Counterfeit Worldviews Invading the Church
September 12, 2022 🕑 95 min.
Motivation
When my family and I moved to town six years ago, it took us quite a while to find a church home. Though we tried plugging into a few places, sometimes for months at a time, we never really felt like we fit. One weekend, though, we had what I called the most efficient church shopping experience ever. After doing some research throughout the week, we set off Sunday morning to visit a new church. We lasted maybe 20 minutes into the service when my wife and I looked at each other, said, “Nah,” and got up and left. We got back in the car, found the next closest church on the map that hadn’t started yet, and headed that way. At stop number two, we didn’t even make it into the sanctuary because they wanted us to hand over the sleeping baby in our arms to their childcare program. No thanks; back in the car, and on down the road to the next closest church. Stop number three was the winning ticket, so in less than an hour we’d visited three churches and found the place we would call home. Mission accomplished.
Fast-forward about three months, and the pastor announces that he’ll be taking a pastorate back home so he and his family can better care for aging parents. Makes sense, and I don’t fault him for making the switch. Sometimes, though, it seems like the lead pastor is what’s holding things together, and after his departure things that hadn’t been addressed but really needed to be start to surface and things start to fall apart. In this particular case we had a rough interim period, a sketchy pastoral search process, a contentious congregational meeting to hire a new pastor, a difficult time under new leadership, a request from the elder board that the new pastor resign, and then the departure of both the new guy and a disgruntled faction within the church. You’d think, with all that in mind, when asked if I would consider joining the elder board, I would’ve responded with, “I’m out. No—thank you for thinking of me.” Instead, being convinced the call to eldership was from God and not solely from the church, I agreed, and then got to see “how the sausage is made,” so to speak. Fast-forward some more, and after my wife and I confront some of the church leadership on lying to the congregation, and those conversations ending effectively in, “Well, I guess we’ll just need to agree to disagree,” we realize that for us to continue following where God is leading us, we need to leave the church we’d invested our lives in over a number of years.
That was rough, but in short order we found ourselves connected to a church that seemed like it really had a culture of devoting itself to the study of the scriptures and to discipleship. Good deal—at that point we needed a place that was rock-solid founded on truth. However, on our second Sunday there, the lead pastor who’d been there a couple decades gives his two weeks notice. Now at this point I start thinking we should be able to monetize our apparent skill set here. Want to get rid of your pastor? Invite us to your church, we’ll start getting plugged in, and he’ll be out the door in a few weeks to a few months, guaranteed. Tongue in cheek aside, this ushered in a rough interim period, a sketchy pastoral search process, and a contentious congregational meeting to hire a new pastor. Déjà vu. Seeing that this congregation didn’t have a biblical understanding of the church, of church leadership, or of church discipline, we decided not to invest any more time there.
Switching away from our church family woes, in recent years I’d also been feeling a need to seek out more intentional training in spiritual matters. Being raised in the middle east, a good deal of my childhood was devoted to learning how to defend the faith, particularly in conversation with all the other world religions out there. However, much of my adult life was spent largely relying on that foundation that had been built up in childhood, not necessarily developing it further. I therefore started looking around to see who or what kind of program I might train under. I looked into a few seminaries, but didn’t think I was supposed to step away from software engineering at the time. I came across The Institute of Public Theology, which looks like a great program, but the price tag and time commitment were more than I thought was reasonable for us, given the rest of life right now. Eventually I found a program that looked like it fit the bill, and a few friends and I signed up for their year-long training program.
Given our last two church experiences, I think I’m perhaps more perceptive now than you’re average Joe when it comes to seeing things start to go sideways in a Christian context. As our time in the program progressed, there started to be concerns about how some of us were engaging with the materials (e.g., you’re being too negative in your critiques, etc.). I suspected our small group leader was undergoing some harsh treatment at the hands of the program’s leadership. Eventually, not being able to ignore the problems any longer, I sank an entire day into re-reading six months’ worth of online forum discussions to see if I could figure out what exactly the problem was and where. At the end of that, I reached out to the program leadership and said, “Hey folks, I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, but I suspect some of us have been accidentally sinning against one another. I might be wrong, but here’s all my research to support that. Can we please get together and talk things through?” What should have been a simple matter of, “Sorry, all. We made some bad assumptions, didn’t do our homework, and therefore made some false accusations. Can you please forgive us?” turned really ugly really quickly, and in less than two weeks a friend and I were expelled from the program.
You run into three nasty church situations like this in three years’ time, and you have to start wondering, “Am I the problem? Why would God put us through all of this? Wasn’t the first go-around painful enough? What on earth is going on?” On the surface it might seem like all the various problems we’ve experienced are unrelated—a confluence of events such that this was simply an unfortunate and unpleasant season in our lives—however, we eventually realized that there is something that ties all the strands together: a conflict of worldviews.
🕑 8 min.
What Is a Worldview?
Before we unpack what I mean by a conflict of worldviews, we must first understand what the term means. It was first coined by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgment in 1790 as Weltanschauung (literally view of the world). While for Kant the term meant simply the perception of the world you gained empirically, the term quickly grew to encompass all the fundamental beliefs you hold that color how you view the world. Often you’ll hear people use the analogy that your worldview is a pair of glasses through which you see everything else—if the lenses are blue, then everything will have a bluish hue, etc. Though there are multiple ways to talk about worldviews, there are three that I find most helpful.
The Four Fundamental Questions
The first way to have a more concrete understanding of a worldview is to say it answers these four fundamental questions:
Who am I?
Why am I here?
What’s wrong with the world?
How can what’s wrong be made right?
Everyone has an answer to these questions, whether or not they’ve thought through them intentionally. The biblical worldview answers these questions as follows:
I am an individual (Psalm 139:13) made in the image of God, the crowning glory of his creation (Genesis 1:26–31).
I am here to glorify God (1 Corinthians 10:31) and enjoy him forever (Psalm 144:15).
The problem with the world is I don’t do what I was created to do (Leviticus 5:17; James 4:17).
To address the problem, I can surrender my life to the lordship of Christ (Romans 10:9) and allow God to transform me more and more each day into his likeness (2 Corinthians 3:18). Ultimately Christ will return to judge the world and make all things right again (Matthew 25:31–46; Revelation 21:1–8).
A non-biblical worldview will have different answers to one or more of these questions.
The Historical Meta-Narrative
The second way to understand a worldview more fully is to look at the historical meta-narrative it tells. History tells a story, the main components of which are:
Creation
Fall
Redemption
Consummation
The biblical worldview tells us:
God created all things, both seen and unseen (Colossians 1:16), created man and woman in his image as the crowning glory of his creation, and deemed it all very good (Genesis 1:26–31).
Mankind ruined our perfect relationship with our creator by sinning against him (Genesis 3:6–8). This fall from grace forever impacted God’s perfect creation (Romans 5:12–21; Romans 8:18–22).
After promising redemption for millennia (Genesis 3:15; Deuteronomy 18:15), God sent his son Jesus (Galatians 4:4) to become fully human (John 1:14), to live a perfect, sinless life (Hebrews 4:15), to die a substitutionary death on the cross in our place (2 Corinthians 5:21), that his righteousness might be credited to us (Romans 4:20–25) and we might be reconciled to God (Colossians 1:19–20) through faith in him (Ephesians 2:8–9).
