Page 5389 – Christianity Today (2024)

A standing ovation for a liberal.

Not since David went to live among the Philistines have adversaries treated one another so cordially—at least in the short run. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) has every reason for avoiding the Moral Majority, to which he is the apotheosis of liberalism. Yet last month he boarded Jerry Falwell’s private jet, flew to Lynchburg, Virginia, and told a rapt crowd of 5,000 why he disagrees with Falwell’s political organization.

Kennedy discussed major issues of contention—nuclear freeze, the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion—and he criticized Moral Majority’s name for implying that “only one set of public policies is moral.” People with a deep faith, Kennedy cautioned, “may be tempted to misuse government in order to impose a value which they cannot persuade others to accept.”

He quoted Falwell directly as having written, “To stand against Israel is to stand against God.” Kennedy said, “There is no one in the Senate who has stood more firmly for Israel than I have. Yet I do not doubt the faith of those on the other side. Their error is not one of religion, but of policy.”

Overall, however, the 3,000-word speech was nonaccusatory and emphasized the need for respect. “I believe there surely is such a thing as truth,” Kennedy said at the outset, “but who among us can claim a monopoly on it?” After the audience—4,000 of whom were Liberty Baptist College students—gave Kennedy a standing ovation, Falwell joked that he would have to win back some of his students.

Before Kennedy’s evening appearance, he dined at Falwell’s home, and afterward attended a reception. No future get-togethers are planned at this point, but spokesmen for both Kennedy and Falwell say they are open to the idea. Moral Majority spokesman Cal Thomas said the Lynchburg occasion was “very positive and warm,” and is a step toward “disarming ideologues on both sides.” Thomas commented, “Sadat went to Jerusalem and now Kennedy has come to Lynchburg.”

It was Thomas who inadvertently brought about the Kennedy visit. A computer error in Lynchburg caused a plastic Moral Majority membership card to be sent to the senator’s office. When Thomas heard about it, he wrote a quick note that included a perfunctory invitation to Kennedy to stop by if he happened to be in the area.

To the profound surprise of everyone in Lynchburg, Kennedy accepted, and wanted to speak to the Liberty students. Although he has been critical of right-wing ideas and approaches throughout his political career, Kennedy has not attacked Falwell or Moral Majority by name in the past. His deputy press aide, Melody Miller, said “he doesn’t deal in personalities” and, unlike some other critics, “believes there is lots of room for religious involvement in public debate.”

After the speech, “a number of students said he made them think,” Miller added.

Excerpts From Kennedy’S Speech

I have come here to discuss my beliefs about faith and country, tolerance and truth in America. I know we begin with certain disagreements; I strongly suspect that at the end of the evening some of our disagreements will remain. But I also hope that tonight and in the months and years ahead, we will always respect the right of others to differ—that we will never lose sight of our own fallibility—that we will view ourselves with a sense of perspective and a sense of humor. After all, in the New Testament, even the disciples had to be taught to look first to the beam in their own eyes, and only then to the mote in their neighbor’s eye.

I am mindful of that counsel. I am an American and a Catholic; I love my country and treasure my faith. But I do not assume that my conception of patriotism or policy is invariably correct—or that my convictions about religion should command any greater respect than any other faith in this pluralistic society. I believe there surely is such a thing as truth, but who among us can claim a monopoly on it?…

A generation ago, a presidential candidate had to prove his independence of undue religious influence in public life—and he had to do so partly at the insistence of evangelical Protestants. John Kennedy said at that time: “I believe in an America where there is no [religious] bloc voting of any kind.” Only 20 years later, another candidate was appealing to an evangelical meeting as a religious bloc. Ronald Reagan said to 15,000 evangelicals at the Roundtable in Dallas: “I know that you can’t endorse me. I want you to know that I endorse you and what you are doing.”

To many Americans, that pledge was a sign and a symbol of a dangerous breakdown in the separation of church and state. Yet this principle, as vital as it is, is not a simplistic and rigid command. Separation of church and state cannot mean an absolute separation between moral principles and political power. The challenge today is to recall the origin of the principle, to define its purpose, and refine its application to the politics of the present.…

The separation of church and state can sometimes be frustrating for women and men of deep religious faith. They may be tempted to misuse government in order to impose a value which they cannot persuade others to accept. But once we succumb to that temptation, we step onto a slippery slope where everyone’s freedom is at risk. Those who favor censorship should recall that one of the first books ever burned was the first English translation of the Bible. As President Eisenhower warned in 1953, “Don’t join the bookburners … the right to say ideas, the right to record them, and the right to have them accessible to others is unquestioned—or this isn’t America.” And if that right is denied, at some future day the torch can be turned against any other book or any other belief. Let us never forget: today’s Moral Majority could become tomorrow’s persecuted minority.

The danger is as great now as when the founders of the nation first saw it. In 1789, their fear was of factional strife among dozens of denominations. Today there are hundreds—and perhaps thousands—of faiths, and millions of Americans who are outside any fold. Pluralism obviously does not and cannot mean that all of them are right; but it does mean that there are areas where government cannot and should not decide what it is wrong to believe, to think, to read and to do.…

The real transgression occurs when religion wants government to tell citizens how to live uniquely personal parts of their lives. The failure of Prohibition proves the futility of such an attempt when a majority or even a substantial minority happens to disagree. Some questions may be inherently individual ones or people may be sharply divided about whether they are. In such cases—cases like Prohibition and abortion—the proper role of religion is to appeal to the conscience of the individual, not the coercive power of the state.

People of conscience should be careful how they deal in the word of their Lord. In our own history, religion has been falsely invoked to sanction prejudice and even slavery, to condemn labor unions and public spending for the poor.… I respectfully suggest that God has taken no position on the Department of Education—and that a balanced budget constitutional amendment is a matter for economic analysis, not heavenly appeals.…

Thus, the controversy about the Moral Majority arises not only from its views, but from its name—which, in the minds of many, seems to imply that only one set of public policies is moral—and only one majority can possibly be right. Similarly, people are and should be perplexed when the religious lobbying group Christian Voice publishes a morality index of congressional voting records—which judges the morality of senators by their attitude toward Zimbawe and Taiwan.

Let me offer another illustration. Dr. Falwell has written—and I quote: “To stand against Israel is to stand against God.” Now there is no one in the Senate who has stood more firmly for Israel than I have. Yet I do not doubt the faith of those on the other side. Their error is not one of religion, but of policy—and I hope to persuade them that they are wrong in terms of both America’s interest and the justice of Israel’s cause.

Respect for conscience is most in jeopardy—and the harmony of our diverse society is most at risk—when we reestablish, directly or indirectly, a religious test for public office. That relic of the colonial era, which is specifically prohibited in the Constitution, has reappeared in recent years. After the last election, the Rev. James Robison warned President Reagan not to surround himself, as Presidents before him had, “with the counsel of the ungodly.” I utterly reject any such standard for any position anywhere in public service. Two centuries ago, the victims were Catholics and Jews. In the 1980s, the victims could be atheists; in some other day or decade, they could be the members of the Thomas Road Baptist Church. Indeed, in 1976 I regarded it as unworthy and un-American when some people said or hinted that Jimmy Carter should not be President because he was a born-again Christian. We must never judge the fitness of individuals to govern on the basis of where they worship, whether they follow Christ or Moses, whether they are called “born again” or “ungodly.” Where it is right to apply moral values to public life, let all of us avoid the temptation to be self-righteous and absolutely certain of ourselves.…

We sorely test our ability to live together if we too readily question each other’s integrity. It may be harder to restrain our feelings when moral principles are at stake—for they go to the deepest wellspring of our being. But the more our feelings diverge, the more deeply felt they are, the greater is our obligation to grant the sincerity and essential decency of our fellow citizens on the other side.

Those who favor ERA are not “antifamily” or “blasphemers,” and their purpose is not “an attack on the Bible.” Rather we believe this is the best way to fix in our national firmament the ideal that not only all men, but all people, are created equal. Indeed, my mother—who strongly favors ERA—would be surprised to hear that she is antifamily. For my part, I think of the amendment’s opponents as wrong on the issue, but not as lacking in moral character.

I could multiply the instances of name calling, sometimes on both sides. Dr. Falwell is not a “warmonger”—and “liberal clergymen” are not as the Moral Majority suggested in a recent letter, equivalent to “Soviet sympathizers.” The critics of official prayer in public schools are not “Pharisees”; many of them are both civil libertarians and believers, who think that families should pray more at home with their children, and attend church and synagogue more faithfully. And people are not “sexist” because they stand against abortion; they are not “murderers” because they believe in free choice.…

North American Scene

A Texas doctor has been sentenced to 15 years in prison in a Texas court for drowning a live-born fetus. After a July 1979 abortion, according to five of his former employees, Raymond Showery wrapped the baby’s face in the placenta, submerged the body in a pail of water, put it into a plastic garbage bag, and discarded it. Showery pleaded innocent, claiming the incident never occurred. The court decision was unusual in that the body of the victim was not produced as evidence in the case, since it had been disposed of. His lawyer said the conviction would be appealed.

Madalyn Murray O’Hair does not have and never has had before the Federal Communications Commission a petition that threatens to remove religious broadcasting from the airwaves. Nevertheless, letters of protest still flow into the FCC at the rate of 135,000 a month. Many of them come from members of conservative churches. Since 1975, the FCC has received nearly 16 million pieces of mail about the alleged petition.

The Tennessee Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from a man whose 12-year-old daughter is undergoing court-ordered treatment for cancer. Since mid-September, Pamela Hamilton has been receiving chemotherapy for a huge, cancerous tumor on her leg. Doctors said that without treatment she would die within three months. The girl’s father, Larry, a Church of God pastor, says only God can cure his daughter and that she should not be receiving medical treatment. The treatment was ordered by a state appeals court.

Representatives of four major Protestant agencies have condemned recent Senate action to establish diplomatic ties with the Vatican. The National Council of Churches, National Association of Evangelicals, Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State say the Senate action is an official show of preference for the Catholic church. The Senate voted in September to repeal a 116-year-old ban on funds to support the diplomatic mission.

The number of clergywomen in the Episcopal church more than doubled during 1982, rising from 215 to 555. The total number of Episcopal clergy is about 3,000.

The Saturday Evening Post will no longer accept tobacco advertising, starting with its March 1984 issue. Since the Post was purchased by the Benjamin Franklin Society in January of 1982, the question of whether to continue advertising tobacco products has been at the forefront. The society is a nonprofit corporation that disseminates medical and nutritional knowledge to support research on cancer and other diseases. The magazine also carries Christian-oriented articles. “We believe in placing Christianity in a positive and favorable light,” says religion editor Robert Silvers.

Just a few days before he died, Catholic Cardinal Terence Cooke wrote a letter condemning mercy killing and reaffirming his commitment to the sanctity of life. “Life is no less beautiful when it is accompanied by illness or weakness, hunger or poverty, physical or mental diseases, loneliness or old age,” he wrote. In another letter, the cardinal urged the Irish-American community to work for peace and reconciliation.

Some 15,000 demonstrators from American and West German churches gathered last month to protest the planned deployment of Pershing II missiles in West Germany. The rally was planned to coincide with an official celebration of the three-hundredth anniversary of the first German settlement in America. Organizers of the demonstration said they, not the official celebrants, truly represented the pacifist beliefs of the original German settlers.

Bread For the World has thrown its weight behind the Human Needs and World Security bill, which, if enacted, would halt increases in foreign military aid. The Christian lobbying group contends that military aid, called “security aid,” hinders more than it enhances security. The bill would channel more foreign aid into programs that directly benefit poor people, BFW policy analyst Paul Nelson stresses the legislation would not affect U.S. defense spending. BFW hopes the bill will be introduced in both houses of Congress by year’s end.

National Bible Week will be observed November 20–27. In this forty-third annual observance, it will culminate the Year of the Bible, declared earlier this year by President Reagan. An interfaith celebration sponsored by the Laymen’s National Bible Committee, National Bible Week is observed to motivate interest in Bible reading and study.

The Supreme Court takes up the issue of nativity scenes.

Christmas season arrived early at the Supreme Court, where on the second day of their current session the justices heard arguments for and against a state-sponsored nativity display in Rhode Island. The case, Lynch v. Donnelly, promises to be an important indicator of the court’s church-state positioning when a decision comes, sometime before next summer.

In two cases last term, the court upheld the right of state legislatures to employ chaplains. It also ruled in favor of Minnesota’s tuition tax-deduction law for private school students. To some observers, this signals a rethinking among the justices and a willingness to give more weight to considerations such as “longstanding tradition,” as they did in the Nebraska chaplain case. The Christmas créche case also pits tradition against claims of church-state entanglement.

Lawyers who favor the créche’s constitutionality believe it is an inextricable part of Christmas, which is a federally recognized holiday. Removing any hint of Christ’s birth from a Christmas display amounts to “cultural censorship and intellectual dishonesty,” U.S. Solicitor General Rex E. Lee told the court.

Opponents, including a group of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, taxpayers and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), say the life-size display violates all three constitutional tests of religious establishment.

It does so, they say, because, first, the nativity scene has a religious rather than a secular purpose; second, its effect is to “advance religion,” and, third, the government excessively entangles itself with religion by paying for and promoting the display, they say.

This three-part test, used since 1971 to weigh claims of free religious exercise against possible state establishment, was applied differently by the two leading proponents of the nativity scene, adding to the intrigue. William F. McMahon, attorney for the mayor of Pawtucket, argued that the créche adheres to the three-part test because in the larger context of the city’s total Christmas display, any possible religious purpose or effect is nullified.

To put the controversy in perspective, McMahon told the court that the city’s annual display takes up 40,000 square feet and includes the whole range of attendant secular symbols: a lighted spruce tree, a live Santa Claus, stars, bells, a wishing well, snowmen, and a variety of Walt Disney characters. In the midst of all this is a 140-square-foot area with a stable and manger scene that includes wise men, angels, and animals, along with the traditional representations of Joseph, Mary, and the infant Jesus.

Christmas has become “a secular folk festival” in which the nativity theme is interwoven, McMahon said. Emphasizing that Christmas is “a dominantly secular holiday with religious roots and components,” McMahon asked the court, “What is the government [in Pawtucket] doing? It is not promoting religion, it is celebrating Christmas,” and thus it satisfies the Constitution by having a secular purpose and effect.

Solicitor General Lee, intervening for Pawtucket in behalf of the Reagan administration, followed a different line of reasoning that he said makes the three-part test irrelevant in this case. He charged two lower courts, which ruled in favor of the taxpayers and the ACLU, with mandating a “contrived exclusion of religion from our public life.” McMahon, concurring with this, said, “It is impermissible for government to put Christ in Christmas or take Christ out. Strict neutrality requires Christ to be there because of tradition.”

In presenting his case, Lee acknowledged much more readily than McMahon the religious significance of the display. If the court decides in favor of the créche, observers will be waiting to see whether they rely more on Lee’s arguments or on McMahon’s “folk festival” reasoning.

ACLU lawyer Amato A. DeLuca said religious purpose and intent are undeniably part of the créche because of the worshipful attitude of the figures and the implied divinity of Christ.

By backing a uniquely Christian symbol, DeLuca’s brief said, the city of Pawtucket also may be setting itself up for possible political divisiveness among its residents. DeLuca based this argument on the large number of letters Pawtucket Mayor Dennis Lynch has received in the wake of the initial court challenge to the créche in 1981. The letters, many of which were strongly emotional and expressive, voiced considerable support for the nativity display.

DeLuca was peppered with questions from the justices about other instances where government and religion overlap. What about chaplains in state legislatures—found to be legal by the Court in its last term? DeLuca replied that their role is “purely symbolic” and said their prayers merely “draw attention” and serve as “a formalized way of commencing a session.”

What about the elaborate stone sculptures on the walls of the Supreme Court chamber itself that represent the Ten Commandments? asked Reagan appointee Sandra Day O’Connor. DeLuca said they are constitutional because they represent the origin of law. O’Connor shot back with what may be a telling indication of how she, at least, may reason. The state of Rhode Island, she reminded DeLuca, argues likewise that the créche symbolizes the origin of Christmas.

A bisexual nightmare from the National Council of Churches.

The publication last month of an “inclusive language” lectionary is guaranteed to pour oil on the flames of controversy that have engulfed the National Council of Churches (NCC) recently.

Lectionaries, collections of Bible readings from the Old Testament, the Epistles, and the Gospels, are used in Sunday worship services mostly by such liturgical ecclesiastical bodies as the Episcopal and Lutheran churches.

Using the Revised Standard Version (RSV), an 11-member committee of the Division of Education and Ministry of the NCC selected a year of readings and eliminated all references that use masculine words to refer to both men and women. Genesis 2:7, for example, says in the RSV, “The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (italics added). In An Inclusive Language Lectionary, this verse becomes, “God the Sovereign One formed a human creature of dust from the ground, and breathed into the creature’s nostrils the breath of life; and the human creature became a living being.” Only when God causes a deep sleep to fall on the “human being and removes a rib in order to build a woman does “man” come into being.

