Being Definite
Author: Michael Gott
Never has Paul sounded more laughable since he stood on Mars Hill in Athens when we read him saying, “. . . I know whom I have trusted, and am confident of his power to keep safe what he has put into my charge until the great day” (II Timothy 1:12, English Bible). The intellectuals of our day react to him like Festus, “‘You are out of your mind, Paul!’ he shouted.” (Acts 26:24, NIV).
We live in a day when being sure is a sign of sure ignorance, at least in the post-Christian America of today. It’s an insult to the world of academia to give the impression that you are absolutely sure. Most scholars’ mind-set is either agnostic, or all opinions must be scientifically supported and guardedly claimed. The spirit of relativity seems here to stay. This is the age of political correctness and the high noon of pluralism. Modern theologians are now even trying to tell us why it is possible for Moslems to be “God’s true children still in the semi-darkness” so that their religion must not be judged wrong!
The favorite color today seems to be some shade of gray—take your pick, lighter or darker shades are always available.
So we hear it all around us; the little jingle “Don’t worry—be happy.” It seems to have replaced the “Prepare to meet thy God” billboard we once saw on the roadside. Yes, and the twelve steps seem to have edged out Four Spiritual Laws, and the any way of “faith-of-some-kind” has replaced the one way of Jesus.
It is not all the fault of others. Christians themselves have fallen in line. George Grant, in his tabasco hot book Truth and Consequences, says it plainly; “Christian men have especially fallen prey for the spirit of the times. We don’t want anything to be terribly demanding. We don’t want to deal with those things that actually challenge our pet notions. We want cheap grace, positive thinking, easy faith. We want Christian lite.”
Even in the church there is a dumbing-down and the easing-up of the exclusive claims of Christ and the gospel, and it is all strongly rooted in the seductive power of postmodern America.
Recent surveys of respect reveal that we do not have absolutes any more and certainly not in morals. There is, in the modern mind, always an ever-present loophole. Bill Clinton’s mind-set seems here to stay; in fact, he may be the perfect product of the 60’s and 70’s—their ideal man. Right once was right; now it is some of the time. Wrong used to be wrong; now it is only part of the time.
It was promised in scripture that an age was coming when God would send a “strong delusion that they should believe the lie” (II Thessalonians 2:11). We must remember that the greatest judgement God can send on a people is to let them fully have their own way. “And he gave them their request, but sent leanness into their souls” (Psalm 106:15).
Jon Johnson said in his boldly prophetic book of thirty-something years ago, “Our degree of compromise has reached epidemic proportions,” so that reputation is more important than character, and being successful is a million times more important than being consistent. And certainly, popularity stands far above integrity in our world. If it works or if it’s effective, it’s right, and don’t ask questions. Just do it!
In the spellbinding movie Burden of Proof there is a scene where a boss’s open immorality is the subject of conversation at work. A secretary says, “The man could use a character transplant.” So does our culture, and it’s now at level of greatest need. John Killinger commented on this subject, “Jesus is God’s answer to a bad reputation,” but Paul Powell adds with cutting authority, “But not just to a bad reputation—a bad character.”
Our sin is our failure to be definite and to subtly offer people the opportunity to qualify almost anything. But Christianity is a religion of absolutes. We must say it clearly, Jesus Christ was and is and ever will be absolute. C. S. Lewis, himself a highly respected scholar, is right, and we stand with him. Speaking of Jesus and His absolute claims, he said, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say . . . You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” We must be at this point dogmatic. There are things that demand definiteness and dogmatic declaration.
Vance Havner told a great story which I will paraphrase. He said when the Titanic left Liverpool in 1912, there were all kinds of people on board—first class, second class, and third class. There were millionaires and poor people, there were famous people and common people, educated people and illiterates. But hours later, after it hit the iceberg and sank to the ocean bottom, there were only two kinds of people: lost and saved, dead and alive. The element of the definite was evident to everyone! It was absolute!
In Victorian London there were two great preachers. Christian visitors from America to London would go hear one in the morning and the other in the evening. Charles Spurgeon and Joseph Parker were pulpit giants. Parker outlived Spurgeon by several years. Parker once said of Spurgeon after his death, “The only colors Mr. Spurgeon knew were black and white. In all things he was definite. You were either in or out, up or down, alive or dead.”
Today we live in a murky haze, and we can’t quite come to the place of being as definite as Spurgeon. How did it start? Well, A. W. Tozer has an answer to the question. He said, “The first step down . . . is taken when [we] surrender [our] high opinion of God,” and soon to come will be a low view of scripture. You know how it goes. “This is what it says, but this instead is what it really means today!” While not a theologian, Billy Graham objects with a theologian’s precision, “It is dangerous to interpret the Bible in such a way as to justify or excuse our sins, by saying some of its statements on behavior applied only to first-century culture.”
This is illustrated in history by the people of the clan of Judah slowly allowing a religious system to creep in that dethroned the very same God that had made them great. Ultimately, they even lost the ability to blush and to even have guilt over their openly sinful acts. While the setting is different, and the word for word script may not be the same, and new actors may have arrived on stage—the results will be the same as in Jeremiah’s day—the curtain will dramatically fall! The play will be a tragedy.
Let all true preachers stand up, speak up, and be definite. And when you do, expect to be called a narrow-minded bigot and expect to lose a measured degree of popularity.
George MacDonald was largely out of step with his generation. He was often too honest to be popular. He once said, for example, “In whatever man does without God, he must fail miserably or succeed more miserably.” I think much of our success today is succeeding “more miserably”!
Warren Wiersbe is right, pastors in the morally weakened church are concerned only about knowing the number of the sheep rather than the state of the flock. As long as the number is growing, there is not a lot of concern about much else. Doctrine and belief are no longer major issues. Joining and belonging are also not a major concern. We have found the lowest common denominator and have comfortably settled for it. All this is a very significant change from historical Christianity, you will agree.
We have had the prayer of Jabez; now please, could we all learn the prayer of Ezra? “‘I am humiliated, my God; I said, ‘I am ashamed, my God, to lift my face to you. Our sins tower above us, and our guilt is so great that it reaches high heaven.’” (Ezra 9:6) That seems to be the one proper confession in such times as these in which we live.
At some point we must stand and say without apology—this is absolute truth. Scripture is absolute truth without mixture of error. Jesus claims absolute Lordship. It makes no difference if it runs in line with the mood of the moment. Furthermore, history is moving to an absolute climax when all the world will acknowledge Jesus is Lord absolutely! Jesus was definite when He said with absolute authority, “He that is not with me is against me” (Matthew 12:30). That’s about as absolute as you can get.
But woe be it to the preacher today who is “too definite.” He must be prepared to go nowhere! Paul Powell is right, in the pulpit “today it is far better for a man to be witty than weighty. We want soft-sell, we want relevance, we want an update, low key, clever, motivational, friendly, informal, yuppified, and abbreviated faith. No ranting, no raving, no Bible thumping, no heavy commitments, no strings attached, no muss, no fuss, we want the same salvation as in the old time religion—but with half the hassle and a third less guilt!”
But God has always blessed those who say like Luther, “Here I stand, so help me God.”
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