God has appointed a day for Christ to come again to judge the living and the dead (Acts 10:42) and make all things right (2 Peter 3:10–13).
A non-biblical worldview will address the same four areas of the historical meta-narrative, but there will be differences in one or more of the stages.
Note
The historical meta-narrative and the four fundamental questions line up as follows: Who am I and why am I here? Creation. What’s wrong with the world? Fall. How can what’s wrong be made right? Redemption and consummation.
The Five-Fold Breakdown
The third and final way to think about worldviews that I find useful is to break up the fundamental beliefs into a handful of categories. People tend to break it down in different ways, but one way that’s helpful to remember is your worldview consists of your views on:
God
Man
Truth
Knowledge
Ethics
The biblical worldview specifies:
There is only one true God (Deuteronomy 6:4), eternally existent in the three persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19).
God made man in his image as the crowning glory of his creation (Genesis 1:26–31), and gave us the responsibility to exercise dominion over his created order (Genesis 2:15).
Truth is absolute and unchanging (Psalm 119:160), having its source in God himself (John 14:6).
We can know truth through what God revealed to man in the special revelation of the Bible (John 17:17), as well as in the general revelation of his creation (logic, math, science) (Romans 1:20; Psalm 19:1–4; Romans 2:14–15).
Ethics are absolute and are based on the unchanging word and will of God (Exodus 20:1–17; Matthew 5:17–18).
A non-biblical worldview can be broken down into the same five categories, but will differ in what it specifies for one or more of them.
To Sum Up
There is a biblical worldview—that is, a worldview completely consistent with revelation, reason, and reality—and there are numerous counterfeit worldviews—those that disagree with the biblical one on one or more points. I refer to them as counterfeit worldviews because, like a counterfeit bill, they resemble the real thing, but are wrong in often subtle ways. That which they get right, they pilfer from scripture, and that which they get wrong is a twisting of God’s truth.
Note that in all I’ve said above I have appealed to the Bible as a source of truth without first establishing it as such. Examining the veracity of scripture is a lengthy endeavor outside the scope of our current discussion, so I’ll leave looking into is as an exercise to the reader. However, to whet your appetite it’ll be sufficient to say, “I choose to believe the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents, written down by eyewitnesses in the lifetime of other eyewitnesses; they report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies, and claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin.”
Now one final note before we leave this section: Often enough I’ve heard people use the term “worldview” to mean something more along the lines of systematic theology—a complete, orderly account of all Christian doctrine that believers will learn over the course of years of intensive study—but to conflate the two terms is to misunderstand both concepts significantly. Everyone has a worldview, whether or not they’ve studied theology, and whether or not they can articulate it with any clarity. The elements of your worldview form quite early in life, with most of them (your fundamental beliefs about God, man, truth, and knowledge) solidifying by age nine or so, and the final element (ethics) settling around age thirteen. To learn to identify, analyze, and refute counterfeit worldviews is not just an academic exercise for the theological scholars—it’s necessary for each and every one of us because we’re all influenced by various worldviews on a daily basis.
Where Is the Conflict Then?
If you’ve been in the church for any significant amount of time, I’d guess as you were reading through the last section you were thinking something along the lines of, “Okay, this seems like Christianity 101. What’s the big deal?” The problem that arises is we say we hold to scripture, while at the same time mentally assenting to multiple conflicting worldviews. This inherent contradiction is played out in what we think, say, and do, but without the ability to identify, analyze, and refute counterfeit worldviews, we’re often unaware of it.
Let’s unpack this by examining two concrete cases of worldviews that have been making significant inroads into the church in recent decades. First we’ll take a look at what happens when our emotions become the barometer for reality. After that we’ll see how the tyranny of the experts unfolds within the church. Let’s dive in.
🕑 30 min.
Emotionalism
The first worldview in play is emotionalism. For a fuller treatment of this subject, I highly recommend Mama Bear Apologetics, edited by Hillary Morgan Ferrer, but I’ll try to do it justice in brief. Starting around the Age of Enlightenment back in the 17th century, there was a growing belief in the philosophy of naturalism, which holds (among other things) that the only things that are knowable are what we can observe with our senses. As this view grew in popularity, eventually authority and divine revelation were jettisoned as sources of knowledge, which characterized the age of modernism in the 19th century. As we continued to whittle away at sources of knowledge, we eventually wound up at postmodernism in the mid-20th century, where the only truth is that there is no truth. However, being created in the image of God, and subject to his reality, humans naturally crave a source of truth—perhaps a built-in longing for our creator—so even in our insistence that no such source existed, we still needed one.
Well if we’ve given up on revelation, reason, and reality, what’s left over that can fill the void? Cue the Disney montage and crank up True to Your Heart from the Mulan soundtrack, because the answer is your emotions. This worldview is often easy to see out in the wild. For instance:
Following your heart—oftentimes contrary to your better judgement and the advice of those who have your best interests in mind—has been one of the dominant themes in children’s literature and entertainment over the last half-century, and it always works because “they all lived happily ever after.”
Over the last two decades or so, the concepts of trigger warnings and safe spaces were incubated on college campuses and are now spreading through society at large, all in service of ensuring no one has a negative emotional response to anything.
Recently Matt Walsh released a documentary entitled What is a Woman?, in which he travels the world seeking answers regarding gender and transgender issues. At times it’s downright comical as his interviewees are reticent to answer simple questions directly, instead relying on emotional justifications for their beliefs.
Though the examples above are fairly noticeable, emotionalism can also be much more subtle, particularly as it’s been invading the church. For instance:
We have a family that will be joining our small group, and the husband is one who was raised in the church and is now an unbeliever, and we want to make sure we conduct ourselves in a way that is loving and welcoming and not off-putting.
We want to make sure we’re seen as loving our neighbor, so we’ll [insert something here] to ensure we’re not creating a wedge between us and those we seek to minister to.
The way you’re critiquing this Christian organization’s content is overly negative, and is hampering the ability of some in our group to engage with the material, so you need to change the way you engage with the information and communicate with your fellow participants.
What’s Wrong with This?
In the prior three examples it might be significantly harder to discern where the problems lie. We know we’re commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:31). We know that people can’t be saved without first hearing the gospel from us (Romans 10:14), and we don’t want to create a barrier such that they can’t hear it. We don’t want to cause people to stumble in their faith (Luke 17:2). It seems like in these examples we’re simply being exhorted to be good Christians—what’s wrong with that? To answer that question, we need to realize that emotionalism is built on a number of false assumptions: that positive emotions are good and negative ones are bad, that something I feel must be true, and that I’m responsible for the feelings of those I interact with, among others. Let’s walk through each of these in turn.
Positive Good, Negative Bad
It’s natural that we think emotions indicate whether the situation that caused them was good or bad. For instance, when we’re celebrating the wedding of dear friends, we’re overjoyed, because their marriage is a good thing. Alternatively, when we hear of the latest mass shooting, our hearts break, because murder is a bad thing. However, it’s relatively easy to come up with counterexamples to show that this relationship between emotions and ethics doesn’t hold universally.
