FreeTruth

One of the temptations we face when thugs take over government or the workplace or the neighborhood or the home is to run. We're tempted to try to escape, find a safer place, go into hiding, get away from the danger zone. I'm not sure this is the best way.

I wouldn't say that there is never a time to escape (after all I do remember an Acts 9:23-25 scene in which Paul escapes Damascus in a basket lowered over a wall, a scene that makes me smile as I play back the grainy footage of that night-time escape in my mind; a bit of a humbling moment for a mighty apostle, wouldn't you say?). Friends, if there is imminent danger to body or soul, escape is a very real option, and in some cases duty.

But something tells me that often God's preference for us in hard times, when the heat of persecution or cultural meltdown increases is not that we run but that we root.

You'll remember that Psalm 37:1-40 is God's counsel to us when thugs rule and evildoers turn up the heat. And among the many commands given us is that of Psalm 37:3--"dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness."

The Hebrew word translated "dwell" means to settle down, reside, stay. This is a call to stay put; to dwell in the land; to root rather than to run.

The additional admonition to "befriend faithfulness" is our translator's attempt to capture an uncertain Hebrew phrase. Check other translations and, instead of "befriend faithfulness," you'll find "feed on faithfulness" or "enjoy safe pasture" or "cultivate faithfulness."

One thing all the translation attempts have in common is a picture of steady, staying grace. Psalm 37:3 is either a call to settle down and be faithful, or to settle down and feed on God's faithfulness, or to stay and graze in the pasture of God's grace. One thing it is not is a call to run.

I'm reminded of God's words to His exiled people in Jeremiah 29:4-7. Folks, while in our own Babylonian captivity under thugs and thieves in high places, perhaps the best thing we can do is "build houses (or rent apartments) and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce" and then build godly families as Jeremiah commands.

In other words perhaps the best thing we can do is take root and bear fruit. Perhaps the best thing we can do is to go about the business of everyday living, quite indifferent to the turmoil around, just minding our own business (as Paul puts it in 1 Thessalonians 4:10-12), taking care of our own affairs, working hard, tending our families, living quiet lives of consistent godliness, and whatever happens, simply keeping on keeping on.

Hard times are not times to run and hide; they're times to stay and shine (Matthew 5:10-16). What the world needs today is not more Christians moving away from the hot spots, retreating into safety to build communes, but Christians dwelling in the cultural war zones and staying put come what may.

Today's world and church need willing Christian stayers: men and women who'd rather be faithful than safe; who'd choose deep roots in a war zone over a cozy bunker in the country; who stick it out in church and society even when the times get hard indeed.

Labels: Culture War, Faithfulness, Persecution, politics, Social Action

My mind and heart has been especially focused on the Bible in recent months. As has been the case from at least that day in Eden when the tempter made his assault on God's word in the form of a question--"Did God actually say.......?" (Gen. 3:2), the word of God, ultimately coming to written form in Holy Scripture, has been under attack. In one way or another, whether by attempts to physically destroy it, or to undermine its truthfulness and authority, the attacks have come, and they will continue to come until Christ returns. This is not surprising coming from a world that is in rebellion against God, a world that suppresses the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18). However, as I scan the "evangelical" landscape, one of the most distressing things that I seem to increasingly observe are signs of accommodating to the spirit of the age (and "the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience" - Eph. 3:1, the one whose insidious question has continued to echo and wreak its havoc over the millennia) concerning how we view Scripture in terms of its inspiration and authority. This battle was fought and largely won within the evangelical church a generation ago in the 1970's. At that time leaders representing a broad spectrum of the evangelical church came together in the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy and issued its clarion call and confession regarding the Bible in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. I am old enough to remember those days well. But here we are in just a relative short period of time seeing indications on the horizon of the erosion of a high view of the Bible in evangelicalism possibly becoming evident once again.

And so, I am especially appreciative of the following thoughts expressed by Francis Schaeffer, who stood faithful in his day for the truth of God's word. They remind us of the foundational importance of the Bible, and exhort us to be faithful to its view, and Christ's view, of its inspiration and authority, and to the watershed importance of this to all of life. And they encourage us to be faithful in our day.

Martin Luther said, "If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the Devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is merely flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point." In our day that point is the question of Scripture. Holding to a strong view of Scripture or not holding to it is the watershed of the evangelical world.

We must say most lovingly but clearly: evangelicalism is not consistently evangelical unless there is a line drawn between those who take a full view of Scripture and those who do not.... There are two reasons in our day for holding a strong, uncompromising view of Scripture. First, and foremost, this is the only way to be faithful to what the Bible teaches about itself and what Christ teaches about Scripture. This should be reason enough in itself. But today there is a second reason why we should hold a strong uncompromising view of Scripture. There may be hard days ahead of us--for ourselves and for our spiritual and our physical children. And without a strong view of Scripture as a foundation, we will not be ready for the hard days to come.

Christianity is no longer providing the consensus for our society. And Christianity is no longer providing the consensus upon which our law is based. We are in a time when humanism is coming to its natural conclusions in morals, in values, and in law. All that society has today are relative values based upon statistical averages.

Soft days for evangelical Christians are past, and only a strong view of Scripture is sufficient to withstand the pressure of an all-pervasive culture built upon relativistic thinking. We must remember that it was a strong view of the absolutes which the infinite-personal God had given in the Old Testament, the revelation in Christ, and the then growing New Testament which enabled the early Church to withstand the pressure of the Roman Empire.

But evangelicalism today, although growing in numbers as far as the name is concerned, throughout the world and the United States, is not unitedly standing for a strong view of Scripture.... We are back in the days of a scholar like J. Gresham Machen, who pointed out that the foundation upon which Christianity rests was being destroyed. What is that foundation? It is that the infinite-personal God who exists has not been silent, but has spoken propositional truth in all that the Bible teaches--including what it teaches concerning history, concerning the cosmos and in moral absolutes as well as what it teaches concerning religious subjects.

What is the use of evangelicalism seeming to get larger and larger if significant numbers of those under the name of evangelical no longer hold to that which makes evangelicalism evangelical? If this continues, we are not faithful to what the Bible claims for itself and we are not faithful to what Jesus Christ claims for the Scriptures. But also--let us not ever forget--if this continues, we and our children will not be ready for difficult days ahead.

Furthermore, if we acquiesce we will no longer be the redeeming salt for our culture--a culture which is committed to the concept that both morals and laws are only a matter of cultural orientation, of statistical averages. That is the hallmark--the mark of our age. And if we are marked with the same mark, how can we be the redeeming salt to this broken, fragmented generation in which we live? (The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, Volume Two, A Christian View of the Bible as Truth, Crossway Books, 1982)

Labels: Authority, Bible, Faithfulness, Guest Post, Inspiration