As a team, we have been doing a great deal of speaking this month. This speaking comes in various forms of, course—sometimes as preaching, sometimes as teaching, and often as interpersonal evangelism. The tie that binds these various forms of speaking together, however, is that God has used them all to impress upon me the power of the spoken word. Proverbs 18:21 says that “the power of life and death are in the tongue”.
It was by the spoken word that God created something out of nothing (Genesis 1). By the spoken word, people are healed (“Get up! Pick up your mat and walk”; Matthew 5:8) and by the spoken word, people are raised from the dead (“Talitha Cumi!”; Mark 5:41). We’ve seen the power of the spoken word play itself out, as a team, in the extra-biblical here-and-now as well. This year, we’ve seen, with our own eyes, people saved by it (“Showing Up To The Wrong Battlefield”), healed by it (“The Same”), and encouraged by it (“God Blesses Us”).
It doesn’t take an understanding of the Bible, however, to intuit the power of the spoken word. Can’t almost all of us remember some distinct set of life changing words that were spoken to us years ago? We’ve all witnessed words give jobs and lose jobs, create marriages and end them, drive lives to suicide and save lives from it as well. Thus, I would argue that there is little disagreement over the power of the spoken word.
Yesterday evening, I was given the opportunity to deliver a sermon over the radio for a local Christian radio station, Umucyo 102.8. While I was speaking, I wasn’t really considering the words that I was saying. I had prepared for hours beforehand, of course (and I had given this same sermon on the unexpected blessing of God two times before), but while I was speaking, there was very little room for musing or pondering. It was a time for delivery, not discussion.
This morning, I was also able to deliver the Sunday-morning sermon at church—and I legitimately do thank God for granting me these undeserved opportunities. And, again, like yesterday evening, I had very little time to really think about what I was saying. The deep musing came during the pre-sermon preparation and the post-sermon mental evaluation, but the sermon itself was all about delivery. Our evangelism this past week was not much different in that regard. “Team time” is the time for theological and philosophical musing and evangelism is the time for delivery. Team time is the science lab and evangelism is the postal service.
So, as I was riding the bus home last-night (and, to a lesser extent, when I was walking home this morning), I was finally able to “push pause” and meditate on the Christian message I have dedicated my life to proclaiming. I found that the more I filled the recesses of my mind with the doctrines of God, the more I came to realize just how much I love God’s message.
We are called, as Christians, to protect both the verity and the purity of our message (1 Peter 3:15), and I have found two very interesting things to be true about this call, as it relates to my own life. First, I found that I have spent too much time trying to “avoid saying the wrong thing” and not enough time trying to “pursue saying the right thing.” What is the difference, though, you may ask, as these two methods are intricately related and in many ways feed off of one another. In my opinion, the difference is a difference of initiative. The former is passive in attitude and the latter is active in attitude. Jesus says, in Matthew 10:33, that whoever “denies (him) before men, (he) will deny (them) before (His) father in Heaven.” Could it be, perhaps, that the type of “denial” Jesus is talking about relates not only to downplaying the importance of Christ when asked by another, but also to the refusal to actively fight on Christ’s behalf in areas where the importance of his name is already downplayed.
Secondly, I have noticed that God has placed different passions in me at different times, in my two years as a Christian, to defend different aspects of his character, his message, and his story. When I was first becoming a Christian, for example, God placed an affinity for Christian apologetics within me. I would eagerly research the historical reliability of both the Old and New Testament Scriptures, the historical conditions surrounding the cross, and the philosophies of God’s existence. I still enjoy apologetics, but it is more of a hobby to me, now, than a passion, as I am more content than ever to concede a philosophical or historical argument and trust that the Holy Spirit will do what I cannot do.
The new area that God has directed my passions toward is the defense of the body of Christ. I fully recognize that it is the person Jesus Christ himself—above all the saints— whom I am called to defend the most, but I still do feel a special affinity, in this season, for the defense of his body of saints. One offense that has been brought to my attention recently—though it’s never been a new idea—is the charge that “Christians are arrogant for believing that there is one truth, that they alone know it, and that everyone who disagrees is wrong.” So, in honor of not “denying Christ before men”, and because 2012 is a year of initiative, I will try my best to expose the recent meditations of my own heart (within the past week) on what I feel to be the validity—or lack thereof—of this charge.
