make a choice

**evanovitch** · 11-30-2010, 01:07 AM

Re: make a choice

Where are the men and women today with the courage to stand alone?

The church in our age has abandoned the confrontive stance. Instead of overturning worldly wisdom with revealed truth, many Christians today are obsessed with finding areas of agreement. The goal has become integration rather than confrontation.

As the church absorbs the values of secular culture, it is losing its ability to differentiate between good and evil. What will happen to the church if everyone proceeds down the slippery path of public opinion?

MacArthur, John: The Truth War : Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception. Nashville, Tennessee. : Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2007, S. 197

**evanovitch** · 11-30-2010, 01:52 AM

Re: make a choice

How Truth is Under Assault in the Church Today

The clarity and sufficiency of Scripture, the lostness of unredeemed humanity, and the justice of God in condemning sinners are all long-standing convictions in every major strain of historic Christianity. Christians have differed among themselves about peripheral questions or lesser points of doctrine. But historically and collectively, Christians have always been in full agreement that whatever is true—whatever is objectively and ontologically true—is true whether any given individual understands it, likes it, or receives it as truth. In other words, because reality is created and truth is defined by God, what is really true is true for everyone, regardless of anyone’s personal perspective or individual preferences.

These days, however, people are experimenting with subjective, relativistic ideas of truth and labeling them “Christian.” This trend signals a significant departure from biblical and historic Christianity. Carried to its necessary conclusion, it will lead inevitably to the abandonment or compromise of every essential element of the true Christian faith. It is, I am convinced, another major onslaught in an ages-old battle against truth by the powers of darkness. The fact that this error is being taught and defended and promoted by people who profess to know and love Christ does not alter the fact that it is error. And the fact that relativism is often propagated in books found on the best-seller racks in evangelical bookstores does not alter the seriousness of the error. The remodeling of our ideas about truth and certainty poses a severe danger to the heart and core of the Christian gospel.

As always, a war is being waged against the truth. We are on one side or the other. There is no middle ground—no safe zone for the uncommitted. Lately the question of truth itself—what it is and whether we can truly know it at all—has become one of the major points of contention.

We also happen to be living in a generation when many so-called Christians have no taste for conflict and contention. Multitudes of biblically and doctrinally malnourished Christians have come to think of controversy as something that should always be avoided, whatever the cost. Sadly, that is what many weak pastors have modeled for them.
Controversy and conflict in the church are never to be relished or engaged in without sufficient cause. But in every generation, the battle for the truth has proved ultimately unavoidable, because the enemies of truth are relentless. Truth is always under assault. And it is actually a sin not to fight when vital truths are under attack.
That is true even though fighting sometimes results in conflict within the visible community of professing Christians. In fact, whenever the enemies of gospel truth succeed in infiltrating the church, faithful believers are obliged to take the battle to them even there. That is certainly the case today, as it has been since apostolic times.

MacArthur, John: The Truth War : Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception. Nashville, Tennessee. : Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2007, xxii