Consider the case of a man viewing a woman naked. He naturally has a positive emotional response to this visual stimulus. Does that mean the situation that caused that response is good? It depends on the broader context. If the woman in question is his wife, then yes, because that’s how God designed it to work. If she isn’t, then no, the situation that caused the positive emotional response is bad, because it’s adultery, which God forbids (Exodus 20:14). These two possibilities are an oversimplification, to be sure, but for our purposes here we just need to realize that the goodness or badness of any scenario depends on the specifics of the situation and not on the emotional responses in play.
Consider also the scenario of saying something in a conversation that causes a negative emotional reaction in someone. Were you wrong to say what you said? Again, it depends on what exactly is going on. If you were hurling insults at them, then yes, repentance and forgiveness are necessary, and hopefully the two of you can be restored to fellowship in short order (Matthew 5:23–24). However, if you communicated truth to them and the Holy Spirit used that truth to convict them of unrepentant sin in their life, which then caused the negative emotions associated with guilt, then no, what you did was both right and necessary; indeed, scripture requires it (Titus 2:15).
At its core, this foundational assumption of emotionalism is just bad logic. We know from experience that some good situations produce positive emotions, and some bad situations produce negative ones, but then we flip that around and say that positive emotions imply goodness and negative ones imply badness. I’m afraid that’s just wrong.
Feeling = Truth
This second assumption tends to manifest in two different ways. In the first case, consider a newly married couple. It’s their first time celebrating the wife’s birthday together after the wedding, and the husband has arranged for a romantic meal at a fancy restaurant. The food is superb, the dessert top-notch, and yet when they return home for the evening, the husband can tell something’s wrong, but hasn’t the slightest idea what. Being a loving husband, he tries to remedy the situation with flowers, notes, etc., but to no avail. Fast-forward to the husband’s birthday and the wife prepares a cake and candles, has some small gifts to open, and invites some friends over. “Aha!” realizes the husband, now fully clued in. “This is how you celebrate a birthday!” On the wife’s birthday, the celebration had left her feeling deflated and unloved, because all the regular trappings of a birthday were missing. However, did her husband stop loving her, on her birthday of all days? Not at all—it was simply a mismatch of how birthdays were celebrated in their respective families. The feelings present did not match the reality of the situation. (And yes, I’ve learned my lesson, and there have been flowers, cake, presents, etc., ever since.)
The second case is a little harder to parse through. If you’ve ever been through any instruction on communicating in the midst of conflict, chances are you’ve heard it can be helpful to the conversation to make statements about your feelings rather than to make statements of fact. For instance, “I feel like you’re being unloving,” rather than simply, “You’re being unloving.” No one can argue with your feelings, or so the saying goes. While there’s some truth to this statement, unfortunately it has been extended well outside its natural boundaries as it’s permeated modern culture.
If you are simply expressing the emotions you’re feeling, you’re making a truth claim about your emotional state (e.g., “I’m angry right now”). Someone could try to argue that you’re lying about your feelings in the moment, but in general we can take it on faith that someone is being truthful in relaying their emotions to us. And doing so can indeed be helpful to the conversation so others aren’t left guessing and then operating on assumptions.
However, more often than not people tend to use the phrase “I feel” as a substitute for phrases like “I suspect,” “my gut tells me,” or ultimately “I believe.” Rather than making a truth claim about the speaker’s emotional state (which can’t practically be falsified), they’re actually making a truth claim about some aspect of reality (which can). They’re couching their statements in the vocabulary of emotions, though, which has the impact of making them unassailable. The problem, then, is that when making a truth claim about reality, you should be able to support it with a well-reasoned argument (where “argument” refers to the rhetorical device, as opposed to the modern redefinition of the term to mean “quarrel”). Even in the cases when you think it’s just your gut talking, that’s actually your brain processing information faster than your consciousness can keep up (see, e.g., Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell), and you should be able to think through the argument after the fact. If you can’t, your truth claim has no justification, and there’s really no reason for someone to listen to it.
This assumption is a pernicious one, again because we have first-hand experience of instances in which our emotions do happen to line up with reality; that is, they can indeed clue us in to the truth of the matter. However, to take the (understandably large) subset of instances in which emotions and truth align, and then to say that what I feel in any situation must be true, is a logical fallacy. On the one hand your emotions may not line up with reality, and on the other you may be using emotional language to hide your assertions about reality from scrutiny. Either way the assumption falls flat.
I’m Responsible for Your Feelings
This final assumption we’ll analyze under emotionalism is a case of taking a good idea—don’t be a jerk—and extending it far beyond the bounds of reason. If you’re mean, rude, abusive, etc., your actions will cause negative emotions in others, and that’s a bad thing that should be avoided. What should be avoided, exactly? Being mean, rude, abusive, etc.; however, we’ve been trained to think the answer is causing negative emotions in others, and when you take that to its logical conclusion, it means you need to conduct yourself in such a way as to never cause a negative emotional response in anyone you interact with, ever.
To an extent, this may simply be a lack of maturity playing itself out in society. I don’t like feeling sad, upset, depressed, hurt, etc., and when I do I have two options: I can take those thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), and then deal with them appropriately, or I could blame you, take no responsibility whatsoever, and demand that you and everyone else on the planet never hurt me in such a way ever again. Keep in mind that life will throw all sorts of circumstances your way. You’re not responsible for what life throws at you, but you absolutely are responsible for how you respond. Boundaries, by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, is a great resource in this arena.
I suspect something else that’s been hampering the church in particular in this area (at least in the western world) is our relatively recent poor performance in terms of number of souls saved vs those abandoning their faith, which forces us to ask the question, “What are we doing wrong?” It seems we’ve gravitated toward the answer—I would argue because we’re far more influenced by the cultural milieu than we’d ever care to admit—that it’s the way in which you speak that determines whether or not your words will be received well. If only we could speak in such a way as to be perceived as loving, unifying, humble, encouraging (though we’ll define these terms as the culture does, not as scripture does), then we’ll be able to have enough relational capital to win our neighbors to Christ and prevent our children from abandoning the faith as soon as they leave home. Remember that you’re responsible for delivering the truth, not for how someone responds to it.
Counterfeit Worldview
Now that we’ve walked through some of the faulty assumptions underpinning emotionalism, let’s take a step back to see how it’s a counterfeit worldview in conflict with the biblical one. The contrast is easiest to see if you recall the latter three parts of the five-fold breakdown from earlier:
Truth: Truth has you as its source, and is therefore fluid, both in time, and from person to person.
Knowledge: We can know truth through what we happen to be feeling in the moment.
Ethics: Right and wrong are determined by whether actions cause positive or negative emotions.
Though it’s easiest to see in these three areas, these fundamental beliefs have implications across the board. In terms of the four fundamental questions:
Who am I? My identity is determined by whatever I happen to be feeling in the moment. This may be in accord with the biblical worldview, but I might feel like I’m attracted to members of the same sex, that I’m a member of the opposite sex stuck in the wrong body, that I’m actually a non-human animal inhabiting a human body, etc. My identity is effectively only limited by my imagination.
Why am I here? To pursue whatever activities lead to positive emotional responses. This usually only means in the short-term, though—if there are any long-term negative emotional consequences to my actions, I’ll just pursue more activities that yield short-term highs to distract from that.