Chaired by Old Testament professor Victor Roland Gold of Pacific Lutheran Seminary in Berkeley, California, the committee of 6 women and 5 men made three specific types of changes in the RSV text. Language for people was changed to include women as well as men. For example, “brethren” in such verses as Romans 8:12 becomes “brothers and sisters.” “Sons of God” becomes “children of God.” “Let your light so shine before men” in Matthew 5:16 becomes “Let your light so shine before others.”

More controversial are changes in language about Jesus, “Son of man” in the Old Testament, Gold argued, refers to the humanity of Ezekiel, so the lectionary for the sixteenth Sunday of Pentecost has God say to Ezekiel, “O mortal” instead of the more familiar “Son of man.” But New Testament scholars are not likely to feel happy with Jesus’ unique use of “Son of man” becoming “the Human One” in such verses as John 3:13.

The term “Son of God,” Dr. Gold added, refers to Jesus’ very close relationship to God, not to a biological relationship. In Matthew 4:3, therefore, the Devil says to Jesus, “If you are the Child of God, …”

Most controversial of all are references to God as both male and female. Readers familiar with the Bible are almost certain to object to the committee’s decision to make an addition to all texts that speak of “God the Father.” Christ’s exaltation occurred, according to the lectionary version of Philippians 2:11, so that “every tongue” should “confess that Jesus Christ is Sovereign, to the glory of God the Father [and Mother].” Although the appendix to the lectionary attempts to justify the addition as “an attempt to express in a fresh way the same intimacy, caring, and freedom” as Jesus felt for God, Christians familiar with the Bible will insist on principles of translation that are more faithful to what the original text actually says. Biblical scholars will insist that to impose on a translation a preconceived philosophical system, whether or not it is faithful to “the spirit of the gospel,” is to do eisegesis, not exegesis.

Quick opposition to the experimental lectionary has been developing, even within the NCC membership. The Lutheran Church in America is the largest Lutheran body in the United States and, with 3 million members, the third largest group within the NCC, James Crumley, its bishop, has advised his church to reject the lectionary. In a column prepared for his denominational magazine, Crumley wrote, “The overwhelming opinion [of Lutherans whose advice he sought] is that this translation does not meet the goals for inclusive language in a proper way because it is often inaccurate and sometimes written in a poor and inadequate linguistic style.”

He said further that “We must not attempt to make the Bible say only what we want it to say. The Bible is an historic document and has to be read and understood as such.” Crumley raised specific objections, including changing of “son” to “child” in reference to Jesus. “Why the hesitancy to call him son? After all, he was a male baby and grew into a man. We do not call grown men children.”

Evengelical scholars have questions as well. Douglas Moo, assistant professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, said, “What disturbs me is that both the Old Testament and the New Testament use maleness for God, and this is not just a reflection of a patriarchal culture. It is a revelation of the way things are, in some sense.” He noted that obviously maleness in reference to God is not a precise analogy with human maleness. He also pointed out that many ancient religions worshiped female deities, and so to conclude that the Bible automatically is a product of its culture is invalid.

Theologian Carl F.H. Henry acknowledges that most of the Bible’s imagery about God is masculine, but he affirms that “the God of the Bible is a sexless God.” He further points out that the Bible is not without feminine imagery in some descriptions of God. But Henry stands firmly against the idea of modifying Scripture to suit contemporary cultural leanings. He has written, “The gender-uses of the inspired writers involve … important conceptual distinctions, even though they do not convey sexual connotations.” He continues, “The biblical linguistic precedents are to be considered normative for Christian theology.”

Why has the NCC produced an inclusive language lectionary? First of all, because a number of pastors have been asking the NCC to produce such a lectionary so they would not have to do it every week for themselves, according to the committee. More significantly, according to the Rev. Dr. Susan Thistle-thwaite, assistant professor of theology at the Boston University School of Theology and the theological member of the committee, the impetus does not come primarily from the modern feminist movement, “but from the biblical materials themselves.… Not only was Jesus astonishingly open to women, but he is fully incarnate in all of humanity, not just men.”

Committee member Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, professor of English at William Paterson College in Wayne, New Jersey, argued that to keep excluding women from equality in the church is “sub-Christian.” “If God is always manlike, never womanlike, then men are godlike and women are not,” she said. She does not feel, however, that the lectionary will have more than a limited influence on evangelicals, “except perhaps through the rapidly growing Evangelical Women’s Caucus.”

NCC general secretary Claire Randall said there has been “a high decibel interest” in the new lectionary. There is no question that we have not heard the end of it yet.

New answers to this question are revolutionizing our views of marriage, murder, abortion, law, and even athletic salaries.

Is all the paperwork and ceremony associated with marriage really necessary? What is so wrong with a live-in arrangement?

We bridle at such questions, but hot feeling is not enough when we are talking with an acquaintance who shares an apartment with his girlfriend. Just why do Christians see marriage as something more than a convenient relationship between two human beings? The reason seems to be rooted in a whole different way of looking at life.

The issue is not marriage itself, but our basic outlook on life, and especially on authority. We might face much the same problem in talking with that same acquaintance about murder, abortion, law, or athletic salaries.

Interlocking Universe

To understand the present-day division we need to take a quick look at the past. Greek philosophy from Plato’s time taught that the universe is ordered and structured, a System of interlocking systems. In a similar approach, Christian theology would say Scripture teaches about one Lord God who created the world, gave the moral law at Sinai, inspired the prophets of the Old Testament, redeemed the world through Christ, and is the consumator of all things. We can call creation, law, inspiration, holy history, salvation, and consumation systems within one System.

Western culture has been held together, in a sloppy way, by a profound belief that there was some kind of interlocking system, or else one Lord God. This basic viewpoint underlies the West’s political and economic thought, as well as its idea of ethics, value, and beauty. Leonardo da Vinci’s definition of a work of art as “a shadow of the divine perfection” is based on such convictions. Morality is not, on this view, a series of conventional maxims, but stems from the nature of the universe. Moral principles carry the “sanction of the universe.” They are part of the structure of reality. Human beings find peace, stability, order, contentment, and salvation to the degree that their personal lives are in harmony with the divine Order.

Marriage is also part of the System. It belongs to the “order of life,” which also entails the moral order. The sanction of marriage is to be found in this context, and is therefore much more than a relationship of convenience (among many possible ones); marriage is not to be reduced to the level of society’s customs.

No! Say The Nominalists

The opposite opinion to any such structured viewpoint carries the philosophical name of nominalism. In the history of human ideas it is associated with William Ockham, a philosopher-theologian of the Middle Ages. Ockham affirmed against the interlocking idea that the universe is composed only of particular items like sticks, stones, chairs, cats, dogs, trees, and so on. There is no inner structure of things, no cosmic glue, no world order. God is interpreted as the unique sovereign Particular who governs the world through arbitrarily chosen rules. The only guideline is that rules must be consistent with each other.

Parenthetically, we must note that nominalists have objected to a concept of world order on the grounds that it supports wicked kings, corrupt dictators, and oppressive practices in business, employment, and social relationships. This may be the case in the philosophical versions, but not in the biblical one. In Scripture, the prophets were the inspired critics of the political, economic, and social order. In fact, established political criticism emerges in history for the first time in Israel. All aspects of the System or world order as they are concretely worked out in society are under the criticism of the prophetic word. Therefore, there is no order for the sake of order, or power for the sake of power, that can make an absolute appeal.

The cultural explosions of the Renaissance of the fourteenth century and the Enlightenment of the eighteenth did much to unravel the idea of a structural universe, including the biblical doctrine of the one God who is Lord of creation, history, morality, and redemption. However, since World War II the rate of attrition of such concepts has skyrocketed. It is all a very complicated story, and we are limiting ourselves to the central element and how it has so deeply disturbed the concept of authority. The solitary point we want to make is the eventual triumph of nominalism.

Contemporary people need not have a clear philosophy of nominalism in their minds to show the result of such thinking. Nor do we mean that this mentality is produced only by philosophical reflection. Rather, factors contributing to its formation include the development of the sciences, technology, educational systems, the growth of vast population centers, the nature of the business community, the anonymity of large cities, and perhaps even literature and the entertainment world. But whether nominalism is arrived at by reflection or the pragmatisms of life, the contours are the same.

Effect On Marriage

As abstract as this discussion may appear, the consequences of the triumph of nominalism are enormous, affecting the character of Western culture and deeply eroding the concept of authority. The Golden Rule of nominalism is that there are only particulars. There is no cosmic glue, no System of systems, no overarching principles of justice, morality, beauty, or truth. There is no God who is Lord, Creator, Redeemer, Consummator.

If that is the case, then—to pick out one item among many—marriage is only a relationship of convenience. If marriage is only that, divorce is the remedy for a marriage that proves inconvenient. When deep in its bones (or subconsciousness) a population eventually interprets marriage and divorce in this purely nominalistic fashion, the divorce rate skyrockets.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century there was still a strong feeling in America about a world order that included a moral order. At that time, it would have been unthinkable for a divorced person to be President of the United States. Yet our current President is such a person. This could happen only because the majority of Americans have accepted the nominalistic version of marriage and divorce.

If marriage is understood exclusively as a relationship, that and nothing more, then all the formal paperwork and ceremony associated with marriage are unnecessary. The so-called live-in marriage is now popular. And if the nominalistic concept of marriage is pressed even harder, any relationship between any two people is a valid form of marriage. Thus we have hom*osexual and lesbian marriages. Half a century ago the “back street arrangements” were kept as secret as possible, being immoral and scandalous. Nowadays, where nominalism rules, persons on television talk shows freely admit to live-in arrangements. Subconsciously they know that a population that has bought the nominalistic ethic will express no moral outrage.

Nominalism has a powerful effect on language. It takes the moral vocabulary of the past and destroys it. A young girl is no longer immoral, but sexually active. hom*osexual relationships are now termed sexual preferences. Deviant behavior is called an alternative lifestyle. Pederasty is defined as intergenerational sexuality. Drug abuse is now known as the recreational use of controlled substances.

Nominalism And Killing

The unusual anthropologist Ernest Becker has observed that the more scientific and technological a society becomes, the less value it puts on human life. I would rephrase this: the more nominalistic a society becomes, the less it values human life. When a human being is viewed as part of the System of systems (as, for instance, when we say that “no man is an island”), then murder is a terrible crime. It is the total elimination of a self, a person, a piece of humanity. But if there are only particulars, then each human being is one more particular, no more, no less. So to kill a human being is to eliminate but one more particular from about four billion. Some primitive (sic!) tribes have fought each other until one person was seriously wounded or killed, and then they have stopped. Nominalistic man of the twentieth century has carried on wars that have killed millions. And now, according to the latest speculation, a nuclear war could well kill two billion people, and the more remote aftereffects could kill the remaining two billion.

The geometric growth of the rate of abortions is another facet of nominalistic mentality. The notion that the circle of responsibility includes only the pregnant woman and her doctor is nominalistic. Of course, abortion can be justified in a number of situations because two lives are inextricably bound up in one fate, something not true of any other relationship. But under nominalistic assumptions, abortion has become a measure to avoid an inconvenience.

Nominalism And The Law

Another dire symptom of the triumph of nominalism is the proliferation of lawsuits and the enormous sums involved. If a person believes every other person is part of God’s great creation, and a participant in all the “creation orders,” as some theologians call them, then a relationship with another person has a sacred element to it. One can put no price on that relationship. The holy, the sacred, and the intimate carry no price tags. Under such assumptions a lawsuit is a rare thing, and the sums involved are modest.

Our nominalistic society, which has lost its vision of the sacred, now puts sums on human relationships and does not hesitate to create the serious moral rupture among the people such suits inevitably involve. Once human relationships can be reduced to sums, it is surprising who sues whom. There are cases of lesbian partners suing each other, of children suing parents, of parents suing school boards or educational systems. Live-ins sue live-ins, a rough calculation of one such suit putting the cash price of such a relationship at a thousand dollars a day. Nominalism does that sort of thing. It is no longer “Man is the measure of all things,” but “Money is the measure of all relationships.”

The enormous impact of nominalism on legal theory is also apparent. Formerly, when a jurist believed in some version of a world order (philosophical or theological), he also believed that human law reflected—imperfectly—the justice of the world order. In the Old Testament, the laws of Israel were understood to be derived from the justice of Yahweh. Therefore, there is something sacred or holy about a code of law, a court of law, and a policeman who enforces the law. There was something above and beyond the human personalities of these legal people, and they were given an extra measure of respect for that reason.

Nominalism puts the picture together differently. Legal systems are only human arrangements, human conveniences, in order that matters of business and common life may proceed with a minimum of obstruction. Laws are functional and pragmatic, enabling millions of people to live together in relative harmony. Hence, there is nothing extra to legal codes, courts of law, judges, or policemen. They are reduced to people paid to do certain tasks.

Son, Sixteen

Is this gift, this loan

of tiny rose-faced son

with silken hint of hair

and sobs that soothed away

in shoulder nestled sleep

so soon sixteen and six feet tall?

When did his child-wide chatter

change to rhetoric, expounding

man-voice deep? And hands,

a daisy-span, outgrow my clasp?

And timid toddling feet begin to march

to inner beat, determined dreams?

When did fearless questioning

replace the trust

that earlier lit his eyes?

While babe to child to man unfolds,

does love, mother-young turn

love, mother-wise?

I step aside

and ponder his mysterious growth.

And mine. And time.

So little time to nurture left.

So much for him to teach me yet.

So much more

to lean on Love to learn

—Vivian Stewart

The sickness that nominalism brings to our legal system may be seen in the way lawyers toy with the system. Some of the worst scoundrels may hire the cleverest of lawyers. The law, set up to establish justice in the land, is now used against it. Every conceivable ploy within the law is used to frustrate justice. A lawyer with the historic view of the relationship of justice to the legal system would never engage in the willful manipulation of the system. But a lawyer whose mind is governed by nominalistic assumptions will see nothing wrong with it. Such a lawyer is governed by money, or fame for winning his case, or some sordid combination of both.

Nominalism And Athletics

Another commentary on our nominalistic society is that of the enormous sums of money paid to professional athletes. Historically, certain criteria applied to athletic contests set them above the criteria of the market place. In such contests heroism, team play, physical dexterity, remarkable endurance, and the astonishing will to achieve were the gold coin of the realm and sufficient in themselves. But in a society governed by nominalistic assumptions, such virtues all become of secondary value. The same mentality that puts sums of money on personal relationships in lawsuits now places sums of money on the quality of athletic performances. And that performance is viewed by a crowd of spectators governed by similar nominalistic assumptions.

Nominalism And Catholic Authority

Nominalism means that the individual is the the ultimate point of reference for value, morality, or any other such decision. This spills directly over into theology, especially with reference to any authority granted to Scripture, tradition, or church.

A revelation of this mentality is to be found in Hans Küng’s book, Infallible? An Inquiry. Traditional Roman Catholic theology presents five infallible authorities: the pope, the ecumenical council, the universal consent of bishops, tradition, and Scripture.

In Küng’s books we see that the real issue concerns not the infallibility of these sources, but their authority. Nominalistic thinking has deeply penetrated the Roman Catholic church, and created a major crisis of obedience to authority. Hans Küng himself has refused to obey the orders given to him by the heirarchy of the church. It is now common knowledge that bishops, priests, and lay people disobey systematically and massively the authority of the church. The Roman Catholic church forbids all use of artificial methods of birth control, yet polls show that many millions of Roman Catholic laity use such methods. Such is the nominalistic erosion of authority in the Roman Catholic church.

Erosion Of Protestant Authority

The basic case is no different in Protestantism, where the nominalistic mentality also reigns. Historic creeds have only the authority a pastor wills subjectively to give them. Scripture fares no better. Its authority is exactly that of the subjective preferences of the theologian or pastor. The sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) of the Reformers is replaced by the subjective preferences of the individual conscience. Even those of us who maintain the historic sola Scriptura discover how deeply into our own bones the nominalistic cancer has penetrated. We too engage in a sorting-out practice on what binds us and what does not.

Of course, it is an oversimplification to hang all our modern woes, secular and religious, on nominalism. In any cultural development many factors are at work. Our argument is that the most influential factor is nominalism, and that it has done the most to undermine the concept of authority in both the secular and theological realms.

I do not deny the truth in nominalism that all authority requires an element of subjective recognition. The Reformers knew this and expressed it in their great doctrine of the internal, secret witness of the Holy Spirit. It is that persuasion of the Spirit that enables the sinner to admit the authority of Scripture. And nominalism has a point in requiring that any proposed authority give an account of itself (“legitimization”). Sheer, uncritical acceptance of authority is irresponsible.