**evanovitch** · 11-30-2010, 01:54 AM

Re: make a choice

Why Truth is So VitalWith increasing frequency nowadays, I hear people say things like, “Come, now, let’s not bicker about what we believe. It’s only doctrine. Let’s focus instead on how we live. The way of Jesus is surely more important than our arguments over the words of Jesus. Let’s set aside our disagreements over creeds and dogmas and devote ourselves instead to showing the love of Christ by the way we conduct our lives.”
Many people these days evidently find that suggestion appealing. On the surface, it may sound generous, kindhearted, modest, and altruistic. But the view itself is a serious violation of “the way of Jesus,” who taught that salvation hinges on hearing and believing His Word (John 5:24). He said, “The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). To those who doubted His truth claims, He said, “If you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins” (John 8:24). He never left any room for someone to imagine that the propositional content of His teaching is optional as long as we mimic His behavior.
In fact, the New Testament consistently stresses otherwise. One vital principle about our redemption from sin destroys the whole argument: faith, not works, is the sole instrument of justification (Galatians 2:16; Ephesians 2:8–9). In other words, what we believe rather than what we do is what secures us a righteous standing before God—because we lay hold of justifying righteousness by faith alone, and not by our works (Romans 4:5).
Paul says in Romans 9:31–32 that “Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law.” In other words, regardless of how meticulous they may have been in their external observance of God’s law, their unbelief was sufficient to exclude them from the kingdom. “They being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:3–4). They doubted the truth of Christ, and that proved spiritually fatal in spite of how well they had perfected an external display of piety.
Notice: Paul expressly says they were pursuing righteousness. But they were looking for it in all the wrong places. Because they clung to wrong beliefs about the righteousness God requires and rejected the righteousness Christ would have provided for them, they were eternally condemned. Their failure was first of all an error about a vital article of faith, not merely a flaw in their practice. Their whole belief system (not merely their behavior) was wrong. Unbelief was enough to condemn them, regardless of how they acted.
It is not kindness at all, but the worst form of cruelty, to suggest that what people believe doesn’t really matter much if they feel spiritual and do good. In fact, on the face of it, that claim is a blatant contradiction of the gospel message.
Besides, real righteousness simply cannot exist in isolation from belief in the truth. To make the case for any concept of “practical good” that subsists apart from sound doctrine, one quickly has to remove just about everything that is truly righteous from the definition of good. Naturally, it doesn’t take very long for that kind of thinking to undermine the foundations of Christianity itself.
Brian McLaren, for example, goes so far as to suggest that followers of other religions can also be followers of Christ in practical terms without leaving other religions or identifying with Christianity. “I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion,” he says. “It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts.”&#65279;3&#65279;
McLaren is leading the parade for those who do not seem to think wrong beliefs, superstition, false religion, and false gods are evils that people need to be delivered from. Instead, he suggests that even the false religions themselves may ultimately be redeemable:
Although I don’t hope all Buddhists will become (cultural) Christians, I do hope all who feel so called will become Buddhist followers of Jesus; I believe they should be given that opportunity and invitation. I don’t hope all Jews or Hindus will become members of the Christian religion. But I do hope all who feel so called will become Jewish or Hindu followers of Jesus.
Ultimately, I hope that Jesus will save Buddhism, Islam and every other religion, including the Christian religion, which often seems to need saving about as much as any other religion does. (In this context, I do wish all Christians would become followers of Jesus, but perhaps this is too much to ask. After all, I’m not doing such a hot job of it myself.)&#65279;4&#65279;
The logical starting point of McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy is his belief that doctrinal distinctives are of “marginal” value.&#65279;5&#65279; A predictably postmodern dubiousness seems to color McLaren’s treatment of practically all objective truth claims—and it’s a skepticism that extends even to the authority of Scripture itself. He seems deeply suspicious of any truth-based definition of orthodoxy. He writes as if orthopraxy (practical righteousness) were what really matters most. In fact, one gets the impression from the book that he thinks right behavior automatically trumps right belief. When McLaren finally gives a description of what he means by orthodoxy, even that turns out to be about “how we search for a kind of truth …”&#65279;6&#65279; rather than about the truth itself.
Despite his well-known preference for ambiguity, McLaren is surprisingly frank about his perspective on this. He believes both the church’s methodology and the Christian message itself need to be constantly in flux: “Our message and methodology have changed, do change, and must change if we are faithful to the ongoing and unchanging mission of Jesus Christ.”&#65279;7&#65279; He says the message changes “not because we’ve got it wrong and we’re closer to finally ‘getting it right,’ ” but because the “context” of the culture in which we live is dynamic. We must, after all, keep up with these postmodern times.
Notice: McLaren acknowledges that an ever-changing message does not bring anyone any closer to “getting it right,” and he is not the least bit troubled by that. In the final analysis, he says, “ ‘getting it right’ is beside the point: the point is ‘being and doing good’ as followers of Jesus in our unique time and place, fitting in with the ongoing story of God’s saving love for planet Earth.”&#65279;8&#65279; All of that is an exemplary statement of the typical postmodern perspective.
But the thing to notice here is that in McLaren’s system, orthodoxy is really all about practice, not about true beliefs. While acknowledging that this idea is “scandalous,” he nonetheless affirms it as the central message of his book.&#65279;9&#65279; It is frankly hard to see such a perspective as anything other than plain, old-fashioned unbelief, rooted in a rejection of the clear teaching of Scripture. McLaren has elevated the sinner’s own good works above the importance of faith grounded in the truth of the gospel. No wonder he feels such an affinity with Buddhists and Hindus—at the end of the day, many of his ideas about the role of righteousness and good works in religion are not fundamentally different from theirs.