What’s wrong with the world? Definitely all the things everyone else is doing that result in me experiencing negative emotions. Definitely not anything I do that does the same, and if anyone tries to point out such a scenario, them pointing it out is what causes my negative emotional reaction, so they’re in the wrong.
How can what’s wrong be made right? Society must be restructured such that no one hurts anyone else, even accidentally, ever again. While we’re at it, we may as well throw in free unicorns for everyone too.
In terms of the historical meta-narrative:
Creation: Everything came into being however I feel like it did. I might feel like a young-earth creationist or a big bang naturalistic materialist—either way’s fine, or I can pick something else that makes me feel good.
Fall: Things went wrong when humans started experiencing negative emotions. They’re uncomfortable and often hurt, and ruin the paradise of positive emotions we inhabited at some indeterminate point in the past.
Redemption: We can save ourselves by ensuring we never experience things like hurt, anger, rejection, depression, etc., ever again. Theoretically that should be possible by rearchitecting society, but in the meantime we’ll just do whatever we can to deaden our senses.
Consummation: One day we’ll get to a place where everyone’s happy and no one’s ever upset. No telling how we’ll get there, but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Then we can return to the five-fold breakdown, the last three parts of which we started with up above. To finish it out:
God: Whatever conception of God makes you feel most at peace is good for you. This tends to be what’s been characterized as moralistic therapeutic deism.
Man: I’ll define myself however I feel like it, thank you very much. See the first two fundamental questions up above.
How Does This Play Out?
With all of this in mind, let’s see if we can discern where emotionalism might be in play in the three more subtle example scenarios from earlier.
When Love Silences You
We have a family that will be joining our small group, and the husband is one who was raised in the church and is now an unbeliever, and we want to make sure we conduct ourselves in a way that is loving and welcoming and not off-putting.
Many ideas you’ll run into in life are neither all good nor all bad. Rather than simply accept them at face value, though, you can cultivate a posture of discernment by approaching ideas with the following questions:
What ideas here are good or bad?
Why are they good or bad?
Where do these good or bad ideas come from?
What purposes do these good or bad ideas serve?
Let’s try to ask some of these questions of the current scenario.
In terms of what’s good, we know that treating an unbeliever with the love and respect due to another made in the image of God is a good thing. Scripture tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:39) and to be welcoming (Matthew 18:5). We know such admonitions are good because they come from God and are meant for our flourishing, both individually and in community. We can reason that if we were, for instance, to conduct the small group in such a way that it seemed like the purpose was to save the unbeliever, treating him as a sort of project, that likely wouldn’t go over well. Shouldn’t we instead just let our light shine before others (Matthew 5:16) and see how that plays out?
It depends on what exactly you mean by “letting your light shine.” If you mean regularly pointing people to the truth of God’s word, such that it can set them free from our slavery to sin (John 8:31–36), then absolutely—go for it. If, on the other hand, you mean just generally living as “decent” human beings—you know, a step or two above serial killers—in the hopes that one day they’ll have an epiphany and realize there’s something fundamental they’ve been missing that no one’s ever told them about, then no, chances are that won’t be terribly effective. We tend toward the latter understanding, though, due to tacitly believing a false assumption that to be loving means to not tell someone what they’re doing is wrong.
I distinctly remember one evening where this influence of emotionalism was in full force, though I wouldn’t realize what was going on until years later. Our small group went through a season in which the couples shared their backstories with each other. This was a time in which we were more vulnerable with each other than ever before. When this particular couple shared their story of faith, marriage, and then the husband abandoning his faith afterward, one of the comments he made was that in all of their journey he hadn’t abandoned his marital vows. In that moment, I was instantly on high alert as my mind thought, “That ain’t right.” I waited to see if anyone else would raise a concern, but instead it was all hugs, thanks, “we’re here for you,” etc. To my shame, I didn’t say anything.
What was I so concerned about, though? When we got home, I brought the issue up to my wife. Fidelity to the marital covenant is more than just making sure you don’t cheat on your wife. When a man marries a woman, he’s agreeing to take on the roles of provider, protector, prophet, and priest, both for his wife and for any children God may bless them with. Provider and protector are easy enough for everyone to understand: bring home bacon, and stand between your family and those who would do them harm. Prophet and priest sound stranger to our modern ears, though. Prophet means representing God to your family (speaking God’s truths to them), and priest means representing your family to God (lifting them up in prayer). When my friend abandoned his faith, he abdicated these latter two roles. When he shared his story, the Holy Spirit tried to speak truth through me, but then and in the days, weeks, and months that followed, my desire to love my friend kept me silent.
When Love Makes You Compromise
We want to make sure we’re seen as loving our neighbor, so we’ll [insert something here] to ensure we’re not creating a wedge between us and those we seek to minister to.
As we saw up above, we know that loving our neighbor is a good thing, because it’s the second part of the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:37–40). We know we’re to be the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13), and that salt only does any good when it comes into contact with food, so we don’t want to be separating ourselves from those we’re supposed to be seasoning. Where does this thought go wrong, then? It depends on what kind of bounds we put on it (if any). For instance, in our attempts to ensure our neighbors perceive us as loving them, do we wind up compromising truth? As we seek to ensure we can continue ministering to the lost, do we wind up disobeying other commands from God in the process?
This scenario is perhaps easier to work through if we make it more concrete, so let’s talk about how many churches responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. If you think back to March of 2020, one of the commmon reasons cited for shuttering churches was that we were doing it to show our love for our neighbors. If you tried to push on this to determine what exactly was meant, you might’ve been answered with something along the lines of, “We don’t want to take the chance that us staying open is what causes someone to contract COVID and die.” What motivates such a response, though? If we do stay open, and someone does contract the virus, and they do die, what happens? Negative emotions—either in us, because we feel guilty, or in those close to the deceased, because they’re mourning the loss of a loved one, or both.
Hang on, though: Why are we worried about believers passing away, when we know that what awaits us after death is infinitely better than anything we could possibly have in this life (Philippians 1:21–23)? People will still be sad, sure, but that doesn’t mean death is a bad thing for us. Maybe you’re worried about not being ready to die yet, but if that’s the case, what do you need to do to get ready? Life is fleeting (Psalm 39:5, James 4:14), and we never know which day will be our last. Are you living accordingly?
Perhaps then church leaders clarified that, no, we’re concerned for the unbeliever who might die as a result of our actions. In that case there really is a negative outcome, because the end result is an eternity spent in hell. Hang on, though: Who’s responsible for someone coming to faith? Is it me, or is it God (Ephesians 1:4–6, Ephesians 2:8–9, 2 Timothy 1:9)? Is God indeed sovereign over all his creation and the affairs of man (Psalm 115:3, Proverbs 19:21, Jeremiah 32:17, Lamentations 3:37–39), or did someone die with COVID and God’s response was, “Darn it, I meant to save that one”? If our actions were intended to prolong the lives of unbelievers that they might be saved, did we then do anything to ensure they came in contact with the truth that has the power to save them, or did we just go about living as “loving” examples in the hopes that they’d eventually get a clue?