Although T. S. Eliot is commonly known as a poet and dramatist, he was recognized in his day as one of the sharpest critics of culture in Europe (based on 19 years of editing the journal The Criterion). He believed that unless Europe and America kept a firm hold on basic Christian values and morality, our civilization would repeat the Dark Ages. That may be the case, if nominalism continues to rule.

Authority And Grace

From the Christian perspective, authority is always established in the context of grace. There is the amazing paradox of the sovereign authority of God accepted within the boundaries of the immeasurable grace of God revealed in the gospel. The Reformers saw an intimate connection among the grace of God, the gospel, justification by faith, regeneration by the Holy Spirit, the lordship of Christ, and Scripture. Sola Scriptura exists within the context of grace and gospel. And wherever the gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ is preached, the authority of Scripture is established.

Whether Western culture will ever return to a healthier concept of authority is beyond our present knowledge. We do know that the more that nominalistic thinking prevails, the more ripped and frazzled will be our common life. But we can be assured that wherever the gospel is preached, those who receive it will seek to establish once again the authority of the Word of God in their lives—the sola Scriptura of the Reformers.

In this five-hundred anniversary year of Martin Luther’s birth (Luther was born on Nov. 10, 1483), the Reformer’s life and thought are being studied with more than usual intensity.

Luther’s theology is being tested, his lectures looked over, his correspondence combed, his personality probed.

But what of Luther the preacher?

Luther was a premier preacher. Estimates are that he delivered at least 4,000 sermons.

Some 2,300 of these have been preserved. Compared with the preaching of his medieval forerunners, Bernard of Clairvaux, Anthony, and even the great Savonarola, Luther’s preaching is distinctive in both content and style. E. C. Dargan in History of Preaching considered Luther’s preaching as “the best and principal work of his variously busy life.” Luther stands in the “first rank” as “one of the greatest preachers of all time.”

What can today’s preacher learn from Luther? Sixteenth-century Europe during the turbulent days of the Reformation is long centuries removed from contemporary America. Our situations and contexts are drastically different. Yet there are vital lessons Luther can offer for preaching. He is a model who can still instruct preachers of the Word who care as passionately as Luther did about the proclamation of the gospel.

God Speaks Through The Preacher

For Luther, preaching was a means of grace. Quite clearly, he saw God speaking in the preached Word. He said,

“Yes, I hear the sermon; but who is speaking? The minister? No, indeed! You do not hear the minister. True, the voice is his, but my God is speaking the Word that he preaches or speaks.” This meant for Luther that the power of the Word and the grace of God came through preaching, regardless of the human inadequacies of the preacher. “Though an ass were to do the speaking, as in the case of Balaam (Num. 22:28), it would nonetheless be God’s Word,” proclaimed Luther in one of his sermons.

Luther saw preaching as a means of grace God uses to give the Holy Spirit to those who hear the gospel. He said that the preaching of the gospel is “a means and a way and, as it were, a pipe, through which the Holy Spirit flows and comes into our hearts.” The Word proclaimed is the “vehicle of the Holy Spirit.”

Despite the fact that Luther had occasional bouts with depression about the preaching office, his theology of preaching as a means of grace impelled him to preach vigorously throughout his career. At the end of his sermons Luther believed the preacher, while aware of personal shortcomings, could nevertheless say, “Here God speaks, God himself has said it. I was an apostle of Jesus Christ in this sermon.” In the sermon, in other words, one encounters God himself.

Contemporary preachers could well recover this confidence in God’s use of preaching. It need not lead to idolatry, pernicious pride, or the “cult of personality” that glorifies the person of the preacher at the expense of the marvels of the message. A pastor’s confidence can often be renewed if he preaches believing that God can and will use his stammering words to convey himself. That conviction can call us to see the sermon as an event, a “happening” between God and people where something of tremendous significance can occur. Lives can be changed, perspectives can be altered, new visions of God’s call and work can break in, and people can be healed by the grace of God. To see preaching in this light will push us forward as preachers. It will beckon us to do our best in our preparation and proclamation. It will renew our hope in the tasks before us. To see preaching as a means of God’s grace as Luther did, can, if we let it, revolutionize our ministries!

The Content Is True Doctrine

For Luther the content of preaching is very plain. It is the good news of the gospel as known in Jesus Christ and expressed in Christian theology. Christian doctrine as the church understands it is to be boldly proclaimed. As Luther wrote, “The true doctrine is always to be preached publicly and constantly; it is never to be surrendered or kept secret, for it is the ‘rod of rectitude.’” Christian preaching is rooted in theological understanding.

The subject of Christian proclamation is the focus for both the preacher and the congregation. Both are directed beyond themselves to the One who is the source of the preaching itself. For “true preachers must carefully and faithfully teach only God’s Word and seek its honor and praise alone. In the same way the hearers must say, ‘We do not believe in our pastor; but he tells us of another Master, One named Christ. To him he directs us; what his lips say we shall heed. And we shall heed our pastor insofar as he directs us to this true Master and Teacher, the Son of God.’” In this way the church is nourished by the source of its life, Jesus Christ, as he is known in his gospel as the church understands and proclaims it.

The seriousness with which Luther took the preaching task is reinforced when Luther’s sermons are read as if they were preached on a battlefield.

Luther viewed the sermon as part of a cosmic warfare for peoples’ lives. The sermon was a kind of “apocalyptic event” that set a person’s life in motion—either in the direction of heaven or hell. No one can listen without being involved. “No one can listen in cool detachment,” said the Reformer.

The very form of Luther’s sermons indicate this fact. “When I make a sermon, I make an antithesis,” Luther said. Two sides confront each other. God and Satan struggle while the victory of Christ is being proclaimed. Luther stressed the antithesis between the God humans seek to know through human reason and speculation and the God who reveals himself in his Word, specifically in the Son of God, the man Jesus. Philosophy or human reason alone can never give us true knowledge of God. Luther strongly denounced the scholastic speculations of his time and referred to this reason apart from God as “the devil’s whor*.”

But in preaching Luther stressed that what was to be preached was “not philosophical subtleties … but the promise that makes trust possible.” God has revealed himself in the promises of the gospel found in Jesus Christ. In him “we learn to look straight into the face of God.” All other attempts to come to a knowledge of God are antithetically opposed to the Word of God. Whoever seeks God outside Jesus finds the devil instead. This false theology leads only to condemnation.

This is why true preaching must be rooted in theology and focused on the God who has shown his real self in his Son Jesus. People are called to faith in him. This is the crucial decision of their lives. It means life or death. And it is ultimately only this theologically sound preaching that will bring results. The spoken Word of the gospel is “not inefficacious; it bears fruit.” “The Word of the Lord does not return void but bears fruit, just as the rain waters the earth and makes it fruitful [Isa. 55:10–11],” said Luther.

The fruits of the gospel appear from preaching that has its roots deep in the soil of Jesus Christ and his gospel.

The church’s need for theologically sound preaching is constant. In the midst of multiple contenders for the affections and allegiances of millions, the gospel of Christ calls for a decided commitment of the self. Against all ideologies that put confidence in human resources alone stands the Christian’s theological affirmation: God has revealed himself in his Son, Jesus Christ. To proclaim this and all Christian doctrine with integrity is the continual challenge for today’s preacher. The question of Ezekiel was “Can these bones live?” (Ezek. 37:3). The question for us is, “Can these terms live?” Can we translate the theological legacies from our inherited Christian tradition into proclamation that speaks meaningfully for contemporary culture? Can our preaching powerfully address current issues—intellectual, social, and ethical—from perspectives that are grounded in the gospel of Christ? Luther’s own witness in preaching puts these issues before us. He challenges us to be theologically responsible in the preaching task.

Preaching Must Be Graphic And Concrete

It is well known that Luther spoke and wrote colorfully. This was his style. It was carried over quite naturally into his sermons and preaching. Yet Luther was also convinced of the importance of consciously making preaching graphic and concrete. In commenting on the apostle Paul’s use of picture language in Galatians, Luther said “the common people are captivated more readily by comparisons and examples than by difficult and subtle disputations. They would rather see a well-drawn picture than a well-written book.” Luther’s sermons are full of examples of his picturesque preaching language. Since not everyone dies completely stretched out, Luther referred to death as “old stretch your leg.” He called those who sought prosperity “knights of the belly.” If salvation could be attained only by working hard, Luther observed, then surely horses and asses would be in heaven! Just going to church will not insure heaven; dogs wander into church and go out again just the same as they came in—dogs!

For Luther, plain sermons are the best. A preacher must keep his audience in mind as he thinks about communication methods and images. “A sincere preacher must consider the young people, the servants and maids in the church, those who lack education.” As might be expected, Luther adjusted his language to the capacity of his audience.

In this area Luther followed the principle of accommodation, a principle the ancient rhetoricians stressed and great Christian preachers such as John Chrysostom, Augustine, and Calvin practiced. A preacher speaks to the level of his audience, accommodating his language so it is commensurate with the level of the hearers’ understanding. Luther said the preacher “must accommodate himself to [his hearers] as a nursing mother does to her infant. She prattles with the child and nurses it at her breast, since it needs no wine or malvasia. So preachers should also act; they should be simple in their sermons.” He added, “When we are in the pulpit, we should nurse people and give them milk to drink.… The lofty speculations and matters should be reserved for the wiseacres. I will not consider Drs. Pomeranus, Jonas, and Philipp while I am preaching; for they know what I am presenting better than I do. Nor do I preach to them, but to my little Hans and Elizabeth; these I consider.” For Luther the sermon was to be “childlike.”

Luther’s challenge is still with us. The preacher is constantly called to use his imagination to portray graphically the truths of the Christian faith. Jesus himself was the master of vivid communication. His sayings and parables potently presented the kingdom of God and other themes in language that captured the imagination of his hearers and invited their response. As contemporary parable studies have shown, Jesus’ parables were “language events,” open-ended and beckoning his audience to participation and involvement. To capture Jesus’ intention in his parables—to communicate vividly and imaginatively—could vitalize many a contemporary sermon! To adjust our language and images to the needs and natures of our congregations is basic. It is a goal we should always have before us. To communicate sensitively by learning how language works and then making it work for us in preaching is an important responsibility. As it was for Jesus and Luther, simplicity is still the key for us.

Yet to make things simple is often a complex task. Hard work and study is a must. Luther challenges every preacher to make the effort.

Preaching Is Christ Coming To Us

Preaching, for Luther, was the “spoken Word” of God. Through preaching, Jesus Christ presents salvation to the human race. For “the preaching of the gospel is nothing else than Christ coming to us, or our being brought to him,” the Reformer said. Christ comes through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not work independently of the Word but Luther stressed the fact that Christ is the true object of our proclamation. “Nothing except Christ is to be preached,” he often said. His controversies with Roman Catholic theologians and such Reformed theologians as Zwingli and Calvin over the sacraments centered on the “real presence” of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. But for Luther, the “real presence” of Christ was also in the proclamation about him. In the preaching event the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is really present and active. The “entire Godhead will draw you and hold you” when you “hold to the Word with your heart,” Luther said in a sermon on John 6:47.

Since Jesus Christ is the center of Christian proclamation, Luther concluded that both preacher and sermon should be modeled after Christ. In the Incarnation the Son of God humbled himself. So, said Luther, as a preacher one should be humble and see one’s own self along with the congregation as a sinner for whom Christ died. The form of the sermon should model Christ too, in that it should show that “the reality of God to whom we should bow in faith is really very simple.” Some have noted that Luther’s own sermons became more and more simple as he moved toward the end of his life.

The evangelical thrust of Luther’s preaching is seen in his focus on Christ and his work on the cross, as well as in his insistence that the gospel demands a personal decision. In preaching, one is confronted with the living Jesus Christ who calls for faith in him. No one but the individual can believe. There is no alternative for personal commitment. As Luther said, “No one can ever believe for someone else as though his faith were a substitute for the entirely personal faith of the other.” For “a Christian is a person in his own right; he believes for himself and not on behalf of anyone else.”

This is why preaching, both in proclaiming and hearing, is so tremendously important. God speaks in preaching. Jesus Christ is conveyed. The Holy Spirit is at work. The promises of God are heard, faith is formed, and new life takes shape. The need for a continual hearing of the Word is strong—even for preachers themselves. As Luther said, “Since the preachers have the office, the name, and the honor of being God’s coworkers, no one should think that he is so learned or so holy that he may despise or miss the most insignificant sermon. This is especially true because he does not know at what time the hour will come in which God will do his work in him through the preachers.” We preach with excitement and expectancy, and we listen with excitement and expectancy, for Christ is present in our midst.

Contemporary preaching will produce interest and anticipation among us only if it is centered on Jesus Christ. He has been the focus of all genuinely Christian proclamation from New Testament days onward. The early Christian kerygma (preaching) was an announcement of God’s acts in Jesus Christ. Christ was the content of the proclamation. By the work of the triune God, Jesus Christ can be our contemporary. His Word can move us, and his Spirit can prompt us to new understandings and actions. We simply do not know where or when we may be arrested by his power or launched by his love into new areas of insight or involvement. This means the whole world is open before us. God’s call in Jesus Christ can lead us anywhere. His presence through the preached Word can bring new life. We speak and listen expectantly as Christ is conveyed in the preached Word.

Luther’s insights challenge us to care intensely about the proclamation of the gospel. We will take our task seriously if we believe God is speaking through us. We will see that our preaching is theologically grounded in the gospel. We will communicate as vividly as possible, using our best insights about language and style. And we will center our proclamation on Jesus Christ, who lives among us and calls us to continue to live lives of faith.

No two men have made a more indelible impact on the world we live in than Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, especially in changing our society from one whose values were primarily moral and spiritual to one whose values are primarily material and secular. The two men, as we will see, had much in common. Both died mired in hopelessness and despair, both bereft of religious faith. Hope and the Christian faith is my subject, but first let me detail the impact and the similarities of Marx and Freud.

Marx, the German philosopher, through his writings—especially his Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto—set the stage for the Russian revolution. This in turn led to the rise of Marxism and to Lenin and Stalin coming to power. Stalin in turn helped make it possible for Hitler to come into power. One can make a reasonably strong argument that without Marx we would not have had World War II, the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the endemic Middle East crisis, the arms race, or the world being divided today into Communist and non-Communist camps.

Freud, the Viennese physician whose scientific contributions some historians have ranked with those of Einstein, gave us a new understanding of the development and functioning of the human mind. His ideas have pervaded medicine, literature, anthropology, and many other disciplines.

In addition to their intellectual legacy, both Marx and Freud left a world view that has helped to erode our society’s moral and spiritual values. Both mounted a direct attack on religious faith, Marx calling religion the “opiate of the people” and Freud diagnosing it as “the universal obsessional neurosis.” Freud concluded that God was but a projection of the childish wish for an all-powerful father who would protect one from the harsh elements of nature. When a college freshman mentions God in a paper today, it is not unusual for him to find at the end of his paper a comment by an instructor asking, “Are you serious? Freud disproved God 50 years ago and showed religion to be a psychological crutch for the ignorant masses.”

It is interesting to ask if Freud’s philosophy of life stemmed from his scientific discoveries or from something more personal. Although he declared religious faith absurd, he spent the last 30 years of his life writing about it. He seemed to be obsessed with it. He mentions God frequently in his personal letters. “If someday we meet above,” “if God so wills,” “he is indeed a true servant of God,” “by God’s grace,” are a few of the phrases found in his letters. Freud, who insisted that even a slip of the tongue has deeper meaning, would be the last to dismiss these references to the Creator as merely “a manner of speaking.” Perhaps they reflect an unresolved ambivalence toward the Ultimate Authority. And although he observed that persons’ relationships with their fathers influenced their concept of God, Freud seemed to be unaware that his extremely negative attitude toward his own father may have been the basis for his extremely negative attitude toward God.

The number of parallels in the lives of Marx and Freud is striking. Here are a few:

• Both had devout fathers. When Marx was six years old, his father became a Christian and had all of his children baptized in the Protestant church. Marx’s father wrote his son in a letter when Karl was in college: “A good support for morality is a simple faith in God. Sooner or later a man has a real need of this faith; and there are moments in life when even the man who denies God is compelled against his will to pray to the Almighty.” He then encouraged Marx to embrace the faith of Newton and Locke. Freud’s father presented Freud on his thirty-fifth birthday with a Bible inscribed in Hebrew: “My dear son, it was in the seventh year of your age that the spirit of God began to move you to learning. I would say the spirit of God speaketh to you: ‘Read in my book; there will be opened to thee sources of knowledge of the intellect.’ It is the book of books; it is the well that wise men have digged and from which law givers have drawn the waters of their knowledge.”

• Both had conflicts with their fathers, with authority generally, and, of course, with the concept of an Ultimate Authority.

• Both wrote prolifically and suffered rejection because of their ideas.

• Both died bitter and disillusioned men, with little compassion for the common man. Freud wrote in 1918, “I have found little that is good about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all.”