And bear in mind that in McLaren’s own moral hierarchy, one of the highest values (if not the supreme virtue by which all others are measured) is a particular notion of “humility”—namely, the standard postmodern species of humility, which starts with the assumption that certainty, assurance, and bold convictions are arrogant and therefore wrong. So the ramifications of McLaren’s continual stress on right practice apart from an equal stress on right belief turn out to be profound. “Right practice” by his definition virtually begins with the relinquishment of all certainty about “right belief.” One gets the distinct impression that objective, propositional truth means so little to McLaren that he would consider a broad-minded Hindu who always tries to speak positively and tolerantly about others’ beliefs a better “Christian” than the preacher who openly curses someone else for teaching a wrong view of the law and gospel.
That, of course, would make the apostle Paul a bad Christian (Galatians 1:8–9)—not to mention Jesus (Matthew 23).
No one except the grossest hypocrite would ever suggest that how we act is utterly immaterial as long as we subscribe to the right creeds and confessions. McLaren nevertheless begins his book with precisely that kind of caricature. He claims that “many orthodoxies have always and everywhere assumed that orthodoxy (right thinking and opinion about the gospel) and orthopraxy (right practice of the gospel) could and should be separated, so that one could at least be proud of getting an A in orthodoxy even when one earned a D in orthopraxy, which is only an elective class anyway.”&#65279;10&#65279;
In reality, no true Christian anywhere has ever deliberately advocated such a twisted view of orthodoxy. Scripture is clear: “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also” (James 2:26). A high view of orthodoxy cannot nullify or undermine the importance of orthopraxy. That might seem to be the case if you start with the presupposition that certainty and strong convictions are always wrong and arguments about the truth value of propositions are always arrogant. But surely from a biblical perspective we can recognize the truth of James 2 without automatically discounting sound doctrine and settled assurance altogether.
Biblical orthodoxy encompasses orthopraxy. Both right doctrine and right living are absolutely essential and totally inseparable for the true child of God. That is the consistent teaching of Christ Himself. “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31–32).
Furthermore, Scripture does clearly and consistently teach the primacy of right belief as the foundation of right behavior. In other words, righteous living is properly seen as a fruit of authentic faith, and never the other way around. Pious actions devoid of any real love for the truth do not even constitute genuine orthopraxy by any measure. On the contrary, that is the worst kind of self-righteousness hypocrisy.
So truth is worth fighting over. As we have seen, it is the one thing in this world the church is supposed to fight for. Lose that fight and all else is lost.
It is obvious to most sensible people that not every point of truth is of equal importance, and therefore every trifling disagreement does not need to be pursued with equal fervor. In fact, one of the most important points in the whole issue of spiritual warfare is the question of what is insignificant and what is really worth fighting for. (I addressed that question in some detail more than a decade ago in a book titled Reckless Faith.&#65279;11&#65279; It is a question that deserves more careful consideration than most Christians evidently care to give it.)
But Brian McLaren leapfrogs over that part of the discussion, because one of his fundamental presuppositions is that there is really not much in the realm of propositional truth that is worth fighting over. He gives a somewhat qualified affirmation of the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. He then repeatedly insinuates that once you get past those two ancient creeds, the only issues at stake are mere “denominational distinctives” and doctrinal trivia that should all be relegated to the “marginal” category.&#65279;12&#65279;
That is simply not an honest assessment of what is happening in the Truth War today. The main battlegrounds—the ideas McLaren himself spends most of his book attacking—are the objectivity and knowability of truth as it is revealed in God’s Word. So what is really at stake are the very same truths the serpent sought to subvert when he asked Eve, “Has God indeed said … ?” (Genesis 3:1). They are the same truths that have always been at the heart of the Truth War—the inspiration, authority, inerrancy, sufficiency, and perspicuity (clarity) of Scripture—not to mention several essential aspects of the gospel message. Surely those are issues that cannot be swept aside or discounted as marginal in the name of a twisted notion of charity or false humility. When you reflect on how much of the Christian message is undermined by postmodernist notions about truth, it turns out the current controversies are infinitely more serious than McLaren wants to pretend.
Furthermore, when you realize that not one of those issues is mentioned in the two creeds McLaren names (because those doctrines weren’t even seriously challenged by the early heretics the creeds were written to answer)—it should be instantly obvious that there are several very crucial doctrines worth fighting for beyond the few that are catalogued in a couple of Christendom’s most ancient creeds. The vast majority of Christians throughout history have also understood that the truth of the gospel is even worth dying for. It is frankly difficult to see how anyone viewing truth from a post-modernist perspective could ever begin to understand why.
Truth—including historical facts, assurance, and objective, distinct, knowable, authoritative propositions that demand to be embraced as true—is an essential concept in authentic Christianity. All the other aspects of religious experience flow from the truth we believe and simply give expression to it. Take away the ground of truth, and all you have is fluctuating religious sentiment.
Remember, the apostle Paul called the church “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). We have a duty to uphold the truth and to wield the sword of God’s Word against every human speculation and every worldly hypothesis raised up against the knowledge of God. The struggle will continue until every thought is brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). The church must pursue that fight, and if church leaders are not setting the example, they are not being faithful to their calling.