Okay, no, we understand that the death of a believer means, “Go directly to heaven; do not pass ‘Go’; do not collect $200,” and that God is ultimately in charge of when we kick the bucket. Rather, we’re closing down for a time because this is how we lovingly submit to our governing authorities (Romans 13:1–7). First question: What if you’re being told to disobey God’s commands (Acts 5:29), like to not neglect gathering together (Hebrews 10:25)? Second question: What authorities are we supposed to submit to, exactly?
This latter question deserves some examination, real quick, as it’s something that often gets confused when people are throwing Romans 13 around. When Paul was writing his letter to the Romans, he was doing so in the midst of the Roman Empire, in which the highest authority in the land was the emperor. Some authority was delegated to those under the emperor for the execution of certain offices (e.g., within the military or various provincial governments), but ultimately this period of ancient Roman history was characterized by a government that became ever more monarchical. In contrast, the United States is what’s known as a constitutional republic, in which the highest authority in the land isn’t a person, and isn’t an office, but instead is a document: the United States Constitution. Certain authority is delegated to various elected representatives for the execution of particular offices, but when an individual in one of those offices seeks to appropriate for himself authority that has not been delegated to him by the constitution, he’s operating outside the bounds of his roles both as a government official and as a minister of God (Romans 13:4). When that’s the case, you’re still required to submit to the governing authority, but that’s the constitution, which the particular official has run afoul of. When presidents, governors, and mayors start behaving like little tyrants, submitting to their whims, instead of holding them accountable both to the foundational documents that delineate their authority and responsibilities, and to the God who they ultimately serve, is perhaps one of the most unloving responses we could have.
While we must love our neighbor, we must do so while both loving God (Deuteronomy 6:5) and obeying all that he’s commanded us (John 14:15). Our actions must be in accordance with all of scripture. Compromise isn’t an option. Unfortunately in this instance many believers allowed fear (of death, of being seen as doing the wrong thing, of making the wrong decision, etc.) and other concerns to trump revelation, reason, and reality.
Note
You may argue that churches closed down not based on emotional reasoning, but based on a sound examination of the scientific evidence available at the time. In practice, I didn’t see this—and I was very much on the lookout for it—though I’ll grant that it might’ve happened somewhere. What I saw instead was a good deal of appealing to experts without first examining their authority or the veracity of their claims, which we’ll return to later on in this piece.
When Love Demands You Stop Thinking
The way you’re critiquing this Christian organization’s content is overly negative, and is hampering the ability of some in our group to engage with the material, so you need to change the way you engage with the information and communicate with your fellow participants.
First some backstory on this one. Some of the study materials for that year-long training program I mentioned in the introduction included the Bible Project videos, which are short, well-animated, informational videos that help you understand that the Bible is a unified story that leads people to Jesus. In terms of what they attempt to achieve, they are both excellent and unparalleled; however, problems became apparent very early on in the series. In some cases the concerns raised were along the lines of, “I don’t think I would’ve said it quite that way.” In others, “I disagree with your interpretation, but I understand how you got there.” In still others, “This is just plain wrong. The Bible says one thing, the video says another, and the two do not agree.” We were eventually counseled by the program’s leadership to take what was good from the videos and comment on the positive for the edification of others, but to keep our concerns to ourselves, as they were negatively impacting some members of the group.
What’s good here? You don’t want to be a Debbie Downer all the time—it’s not good for you or for those you’re around. A joyful heart is good medicine (Proverbs 17:22). It’s good to focus on the good (Philippians 4:8). Uplifting speech is a good thing, but negative talk is no bueno (Proverbs 10:32, Proverbs 15:4, Ephesians 4:29). We shouldn’t judge others (Matthew 7:2, Luke 6:37). You don’t want to be around divisive people (Titus 3:10, 1 Corinthians 15:33). We shouldn’t be a stumbling block to others (Leviticus 19:14, Romans 14:13). It seems like there’s a pretty solid scriptural basis for the exhortation to chill out and focus on the good.
What’s wrong here? Unfortunately it’s that the scriptures above are either being misinterpreted or misapplied to the current situation, or both.
Proverbs 17:22: While it’s good to be cheerful, thinking critically about a teaching isn’t indicative of a spirit of anxiety that weighs you down. If someone else’s critical thinking gets you down, that’s something that we should work through.
Philippians 4:8: Focusing on the good is worthwhile, but I’d think trying to ensure Christian teaching adheres to the word of God is one of the honorable and commendable things that fits into that bucket.
Proverbs 10:32, Proverbs 15:4, Ephesians 4:29: These verses don’t warn against critiquing other people’s ideas, but rather against speech that is unwholesome, wicked, perverse, rotten, or worthless.
Matthew 7:2, Luke 6:37: These passages aren’t saying not to judge, as Jesus goes on to call out the Pharisees for being blind, and says you can determine people to be either good or bad based on the fruit their lives produce. Rather, he’s saying the measure we use when judging others is the measure that God will use when judging us, so it’s a call to forgiveness and sacrificial love. But in order to forgive, there first needs to be something that requires forgiveness, which means some action has been deemed wrong.
Titus 3:10, 1 Corinthians 15:33: Paul’s letter to Titus is an exhortation to sound doctrine and the godly living that accords with it. The divisive people in this verse are those Paul has been warning Titus about throughout the letter—rebellious and deceptive false teachers and charlatans—not people questioning the biblical accuracy of a presentation. The bad company in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is referring to those who would tempt you to sin, not to ensure your teaching is sound.
Leviticus 19:14, Romans 14:13: The first verse here is admonishing you to not take advantage of the disabled, or, more generally, to not be a jerk. In the second verse, Paul is talking about the liberty of conscience we have in matters of differing personal conviction. Neither verse is making the general statement that you must avoid doing something that has the potential to upset somebody.
To sum up, when someone’s being critical, exhorting them to not be a jerk is just fine. Beyond that, though, there are some questions you should ask to get to the heart of the matter: Are the criticisms mean-spirited and rude, or are they simply pointing out where something doesn’t seem to align with scripture? Are you uncomfortable with the critique because of the content, tone, or way in which it was put forth, or just because you’re uncomfortable with any kind of confrontation? Has the person leveling the criticism actually sinned, or is someone just offended that their leadership has been called into question? By all means think critically about your critical thinking, but by no means stop thinking critically.
What are the Consequences?
Emotionalism is a worldview that is inconsistent with how God designed the world. When your thoughts, speech, and actions don’t mesh with reality, that causes problems. Other than the specific instances we’ve looked into above, what sort of problems manifest when this worldview infiltrates the church?
On the most basic level, our thinking is simply conflicted and erratic. We have one epistemology that applies to spiritual or religious matters (however you’d care to define those terms), and another one that applies everywhere else. Nancy Pearcey does a fantastic job in Total Truth chronicling where this sacred/secular divide came from, and what havoc it’s wrought both on the church and on society at large. The problem is worse than this, though, as we hold to the biblical worldview only when discussing matters of doctrine or theology within our walls, but then when those beliefs are to be lived out, even within the church, a different and incompatible ethic informs our actions. We’ve been so effectively discipled in this way of thinking that we don’t even realize the disconnect. What does this mean practically? I’ve typically seen it work itself out in two ways.