• Both had virtually no friends. Biographers agree that Marx had few close friends, was coldly arrogant, conceited, and “full of hate.” Freud broke with each of his followers, none of whom he had been very close to anyway.

As we read of the end of their lives—of how Marx and Freud finished the course—we note the lack of inner peace and fulfillment, the overwhelming sense of despair and hopelessness.

As despair and hopelessness characterized the last years of the lives of Marx and Freud, so do these same qualities characterize an increasing number of people in our society today—especially the young. The rapid rise in the suicide rate among adolescents may be but one reflection of this despair.

When a doctor sees a patient who expresses complete hopelessness, he thinks immediately of the clinical picture of depression. Depression may be mild, or it may be so intense that it paralyzes.

Mild or severe, depression affects more people in our culture than any other 6 emotional disorder. One feature of depression might also be considered a cause. What often appears to be the cause of despondency in many today is an awareness of a gap between what they think they ought to be and what they feel they are. That is, there is a discrepancy between the ideal the depressed hold for themselves and an acute awareness of how far they fall short of the ideal.

At Harvard University, the intellectual ability of the entering students has risen steadily year after year. Yet the dropout rate remains the same. About 25 percent of each class drops out over the four years, and about 40 percent of these have emotional conflicts severe enough to warrant psychiatric help. The most frequent diagnosis among these students who leave college is depression. The most frequent cause appears to be an awareness of a gap between the ideal self as a gifted brilliant student—as often they were in high school—and the actual self which, because of real or imaginary reasons, they see as a mediocre student in the highly competitive world of a modern university. This is but one example. All of us at some time suffer from the awareness of how far short we fall of what we ought to be.

Does the Christian faith offer resources to help with this conflict? The New Testament makes us acutely aware of an enormous gap between what God demands us to be and what we are. This realization, of course, leads not to despondency but to greater awareness of one’s need for Christ, for Christ bridges the gap. This bridging of the gap was precisely the reason for his presence on earth—to bridge the gap between God and alienated man, between what we are and the perfection God demands. Spiritual rebirth and redemption is based not on good works, “lest any man should boast,” but on what Christ has accomplished for us. The good works ought to be a result of the new birth, not the other way around. The Scriptures indicate clearly that God is interested not merely in good men, but first of all in new men, because man’s natural goodness always falls short. And this new birth does not make one less aware of how far short he falls of his ideals and of God’s standards; it makes him painfully more aware. But this awareness does not lead to self-hatred and despondency.

The Christian experience may provide a man with the motivation and the inner strength to take a step toward being what he knows he ought to be. He may stumble and fall while taking the first step or the next step, but when and if he does fall, he knows that there is always forgiveness and the opportunity and resources to start again. In this way the Christian experience helps one cope with the haunting awareness of the gap between what he ought to be and what he is. God’s forgiveness and acceptance make it easier for him to tolerate and accept himself—perhaps reason he can accept others.

A second element of depression, closely related to the first, is the feeling of worthlessness, of low self-esteem. Psychiatrists have long been aware that this feeling is a significant part of depression. As with all feelings experienced by an emotionally ill person, everyone experiences the feeling of worthlessness to a greater or lesser extent.

Deep-seated misgivings about our personal worth plague all of us. If we peer beneath the surface of the most egotistical, we find his conceit covers deeper fears of inadequacy and incompetence. College students with the highest academic performances sometimes harbor the constant deep-seated fear of not being intelligent. Some of the most intellectually gifted are haunted by the feeling that their acceptance in college is a fluke and that they have hoodwinked a great many people. (These feelings of inadequacy are also found in older adults who have been immensely successful.)

This lack of esteem, this lack of personal worth and confidence, harasses continuously. Some people are able to use these fears adaptively, to work excessively hard, and to achieve more than they would without the fears. But many others are incapacitated and discouraged, making even an effort difficult.

Whatever the cause of our feelings of worthlessness, the important question is how we handle them. Some are paralyzed by them—avoiding all activity that involves risk of failure lest they fail and confirm what they feel about themselves. Others work hard to disprove the feelings. And some handle feelings of worthlessness by projecting them. People have a tendency to see others, especially others who differ from them, as worthless or inferior. We do this unthinkingly. We tend to look down on people from other countries, people with less education or less money, or people with different skin color and different clothes. All of this is but a desperate attempt to deal with our own feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness.

Does the Christian faith provide resources to help deal with feelings of worthlessness? Once again the starting point for the Christian is the full realization that in himself, as far as his relationship to God is concerned, he can do little to improve his worth. But this does not lead to despair, for he realizes that his worth is not in what he does, in what success he achieves. Scripture states that our worth is in what Christ has done for us. “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us.”

Another feature of depression is the feeling of hopelessness, the feeling that there is no way out, that things will only get worse, and that one is completely helpless. Some authorities consider the feeling of hopelessness and helplessness the one essential feature characterizing all types of depression.

The word “hope” is used and heard little in our culture. Perhaps hope conflicts with our concept of a scientific-world. Many books exist on faith and on love, but few on hope. Psychiatrist Karl Menninger writes, “The Encyclopedia Britannica has columns on love and faith, but not a single word about hope. In scientific circles there is a determined effort to exclude hope from conceptual thinking … because of a fear of corrupting objective judgment by wishful thinking. But all science is built on hope, so much so that science is for many moderns a substitute for religion … man can’t help hoping even if he is a scientist. He can only hope more accurately.”

Psychiatrists have long suspected that hope fosters health, both physical and emotional. An increasing body of medical evidence documents the deleterious effect that depression and hopelessness have on physical health. As long ago as 1905, Freud wrote: “Persistent affective states of a depressive nature, such as sorrow, worry, or grief, reduce the state of nourishment of the whole body, cause the hair to turn white, the fat to disappear, and the walls of the blood vessels to undergo morbid changes. There can be no doubt that the duration of life can be appreciably shortened by depressive affects.”

Lovingkindness 1 & 2

God’s strong arm

extends to selfish bullies, willful, crude;

endures the self-deceived; ignores the rude;

forbears with murder; incest does not quell.

And when my arm would sweep them all to hell,

His little finger draws them to his heart.

God’s strong arm

in love applies the rod, employs the lash;

impairs a face; in beauty strikes a gash;

denies the hungry; wounds a mother’s breast.

And while I raise my fist, beseech, protest,

His thumb imprints a poem with the pain.

—Beverly Butrin Fields

A noted physiologist, Harold G. Wolf, writes, “Hope, faith and a purpose in life, is medicinal. This is not merely a statement of belief but a conclusion proved by meticulously controlled scientific experiment.” He then mentions the differences in the death rate from tuberculosis among primitive people who are completely in despair and other people who had hope for relief, and also the number of prisoners of war who died for no apparent reason other than that they had given up hope. For years there have been clues that hopelessness often sets the groundwork for the development of organic disease. These clues have stimulated a number of recent experiments, documenting the deleterious effects of depression and hopelessness on health.

In an experiment carried out at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, 54 patients for open heart surgery were interviewed before surgery and following it. The significant finding was that 80 percent of the patients who died after surgery were depressed. They were the patients without hope. The impression that hope plays a significant role in determining morbidity and mortality is being documented by rigorously controlled scientific experiments.

But what is hope? It certainly is not the same as wishful thinking, for wishful thinking has few grounds on which to expect the wish to be fulfilled. Neither is hope identical with optimism, for optimism often implies a distance from reality. And according to Webster, hope is not the same as expectation. Webster defines expectation as implying a high degree of certainty—that is, a certainty based on being able to see what obviously is going to happen. As you recall, Paul says, “For in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is no hope at all” (Rom. 8:24, NIV). Webster defines hope as belief that what is desired is attainable; hope involves trust and reliance. Menninger, reminiscent of Paul, defines hope as positive expectations that go beyond the visible facts.

If hope is defined as belief and trust and reliance, one cannot help but ask, “Belief in what? Trust in what?” One must have some basis, some reason for one’s hope. It must be rooted in some reality.

When we turn to the New Testament we read again and again: “Christ Jesus our hope.” The Christian’s hope is based on historical fact: the person of Christ and, above all, his resurrection. “In [God’s] great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet. 1:3, NIV).

I have mentioned the resources that are available to the Christian to help him cope with the feelings of depression. My conviction that such resources exist is not based on emotional bias. Of course, as a Christian I would like such resources to exist. But I can say the conviction that they do exist is based on a critical assessment of evidence from my own observations and experiences. One can’t help but observe the very limited resources available to one with no faith and no hope. Both Marx and Freud ended their lives bitter and disillusioned men. Though their lives incurred a full share of hardship and adversity, they apparently lacked the spiritual resources to draw on to help them finish the course with any sense of hope.

In 1920, when Freud was 64, he lost through death a young and beautiful daughter. He wrote that he wondered when his time would come and he wished it would be soon. “I do not know what more there is to say,” he writes. “It is such a paralyzing event, which can stir no afterthoughts when one is not a believer.…”

Compare Freud and Marx with another scholar. An atheist until about 30 years of age, C. S. Lewis embraced the Christian faith after a great deal of intellectual struggle and used his gifts of keen intelligence and mastery of the language to write books that have influenced scores of people in a direction opposite to that of Marx and Freud.

C. S. Lewis wrote about his reactions to the loss of his wife—the one person who was to him everything worthwhile on this earth. The book (A Grief Observed) is a magnificant one for a psychiatrist to read because it expresses with remarkable clarity the process of mourning and grief. Lewis describes the anger, resentment, loneliness, and fear, the fluttering in the stomach and restlessness; how the world seemed dull and flat, how he could find no joy in his work. Could God in the final analysis be a cruel God? Was God a cosmic sad*st?

In the agony of his grief, Lewis tried to pray. Though his need was desperate, he sensed only a door slammed in his face and a sound of bolting and double bolting from the inside.

He felt God had forsaken him. A Christian friend reminded him of Christ’s cry in agony—“My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me”—but it didn’t help. Lewis was aware only that God did not answer his prayers. There was only the locked door, the iron curtain, the vacuum, absolute zero. He soon realized that in his desperation he wasn’t knocking at the door; he was trying to kick it down. Then, slowly, gradually, like dawning of a clear spring day, with light and warmth of the sun, his faith began to bolster him, to give him renewed strength, comfort, and what he describes as “unspeakable joy.” He knocked, and this time the door was opened and he experienced again the presence of him upon whom his hope was based.

Lewis’s last letters, some written days before his death, indicated that he finished the course in striking contrast to Marx and Freud. He writes, “I was unexpectedly revived from a long coma, and perhaps the almost continuous prayers of my friends did it—it would have been a luxuriously easy passage, and one almost regrets having the door shut in one’s face. Ought one to honor Lazarus rather than Stephen as the protomartyr? To be brought back and have all one’s dying to do again was rather hard.”

“When you die, and if ‘prison visiting’ is allowed, come down and look me up in Purgatory.”

“It is all rather fun—solemn fun—isn’t it?”

Then, in his last letter, he writes to a woman friend, “Thanks for your note. Yes, Autumn is really the best part of the seasons; and I’m not sure that old age isn’t the best part of life. But, of course, like Autumn it doesn’t last.”

Hopelessness and despair? No. Fulfillment, peace, excitement, and even anticipation of what comes next? Definitely.

Does the Christian suffer less adversity and pain than others? There is much evidence that he suffers as much. Does he, however, have more resources to cope with the pain? There is a great deal of evidence that he has. By no means the least of these resources is hope.

The Scriptures again speak eloquently: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:13, NIV).

Leighton Ford’s vision for world evangelization.¹This article is taken from an address prepared for delivery at the International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam last summer. Leighton Ford is a veteran evangelist and associate of Billy Graham. Copyright 1983 by Leighton Ford; used by permission.

Late in the last century two French writers went to visit a famous scientist, Pierre Berthelot. The scientist predicted that in decades, mankind would develop awesome weapons of terrible power. “We are only beginning to lisp the alphabet of destruction,” he said, and he went on to express his fears that the human race might destroy itself. One of the writers spoke up. “I think,” he said, “that before that time comes God will come down, like a great gatekeeper, his keys dangling at his waist, and say, ‘Gentlemen, it’s closing time.’”

Now, in the 1980s, many people are wondering if we are getting close to closing time. There is a widespread feeling of hopelessness in the face of economic problems and international tensions. Ours is a world in which 10,000 people a week die of starvation. It is a world in which 40 different wars are now being fought, any one of which might flare up into an international conflict. It is a world in which main nations wrestling with poverty are threatened with totalitarian regimes. It is a world with terror on the horizon, in which our nuclear arsenals contain weapons with explosive power equal to one million of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima. A teen-age girl in Morris West’s novel The Clowns of God speaks for many youth when she says to her father, “You have given us everything except tomorrow.”

For many, this is an hour when despair and hunger and darkness reign. But from the standpoint of the gospel, another reigns. Jesus ties together world evangelization and the climax of history. “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations.” says our Lord, “and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14).

This prophecy of Jesus comes in a twofold context. First, he speaks of the instability of human history. Describing the “signs of the age.” he says that the whole period from his first coming to his second coming will be an age marked by wars, famines, earthquakes, false prophets, and persecution. Down to the time he returns there will be hostility to the gospel, and at the end of the age evil will actually intensify.

If these “signs of the age” were all we had to go by, then Christians, too, might give way to despair. But Jesus also speaks of “the signs of the end.” “The sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory” (Matt. 24:30).

So it is in the context of human instability, but also a great divine certainty, that Jesus says, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached to the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come.”

This is one of the most exciting statements in all the Word of God concerning the evangelist’s task. King Jesus tells us that his coming lies right over the path of world evangelization. We are in an age of great spiritual conflict. Satan, the god of this age, is at work. The false rulers of darkness do strut around the world. But in the middle of all this we are to believe and to proclaim: King Jesus reigns!

As we go forth to preach the reign of Jesus, we ought to go with three great convictions about the King. These are the convictions that Jesus has a great power, a great program, and a great promise.

Great Power

First consider that King Jesus has a great power. Not only does Jesus promise us that “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached,” but in the Great Commission of Matthew 28 he claims “all authority is given unto me in heaven and earth.”

To present Jesus either as Lord but not Savior, or as Savior but not Lord, is to misrepresent the gospel. “The true response of a person to Christ is a genuine repentance which involves recognizing Jesus as true King in God’s world and thus seeking to live under his authority,” wrote John Chapman.

It is important that the evangelist understand the gospel of the kingdom, the power of Jesus. The kingdom is God’s reign, in the person of his Son, to abolish his enemies and to bring the blessings of God to redeemed humanity.

Consider how King Jesus actually shows his power in Luke 7. At Capernaum, he heals the highly valued servant of a centurion. In Nain, he stops a funeral procession and raises to life the only son of a poor widow. At dinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee, he says to a sinful woman. “Your sins are forgiven” (Luke 7:1–10. 11–17, 36–50). So Luke tells us Jesus traveled about “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God” (Luke 8:1). The “good” in the “good news” is that King Jesus has the power to overcome the great enemies of mankind: sickness, death, and sin.

As Paul tells us in several places, sin, death, and Satan have been “abolished” by Jesus (2 Tim. 1:10; Heb. 2:14–15; Rom. 6:6). “Abolish.” in this context, means to defeat. Satan is a defeated enemy. He is still at work, but his doom is sure. A decisive victory has been won. King Jesus began his reign at his first coming. He continues his reign through his church now, and he will complete his reign when he comes again.

But we also need to know what the gospel of the kingdom is not. It is not a kingdom without a cross. On Jesus’ last trip into Jerusalem, the crowds, even the disciples, were delirious with joy. They felt sure that the kingdom was coming in glory and power at that moment. But Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again” (NIV). The disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them and they did not know what he was talking about (Luke 18:31–34). Likewise today, we have many popular ideas of Jesus: Jesus the great example or Jesus the revolutionary or Jesus the guru. Many causes want to identify his kingdom with theirs. But without Jesus’ death for our sins, he would not be Lord and King. We always have to ask: are we Christian soldiers “marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before”? There is no crusade or no kingdom without a cross.

Nor can we have a gospel of the kingdom without conversion. Also on that final trip to Jerusalem, Jesus called the children and said to his disciples, “Whoever will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter” (Luke 18:17). Then we have the story of the two rich men. The first is a rich young ruler who will not be like a child. He trusts in his riches and turns away from Jesus. The second is Zacchaeus, who becomes like a child, welcomes Jesus into his life and his house, and gives half his goods to the poor. Jesus says, “This day has salvation come to this house.” Ultimately we believe that the power of Jesus will bring a new social and political order. “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 11:15, NIV). We can expect the power of the kingdom to bring some profound and positive changes of peace, justice, and freedom in the structures of our world. We should pray and work to that end. But primary in Jesus’ program is the changing of men and women.