Though I will start by saying that I feel that this charge is misplaced, I will say that, as a Christians, I have a reason to be concerned at any charges that include the words “Christians” and “arrogant” in the same sentence. I have a reason to be concerned because the Bible tells us to make every effort to live at peace with all men (Hebrews 12:14). I have even more of a reason to be concerned because God opposes the proud (James 4:6). Furthermore, I know that perception is everything and that, regardless of the pride or humility we, as Christians, exhibit, if we are perceived as arrogant, we may need to analyze our actions and words to see, to the best of our abilities, if there is truth to the claims and if we can do anything to change our actions.
When I think about humility, it seems as if there are two different types of humility—humility in delivery and humility in belief. Humility in delivery represents a humble method of presenting the Gospel (or any other) message—a delivery with empathy and compassion and without condescension, cold-heartedness, and sarcasm. Humility in belief often represents a way of looking at the world (and at oneself), where one is unsure of the verity of his or her own beliefs, open to other possibilities for truth, wary of “absolute truth” claims and exclusivity claims, skeptical of our own ability to “figure the world out”, and generally willing to avoid confrontation in the name of a higher pragmatic ideal—harmonious living among peoples.
Regarding these two forms of humility, it seems as if the secular world (and even many people who would consider themselves part of the loosely-defined “Christian left”) accuse evangelical Christians of lacking both two types of humility. In response to these accusations, I fully affirm the first, and partially refute the second.
It is absolutely true that we, as Christians, are called to have a humble delivery of our message (Ephesians 4:15) and it is absolutely true that, for the most part, we have failed to do so. This is unacceptable, though expected. As fallen beings called to live by a standard we will never achieve until death, it makes sense that we will not only fall short in achieving God’s standard of delivery, but that we will fall short in God’s standard of everything. Through salvation, we are credited with Jesus’ righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21), and through sanctification, our actions conform, little by little, to God’s perfect standard of love (1 Corinthians 13), yet nevertheless, on this side of eternity, we will always fall short of God’s perfect standard, and we will do so in every area of life. Failure in humble delivery simply stands out more to the non-Christian world, as it offers non-Christians an easy opportunity to combine a verse they know (“do not judge”; Matthew 7:1) with a breach they see.
Praying with many superfluous words is just as much a breach of the Christian standard, (“don’t babble like the idolaters, since they imagine they’ll be heard for their many words.” Matthew 6:7), and just as representative of our universal failure to live up to the standard we’ve been given, yet it doesn’t quite get called out as much by non-Christians, because the verse is not as well known, and the breach is not as open, as times of prayer are not usually witnessed by non-Christians.
We must not let the fact that failure (to varying degrees) is inevitable be an excuse not to strive for humility of delivery. Yes, the apostle Paul boasts that he is a hypocrite and the “chief of sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15), but he does so, not to glamourize sin, as if he was a frat-boy bragging about his worldly ability to breach standards, but to highlight grace.
We must deliver our message with humility—by the power of the Holy Spirit—and doing so involves highlighting the grace of God and the insufficiency of man. Too many Christian deliveries are accusatory. When we speak with an accusatory tone, we are assuming God’s role as judge. “Do not judge” (Matthew 7:1), does not mean judgment is inherently bad. Rather, it means it’s inherently bad when it’s practiced by anyone other than God. Too often, our message sounds like “you need to repent, because I am righteous”, rather than “we both need to repent, because God is righteous.” Too often, our message sounds like “my superior power of logical reasoning and my superior moral conviction has earned me God’s favor, so you need to shape up and act like me,” rather than “I am the chief of sinners, with a peanut brain, and I would not be saved if God hadn’t overlooked my prostitution and plopped the knowledge of himself right in my lazy lap and because of all that, I think God might now be using me to plop the knowledge of himself in your lap, so let’s go down together, as family members, to the river of grace, because the water tastes good to me and I think you’d like it too.”
How many more people would be in the kingdom of God if this were our delivery? Sadly, though, in most cases, I cannot even exclude myself from the group of saints who use the wrong delivery. There is no appropriate Christian answer for our lack of humility of delivery other than to champion the grace of our God and to beg for the forgiveness of our peers.
The second type of humility, however—humility of belief—is considerably more complicated. It is in this area that I want to, using humility of delivery, and in love,fight strongly against. I am sad—not disgusted, because that would breach humility of delivery, as it would cast me as judge, but legitimately sad, as in mourning, at our lack of vigor in defending the humility of our belief—especially as the humility of man is a cornerstone of our Gospel message.
