcast on a loudspeaker.
We looked around and realized that, yes, this church had become a museum, and yes, the public was here just to see its beauty, but they were also hearing the liturgy and the Gospel. Then we were struck by the realization that the Gospel is always going to be preached and heard and lived—in tiny enclaves or vast churches.
Both Patty and I got goose bumps as we realized that we were sitting in a place where that same Gospel has been preached for hundreds of years (actually, fourteen hundred years if you count the churches that were on that spot before the present cathedral). It made us realize afresh that the Gospel provides a connection with all the Christians who have come before us, all the way back to the time of Jesus. And it is still transforming hearts and lives today every time it is preached or read. God and His Word are, as Augustine said, “beauty so ancient and so new.”
Watered-down “progressive” Christianity has nothing that can compare with this. Refusing to accept the authority of Scripture and cutting off all ties with our heritage leaves us rootless and drifting, ready to latch onto any fad. By contrast, as G. K. Chesterton explained about the timeless quality of God’s truth: “The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer.” He even wrote of the truth of the Gospel as “the heavenly chariot [that] flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.”
God’s truth has always shown that it can survive heresy, persecution, and any fad that the human mind can dream up. It will continue on, long after the last progressive has come up with the last resolution on tolerance.
There are links to further information at the source document.
If anyone wants on or off my Chuck Colson/BreakPoint Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
BreakPoint/Chuck Colson Ping!
If anyone wants on or off my Chuck Colson/BreakPoint Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
This thread continues on the same subject as the "Tragedy" thread.
So, so true. I'm in a Christian book club and lately, the selections have tended toward post-modernism. Sadly, our book club leader (and elder in our church) is tending toward this way of thinking. Colson gets it exactly right here. And, it's time to return to some Chesterton reading!
Colson quoting Chesterton - nice! Though he quotes a text that Chesterton wrote while still an Anglican.
"Orthodoxy" is a great book. I've read and reread a lot of Chesterton's books, but if you read just one, I think that's the one to read. His image of orthodoxy as a chariot reeling down through the centuries, spilling out simplifying heresies left and right, and always continuing onward, is one I'll never forget.
This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom -- that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.
sorry, but I have to chuckle when I hear a Protestant talk about "orthodoxy."
Great quote. Though I'm a Calvinist. Thanks.
Thank you. I have friends on the faculty at Calvin College, and I admit I rather wondered when I posted it what Calvinists might make of that bit.
We recognize that most people misunderstand Calvinism, so the smart Calvinists overlook the ignorance. Besides, I love Chesterton. We really do have a lot of things in common with Orthodoxy. My husband is Catholic and I respect their tradition the older I get. He calls us the "boutique" religions. Sigh.
There's a reason the first commandement states:
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Exodus 20:3
The history of the Bible shows, time and time again, that pursuing the "gods" of man leads to destruction. The children of Israel were frequently led astray by the beliefs of the non-believers around them. They demanded to be led by a king, despite God's will, for the reason: "20 That we also may be like all the nations..."(1 Samuel 8:20) They wanted to be accepted by those who didn't believe as they did. It's not easy to stand out as the children of God.
The religious left is following the same pattern. They are more concerned with the precepts and perceptions of man. Tolerance, at least their concept of it, has become a "god" for them and they have quite clearly placed it before the God of Heaven. Just as Israel followed after Baalim, the religious left has set up their own, man-made God(s) in an effort to become more palatible to those who rely on "the arm of man." This is the principle reason why they have such a problem with "Orthodoxy."
Excellent. I wish I could write like this.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.