And who is the gospel of the kingdom for? The answer is clear. When John the Baptist asked Jesus whether he was the Messiah or if another was to come, Jesus’ answer was clear, “The blind receive sight and the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the good news is preached to the poor” (Luke 7:22). Are these poor for whom King Jesus exercises his power the economically poor? Yes, and the presence of the King must be seen in the community of the King as Jesus’ people do works of mercy and seek justice on behalf of the poor of this world. But look again at the people Jesus helped in Luke 7: they were not only the economic poor. Each had a need only God could meet. The centurion’s servant was sick, the widow’s son was dead, the sinful woman was cast out of society. In the eyes of their peers these people had no claim on God. The centurion was just a Gentile, the widow only a female, the woman merely a sinner. They were outside the circle of privilege. So good news for the poor is a message of grace. King Jesus’ power is for those who have no claim on God, for the helpless, who are ready to receive salvation as a gift.

If we are going to be caught up into the Great Commission, we need to see the magnificent power of King Jesus. God, through Jesus Christ, plans to put this broken world back together. Mankind’s great enemies of sin, suffering, and death are defeated foes. God, through Jesus, is redeeming sinners and will change all creation. The good news is for all—all who know their need and seek the mercy of the king.

A missionary, working in Southeast Asia, was taken by a little group of guerillas. He had several weeks to discuss political revolution and Christ with the leader of the revolutionary band. At the end of his time the revolutionary leader said a significant thing: “I have become convinced that your message of Christ is a more powerful one than our message. But, nevertheless, we are going to win. Christ means something to you, but the revolution means everything to us.” Only when King Jesus begins to mean everything to us because he means everything to the world will we truly become world Christians.

A Great Program

The second conviction the evangelist should have as he preaches is that King Jesus has a great program. “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations.” he affirms (Matt. 24:14). If the kingdom is the power of King Jesus, then the world is his goal. Evangelists are to be kingdom proclaimers with world horizons.

Matthew 24:14 is perhaps the most important verse in the whole Bible in helping us to know where history is headed. What is the meaning of our human story? The ancient civilizations and religions saw history as a kind of merry-go-round of endless cycles repeating themselves over and over. The secular humanist sees history as a moving staircase with humankind progressing onward and upward forever. The nihilist sees history as a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that is not there. The Marxist sees history as the zigzag lightning bolt of class conflict. But those who believe in King Jesus see history as an arrow shot toward a target. We look to that day when our King will return and God’s purpose will be reached. Meanwhile, we have been commissioned to carry out his program for the world.

The central theme of the Bible is God’s redemptive work in history. First, he chose a small, despised people. Israel. Then, “in the fullness of time.” God sent his Son. Now the purpose of God is centered in King Jesus’ new people—the church. Jews and Gentiles become one new body in Christ. For nearly 2,000 years, God’s program and purpose have been found in the evangelistic program of the church.

This is staggering. God has given to you and me, redeemed sinners, the responsibility of carrying out his purpose. Who are we? We are not great people in the eyes of the world. It is focusing on the UN or what happens in Washington, London, Paris, or Peking. Sometimes we get an inferiority complex. Why did God put this program in our hands? Why didn’t he use angels? Our mindset begins to be that of self-preservation. A survival theology replaces a search theology.

Then let this verse burn in our hearts: “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then will the end come.” God has not said this about any other group. The good news will be preached by the church in all the world. This is God’s program.

The Immensity Of The Task

We must not oversimplify here. God’s program does not imply that the whole world will be converted. No, the gospel will be preached as a testimony. Some will respond and some not. Nor should we suppose God’s program might be fulfilled merely by preaching one gospel sermon or producing one gospel tract in each language. Rather, Christ has commissioned us to preach to make disciples and to teach these new disciples to obey all he has commanded.

Still, Scripture says, “This gospel will be preached in the whole world.” Do we really believe this? There are still over two and one-half billion people in the world who have not heard it. If they could be reached at the rate of one million new people a day it would take six and one-half years to complete the task.

Think of Islam with its seven hundred million followers worldwide, now the third largest religion in Europe. Think of China with its billion-plus population. Think of the great world-class cities. Cairo, the largest African city, went from four to eight million people in the 1970s. Mexico City, the world’s largest city, has a growth rate of about a million a year. Or think of the mass of defections from Christianity that have taken place in Western Europe due to secularism; in Eastern Europe and Russia, due to Communism; and in America due to materialism. The challenge of the unfinished task is greater than ever.

It has also been estimated there are 10 to 30 thousand people groups yet unreached with the gospel. Time magazine, in a recent article, singled out the idea of reaching the world one people at a time as the most significant development in missionary strategy in the last decade.

Recently a thrilling story came to light of how one “people group” was reached. It is the story of the Cholanaikkans. In 1972, woodcutters working near the Mangeri Hills in India reported sighting a tribe of naked, fair-skinned people living in caves.

Curious newsmen took the woodcutters as guides and set out to investigate. As they approached the hill area they saw a group of men, women, and children, without clothing, sitting around an open fire. As they came closer to the caves, the Cholanaikkans ran and hid. Soon some of the stronger men began to come out of the caves. The newsmen became frightened, but moved closer and eventually began communicating by using sign language.

The Cholanaikkans were living in caves because they were afraid of wild elephants. They ate fruits, vegetables, and wild honey. They never bathed, cleaned their teeth, or shaved. When it was cold, they wrapped themselves in the bark of trees.

This same year preparation had already begun on an Unreached Peoples Directory for the 1974 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. Because of the report written by the newsmen, the Cholanaikkans were “discovered” and listed along with thousands of other unreached people groups. As information from the directory began to spread, a group of concerned Christians living near the Cholanaikkans began to pray specifically for this unreached group. They realized the responsibility for reaching the Cholanaikkans rested with them, so they formed an organization called Tribal Missions.

The Cholanaikkans lived deep in the hills of the forest and it took the newly formed group a full day to reach them on foot. As they approached, the tribal group was again frightened by outsiders wearing clothes, and they ran to hide. The Christians then devised a strategy: they took off their shirts and trousers, leaving only their waists covered, then walked on.

After repeated visits, the believers began to win the confidence of the Cholanaikkans. They cleaned their wounds, gave baths to their children, applied ointment to diseased skin, and taught them to wear clothes. They brought them food and tablets for headaches. They knew they had to meet both the physical and spiritual needs of the Cholanaikkans.

The Cholanaikkan children began to attend a small school where they were taught stories and songs. Pictures were used to share the gospel story. A number of both adults and children began to understand and accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.

By their third year of ministry, Tribal Missions was able to buy land and build a small place of worship and a medical center. The place of worship is the center of activity for the Cholanaikkan community. About 50 people attend the regular worship services and more than half are baptized believers. Most of the Cholanaikkans no longer live in caves. Their whole standard of living has been changed because a group of believers cared enough to reach out to a lost and hurting people.

If disciples are to be made of all nations, then it will take a tremendous new task force of all kinds of evangelists—mass evangelists, village evangelists, city evengelists, student evangelists, men and women evangelists, Western and Third World evangelists, full-time and lay evangelists, pastor and tent-maker evangelists, older and younger evangelists.

A Great Promise

And that will happen. The evangelists will come and the gospel will be preached. For King Jesus has not only a great power and a great program, but a great promise. This is the evangelist’s third great conviction.

The gospel will be preached, for Jesus says so. This sure promise of our King Jesus should be a mighty motive. “There can be no doubt,” writes Michael Green, “that the expectation of the imminent return of Christ gave a most powerful impetus to evangelism in the earliest days of the church.” He believes that “it is difficult to overestimate the importance of eschatology on the mission of the early Christians. They believed that the long-awaited kingdom of God … was already ushered in through the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth.… They were conscious thereafter of living in the last chapter, so to speak, of the book of human history, however long or short that chapter might be.” King Jesus did not give to his disciples any dates. What he did was to promise them the Holy Spirit for world evangelization. Our sovereign God has mysteriously linked the completion of his kingdom to the completion of our task of evangelization. And he has promised his presence through the Holy Spirit to be with his disciples in this task until the end of the age (Matt. 28:19).

Peter tells us to look forward to the day of God and to “speed its coming” (2 Pet. 3:12). How can we speed his coming? Will he not come when he is ready? There was a saying among the rabbis that if all Israel would repent for one single day the Messiah would appear. Peter seems to say: God in his gracious mercy is delaying his coming until the good news is spread to the whole creation. “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief” (2 Pet. 3:9–10). So we are to present Christ, warning all that they will face him some day and that will bring them either great joy or terrible judgment.

There are several obstacles to evangelism. “The doors are closed,” says someone.

“But are not things to get worse and worse in the last days? Are we not to expect suffering and rejection rather than the triumph of the gospel?” objects another. Of course, Scripture teaches that evil will intensify. But Scripture also tells that in the last days God pours out his Spirit upon all flesh (Acts 2:17). The last days will be evil, but not totally evil. God has given us the gospel for the last days and a power to take that gospel into all the world for a testimony. “We are not rosy optimists,” wrote George Ladd, “expecting the gospel to conquer the world. Neither are we despairing pessimists who feel that our task is hopeless. We are realists, biblical realists, who recognize the terrible power of evil and yet who go forth on a mission of worldwide evangelization to win victories for God’s kingdom until Christ returns in glory to accomplish the last and greatest victory.”

When world evangelization is completed, “then will the end come,” Jesus promises. That leaves us with three ends to keep in mind. There are the ends of the world to which the gospel is to go. There is the end of history which will be consummated with the return of Christ. And there is the end of our lives. Are we willing to go all out to the end of our lives, until the ends of the world are reached, until the end comes and Christ returns?

Paul said to the Ephesian elders, “I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24). When the time came for him to be offered up, he wrote to Timothy, “I have finished the race” (2 Tim. 4:7).

Finishing The Race

When our oldest son Sandy was 14, he developed a very serious heart problem. The problem seemed to be corrected by surgery and he returned to the athletics he loved so much, particularly track and cross-country running. Once he was pulling ahead to a record-setting victory in the mile run with a 40-yard lead on the next runner. Then either his old heart problem came back or he developed a problem with his legs. He stumbled and fell. He picked himself up and stumbled forward a few more yards and fell again. Looking around, he saw the second-place runner closing in on him. Sandy rose to his hands and knees and crawled under the tape, across the finish line and fell there, having won his race. They took a picture of that dramatic finish and put it in our paper. When I saw it, I thought of Paul’s words, “I have finished the race.”

That same son of ours had an intense dedication in everything he did and he was especially dedicated to Christ. He wanted to be a minister of the gospel and he was a strong witness for Christ at his secular university. Then in November of 1981 his heart problem returned. Further surgery was required and after 12 long hours the doctors came to tell us that they could not get his heart started again.

We miss him terribly. There are many things we do not understand about why God would allow the death of a 21-year-old man with so much to give to Christ. And yet we know this, that God has used Sandy’s life and death as a witness to stir other young people both to come to Christ and to go for Christ.

Were 21 years enough? There is no answer to that question. How many would be enough: 31, 51, 81? The only answer is that every moment we have must be filled as full as it can be to the glory of God.

So, until the power of King Jesus is proclaimed to all the world, and until he returns in great glory and God finally says, “It’s closing time,” let us run the race that is set before us, “looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”

And how to overcome objections and get started.

Scripture speaks of virgins and a Virgin Birth, of the erotic and the carnal, of heterosexual and hom*osexual behaviors, of the body and the flesh. Does the youth group your son or daughter attends ever address these issues? If not, the morning paper does, the evening television news does, the weekly news magazines do, their peers do, and 43 percent of their schools may (results of a 1978 Gallup Youth Survey).

Some religious leaders have been vigorously criticizing sex education in the public schools; innumerable clergy hesitate to risk sponsoring a family life and sex education series in their church. Meanwhile, innumerable teenagers do not hesitate to risk less than responsible sexual behavior in their environment. Our high school youngsters face sexual temptation or sexual themes or sexual innuendoes rather regularly. A school biology class may involve discussions about genetics and genitals, particularly where dissection is a part of the laboratory experience. An English literature class in the classics may discuss various deviant relationships. A social studies class might explore the similarities and differences between marriage customs in various Third World countries and Western civilization. When a health class may offer films, pamphlets, and handouts, whose values will prevail? Will the art class discuss nudity? Playground jokes can easily border on the risqué. And trips to away ballgames where cheerleaders can pair off with players in the back of the bus offer special temptations from the benign to the ridiculous.

In the public high schools, one may find few convinced Christian friends. Away from the classroom—but not necessarily removed from the influence of classmates—television programming becomes rather quickly another battlefield. One would need ESP to know when these graphic elements are due, and one would have to move with alacrity to turn the dial before Hollywood’s latest pandering passes by.

Do the churches have a heart for teenagers, who live in a sex-laden atmosphere? If so, if our teenagers are to be light and salt in their own environment, someone must help them make sense of sexuality. What is the effect of such a sex-laden atmosphere on teens today? Have Christian educators discovered how to influence teen behavior in this area? Much evidence is available on today’s sexual situations in such areas as premarital sex activity, pregnancy, abortion, venereal disease, self-image, one-parent families, and suicide.

The Teenage Environment

Premarital activity.By 1979, 50 percent of metropolitan-area teenage women (ages 15–19) had had premarital sexual intercourse, while 70 percent of men (ages 17–21) were sexually active prior to marriage.

Since the girls in this range typically are involved with males who are about two years older, these data are given for the two different age increments. The surveys by Johns Hopkins sociologists Melvin Zelnik and John F. Kantner document the increased premarital sexual activity of our nation’s young women. While 30 percent had had such experiences in their 1971 study, by 1976 43 percent were active. This upward trend suggests that part of the sexual revolution finds adolescent women catching up with their male peers in premarital sexual activity.

Good data on the sexual mores of evangelical young adults are scanty. One survey disclosed that 22 percent of young adults over age 18 (both for males and for females) who identified themselves as “born-again” evangelical Christians had been sexually active prior to marriage.

Revolutions sweep along spectators, too.

Pregnancy.By 1979, the proportion of American teenage girls who had been pregnant before marriage reached 16 percent.

Our culture has seen an increase in adolescent out-of-wedlock pregnancies from 9 percent in 1971 through 13 percent in 1976 to the present level. The proportion marrying before the resolution of the pregnancy has fallen from 33 percent in 1971 to 23 percent in 1976 and to 16 percent in 1979 (Zelnick and Kantner).

One study discovered that three out of five teenage girls who were pregnant when they married and who were aged 17 or younger at the time of marriage were separated or divorced within six years of the marriage.

One study of adolescent females in New Jersey disclosed that one out of every five girls in junior and senior high school would become pregnant during the year. In the inner cities there, the rate approached 30 percent.

Traditionally, adolescent pregnancies are higher-risk pregnancies. In such circ*mstances, the maternal death risk is 60 percent higher for young teenagers, low birth weight for the infant is twice as high, and the babies of young teenage mothers are two to three times more likely to die in the first year of life. Pregnancy is the reason most often cited by teenage girls who drop out of school.

The Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Foundation has turned its attention to the national problem of adolescent pregnancy. Coauthor Ethel Kennedy Shriver has written the foreword to the curriculum developed at Johns Hopkins Hospital (A Community of Caring: Helping the Pregnant Adolescent Have a Successful Pregnancy):

“This enterprise is dedicated to all those who believe we can create communities of caring—to those who believe that these young lives need not be blighted, that their families need not be torn apart by the fact of pregnancy and parenthood at an early age.… This program attempts to bring about a reconciliation a recognition that those at risk and in need are our neighbors, and that we owe our neighbors the love … ingrained in every cultural and religious tradition we value.”

After over eight years with this program, studies have disclosed a much healthier outcome to pregnancy, repeat out-of-wedlock pregnancies reduced by almost two-thirds, drug and alcohol abuse significantly curtailed, dependency on welfare greatly lessened through the resumption of educational goals, and the incidence of child abuse vastly diminished.

With the availability of adoptive couples (one out of nine marriages is infertile), and with the support of such a loving family, not every adolescent pregnancy need face a bleak outlook.

The teenager who becomes pregnant may not know what values she lives by, but suddenly she is confronted with life’s ultimate values.

Abortion.By 1979, approximately 37 percent of adolescent out-of-wedlock pregnancies were terminated by an induced abortion.

The proportion has risen from 23 percent in 1971 through 33 percent in 1976 to 37 percent in 1979 (Zelnik and Kantner).

Though the sanctity of human life may be ill-defined in modern America, easy abortions neither clarify nor satisfy this classic moral principle.

Venereal disease.By 1981 the reported cases of gonorrhea in the 15- to 19-year-old population had increased by 62 percent over the calendar year 1969.

The Herpes Resource Center estimates that 1 percent of this age group is afflicted with herpes simplex virus II. The Sorensen Report of 1973 disclosed that 12 percent of all nonvirgin boys aged 16–19 and 11 percent of all nonvirgin girls aged 16–19 indicated that they had had a venereal disease.