MacArthur, John: The Truth War : Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception. Nashville, Tennessee. : Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2007, S. 32

**evanovitch** · 11-30-2010, 01:58 AM

Re: make a choice

A Lack of Spiritual Maturity

One more factor in the abysmal lack of discernment today is a growing deterioration of the overall level of spiritual maturity in the church. As knowledge of God’s truth ebbs, people follow popular views. They seek feelings and experiences. They hunger for miracles, healings, and spectacular wonders. They grope for easy and instant solutions to the routine trials of life. They turn quickly from the plain truth of God’s Word to embrace doctrines fit only for the credulous and naive. They chase personal comfort and success. The brand of Christianity prevalent in this generation may be shallower than at any other time in history.

I have absolutely no confidence in contemporary Christian pollsters, starting with their incorrigible unwillingness to make any kind of meaningful distinction between a heathen who makes a religious profession in the name of Christ, and people who truly seem to believe God’s Word, love the Lord, and give credible professions of faith. (That is, of course, the very distinction Christ instructed us to make in Matthew 7:15–20.) But since so many supposedly evangelical churches themselves deliberately refuse to differentiate between sheep and goats, sometimes the opinion-poll data is telling anyway.

For example, a survey released by the Barna Research group in February 1994 suggested that half of all people who describe themselves as “born-again” had no clue what John 3:16 refers to. Large percentages of professing Christians were also at a loss to explain terms such as “the Great Commission” or “the gospel.” A number defined “gospel” simply as “a style of music.”&#65279;21&#65279;

Clearly, spiritual ignorance and biblical illiteracy are commonplace among professing Christians. That kind of spiritual shallowness is a direct result of shallow teaching. Solid preaching with deep substance and sound doctrine is essential for Christians to grow. But churches today often teach only the barest basics—and sometimes less than that.
Churches are therefore filled with baby Christians—people who are spiritual infants. That is a fitting description, because the characteristic that is most descriptive of an infant is selfishness. Babies are completely self-centered. They scream if they don’t get what they want when they want it. All they are aware of are their own needs and desires. They never say thanks for anything. They can’t help others; they can’t give anything. They can only receive. And certainly there is nothing wrong with that when it occurs in the natural stage of infancy. But to see a child whose development is arrested so that he never gets beyond that stage of helpless selfishness is a tragedy.
And that is exactly the spiritual state of multitudes in the church today. They are utterly preoccupied with self. They want their own problems solved and their own comfort elevated. Their spiritual development is arrested, and they remain in a perpetual state of selfish helplessness. It is evidence of a tragic abnormality.
Arrested infancy means people do not discern. Just as a baby crawls along the floor, putting anything it finds in its mouth, spiritual babies don’t know what is good for them and what isn’t. Immaturity and lack of discernment go together; they are virtually the same thing.