In the first case we wind up stifling the Holy Spirit’s attempts to speak through us. We think, “Gosh, I really feel like I should say something right now, but if I do the other person might take it the wrong way, it might come across as sounding harsh, it might push them further away from the faith, I might be seen as unloving and judgmental, etc.” This we must not do (1 Thessalonians 5:19).
Consider the various interactions Jesus had with the religious elite of his day. At one time or another people took things the wrong way, he was (appropriately) harsh, people wound up walking away, and he would definitely have been considered unloving and judgmental by today’s standards. We assume these are bad things, and yet Jesus, who is God—the source and definition of love, goodness, rightness, etc.—did them. It’s completely reasonable for us to approach such passages of scripture and say, “Hang on, this looks wrong to me, but I know it must be right, so Lord help me to understand how it is.” In practice, though, our actions say, “Lord, I think you were wrong.” How’s that going to go over when you stand before him in judgment?
“Well hang on a minute,” you say. “That’s Jesus we’re talking about! Who am I to do something like that?” Let me get this straight: We’re called to imitate Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1), and are to be sanctified (John 17:17) more and more into his likeness (1 Thessalonians 4:1–8), but you don’t want me to do what Jesus did because he’s God and I’m not? What are the boundaries of your assertion?
On top of the fact that our thinking here is nonsensical, we also deprive the body of believers from hearing God speak through us. Though we all intellectually assent to the fact that God can communicate to his church through the leading of the Holy Spirit in believers’ lives, more often than not we do a poor job corporately discerning what he’s trying to say to us. If you wish to improve in this arena, Pursuing God’s Will Together, by Ruth Haley Barton, is a good resource with practices to integrate into the life of your community to increase the likelihood that you’ll discern God’s will accurately, and decrease your chances of accidentally quenching the Holy Spirit.
The second way emotionalism works itself out is actually an extension of the first. Since we’ve made it a habit to ignore the Holy Spirit when he prompts us to say something, we abandon our responsibilities both to exhort fellow believers to more Christ-like behavior, and to rebuke those in unrepentant sin (2 Timothy 4:2). For those who are actually bold enough to speak up, you often run into the “nice police” trying to silence you so no one gets hurt or is made uncomfortable. If that happens to you—keeping yourself open to correction, and making sure you conduct yourself in a manner that is above reproach (1 Timothy 3:2)—humbly and politely ask them what exactly you did wrong, when and where, why they believe it was wrong, and what they think an appropriate action in its place would have been (basically a more detailed version of John 18:23). In practice no one has ever answered these questions for me, and like the officials questioning Jesus, my accusers stand condemned by their silence.
The end result of all of this is we lovingly strong-arm the church into an artificial unanimity so we can present our best face to the world—a world that desperately needs the truth we have but won’t share for fear of offending someone. Greg Koukl contends in Tactics—another one of the best books I’ve read in the past year—that we must combat such a fabricated unity through well-reasoned argumentation in our pursuit of knowledge. What is it that changes lives? Living lovingly as good examples, or truth convicting one of sin and of the need for a savior and sanctification? Again, don’t be a jerk, but truth is absolutely essential, and Satan is doing everything he can to suppress it with this counterfeit worldview.
🕑 30 min.
What Can We Do About All This?
I’ve heard a number of people saying things like, “We just need to have faith and focus on the gospel.” The mental picture that comes to mind when I hear that is of a squad of swordsmen in the midst of battle. Beleaguered by enemy forces (though they don’t realize it), their squadmaster encourages them, shouting, “Hold on to your swords, men!” You look at the squad and realize that’s not the most useful advice. One guy has his hand on the hilt, but hasn’t drawn it yet. Another’s resting his hand on the pommel, using it as a walking stick. A third, the most eager of the group, is holding it like a baseball bat, but he’s holding it backwards, grasping the blade near the point, as blood runs down his hands from self-inflicted wounds. A fourth has faith in the countless hours he’s logged as a swordsman in a video game, though he doesn’t even know how to grip his weapon correctly yet. None of these men have been trained in swordsmanship, let alone battle, and their squadmaster doesn’t realize the precarious spot they’re in.
I hope at this point your eyes have been thoroughly opened to our current predicament. Counterfeit worldviews have been invading the church for generations, and we’ve largely been ill-equipped to notice the incursion, let alone fend it off. We’ve only talked through two of them today—and even then, not in much detail—but there are plenty more where they came from. The pit of hell has been churning out tantalizing distortions of God’s truth almost since the beginning of time. Satan and his minions are remarkably well-practiced, and are well-aware of what’s at stake (more so than we are, or so it seems). With all that in mind, how on earth do we fight back?
Understand Our Training Regimen
The first step is to begin training for the battle in which we are already engaged. A successful warrior is not one who just wakes up one day, decides to head off into battle, and then returns victorious. Rather, a successful warrior is one who spends the vast majority of his time training, such that when he’s in battle, he can fall back on the skills and muscle memory he’s built over all those hours of training, and be victorious. What does such training look like for us, though? You’ve heard me mention a number of times that what we think, say, and do must be in accordance with revelation, reason, and reality. The justification for this particular epistemological breakdown I’ll save for another time, but for now suffice it to say these “three Rs” are umbrella terms for how God communicates truth to us:
- Revelation
God’s direct communication to us through his written word, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, and through his miraculous intervention in the world he created and superintends.
- Reason
God’s way of thinking via rational thought processes, which we think after him by virtue of being made in his image.
- Reality
God’s indirect communication to us through his created order, which we can study through the observational and historical sciences.
Under each of these umbrellas, then, are a number of skills in which we can develop our competency over time.
Note
Don’t think of these three categories as hard and fast subdivisions. There’s some overlap, and developing skills in one area improves your skills in another.
Revelation
A primary habit to be cultivated under revelation is that of reading the scriptures. There are some who contend that we are where we are today simply because Christians are largely ignorant of what the Bible says. If the only Bible reading we do is in conjunction with the sermons on Sunday, and if those slowly work their way through scripture a few verses at a time, it can take a lifetime to finally make it through the whole counsel of God. That’s simply too slow a pace, and it means we’re just not familiar enough with everything God has to say. Pick one of the many “read the Bible in a year” plans and go with it. Don’t get discouraged if you get behind a few days—if it takes you two years to make it through, that’s better than twenty. When you make it through, celebrate, and then start back in again. The Daily Bible is a good resource in this endeavor.
Beyond simply reading scripture every day, we must commit ourselves to memorization, that we might hide truth in our heart (Psalm 119:11). Part of this is memorizing scripture itself, whether that means individual verses, or whole books of the Bible (start with the shortest books to build your confidence). A program like Awana can be a big help here. In addition to memorizing scripture, consider also memorizing one or more of the early Christian statements of faith, such as the Apostles’ or Nicene creeds. A final practice in the realm of memorization that has been largely lost in evangelicalism is that of catechism, which is just a fancy word for a summary of doctrine compiled in a question and answer format. Consider using A Catechism for Girls and Boys, though there are a number of others to choose from.
Note
As you’re memorizing these extra-biblical resources, keep in mind that they are not infallible as the Bible itself is.