Promiscuity has natural health consequences; while modern sexologists may seek to defuse the moral language of sexual behavior, in no way can they deny the consequences of illicit activity.

Loneliness of church teens.A 1977 study of over 21,000 church youth disclosed that one out of five experienced continuing thoughts of severe self-criticism and personal loneliness.

The survey conducted by Merton P. Strommen (Five Cries of Youth, Harper & Row) on selected Baptist, Episcopal, Evangelical Covenant, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Young Life teenagers in the years 1970, 1971, 1974, and 1977 underscored the loneliness of adolescents as one of their major vulnerabilities.

About half of the respondents perceived themselves to be persons without importance. Of the 20 percent most troubled by feelings of low self-esteem, 62 percent admitted to thoughts of self-destruction.

Adolescent loneliness can be compounded by the loss of a parent through death or divorce. Lack of self-confidence, lack of personal participation in school social or sport activities and lack of family affirmation can all contribute to feelings of loneliness and rejection.

Human loneliness called forth the first spouse while human estrangement called forth the Second Adam; both are incarnations of divine love and both are offered the solitary soul.

One-parent families.The 1980 census revealed that one out of five children under 18 lives with only one parent in this country.

Among black families, the proportion of such children living with only one parent is considerably higher—almost 46 percent. As a consequence of our high divorce rates and out-of-wedlock birth rates, it is predicted that close to half of American children will reach the age of 18 having spent at least some of their lives with only one parent.

While it may take considerable courage to be a parent today, it may demand real sacrifice to be a surrogate parent to the confused, lonely, and unloved friends our children may bring home.

Suicide.In 1982, suicide was the third leading cause of death for people between the ages of 15 and 24 in this country.

The two leading causes of death for this age group are accidents and homicides. Approximately 250,000 young Americans try to kill themselves each year and about 10,000 are successful. In this age group more lives are lost to suicide each year than to any disease. Project Gateway, a special program for adolescents funded from the Catholic Community Services, has documented how these “at risk” teenagers are usually victimized by situations involving serious family conflicts.

The seven psychosexual and psychosocial areas just discussed are often part of the life experience of members of your church youth group or their friends. Hayrides are fun and missionary conferences are important, but seminars to deal thoroughly and biblically with the psychosexual baggage of being a teenager in 1983 are crucial if this generation is to learn of values that endure.

Responsibility For Sex Education

That parents are the primary educators in this area is universally acclaimed. About 80 percent of our population think schools should also participate; at the same time, this raises a number of unsettling questions. The primary variable in the classroom is the influence of the teacher. Only three states (Kentucky, Maryland, and New Jersey), plus the District of Columbia, require some form of sex education in the public schools. However, a recent Gallup Youth Survey disclosed that only 43 percent of 13- to 18-year-old male and female students reported having had any kind of sexuality instruction in their school experience.

Who requires that churches offer family life and sex education seminars for their youth? Who demands the development of a responsible course to aid those parents who want to be able to field the questions inquisitive youngsters can raise? Has any denomination any evidence that its churches offer such seminars with both quality and regularity? Surely if the church proclaims the whole counsel of God it will have to address issues in family life and sex education.

When churches and parents cooperate on family life and sex education seminars, a natural collaboration has taken place. Outside the pluralistic public sector now, parents and churches discover themselves to be several things: (1) They are paired in a value system they both affirm, the Judeo-Christian ethic. (2) They often share the benefit of family ties that reach across several generations. (3) Usually they experience multiple contacts on a weekly basis. (4) They clearly acknowledge common concerns. (5) They benefit from the continuing influence of leaders who often themselves become surrogate parents to the church’s youth.

Some churches have provided parents with good biblical interpretation, accurate information, answers that appropriately fit the questions of children and youth, and a forum within which one can view good films, share concerns, and integrate the faith with the facts. Such a series, well-done, with competent and engaging faculty, is attractive to townspeople as well.

While most parents feel the weight of their responsibility, many do not feel adequate for the task for a variety of reasons. Some young parents have only recently survived the ravages of the sexual revolution; their minds are still spinning with difficult questions and only partially thought-out Christian answers. Others are slowly recovering from home backgrounds deficient in warmth and mutual respect. Still others are reticent to be too explicit, lacking a clear set of pedagogical guidelines.

Many lack a responsible home library where accurate information, both from the health sciences and from the social sciences, has meshed with the Christian tradition. Many are not readers. And some have difficulty communicating with their youngsters or teenagers on any subject.

Parental aspirations are not always matched by parental action. The Cleveland study on “Family Life and Sexual Learning” discovered that, while most parents may wish that they were educating their children in this area, few are. Fathers were discovered to be both less emotionally expressive around their children as well as less verbal with their children about matters sexual. Both tasks—both privileges—are the province of the mother still. By typically giving brief, often terse answers to their children’s inquiries, parents retreat into silence. The children learn that this is too threatening an area to explore at home.

Since many clergy itch to be creative, here is one grand theme around which the insights of Hebrew and Greek, Old and New Testament principles, systematic and historic theology, and educational and pastoral concerns can blend with distinction. All that is necessary is the formation of a supportive committee to get on with the task.

A superb series is possible if the church and parents enlist Christian physicians, marriage and family counselors, psychologists, social workers, nurses, lawyers, theologians, sociologists, parents, grandparents, and mature singles. For inexperienced family life educators, beginning with groups of parents and pastors can provide the least threatening kind of audience that is combined with a most appreciative crowd.

Parents want help and they let you know of their gratitude once a course is under way. As experience is gained, a healthy comfort level can encourage one to address the concerns of senior high and then junior high students in subsequent months. A good series here has its rewards; teenagers let you know with their enthusiasms, and they change their lifestyles.

One specialized form of Christian education is the Christian college. Here is a natural setting where some of our sons and daughters might benefit from a course in human sexuality taught by qualified professors guided by Scripture. That recent survey located only six evangelical institutions where such a course was offered: Goshen, Gordon, Wheaton, Whitworth, and Messiah colleges, and Seattle-Pacific University. Given the dozens of Christian colleges in this country, and given the whole counsel of God, whence this reluctance, this timidity in confronting so controversial yet so ubiquitous a theme?

Near our home are four Ivy League colleges and five state universities. Every one offers a course on human sexuality, but one would not expect any defense of the Judeo-Christian ethic. How well do our evangelical students do if they are presently enrolled in these courses in secular institutions? Would dorm and classroom discussions be well seasoned with the salt and light of young disciples nurtured in our congregations? (For an interview with a Christian college health physician who began such a course almost a decade ago at Goshen College, see the Winter 1982 issue of the Journal of Psychology and Christianity.)

Why Ministers Feel Ill At Ease

The Lancaster County ministerium of Mennonites and Methodists, Presbyterians and Pentecostals, Baptists and Free Church members agreed that the impact of sexuality upon their teenagers merited a conjointly sponsored series of Sunday afternoon seminars. While mutually respecting one another’s differences in theology, they easily reached agreement on the lordship of Christ and their commitment to the lifestyles of their youth members.

Committee work began to identify faculty and films, and the larger group debated how to handle controversial issues within the various traditions represented. Several options were sketched until a method gained agreement.

Eighty teens from a dozen churches and four high schools attended the six-week series. An initial meeting with parents paved the way.

Often when a pastor or parent or youth sponsor or teacher or teenager inquires about a series on marriage, family, and human sexuality, objections arise that skewer the best of intentions. Here are six:

1. There is too much sex already. Agreed. But is there enough emphasis on commitment, trust, covenant, communication, patience?

Sex is a three-letter, three-dimensional word invading the physical, psychosocial, and spiritual. But it is severely truncated in our culture. It defines our gender, our genitals, and our generalized, total response to the coital act. But “Dallas,” “Dynasty,” Playboy, Cosmo, the National Inquirer, and the local locker room seem to have a fixation with only one dimension of this grand personal treasure.

Where will our children, our teenagers, be enchanted with the splendid scenario God designs for those willing to trust the future to his hands? Responsible family life and sex education seminars have a repertoire of themes beyond the merely physical. Elemental knowledge about the human reproductive cycle is clearly warranted for adolescents whose physiological systems are already telling them of new possibilities and new desires.

Adolescents also deserve sound information regarding their psychosocial development—themes such as handling their newfound independence, dating options, mate selection, decision-making processes, self-esteem, body image, grooming habits, personality development, peer pressure, the joys of parenthood, the handling of guilt, gender roles, and uncommon courtesy.

At the least our teenagers deserve psychosocial as well as theological reasons regarding the validity of virginity, the management of masturbation, and appropriate attitudes toward petting, hom*osexuality, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, contraception, and abortion.

The field is broad and few there be who pasture in it.

2. There are too many controversial issues. Agreed. But while American entrepreneurs thrive on risk taking, woe be to the Christian leader who seeks to match contemporary controversial themes with ancient holy writings where no clear guideline exists. Sadly, the average church has not learned well how to handle controversial issues. Neither liberal nor conservative churches would say their present approaches are wineskins that do justice to the full richness of the new wine offered in Christ. Retreats into bumper-sticker answers and out-of-context biblical proof texting are common errors.

For some themes in human sexuality, the Bible teaches absolute ethics (adultery, fornication, rape, incest, and prostitution, for example). Other issues have two or three acknowledged responses in the Christian community (masturbation, premarital petting, contraception, divorce, nudity, and abortion). Responsible leadership finds ways to translate absolutes into sensible strategies and to transmit ethical options to the spiritual sensitivities of a new generation.

What does one do when teenagers ask difficult questions in a family life and sex education seminar? Three possibilities exist: (1) Always give black-and-white answers. (2) Explain absolutes in everyday terms where they apply, and give biblical principles where both Scripture and reality are ambiguous, trusting the Holy Spirit to assume some of the risk as well. (3) Or don’t plan a family life and sex education program; then Monday morning phone calls from Deacon Brown’s wife can be avoided. Option (3) seems to be in vogue in most comtemporary, progressive, American evangelical churches.

If contemporary Christian leaders do not aid this generation of the young to find answers to controversial questions, we only postpone for posterity the day of reckoning.

3. There are too few qualified leaders. Agreed. This is often true in the local church. But in the larger body of Christ, especially in metropolitan areas, this is not likely the case. And what of the legacy of leaders encapsuled on tape, or in film, or on the printed page?

With the emergence of professionally qualified, spiritually sensitive marital and family educators, no local church is beyond the reach of these authorities. The question of competence is best answered by discerning those writings/tapes/films that best integrate good data from the health and social sciences with first-rate exegesis of the biblical texts.

On the local scene, parishioners may include physicians, nurses, teachers, psychologists, lawyers, and social workers. Nearby institutions or neighborhood congregations may provide additional faculty members. The merging of small youth groups can provide a lively grouping that is efficient.

Aside from the professional criteria for leadership roles, the spiritual qualifications of the pastoral epistles might guide the selection process as well. Adults comfortable with their own sexuality, informed about the issues, sensitive to Holy Scripture and gifted with ready rapport with youth provide the ideal faculty. No small task; no impossible dream.

Such an agenda presumes personal integrity. The tragedy of clerical hypocrisy in sexuality is well-chronicled in the LEADERSHIP journal article, “The War Within: An Anatomy of Lust” (Fall 1982).

Thank God that he usually matches competent leadership to the stresses of each age.

4. There are church inertia and apathy. Agreed. Those two church tramps are members everywhere. Leadership in the local church often meets a parishioner named Inertia. A family life and sex education seminar series and sermon can enumerate the problems with little difficulty. Is there an articulate physician available who can answer anticipated questions? How will he or she speak on abortion, hom*osexual civil rights, masturbation? What should be said of dating non-Christians? Will menstruation be discussed in a coeducational setting? Will parents get to see any of the films to be used in advance? What explanation will be given of the Song of Songs? Worthy questions all.

But if six months of committee work can find responsible answers to these queries. Inertia can readily raise another shopping list of questions to occupy committee members for another half year. It is interesting how frequently this fellow Inertia can raise both the right questions and peripheral questions in an endless succession of committee sessions. It is interesting how infrequently he lifts the phone in the quest for answers and action. It is interesting the discernment it takes to see through smokescreens. It is interesting how easy it is to table this project until a more opportune time. Inertia, thy clones are legion.

Perhaps the best strategy Apathy uses to sabotage life’s agenda is scapegoating: “Sex education is not the responsibility of the school or church; it’s the responsibility of the home.” Suppose the church through its pastors, youth pastors, youth sponsors, boards of Christian education, Sunday school teachers, parents, and teenagers has no central role in family life and sex education? Then the burden of responsibility and the blame for failure can be safely shifted to the shoulder of parents. In either instance, Apathy need burn no midnight oil in establishing a seminar series or bear any sense of responsibility for shipwrecked lives. Apathy can live with a clean conscience because it has no conscience.

Blessed are those churches where Caring Concern and Thoughtful Action become members of each committee.

5. We made it without such a course. Agreed. Some of us have successful marriages and happy homes without ever having attended such a course at home, at school, or at church. That is correct. And some of us have bank accounts, retirement plans, homes, cars, boats, and insurance programs without ever having taken a course in finance either. Boy, have we been taken!

We are the survivors. But what of our siblings or our former friends in the youth fellowship of days gone by? Their absence in the congregation of the righteous is silent testimony to a wide range of reasons, not the least of which is the damnable egocentricity that sulks in silence or ridicules with rage the foibles of the faithful.

But without relevant programs, without substantial answers, without compelling role models, sometimes without a stable family background, sometimes without a friend who really cared, and usually without a solitary encounter with the Incredible One who sets one’s steps on high and lofty places, these friends and relatives stumble through the days.

Our marriage combined the life scripts of two families of seven children; two of us and five brothers and sisters, now in-laws. Of them all, only one besides us has known a stable, satisfying Christian marriage. Among the four others lie five divorces: five painful memories: eight wounded children. Both families of origin were Christian and both families were reared in evangelical churches—proper pedigrees. Whence disaster? Multiple factors, surely.

The Sexual Revolution Of The Twentieth Century

Sex is a major preoccupation in modern America. Here’s how we got where we are.

• European views after World War I gave returning servicemen a taste for looser living.

• Disillusionment with political leadership and a sense of ennui were an American heritage of World War I.

• The automobile became a vehicle not only for travel but also for escape, and the chaperone system broke down as increased mobility gave increased privacy.

• The Nineteenth Amendment gave women the vote; this legitimate concern produced a side effect—rhetoric calling for the “double standard” to be replaced with mutual sexual freedom. This led to a new pattern of selecting mates.

• Birth control methods encouraged greater risk. As a result, the triple threat of detection, conception, and infection was first effectively counterchecked in the 1920s.

• Much literature of the 1920s ridiculed conventional morality (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Ring Lardner, et al.). The value system and lifestyle of masses of people were affected.

• Havelock Ellis’s Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1905–15) crossed new frontiers.

• Pop versions and distortions of Freud, Jung, and Ellis offered nostrums for inhibition and repression, giving “scientific” permission to indulge natural impulses more glandular than cerebral.

• The 1920s, which were often called the “lost generation,” Lawrence Lipton described as the “democratization of amorality.”

• Walter Lippmann asked (1929) whether society’s sexual openness reflected less hypocrisy or more promiscuity.

What began in the 1920s was institutionalized in the 1960s and pursued with a vengeance in the 1970s. Sexual values and attitudes impinge on institutions and behavior, amending them as change occurred. If the 1920s became Phase I of the sexual revolution, Phase II began to be obvious in the 1960s. What happened in that decade?

Medicine

1960—the “pill” first became available to the public.

1966—first transsexual surgery.

1966—Masters and Johnson published Human Sexual Response. In 1970 they released Human Sexual Inadequacy, and in 1974 The Pleasure Bond (now emphasizing commitment in a relationship).

Late 1960s—amniocentesis first available to general public.

1967—first medical journal given entirely to human sexuality.

Medical-Legal

1965—Comstock Act of 1873 overturned by U.S. Supreme Court; public advertising, display, and mailing of contraceptive devices now legal.

1967—Colorado first state to make abortion on demand legal if the pregnancy gravely threatened a woman’s physical or mental health, resulted from rape or incest, or was likely to result in the birth of a severely defective infant.

1973—all previous state laws severely limiting abortion were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, and our current permissive climate resulted.

Mid-1960s—artificial insemination using donor sperm (AID) became more readily available for infertile couples; legal questions lingered.

1974—American Psychiatric Association changed category in its diagnostic manual for hom*osexuality from “Sexual Deviation” to “Sexual Orientation Disturbance,” commenting that pathology was present only when such people are disturbed by their orientation.

1978—Louise Joy Brown, first baby born by in vitro fertilization. Many medical-moral-legal questions arose.

Legal

1966—New York joined California to make divorce legally permissible when “irreconcilable differences” existed.