The tendency to stall in a state of immaturity also existed in New Testament times. Paul appeals to Christians repeatedly to grow up spiritually. In Ephesians 4:14–15, he writes, “We should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ”(emphasis added).

How do we grow spiritually? By “speaking the truth in love” to one another. We grow under the truth. It is the same truth by which we are sanctified, conformed to the image of Christ, made to be mature spiritually (John 17:17, 19). As we absorb the truth of God’s Word, we grow up and are built up. We might say accurately that the process of spiritual growth is a process of training for discernment.
Hebrews 5:12–6:1 underscores all this:

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to [maturity].
The writer of Hebrews is telling his readers, “You’re babies. You’ve been around long enough to be teachers, but instead I have to feed you milk. I have to keep giving you elementary things. You can’t take solid food. You’re not accustomed to the rich things of the Word—and that is tragic.”

Notice that in verse 14 he says that discernment and maturity go hand in hand: “Solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” Knowing and understanding the Word of righteousness—taking in solid food—trains your senses to discern good and evil.
The word “senses” in that verse is not a reference to the feelings, emotions, or other subjective sensory mechanisms. The writer of this epistle is explicitly encouraging his readers to exercise their minds. Those who “because of practice have their senses trained to discern” are the wise, the understanding, people who thrive on the solid food of the Word of God. Discernment results from a carefully disciplined mind. It is not a matter of feelings, nor is discernment a mystical gift. Notice from the wisdom literature of the Old Testament how closely discernment is linked with a seasoned, developed, biblically informed mind.
• Psalm 119:66: “Teach me good discernment and knowledge, for I believe in Your commandments” (nasb).
• Proverbs 2:2–5: “Make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding; for if you cry for discernment, lift your voice for understanding; if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; then you will discern the fear of the Lord, and discover the knowledge of God” (nasb).
• Proverbs 10:13: “On the lips of the discerning, wisdom is found” (nasb).
• Proverbs 16:21: “The wise in heart will be called understanding” (nasb).
The path to discernment is the way of spiritual maturity. And the only means to spiritual maturity is mastery of the Word of God.
Most people are discerning about things that are important to them. People who regard a healthy diet as crucial watch carefully what they eat. They read the fine print on the package to see how many grams of fat the food has and what percentage of the daily required nutrients it offers. People who work with pesticides or dangerous chemicals must be very discerning. They study the procedures and the precautions very carefully to avoid any potentially lethal exposure. People who make investments in the stock market usually practice discernment. They study the cryptic listings in the newspaper on the stock market and watch the ticker tape. Lawyers are very discerning with contracts. They have to figure out the legal jargon and make sure they understand what they are signing. People who undergo delicate surgery are usually very discerning. They try to find the doctor with the finest skills—or at least verify that he has plenty of experience in whatever procedure he will be doing. I know a lot of people who are very discerning sports enthusiasts. They watch a football game and can assess any offense, any defense, any play. They often feel they are more discerning than whoever is calling the actual plays. They study statistics and averages and take it all very seriously.
Did you realize those are essentially the same skills that are required in spiritual discernment? Careful thought, keen interest, thorough analysis, close observation—together with alertness, attentiveness, thoughtfulness, and above all, a love of truth. All of us have those skills to some degree, and we use them in whatever field of endeavor is important to us. Yet what could be more important than spiritual discernment?

No valid explanation is readily available for why contemporary Christians are so undiscerning, but their lack of discernment reveals a spiritual apathy that is deadly evil.
Can we as the church regain our ability to be discerning? Only by growing up spiritually. That means confronting the spirit of a relativistic age and diligently applying ourselves to the unfailing Word of God. We cannot gain discernment overnight or through a mystical experience. Discernment will come only as we train our minds to be understanding in the truth of God’s Word and learn to apply that truth skillfully to our lives
MacArthur, John: The Truth War : Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception. Nashville, Tennessee. : Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2007, S. 210

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