In addition to knowing what’s in the Bible, we also need to hone our skills when it comes to interpreting what it says. The practice of understanding the meaning of scripture is known as biblical hermeneutics. To an extent, it’s simply an application of how to analyze literature, where the literature in question is the word of God. If you get good at one, you get good at the other, so a resource like How to Read a Book, by Mortimer J. Adler, can be beneficial. More specific to scripture, though, you might consider learning and practicing the inductive Bible study method, though other methods abound. A significant difference between interpreting scripture versus other works is you have the author on hand to help you. As such, books like Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline can be helpful, in that spiritual disciplines like prayer and fasting help to put us in a place where God can better inform and correct us.
Reason
Another way we can discern between that which is true and that which is almost true is by using the rules of logic. This is a practice that is often overlooked these days, so training ourselves in the fundamentals of logic, and in more advanced logical argumentation, can go a long way in improving our ability to ascertain truth. Once you have the fundamentals down, a fun way to continue to sharpen your skills is to keep your eyes peeled for logical fallacies throughout the day and talk through them come dinner time.
In addition to thinking logically, we can also improve our skills in the realm of communicating effectively, known as rhetoric. While you speaking persuasively doesn’t directly improve your ability to determine truth, knowing how people communicate effectively, in terms of both honest and deceitful tactics, can help you sense when something’s amiss. Aristotle’s Rhetoric is the classic text on the subject, but How to Speak, How to Listen, by Mortimer J. Adler, is a good one as well.
Reality
A first arena under the umbrella of reality is that of empirical science, which consists of using our senses to better understand the world around us. We can improve our observational abilities over time with practice. Such skills are foundational to the scientific method, which allows us to verify whether our current understanding of how the natural world works is correct, and adjust our thinking if not. Additional skills that play into the process are the practices of deductive and inductive reasoning, which come from logic, mentioned earlier. “Well hang on now. Are you saying I need to switch careers and become a scientist?” No—indeed, doing so may decrease, rather than increase, your odds of being able to see truth clearly—but I am saying you need to be able to think critically about what you see in the world around you.
A second arena is that of historical science. This one is often overlooked these days, because the prevalence of naturalism has duped us into thinking the only things we can know are those we can know “scientifically,” by which is meant “by the methods of empirical science.” Consider this question, though: What did you have for lunch last Tuesday? I’m afraid no amount of observational work is going to answer that question for you. Instead you need historical thinking skills like examining sources, determining context, finding corroboration, and careful reading, to name a few. A great resource for training you in these techniques is Cold Case Christianity, by J. Warner Wallace.
Whether you’re dealing with empirical or historical sciences, a skill set useful to both is that of evaluating evidence. This involves evaluating the credibility of sources: how close they are to the information they’re reporting, whether or not they’re biased, how reliable they’ve been in the past, etc. Instead of simply accepting information because it comes from an expert, you need to be able to determine the likelihood that the expert is giving you accurate information in a particular situation.
How Am I Supposed to Do All This?
At this point I’ve introduced you to a dozen or so skills that need improving over the course of your life. I doubt this list is complete; it was just intended to give you an idea of the depth and breadth of the training necessary to be able to stand firm for truth. That said, do you need to drop everything and start training in each of these areas simultaneously? No, don’t do that. Instead, figure out one or two areas where you happen to be weak at the moment, and focus there. On the flip side, if you know you’re particularly strong in an area, try to figure out how you might teach others. I don’t want you to walk away thinking, “Gosh, there’s so much to do, it just seems hopeless;” rather, I want you to say, “Here’s one thing I can tackle, so let me get after it.”
Parents, understand that you have the responsibility to ensure your kids are well-practiced in the martial arts of discerning truth from falsehood before they leave the home. Once they’re out in the wild, the vast majority of the influences they’ll run into will be peddling counterfeit epistemologies. The good news is training your kids in most, if not all, of these skills can be incorporated into the regular rhythms of family life: Bible reading, memorization, and catechism around the dinner table; a homeschool curriculum that includes things like critical thinking, persuasive writing and speaking, scientific experimentation, investigative journalism; etc. There’s no silver bullet solution to this training regimen—use your creativity and tailor it to each of your kids’ personalities.
Church leaders, understand that you have the responsibility to ensure your congregants are growing in these areas, as it’s part of equipping them for the work of ministry (Ephesians 4:11–16). Now I’m not saying here that we shouldn’t be focused on loving our neighbors, sharing the gospel, being Jesus’ hands and feet in our community, etc. What I am saying, though, is that all the various things we are called to as followers of Christ must have truth as their foundation. Without it, everything falls apart. Please don’t walk away from this thinking, “Great, I just added another dozen things to my already overloaded plate.” When executing this responsibility you can and should be leveraging those in your congregation for what they can contribute, which we’ll come back to momentarily.
Identify, Analyze, and Refute
With our training regimen in place, the next question is what to do when we encounter one of these faulty worldviews out in the wild. The first step is simply to learn to recognize it, which is why we started off with the introduction to worldview analysis up above. Memorize the four fundamental questions, the historical meta-narrative, and the five-fold breakdown, along with what the biblical worldview has to say about each area. Once those are lodged in the back of your head, thinking “worldviewishly” is simply a matter of testing things against them. This can actually be a lot of fun when you’re practicing. Pick something from popular culture—a movie, song, book, piece of artwork—and analyze it. What does this have to say that’s good, and why is it good? What does it have to say that’s bad, and why is it bad? For that which differs from the biblical worldview, brownie points if you dig in and figure out where the bad ideas came from or what they’re trying to achieve.
It’s one thing to see counterfeit worldviews crop up in popular culture, though; what do you do when you see one exerting influence in the church? A common mantra is, “If you see something, say something.” Usually that comes up in various corporate trainings around safety, security, harassment, etc., but it applies here as well. If you think you see the influence of an anti-biblical worldview in the life of a fellow believer, call it out appropriately (Matthew 18:15–17). There’s a chance you might be mistaken, but you owe it to your brother to talk it through with him. We can’t afford to let brothers and sisters accidentally lead one another astray.
Hopefully such situations result in the errant believer being reconciled both to truth and to whomever they may have harmed along the way. That’s not always the case, though, as pride and confusion can very easily cause us to dig in our heels. When that happens, the one in error will often resort to tactics from emotionalism or authoritarianism (or both) to try to get you to give up. If that happens to you, politely say something along the lines of, “This is manipulation, and it doesn’t work on me.” You put them on notice that you know that they know their position is both wrong and indefensible, and that their response to it is unethical.
Require Specificity
The one thing that likely most hampers our pursuit of truth, other than the sinful human heart, is ambiguity. Let me give you an example from history. One of the most influential philosophers in the last 250 years was a German fellow by the name of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (and with a name like that, how could he not be German?). We’ll leave what he had to say and the impact it’s had as a story for another time, but for now it’ll be sufficient to hear what some of his detractors had to say of his writing, in which he used such imprecise language, often nobody had any clue what he was talking about. Arthur Schopenhauer was a fierce critic of his, denouncing him as a clumsy charlatan, saying that his awful writing was an embarrassment to the German people and to philosophy. Ludwig von Mises devotes some space in Human Action to rail against Hegel for the same problem, pointing out that shortly after his death there were two camps of adherents that sprung up: the Old Hegelians, who were devoted to maintaining protestant orthodoxy, and the Young Hegelians, who were supporting revolutionary atheism. Hard to get further apart than that, yet both groups pointed back to the same works and the same words to support their radically different interpretations of what he’d meant. Imprecise language is dangerous.