1967—interracial marriages were freed of legal restraint by the U.S. Supreme Court (Loving v. Virginia). This declared all antimiscegenation laws unconstitutional.

Literary-Legal

1957—p*rnography defined as “utterly without redeeming social importance” where the average person, exhibiting “contemporary community standards” would find the dominant “theme” appealing only to one’s “prurient interest” (Roth v. U.S.).

1966—“Pandering” or “titillating” advertising was censured.

1967—attempted distribution of licentious material to juveniles was an appropriate guideline for writing obscenity laws (U.S. Supreme Court).

Literary

1953—Playboy founded. William F. Buckley later called Hugh Hefner “the godfather of the sexual revolution.” Through most of the 1960s and 1970s, Playboy’s circulation outstripped Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report.

1982—Hefner said in Newsweek, “Things are a lot better in the bedroom today than when I was growing up, and I think there is a clear recognition that Playboy played an important part in changing attitudes and values. It’s the single thing I’m proudest of.”

Theology

1963—J. A. T. Robinson’s Honest to Cod.

1966—Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics: The New Morality.

1968—Pope Paul’s encyclical Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”) reaffirmed the traditional Roman Catholic position that artificial means of birth control are immoral.

The absence of courses on love, sex, and marriage certainly froze our pools of ignorance. Unanswered questions remained so, with the hidden assumption that they probably were unanswerable. The lack of any premarital classes reflected deficiences in clergy education as much as pastoral ineptitude. In the process, many deserted the Bridegroom as well. Out of common disasters emerged an explicit disrespect for the church that soon slid into implicit disregard for Christ. Though the former is more understandable than the latter, neither reflect a mature response to reality. But then, none of the four has ears to hear anymore, if one is to believe his or her discontents.

Each generation has its own agenda of stresses to manage; civilization depends upon the elders of the tribe to pass on the principles and the God who remains responsive to any new threat to personal intimacy.

6. No data exist that courses make a difference. Disagreed.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that positive change does occur in the areas of knowledge and attitudes. One might have predicted this. The more difficult outcome to measure is behavioral change. Some form of investigation over a lengthy stretch of years would be needed to measure subsequent behavior. To date, few have attempted this task.

A recently published study in Family Planning Perspectives by Johns Hopkins researchers Melvin Zelnik and Young J. Kim (May/June 1982) shows that “young people who have had sex education are no more likely to have sexual intercourse than those who have never taken a course” (italics added). This is among the first reassuring evidence that such courses do not necessarily trigger sexual acting out, a concern of opponents.

Zelnik and Kim also discovered that “amongst 18- to 19-year-old white women surveyed in 1979, those who had not had instruction had a higher rate of sexual activity than those who had (71 percent compared with 55 percent).” In 1980, Dougles Kirby reviewed studies on behavior in The Journal of School Health (December 1980) and generally agreed with Zelnik and Kim.

On the national problem of adolescent pregnancy, the curriculum prepared by The Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Foundation entitled “A Community of Caring” and based on six years of experience at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore has well-measured, positive outcomes for these girls. Their involvement in a comprehensive prenatal health care program where values are specifically salted into the curriculum has had very encouraging results. (No evangelical health care provider working with this problem should be without information on this marvelous program.)

However, a Minnesota study published several years ago in Minnesota Medicine (February 1973) found that adolescent girls who had not taken a sex education course had more than 16 times as many out-of-wedlock births over a 20-year period as those who had taken a course. This same study discovered that adolescent boys who had not taken the course had about four times the divorce rate of those who had taken the course.

A particular caveat may be noted here. Students are stuck with an enormous amount of sexually laden stimuli in our culture. Then too, their social, emotional, and sexual needs contribute to their valnerabilities. To expect classroom discussions to counterbalance all these influences may be asking for a miracle—but then, in a church-sponsored program, wouldn’t that be appropriate?

We do have impressive, overwhelming evidence that, in the absence of courses, adolescent sexual behaviors are marching off the charts. With little information from caring, well-informed, well-matched adults, teenagers seem to assume that (1) everyone’s doing it; (2) answers to permissive sexual lifestyles do not exist; (3) the Bible is out of date; and (4) television and movie innuendoes probably disguise a pretty exquisite experience. So off to bed they go.

One bumper sticker that has appeal reads: “If you think knowledge is expensive, try ignorance.” Our teenagers, lacking any comprehensive knowledge of the interface between abiding love and sexual fulfillment, are acting on their ignorance.

Why Wait?

Please do wait until a committee can be formed, the best available leaders found, the budget prepared, the films screened, the parents informed, the publicity launched, the paperbacks ordered, the handouts written, and the teenagers’ opinions solicited.

But please don’t wait until the first out-of-wedlock pregnancy rocks your youth group, the first abortion unsettles a family, the first college kid contracts herpes, the first elder’s daughter has a shotgun wedding, and the last recalcitrant deacon steps into the twentieth century.

How To Begin: Methods And Curricula

Once a committee has been formed, speakers and films can be identified and a trajectory outlined. Prayers for discernment and discretion as well as for courage are appropriate. Funds may need to be budgeted. To begin with a series for parents is a natural course of action to take. Competency demonstrated here will pave the way later for the development of a series with senior high and then junior high youth. One needs patience to secure the kind of qualified speakers and discussion leaders needed.

In the past decade, several curricula have appeared for use by evangelical congregations. The recently released, newly revised Concordia series on sex education comes with splendid recommendations. By age group, the titles are: “Each One Specially” (3- to 5-year-olds), “I Wonder Why” (6–8), “How You Got to Be You” (8–11), “The New You” (11–14), “Lord of Life, Lord of Me” (14 and up), and “Sexuality: God’s Precious Gift to Parents and Children” (adults and parents). The books are reasonably priced ($5.95), while a filmstrip series that compliments the set has been developed for Sunday school, Christian day school, youth group, family retreat, or teacher education audiences.

Interesting also is the Southern Baptist series published in 1973 but relevant to contemporary mores and morals. Titles include: “Made to Grow” (6- to 8-year-olds), “The Changing Me” (9–11), “Growing Up with Sex” (junior high), “Sex Is More Than a Word” (senior high) and “Teaching Your Children About Sex” (parents). Youth groups and senior high Sunday school classes could be stimulated to think through some of the issues by using the David C. Cook curriculum, “Created He Them Male and Female: A Biblical Perspective on Sexuality.”

The film Human Reproduction by McGraw-Hill (Third edition, 1981) offers as useful and as graceful a portrayal of the subject as any church group could desire. The volume by Christian physician Grace Ketterman, How to Teach Your Child About Sex, is useful with parental groups. One could trace a range of themes in recent issues of CHRISTIANITY TODAY that would provide a contemporary primer on family life and sex education issues.

Along with the essays, films, books, and paperbacks that would be useful for background research or distribution in seminaries, competent local leaders and speakers who can respond well to questions on the spot are the most valued asset. Select them with care. Members of both the Christian Medical Society (CMS, Richardson, Tex.) and the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS, Farmington Hills, Mich.) may live near you and have competency in these areas. But do locate these leaders and do begin the dialogue with parents and teenagers that renews itself from generation to generation.

Conclusion

Adults need to be more profoundly aware of the chemical interaction of the H-Bomb and Hollywood—not to mention the perverse influence of Hugh Hefner and the personal impact of individual hormones—on our teenagers. To eat, drink, and be sexual before Doomsday has a certain compelling logic.

The middle-aged parent is caught in the middle. On the one hand, one hears grandparents comment: “I certainly wouldn’t want to be raising teenagers today.” Certain other graybeards firmly dissuade their youth pastor from organizing any family life and sex education program for their church’s youth group. One nearby, sizeable evangelical youth group experienced about a 50 percent rate of premarital sexual activity a few years ago. Known to the youth pastor alone, his plea for a seminar series on family life and sex education fell on deaf ears in the board of Christian education. Should he have breached confidentiality?

Our teenage males see innumerable female bodies, but they do not understand women. Our teenage girls see sexiness from cover to cover in their magazine choices, but they little understand sensuality. Our adolescents listen to the lyrics of love wailed by society’s dropouts but they learn little from these moral midgets. Our teenagers are touched by injustice, by poverty, by suffering, by abuse; are they touched regularly as well with nurturing love? With remarkable insight Paul Ramsey observes, “Ours is the only era in the entire history of human life on this planet in which the ‘elders’ of the tribe ask its newer members what the tribal rules and standards of expected behavior should be.”

With the sexual revolution (and the women’s movement, an equally revolutionary phenomenon) have come gains and losses. Both are profound societal dislocations. However, the Good News still liberates from cultural fashionability while offering discernment through any revolution.

The Pauline trilogy of faith, hope, and love can offer discriminating perspectives for individuals of all ages, both sexes, and whether one is single or married. The modern quest for personal intimacy, so promiscuously pursued in our day, can be safeguarded for those disciples who have the sense to have faith in God’s will and God’s way. The quest for personal integrity, beyond hope in too many human relationships, is yet the hope of those who have experienced the power of a covenant-keeping God. And the quest for personal identity, so denied the abused, the manipulated, the lonely, and the perverse can so richly flower in the sunlight of God’s agape love.

God is love. For modern pagans that is revelation indeed, and for modern Puritans that is liberation indeed. In a world so confused about love, so timid about commitment, so bestial about sexuality and so negligent about nurturance, the Lord God has incarnated Love, established covenants, admitted to creating our sexuality and become our heavenly Father.

In the biblical revelation he is the author of eros (Song of Songs), the embodiment of agape, and still the friend of sinners (John 15:15). From his astonishing imagination have come male and female, gender and genitals, procreation and re-creation, identity and intimacy, roles and rules, ecstasy and eternity. And in the Incarnation these sexual themes took on flesh. There are many treasures that we hold in earthen vessels besides the gospel (though that is surely the pearl of great price!); our sexuality is one. As with most treasures, this jewel is not truly cherished until all counterfeits are exposed, all imitations acknowledged, and the proper matrix disclosed within which this unique gem can fully sparkle.

He can use parents and pastors to achieve this.

A rising young member of Congress comments on faith and politics.

Bill Armstrong is a first-term Republican senator from Colorado who earlier served three terms in the House of Representatives. He chairs the Senate subcommittee studying solutions to the severe problems facing Social Security and is earning respect as a leader. The Wall Street Journal says of Armstrong: “[He] has moved ahead of the pack of bright, young conservatives elected to the Senate in the past three elections.” Armstrong, 46, is the owner of a radio and television station and formerly owned a newspaper, the Colorado Springs Sun. While he was a member of the House of Representatives. Armstrong became a committed Christian. He was interviewed in Washington recently by CHRISTIANITY TODAY editors.

If you had the choice of 50,000 Christians becoming either better Christians or getting involved in politics, which would you choose?

I don’t see those as being mutually exclusive. I frequently talk to people individually about their spiritual lives and about Christ. I think that is one of the most important things I can do. But I don’t see that as being in conflict with politics. In fact, sometimes they go together. Because I’m deeply involved in politics, I am thrown together with other people in the Senate or in the House of Representatives. A colleague recently called me for three reasons. He first asked for two political favors. After we were done talking about that, he said. “By the way, can we get together some time? I want to talk about religious things.” I sense he might be ready to give his life to Christ.

Virtually every denomination and large church group emphasizes organized political action. Jerry Falwell has been prominently identified with that recently. That is largely because he has been the pastor to, and spokesman for, probably the largest group of those who stayed away from political activity over the last 25 years. Virtually all of the mainstream denominations teach that it is an aspect of religious leadership to play their part in political action.

If I had to say what is the most important thing a believer can do. I’d probably say to tell people about Jesus. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s important that they pray or that they register to vote. Would people who say that political activity is not a proper role for Christians also say that William Wilberforce shouldn’t have run for the British Parliament to put an end to the slave trade? It just doesn’t hold up.

On the other side of the coin, there is a danger when believers get deeply involved in political activity that they will try to put the mantle of Christ over their cause. They might try to deify that cause and say, “Because I’m motivated to run for office for reasons that are related to my faith, a vote for me is a vote for Jesus.” That’s not right. Even on such sensitive issues as school prayer, there are conscientious believers on both sides of the issue.

It is terribly important never to let the church see itself as a power bloc. I would resist the church itself organizing as a political force, encouraging individual Christians to do so, and even creating political organizations. Those activities should be separate from the body of Christ itself.

How do you feel about Christians organizing politically to support candidates because they are good candidates, not because they are good Christians?

Members of the church can organize without saying, “A vote for this candidate is a vote for Christ.” What if you have a good candidate who is not a believer and a bad candidate who is? My view is that each case has to be resolved on its merits. I do not think it is proper for a believer to support another believer only on religious grounds. I would not refuse to have a nonbeliever do brain surgery on me in preference to a believer who is not as well qualified. It limits the power of God to say that only a believer can function effectively in brain surgery or in public office. Scripture teaches that God can raise up sons of Abraham out of stone. There are men and women in Congress who are not believers, but they still are doing God’s will.

There are a number of Christians in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. How does your Christianity influence what you do and how you vote on issues?

It makes all the difference in the world. My conception of what a senator is hinges on what his world view is. Scripture tells us to perform any vocation as if unto the Lord. When my staff and I gather for our weekly legislative meeting, we begin with prayer. Sometimes we pray specifically about the substance of legislation or about how we will handle a matter. One of the recurring attitudes in our office is that as we deal with people with whom we disagree, we will be sensitive to their point of view. We want to recognize that they could be right. We feel that relationships with other members of Congress are important. Those relationships transcend whatever the political issue is.

Another level at which we pray specifically is for guidance. A lot of the important questions defy human understanding. I’ve got some idea of what we should do about the economy. But the truth is that nobody knows for sure. Even the most brilliant of our economists are baffled. The same is true with issues of war and peace, drug abuse, p*rnography, and law enforcement. The things that we really care about, for the most part, are those issues on which human understanding isn’t sufficient. So prayer for wisdom is a recurring theme.

My faith really does affect relationships in the Senate. There is a spirit of brotherhood among a number of us which goes beyond political questions. For two years I’ve been meeting with a group of senators on a weekly basis. We are growing closer together in ways that include our official responsibilities. But that doesn’t mean we’ll all be on the same side of a particular issue. Frequently we are not. But we’re growing together in brotherhood and unity, which I believe is consistent with the sort of brotherhood Christ would have us seek.

Are there more Christians in Congress today than in the past?

That’s hard for me to measure since my interest in spiritual things began after I arrived in Washington. Instinctively my answer is “yes.” I think it is easier today for those in public life to be open about their faith than it was a few years ago. Much of the credit for that belongs to former President Jimmy Carter. He was up-front about his faith, and in so doing he opened the door for a lot of people in less-prominent positions to do the same. For a long time there were only a handful of political figures who were prominently identified as believers. That’s much less true today. There are many men in public life today who are serious about their faith.

Is it harder for a President to lead the country these days?

There is almost a total breakdown in the ability of anybody to lead the country. The results of leadership seem to be deteriorating rapidly. It is almost impossible for any President to fulfill his historical task. The last successful President we had was Eisenhower.

What is the cause of the decline in our Presidents’ ability to lead us?

We have raised the expectations of leadership to a level that is awesome for anybody to fulfill. In addition, we subject our leaders, particularly Presidents, to a degree of scrutiny that makes it impossible for them to have time for reflection. The reaction times are so quick, and there is so much harrassment in the media—not in the ideological sense, but in the sense of the speed with which Presidents are forced to react.

Here’s a typical example: The President’s budget was leaked to the news media before Congress received it. The details were published in newspapers around the country. The opposition in both parties had already analyzed and dissected the budget and had begun to critique it before the President even had an opportunity to present it. The reaction time has become so quick, and the criticism by the media has become so instantaneous, that it makes it very difficult to be a leader.

The breakdown in respect for authority is another reason for the decline in the ability to govern. You see it on campus, and you see it in politics. People ignore the leaders of Congress. It used to be that the top two or three men in the Senate and in the House would virtually control the outcome of legislation in their chambers. That’s no longer true. And it used to be that when the President cracked the whip, everybody would fall in line.

Are we expecting more from one another than we are capable of delivering?

I think that is true. If you put people in positions where they have vast authority over other human beings, where they are subjected to temptations, where they are cut off from the kind of accountability most human beings have, and then expect them to exhibit anything other than corruption it’s totally unrealistic. We put our leaders in that kind of situation. It especially affects the President, but it’s not just the President. It affects heads of corporations, and certainly senators. We surround them with people whose task is to flatter their egos and open doors for them. We deprive them of the experiences and self-correcting mechanisms that would make them balanced human beings. If you want to create the worst atmosphere for policy making, give people a lot of public adulation, separate them from their families for prolonged periods of time, and force them to work late night after night. Then, on weekends, take them away from their families and send them to visit their constituents. That’s exactly what we’ve done to those in public office. The wonder is that we’re doing as well as we are.