We seem to be so willing to trade the potency of our message for the approval of our peers. It’s as if we say, “Let’s barter. If I concede to you that I am unsure of the exclusivity and necessity of my message and the urgency of eternity, will you concede to me that, if my message is untrue, I still made a kind of good impact on the world via the placebo effect, and didn’t affect too many people negatively?” Logically speaking, Christians and non-Christians alike know that we both can’t be correct at the same time, as Jesus cannot be savior and non-savior, in the same way that I cannot, logically speaking, be Ben and not-Ben. Thus, it’s as if we try to lower the stakes so that it won’t be as bad for whoever is wrong.
Where have all the gunslingers gone? Where are all the Wild Bill Cody’s and the Jesse James’s who will walk into the bar, confidently sit at the poker table, and go “all-in”? Let us both—Christians and non-Christians alike—slide all of our chips into the middle of the table.
Instead, we have non-Christians on the one side of the table who slide one or two chips into the middle of the table and keep the rest by their sides, thinking “If my hand comes out on top, the world won’t be too much of a better place, because I am still allowing the malignant tumor of Christianity to create intolerance, but if I lose, at least I’ll have all of these chips to live off of, these chips that say I won’t go to hell because it’s not real.” And instead we also have the Christians who slide one or two chips into the middle of the table and keep the rest by their sides, thinking, “If my hand comes out on top, God won’t be all that glorified as all-sufficient Savior, but if I lose, at least I have all of these chips left to live off of, these chips that guarantee I haven’t had too much of a negative impact on the world by giving people false hope and propagating untrue beliefs.”
Let us instead sit down at the table and raise the stakes. The apostle Paul raised the stakes. In 1 Corinthians 15:17, he says that, “If Christ has not been raised, (our) faith is worthless” and that if the claims of Christ are untrue, we should actually be pitied more than anyone! (15:19). It would have been a far better sales-pitch, in my opinion, to say “If Christ has been raised, you will have eternal life, but if Christ has not been raised, then believing so will still, by the power of the placebo effect, make you a good person and help you to enjoy life.” It would have been a far better sales-pitch because it would have been a win-win! Creating a win-win situation was never Paul’s aim, however, because rather than create a “small win-small win” situation, Paul was out to create a “Monumental win or devastating loss” situation. He was a gunslinger and he was out to consciously raise the stakes.
The caveat, however, is that true gunslingers cannot be idiots. True gunslingers have (spiritual and logical) weapons, and they’re not afraid to draw them and use them, but they also have tact and composure. You don’t win the poker game by walking into the bar, taking both two pistols out of either side of your holster, aiming them upward, and blowing two holes in the ceiling. Too often, this has been the approach (and my approach!)—metaphorically speaking—of those Christians who want so badly to avoid the cowardice of the low-stakes players. It might feel good to do this, but it won’t win any chips and won’t bring God any glory. Often times, posting John 3:16 as a Facebook status, without actively and sincerely engaging in discussion with those who believe John 3:16 has no authority as truth is akin to blowing two holes in the ceiling.
So, if you are willing to raise the stakes, I am willing.
I think that the first step in getting us to slide all of our chips into the middle is to recognize—maybe painfully—that whether we like it or not, our chips are already there. If the claims of Christ are true, then billions of people are headed for eternal damnation. That sounds tough—or even old-fashioned— to say, but it is an undeniable part of the Christian message. If the claims of Christ are not true, then 2.1 billion of us have completely wasted our lives and our time. The stakes are already high.
In recognizing the high stakes, I will try to defend the humility of the exclusive message.
And, in keeping with humility of delivery, I must admit that I stole the first part of my defense from the famous Catholic thinker, G.K. Chesterton, and I must admit that I had not even considered his beneficial angle of argument before I read it. Chesterton says, regarding today’s definitions of humility (intro by John Piper):
“In 1908 the British writer G. K. Chesterton described the embryo of today's full-grown immature culture called post-modernism. One mark of its "vulgar relativism" (as Michael Novak calls it) is the hijacking of the word "arrogance" to refer to conviction and "humility" to refer to doubt. Chesterton saw it coming:
‘What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert – himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt – the Divine Reason. . . . The new skeptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. . . . There is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it's practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. . . . The old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which makes him stop working altogether. . . . We are on the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. (Orthodoxy [Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1957], pp. 31-32)’”
Doubt must not be confused with humility and conviction must not be confused with arrogance. They are “false antonyms”, so to speak. “Doubt” and “conviction” are antonyms, not “doubt” and “arrogance.” Similarly, “humility” and “arrogance” are antonyms, not “humility” and “conviction.”
