Aug 12
22
Without worldview, Christianity is done!
From ChristianGovernance eletter (August 22, 2012)
In recent days, I’ve been engaged in some interaction on these pages and elsewhere on the question of how explicit our confession of faith, our confession of the Lordship of Christ, should be when it comes to our public lives. Application to “politics” always seems to be the most controversial area of this discussion.
Differences of belief came out in my review of Prof. Cornelis Van Dam’s book, God & Government, and in some disagreement with Westminster Seminary prof. Michael Horton who is identified with a troublesome theological school labelled as “Two Kingdoms” or “Radical Two Kingdoms.” In another conversation, a quote by John MacArthur was thrown into the mix in which he said Christians should focus on redemption rather than reformation; individuals rather than culture – as though God confronts us with an either…or proposition rather than a both…and.
It is a necessary corollary that a king demands public homage. There is no logic to the position that Christ is King, yet He is OK if we only acknowledge that personally and privately in a safe corner of our lives. And there is no exception clause in the Bible on this point for civil magistrates – politicians, judges and the like. It’s the Lordship of Christ or idolatry. It’s the Law of God or legalism. There are not other alternatives. Christ said, if you’re not for me, your against me. He who denies me on earth, I will deny before my Father. Let’s not invent theological categories that enable us to box up these truths out of the way of our every day lives!
I was struck again by the practical relevance of this posture before God and man when I was re-reading the book on Canada’s human rights commissions, No Sacred Ground. In one chapter, it makes the point that our view of Christ’s Lordship and God’s Law has very relevant implications in how we live and present ourselves before a watching world. It notes that the fact that most Christians do not perceive and live Christianity as a worldview, with a Bible that impacts every area of their lives, gives human rights adjudicators the leverage they need to argue that Christian Horizons’ humanitarian ministry does not have any obvious relationship with Christianity. We excerpt that portion of the book below.
P.S. An article in the column to your left, “Corrupt formerly Christian universities – Why?”, includes the observation that the leadership who compromised on Christian principles did so incrementally without realizing the ramifications of their apparently inconsequential decisions.
The reason for that is that they did not understand and embrace Christianity as a worldview. A worldview is supposed to be a logically consistent whole. A belief in one area cannot contradict a belief in another area without revealing to you that one or both beliefs are wrong, and need adjustment to line up with your first principles. All beliefs are connected. Your belief about God has implications for your political theory. Your beliefs about the nature of man have implications for your economic theory, Your beliefs about sin have implications for your environmental theory. We’re fighting a legacy of several generations in our attempts to rediscover the Biblical vision of Christianity as a worldview. Not everyone is prepared for this long battle, but those not willing to fight it will, along with these formerly Christian universities, become scattered refuse in the ditch along Humanism’s highway. History is a teacher, and it shows us the real-world results of superficial anti-Christian religion and the victorious, vibrant, Kingdom-advancing faith of Biblical worldview Christianity.
P.P.S. The No Sacred Ground link above takes you to our $5 ebook. You can also order the $12 hardcover, but if you reply to this email with a request for the ebook, we will send it to you at no charge. (If I was you, I wouldn’t order the hardcover unless you want it now because we are working on a 2nd edition, though I don’t know yet when that will be ready.)
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From Chapter 5: “Does Christianity matter to Christian Horizons?”
Mr. Gottheil [the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal's adjudicator who ruled against Christian Horizons] acknowledged that the case goes to the “very identity and existence” of Christian Horizons, noted EFC’s Don Hutchinson. Mr. Hutchinson added that “in falsely concluding that we should be treated as a garden-variety social-service provider rather than a group engaged in religious ministry, Mr. Gottheil pretzels his way through earlier decisions of human rights tribunals and the courts that would disagree with his conclusion.” (Hutchinson, 2008) At any rate, Mr. Gottheil’s assertion that Christianity has no necessary relationship with Christian Horizons’ service is nothing less than the unacknowledged prejudice of a materialistic or naturalist ideology.
Mr. Gottheil is wrong. God is a personal God and He acts in history. There is a constant interplay between the material and immaterial realms. God blesses and curses and He works specially and particularly through His people in this world; in history. Christians must affirm these truths – and live them day by day. The strength and maturity of a Christian’s relationship with God directly impacts the nature of his work for God in this world.
Unfortunately, Christians in recent generations have made it easy for the Gottheils of this world to marginalize us by saying that our Christianity is not relevant to the work we do here on earth. We have made it easy to be marginalised in this fashion because we haven’t practised Christianity as a worldview. One partial exception has been in the area of family life, but even here, too many Christians do not consistently look to Scripture for the specific Christian principles of family life. What’s the rate of Christian divorces compared with non-Christians? What percentage of Christian youth think that sex outside of marriage is not always wrong? How many Christians think abortion is always wrong? Do we turn to Scripture for God’s definitive wisdom for our decisions about educating, discipling, training and nurturing our children? Is God’s Law-Word our guide on matters of family finance and debt?
If we don’t exhibit Christianity as a worldview; if the Bible is not the ethical foundation for every area of our lives, then the Gottheils of this world – the secular humanists in our country – have grounds to challenge our claims that our faith has relevance in the day-to-day, non-private, non-ecclesiastical aspects of our lives. We have given them that leverage by not embracing the sufficiency of Scripture and the Lordship of Christ over every area of our lives. If we don’t change, at these fundamental points of theology and allegiance, we will have no basis for challenging the continued ascendency of Humanism at the expense of Christianity in our nation.
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