These days I often run across authors or speakers who use words and phrases that sound really good, enticing even—words that make you react with, “Ooh, I like that”—but have no concrete meaning. The deceptive power of such communication is you allow the reader or listener to define the terms however they like, such that they agree with you. Though you may be using the same vocabulary, you might not be using the same dictionary. Your best defense against this will be to cultivate the habit of asking, “What do you mean by that?” If the response you get doesn’t really clarify things, keep asking. If the person you’re speaking with is actually interested in a meeting of the minds, it’s in their best interest to be as specific as possible such that the two of you actually understand each other. If not, then perhaps it’s worth pointing out that they’re not really saying anything.
Another place we see a good deal of ambiguity is in argumentation. A compelling argument actually has six components, but we’ll just look at the first two here: the claim, which is the truth statement being asserted, and the grounds, which is the information given in support of the claim. More often than not, the grounds are simply omitted. Someone will levy an accusation against you, but then when no support for the claim is given, the implied grounds are “because I said so.” Even if grounds happen to be present, much of the time it’s also difficult to ascertain what the claim actually is. “You done me wrong!” Okay, what do you mean by that? “I mean you’re being overly negative.” Okay, how so? When you find yourself in such a scenario, try to get definitive answers to the following questions:
What have I done wrong? (Can the actual infraction be stated specifically?)
Where and when did I do it? (Can you point to a particular sentence, phrasing, tone, look, etc., and say, “This was where you messed up”?)
Why do you think it was wrong? (What is your ethic, and does it line up with the three Rs?)
What would have been an appropriate action in its place? (Are you willing to try to correct my behavior, or are you just here to yell at me?)
A specific situation you may run into is being accused of having said or done something that caused a negative emotional response in someone. You’re already well aware of the problems underlying such an accusation, but when dealing with it one of the first things you need to do is determine if someone has actually been hurt or offended, or if that person is only hypothetical. For instance, does the use of the term “master branch” in a software engineering context actually cause emotional grief in someone whose ancestors were brought to this continent as slaves? Or is such a person just a possibility? If the one offended is real, then deal with them directly and work through whatever the issue is; if hypothetical, then require the accuser to either produce an example or retract the accusation. As long as claims remain vague and unsubstantiated, it’s too easy to be bullied into submission—don’t fall for it.
Request Transparent Communication
As you read through the examples of how these worldviews can play out, you might’ve noticed that oftentimes things take a turn for the worse when communication happens one-on-one and in private. That’s not always the case, and all-to-all communication in public isn’t the right thing to do in all scenarios, but the frequency with which these worldviews silence people suggests that we should try to make communication transparent wherever appropriate.
What I don’t mean by this is the next time you have a disagreement with a fellow believer you go air it before the entire congregation before trying to work it out with them directly. Don’t do that (Matthew 18:15–17). What I do mean is you should discern whether the conversation involves or impacts more than just the two of you, and then bring others in as appropriate. For instance, concerns about the pastoral candidate impact the entire search process, so the discussion should be with the whole search team. Whether the small group has been appropriate or off the rails in their online forum posts impacts the entire group, so the discussion should involve more than just the person raising the concern.
If the situation justifies a larger discussion, though, what do you do? Politely say something along these lines: “Given the nature of this issue and the others involved with or impacted by it, I suspect a larger discussion would be more beneficial than us talking one-on-one. Can we find a time for [insert people here] to sit down together and talk it through?” Where you go from there will depend on the response. If the person you’re talking with refuses, politely ask them their reasons for thinking a private conversation is appropriate and a more open one is not. They may have valid reasons of which you’re unaware, but they should be able to relay those reasons to you.
If no rationale is given and a private conversation is still demanded, trust your gut. You may be able to request that your pastor accompany you in the private conversation, because if there’s a problem with you, they’re the one responsible for overseeing the correction of your behavior or attitude. Alternatively, as wisdom dictates, you might consider agreeing to a private conversation initially, if you can get the other person to agree ahead of time to a broader discussion if the concerns aren’t satisfactorily addressed. If either of these don’t work, again ask for a justification, and if none is given, retreat, regroup, and reconsider what your next move should be.
Rely on Your Community
Last, but certainly not least, understand that you’re not a maverick out doing battle against the forces of evil on your own. You’re a part of the body of Christ—both your local congregation, and the church universal—in which God has uniquely gifted and outfitted each of us to serve in different roles. Learn to rely on one another in our various areas of expertise. Rely on the scouts, who can see the enemy coming from a long way off. Rely on the swordmasters, who can help you improve your proficiency. Rely on your squadmaster, who can marshal a group of you for a particular mission.
What do I mean by this? For the individual, take a candid look at yourself and assess your strengths and weaknesses. Where you are weak, seek out others who are strong and develop those relationships. Where you are strong, ask God to put you in relationship with those you could support and bless with the gifts he’s given you. For the body of believers, figure out what each other’s strengths are and learn to rely on each other in those areas. For instance, when one gifted in administration sees potential logistical problems, see what they can contribute to help shore things up. When one gifted in discernment perceives something awry, tap the brakes, and see if there’s anything to the intuition. The work of the church is meant to be done by the body of believers, not only by its leadership.
Such thinking means rebelling against the radical individualism that has characterized our age. It means devoting your time and skills to something other than your own pleasure. It means intentionally investing in deep relationships in community, though there’s potential for pain and heartache. It requires vulnerability, as it means keeping yourself open to correction from your brothers and sisters, because—believe it or not—you might be fooled by the next incarnation of one of these ungodly ideologies too, as I was for so many years. Don’t worry; we’ve got your back, and we need you to have ours. We can fight this fight together.
Conclusion
So why on earth did God put us through the last few years of pain and heartache within the church? To wake us up, both to the reality of what’s going on in the world around us, and to what’s required of us as believers in the midst of it. It’s easy to look around today and think that the world has gone absolutely crazy in only a few short years, but to think that is to misunderstand the situation completely. We are now simply reaping the fruit of the ideas sown over the last many centuries. It’s also tempting to think we can turn things around relatively quickly (e.g., with the next election cycle, by speaking up at school board meetings, etc.). That we would do so is actually one of my major concerns, as that would allow us to kick back and relax, thinking we’d avoided impending disaster. What was built over the course of generations cannot be undone overnight.
In a sense, the problems we face today are no different than the ones we’ve been facing since the fall. One way or another it boils down to us trying to remove God from his proper place and insert ourselves in it. The good news, then, is the solution’s not new either. We must allow God’s truth to permeate and direct every thought we think, every word we speak, and everything we do. One day we’ll stand before God and be held accountable for how we conducted ourselves. We can thank him in advance for his grace and mercy.
Fellow believers, we have lost our ability to think. If we don’t regain it, we can’t hope to stand firm for truth. Let me conclude with this:
Stand firm, brothers and sisters. Never give up; never surrender. Live not by lies.