No, just because the words are not antonyms doesn’t mean they are synonyms, but the recognition that they are not antonyms is a start, as it allows us both to speak with a conviction that lets us defer our analysis to the realm of “content”, rather than “method.” If we can never get past the notion that it may be possible—not definitely, but at least maybe—to understand “how the world works”—then analyzing the content of our beliefs is quite literally a waste of breath because, whether we are right or wrong, neither of us truly believeswhat we’re saying!
But, since that hurdle of “doubt and arrogance as false antonyms” is a very real one, we should address it, briefly, before moving on. The notion that Christians are arrogant for believing they alone are capable of knowing “how the world works” is a straw-man argument for two reasons.
First, it is a straw-man argument in that it assumes Christians profess to know how all of the world works, when, in reality, we profess quite the opposite. We profess to know limited aspects of the nature of God (only the ones we need to know), we profess to know the condition of man (fallen), we profess to know the means of salvation (faith in Christ Jesus), and we profess to know some miscellaneous aspects of theology and philosophy that connect these things together. Nowhere in the Christian theology, however, do we propose to have “the whole world figured out”. We not only accept the opposite, but also embrace it. Paul, in Romans 11:33, says, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” We are not enemies of knowledge (Mark 12:30), but we humbly bow in submission to God with the recognition that there are some things we will never know.
Secondly, it is a straw-man argument in that it assumes that we ourselves figured out what we do know. Ironically, though, as a Christian, I completely agree with the secular view that human beings are completely incapable of “cracking the world’s code”. The view that any one person can “figure out the world” is arrogant in that it far overestimates our mental capabilities. So, because Christians actually agree that it is impossible for humans to figure out the world, it follows that if we are to know anything significant in this life, that item of significance would have to be revealed to us—which is exactly what we see in the Christian message. It would be arrogant to say that we “figured it all out”, because that is a statement about our intellectual capacities (and by extension, others’ intellectual capacities), but it would not be arrogant to say that we, through no merit or talent of our own, had revelation placed right in front of us and that everyone else has equal access to this free, unmerited revelation. The Bible says, “God has made known among the Gentiles (us), the glorious riches of…Christ” (Colossians 1:27), not “we have figured out the glorious riches of Christ.”
Furthermore, it seems to me as if those who claim, with absolute certainty, that absolute truth cannot be known, have worked themselves into a corner. If they are 100% positive that absolute truth cannot be known, they are blatantly contradicting themselves by making the very kind of “absolute” statement they say is arrogant and they say cannot be made, and if they are anything less than 100% sure that absolute truth cannot be known, then the degree to which they are unsure is the degree to which the Christian message may possibly be proclaimed with certainty. And, if that is even a possibility, it follows that arrogance can no longer be attributed to it.
Next, we have to realize that no matter what we believe, we are insinuating that a good portion of the world is wrong. Christians believe that 5 billion people are wrong, Muslims believe that almost 6 billion people are wrong, Hindus believe that almost 6.5 billion people are wrong, Jews believe that 7 billion people are wrong, and atheists believe that slightly more than 7 billion people in the world are wrong. Of all the major world religions, it is quite literally the case that Christians believe the least amount of the remaining world is wrong.
The most obvious counterargument to this claim would be to say “I’m not an atheist, so I don’t believe that over 7 billion are wrong. I’m an agnostic, so I’m humble enough to say that I don’t believe anyone is wrong.” I see two types of this agnosticism. The first type says, “Many people really are wrong, but I am humble enough to admit that I don’t know who they are,” and the second type says, “It is impossible for anyone to be wrong”. The former breaches fair conduct and the latter breaches logic.
If the first agnostic wants to sit out of the realm of meaningful discussion on philosophy and world religion because he or she feels that “we will never know who is right and who is wrong”, then they should feel free to do so. By sitting out of the conversation, however, they should realize that they forfeit the right to label those participating as “arrogant” for speaking with conviction. The luxury of “labeling”—if that’s even a good idea—is reserved for those who thoughtfully participate in the discussion, and not for those who fold their arms and, in the name of humility, say, “we’ll never know.”
The second type of agnostic is at least willing to participate in the discussion and present his or her argument for why he or she believes that everyone is right, in his or her own regard. They should be commended for their willingness, but sadly, their argument breaches all logic, and actually displays an incredible amount of arrogance. First, it breaches logic because Jesus cannot simultaneously be savior and not savior, nor can Yahweh alone create the world and Brahma alone create the world. These are simply logical impossibilities. Something can be “true for me, but not for you”, or vice versa, insofar as that thing in question is merely a metaphor, a suggestion, or a maxim representing a greater moral, but it is a logical impossibility for something to be literally true for one person and not for another.
So, what often happens (and this is not a speculation, as I’ve seen it happen all over the internet and in my own interpersonal conversations) is that because the second type of atheist recognizes that the “true for you, but not for me” claim is a logical impossibility, they are forced to begin a long, complicated, unstructured process of “nipping, tucking, and altering” the beliefs of the various worldviews—including their own, to achieve a compatibility that was never meant to exist in the first place.
The claims of Jesus as God (Christianity) and Jesus as prophet (Islam) cannot coexist, when taken literally, but they can when Jesus was simply a good teacher and a nice guy. The claims of heaven and hell (Christianity) and reincarnation (Hinduism) cannot coexist, when taken literally, but they can when heaven and hell are obscured to be taken metaphorically. The 10 Commandments as law (Christianity and Judaism) are incompatible with the atheist/agnostic view of relative morality—unless, of course, they are taken to be what they never were intended to be in the first place—mere suggestions.
As well intentioned as this nipping, tucking, and altering is, I see it as the height of all arrogance. I cannot even imagine looking at another world religion’s set of beliefs and saying, “though I am not a member of your religion, and have very little knowledge of its writings or its great thinkers, here is why it’s 85% correct, and here is the 15% that you should take literally or speak about with certainty.” I cannot even imagine the arrogance! I may approach a Muslim and, in love, share with him or her, why I believe he or she is mistaken by highlighting what I believe to be the self-evident truths of my own religion—and I think that that, if done thoroughly, would be sufficient, too. I would never, however, even dream of pointing out which parts of the Quran I feel they are taking too literally, and why, if they took those parts less literally (or threw them out the window), they would find that we actually believe the same thing!
Neither can I imagine nipping and tucking one’s own religion. Granted, Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Catholics disagree on some minor issues, but it would be unwarranted to say that they don’t agree on “mere Christianity’s” (thanks, C.S. Lewis) distinguishing factors—the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, and the sufficiency and necessity of salvation through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. I cannot imagine the arrogance it would take to simultaneously believe in an all-powerful, eternally existent God and to believe that I have the right to shape his statutes and ordinances around our own perceptions of 21st century morality!
Lastly, if we look at the actual content of the Christian message, we find that it champions humility. Of course, there are some people that would say championing anything with conviction represents a lack of humility. We’ve already seen the many flaws in this view, though I would add the final exception that if a message, spoken with conviction, could be said to be humble, it would be the one that espouses the utter inability of man to save himself—and that is exactly what we find in the Christian message. The Christian message is both humble and humbling.
Imagine if a man walked up to you and said, “I tell you, with complete conviction, that I am unable to run a two-minute mile. Regardless of how much confidence you have in human capability and modern advances in science, I believe, with my whole heart, that I am unable to run a two-minute mile—and I am unable to be persuaded.” Would we call this man arrogant? Never in a million years! Despite his unwavering conviction, I would call him humble in that he is not arrogantly championing his own abilities, but openly admitted his own shortcomings! Even if conviction could be mistaken to mean arrogance (which we know it cannot), the very content of the man’s message would swallow up, in an instant, any illusions of arrogance! We find this same point to be true of the Gospel of Jesus Christ—an unwavering commitment to being open about our own inabilities and the refusal to give in to our own flesh’s prideful desire to exalt itself by overestimating its own capabilities.
You may say, “sure, that part—the Gospel—is humble—but there are many other parts of the Christian message that do not seem to be humble. First, I would encourage you to critically re-examine those “other parts” and ask yourselves whether or not you’re using the false “doubt is the opposite of arrogance” model. Second, I would tell you that I chose to highlight that particular part of the Christian message—the part that espouses our own inability to save ourselves—because that is precisely the point at which Christianity distances itself from every other world religion—even from Judaism, which shares its roots.
In closing, if my zeal for the “humility of belief” has marred my attempted humility of delivery, then I really do apologize—that has never been and never will be my intent. My only intent is to exalt the glory of God. I thoroughly hope that you can rejoice—with me—in the humility of the Christian message and, when it captures your heart, that you can reproduce it with humility of delivery.