How would you reverse that and make the best possible situation?

I’ve been encouraging people to pray that there will be an end to the night sessions in Congress. We keep a bunch of men and women [members of Congress] away from their families until late at night, night after night. Then we punctuate that with all-night sessions of Congress. It gets to be a routine that they’re never home for dinner. They’re never with their families under ordinary, relaxed circ*mstances. That’s going to produce divorce. I think statistics would show that Congress is a divorce factory for its members and also for the staff, of which there are several thousand.

How do you handle that kind of pressure?

When I travel. I’m on the telephone every night with my family. Second, my wife travels with me some. Third, when I’m home. I meet with my family at 6:45 every morning for prayer and Bible study. A lot of times that’s the only time we are together.

My son and I are trying to start a tradition that one weekend every year he and I will spend two days skiing together. We believe that the quality of the time is more important than the quantity. I must admit, however, that if you get the time cut down too far, no amount of quality will compensate.

It’s terribly important that men and women in public life have regular access to the kind of Christian fellowship that I’ve been fortunate to have. The greater the pressures, the more that need exists.

Is there a specific place and time you can recall when you became a Christian?

Yes. I had been a nominal churchgoing Christian suburbanite all my life. But I accepted Christ as my personal Savior in the Joseph Martin Dining Room in the Capitol after I was elected to Congress 10 years ago.

Some people are led to the Lord as a result of tragedies. That was not my experience, but just the opposite. I had dreamed of certain kinds of success: making a lot of money, being elected to public office, and so on. I had achieved those things at a rather early age when I discovered they were fundamentally empty. Instead of being filled and satisfied. I was feeling kind of desperate. Just at that point I was converted by a Christian layman who shared the gospel with me in a very direct way. I came to the realization that although I had been a church member, I wasn’t really a Christian in the sense of trusting Christ for salvation and for the ultimate questions of life. So sitting there in this little dining room, we discussed the gospel. He said, “Does this express the desire of your heart, to accept Christ as your personal Savior and let him take charge of your life?” I said, “Yes, it does. Let’s pray.” It was just about in that matter-of-fact manner.

Why has abortion not been outlawed, particularly after all the outcry?

I think we are in the process of winning the battle. There is a much greater sensitivity to the issue, and a much greater understanding of the moral question involved. Federal funding for abortions is unlikely to be reinstated. But I think it is unlikely that we are going to take the next step—outlawing abortion—any time soon, although I think we should. There are a lot of people who are like I used to be. They simply do not understand the ramifications of it, the moral gravity of abortion.

What are your conclusions about another moral question: the nuclear arms race?

We are in an intellectual cul-de-sac. I basically affirm the doctrine of deterrence, and I affirm the idea of the just war. On the personal level, I respect people who argue for pacifism. But none of those ideas give me much sense of optimism for the future. I have reached the conclusion that the Lord will give us better approaches if we can get out of the intellectual rut we’re in.

From a moral standpoint, our present nuclear doctrine, nuclear destruction, is absolutely bankrupt. It is contrary to the teachings of pacifism and it is contrary to deterrence, because it won’t work. It is contrary to several of the main premises of the just-war theory. It does not direct itself to combatants or to keeping civilians safe. It is not proportionate by several of the hallmarks of the just-war theory. Clearly we need something different. Our country has become, by virtue of the doctrine of nuclear destruction, the first major nation to decide that we’re not going to defend our homeland upon attack. Instead, we are relying for safety on our threat to kill millions of people, such as Soviet citizens if the Soviet Union makes a hostile move against us. I believe that policy to be impractical.

There is a growing body of scientific thought and military strategic thought that we could come up with a purely defensive system. It would not have offensive capability. One of the most promising of those ideas is called “High Frontier.” It is a system that relies partially on space-borne defensive site areas. And I stress, it has no offensive capability. It wouldn’t be a threat to another country. That has a lot of practicality, and I believe it is more scripturally sound.

I attended a conference in Pasadena called “The Church and Peacemaking in the Nuclear Age.” I urged the people there to think about Nehemiah when he rebuilt the wall. He didn’t threaten Sanballat with nasty retaliation or with mutual destruction. He didn’t negotiate with him. He just rebuilt the wall. And he did a lot of other things. He put through a number of civic reforms, including lowering taxes and freeing the slaves. I think that’s the kind of leadership that we need to provide the country with.

What is it about the pacifist argument that you think is fundamentally wrong?

I think pacifism is completely honorable and proper at the individual level. But as John Stott has said, Scripture clearly distinguishes between the role of the individual and the role of the state. The magistrate is not only permitted—but may well be required by the state—to use force to protect the innocent, to restrain evil, and to punish wrongdoing.

At the national level, Scripture teaches that it is proper for leaders to bear the sword in self-defense or to defend an innocent third party. So pacifism on a national level is not scriptural. And it doesn’t respond to practical reality.

Some might say that it’s better to give in. I sense that there is in some people almost a desire for the United States to be subjugated so that we can test out and live our faith in captivity. One of the most articulate of the pacifist spokesmen at the Pasadena conference even admitted that there were some circ*mstances in which he would be willing to resort to violence—in defense of his life or the life of his family. So I don’t think pacifism is the answer.

So far as the nuclear freeze is concerned, I think that’s an idea that has run out of steam intellectually. It doesn’t stand up under rigorous examination. The reality is that the United States has had a nuclear freeze for 12 years. It hasn’t affected the Soviet Union in any particular way that I can tell. By the same token, I think the mindless expansion of the arms race clearly is not the answer. How many weapons are we going to end up with? That’s why I’m looking for ideas like High Frontier.

How do you regard the Moral Majority?

I don’t think there’s any doubt that the Moral Majority has both helped and hurt. On balance it has been enormously helpful. Many of the people who criticize the Moral Majority for taking moral stands are the same individuals who have been taking moral stands for decades, but from a different perspective. The criticism I hear against the Moral Majority is from those who simply disagree with its political positions.

Whether it’s the Moral Majority or the National Council of Churches, any Christian who approaches a political subject should do so with a degree of intellectual humility and should clearly distinguish the gospel from the political issues. There are no political positions on which salvation hangs. Your citizenship in the kingdom does not depend on your position on a balanced federal budget, nuclear disarmament, or even on abortion.

I think I can demonstrate to the satisfaction of most impartial listeners that our form of government is vastly preferable to Marxism. But that doesn’t prove that Christ would be a capitalist. I think Christ is indifferent to issues of that type, with one exception. I think he would approve of those institutions of government or economy that foster human liberty. So I take it for granted that Christ would not approve of the arrangements in Nazi Germany or in the Soviet Union. There are some political and economic features in our own country that don’t seem as hateful to me as to some, but that Christ wouldn’t approve of either. The point is that there is a risk that the church or a religious group would see itself as a power bloc. That is not scriptural in my opinion.

Such groups may unwittingly tend to limit the Lord’s power by assuming that the only way God can accomplish his purposes is through political ends. Now I think political service is worthy and that Christians should wade into politics with both feet. But in the end the Lord is not bound by political considerations.

We are really in danger of throwing the mantle of Christ over any lesser cause. I think it’s perfectly proper for Christians to be in the used-car business. But I don’t think you can say, “This is Christ’s used car lot.” By the same token, I don’t think you can say, “This is Christ’s legislative program.”

The right approach for any Christian in politics is to ask, “Does this actively honor Christ?” If it does, the rest will take care of itself. If it doesn’t, no matter how right it may be on a particular political issue, it’s out of bounds from the Christian perspective.

There are about 184,000 Christians who read CHRISTIANITY TODAY. If you could address them all at once, what subject would you like to speak on? What are a few of the main points you would make?

Christ told how the world would know that Christians belonged to him. He said, “If you have love for one another,” that would be the sign [John 13:35], I think one of the greatest needs in Christendom is that Christians rise above their disagreements over economic issues, political issues, even the most serious issues of war and peace. We should emphasize the overriding significance of our unity in Jesus Christ.

I attended the peace-making conference in Pasadena with some sense of tension. I agreed to make the trip because I felt a deep need to learn about the issue of nuclear war. I wanted to be receptive to people whose views were quite different from my own. But I prayed about the conference for months. My church even prayed that whatever the disputes about policy were, that Christ would be honored. And to a large extent that was true.

When I got back, I was talking to a colleague in the Senate about the experience I had. He said it would be a shame if we let anything become more important than our brotherhood in Christ. And he is a senator who holds quite a different viewpoint from mine on the nuclear issue.

I told some of the people in Pasadena that politics supposedly is very rough and tumble. We are supposed to be tough guys, professional advocates in a sense. But I have never seen the kind of brutal personal relationships between senators that occasionally crop up among leaders of the church. A very deep need of the church is for us to emphasize our unity—not to say we shouldn’t argue. I think we should. I appreciate the contribution made by the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops in their pastoral letter on nuclear arms. Even though I may not agree with their conclusions, it’s good to have those kinds of intellectual disputes. We can honor Christ if the spirit is right.

The High Technology Challenge

We are entering a revolution as far-reaching as the one that followed Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. The survival of some of our Christian colleges is at stake in a struggle with the high technology revolution. Their significance for several decades to come will be determined by the way they respond to the challenges (see “Christian College Enrollment Trends”).

Just what is “high technology”? There is no definition that is universally accepted, but the key element that distinguishes “high” technologies from other types of technology is their dependence on information or communication systems (see “What Is High Technology?”) The close identification of high technology with the concept of the emerging information society is no accident. Whether in genetic codes or computer codes, understanding and using an information and communication system is what really matters. Understandably, therefore, the most immediate high tech problems for the majority of Christian colleges concern computers and other electronic communications and knowledge systems.

Books And Computers

These information and communication technologies are in the process of altering society and education as fundamentally as did Gutenberg’s technology for printing books. They are altering the way people think and learn and value. Therefore, they are challenging current practices in American higher education, including Christian higher education.

The advent of Gutenberg’s printing press technology changed both the method of learning and what one needed to learn. It replaced hand manuscripts and rote memorization with a more efficient means of storing and transfering information. In the same process, it redefined what was worth knowing. Printing eventually broke the knowledge monopoly that university professors who read their carefully guarded lectures held over scribbling students. And it also broke the church’s monopoly on divine truth as it opened the mystery of the Scriptures to every literate layman. The book offered knowledge equality to everyone who could read. In addition, a person no longer had to know every detail a book contained; he only needed to know where he could find information and what it meant. No wonder books were attacked as a tool of the devil. Computers now share similar abuse.

Knowledge Is Power

Print on paper will continue to be important, of course. Like the book, the computer can store information in readily accessible form. But unlike the book, the computer can also manipulate the information. It can do mental work for us. It can “think.” An integrated electronic information and communications network can answer important questions and solve significant problems. Individuals, organizations, or nations with such systems at their service have immense advantages over those without them. In an information society, knowledge is power.

In hard times such as those Christian colleges face in the 1980s, success in the competition for dwindling numbers of freshmen and declining funds will depend in large part on the ability to deal wisely with high technology. They will have to offer that technology to their students and use it in their own operations. Many people will need to learn new ways of doing things. Morale may suffer when technological disruptions are rubbed into the wounds left by lower enrollments. And at the same time, these mostly small, mostly nonendowed colleges will have to avoid going bankrupt.

Change Without Changing

The rapid rate at which these information and communication technologies are developing will challenge the adaptability and resilience of the Christian colleges. The majority of them are liberal arts institutions organized and supported to be bastions of stability, not centers of change. They are designed to preserve values, not promote a technocratic revolution. They are oriented to teaching rather than research. They study the past, not the future. How can they influence the information society if they cannot speak its language?

The liberal arts—like high technology—lack a universal definition. Usually the term implies a broad education in varied fields of study, verbal and artistic expression, analytical and synthetic thinking. Each college would claim more than this, few would claim less, and every one would claim uniqueness for its particular version of educating the whole person.

As these colleges work for significant survival, even the concept of “Christian liberal arts” is likely to undergo modification. The Christian college must be able to attract students and donations. Christian college graduates must be able to find jobs in the world of microchips, communications satellites, laser video discs, and gene splicing. Almost every corner of the successful institutions will be touched before the revolution is over. The trick is to change without changing, to adapt without blindly adopting. Without destroying their identity or losing the essence of the liberal arts, they must transform themselves into colleges as different from the present type as the present type is from a pre-Gutenberg university. Those that do it well will be the influential Christian colleges of the twenty-first century, the ones the church and the rest of the world will listen to and support.

The Industrial Past

Today’s Christian colleges are creatures of America’s industrial era. Most of them were created between 1860 and 1960 during the golden finale of American heavy industrialization. Their founders typically sought to ensure that the college would perpetuate certain religious beliefs and values in the midst of that industrial society. Thus, their purposes have tended to center on transmitting a body of knowledge, imparting skills, and inculcating life values and behavior patterns. They have adapted well to a church and society that look to them as a special source of broadly educated spiritual and organizational servants and leaders. Christian college graduates have provided an important alternative to the university-trained specialist on the one hand, and the Bible-college-trained specialist on the other. The Christian college taught about the industrial world, and even pointed out its evils, but also sent liberal arts graduates into it and drew contributions from it.

In terms of employment, the industrial society reached its peak in America around 1920, when slightly over half of all workers were employed in manufacturing, commerce, and industry. Then the industrial decline started, and by 1976 more than half the working population was employed in information, knowledge, and education. A social and economic revolution was under way. Interestingly, Christian colleges responded by placing more emphasis on “the major” or specialization at the expense of any common conception or high valuation of general education. The common question is, “What is your major?” rather than a query about general studies.

As generalists in a world of specialized industrial workers, Christian college graduates stood out and moved naturally into leadership roles. As specialists in a world of knowledge workers, the difference between graduates of Christian and secular colleges begins to blur. The effort to develop a distinctively Christian collegiate experience, based on the constant interaction of Christian beliefs with all courses and activities, has matured just in time to have its best insights captured in print or video for use on any campus, secular or Christian. That is the nature of information flow in the high tech information society.

Christian College Enrollment Trends

The number of freshman students the Christian colleges enroll is closely related to the number of students graduating from high school each year in the United States. That number has been declining since 1980, and enrollments at Christian colleges are beginning to reflect this trend. Nationally, the number of high school graduates is projected to decline about 20 percent from 1980 to 1990, with the only respite being a modest upswing in 1987–88.

From 1981 to 1982 the number of high school graduates nationally dropped approximately 1.2 percent. However, figures released by the Christian College Coalition indicate that some Christian colleges are bearing more than a proportionate share of the reduction. The total opening full-time freshman enrollment at all these colleges together fell 7 percent during the same period. Since some Christian colleges maintained or even increased their enrollment, the declines at the others have been precipitous and catastrophic.

Many have attributed the surprisingly large decline to the compounding effects of unfavorable economic conditions and reductions, and uncertainty in government student-aid programs. Others point out that a few colleges with extreme circ*mstances may have caused much of the change. Although some Christian colleges are still saying publicly that they expect to grow or maintain their current size, recent experience suggests that reality may soon destroy such optimism.

Evangelicals have consistently made up about 20 percent of the nation’s population, and the number of evangelical high school graduates is expected to follow the national patterns, including significant regional variations. In short, Christian colleges are trying to cope with nationwide declines in the size of their traditional pool of freshman prospects.

In order to avoid, or at least minimize, enrollment declines when the total size of their student market is declining, Christian colleges are competing more aggressively with one another. They are also trying to market themselves to students who otherwise would be expected to attend secular institutions. Such groups as the Christian College Coalition are attempting to assist such efforts by clarifying the differences between secular and Christian higher education in the lives of alumni. Whether or not such efforts eventually prove successful, some colleges have already reduced faculty and cut budgets to ensure financial and programmatic stability with fewer students. Others surely will follow as the great wave of enrollment declines sweeps in.

Christian colleges have grown as the student population grew, especially between 1960 and 1980. But now there will be fewer students, and Christian colleges are beginning to adjust, not painlessly and not always with very good long-range planning or strategic marketing. But they have been adjusting nevertheless. Fewer Christian college students means fewer Christian college professors, and thus a smaller pool of Christian writers and thinkers. And the decline now starting in the number of evangelicals graduating from college will soon have its effect on the size of seminaries and Christian graduate schools, inducing faculty reductions in that sector of Christian higher education as well.

Christian colleges must join the high tech revolution if for no other reason than to keep this decline to a minimum.

RICHARD KRIEGBAUM

The “Mentafacturing” Future

By the year 2000, over two-thirds of all Americans will spend most of each working day creating, storing, retrieving, organizing, revising, teaching, learning, sending, receiving, or otherwise using information. In such a world, machines will do most of the “physical labor,” and people will think. Knowledge will be, as many experts already feel it is, a nation’s most important economic resource. Not factories, not farms, not nuclear weapons, but knowledge.

The Latin roots of the word “manufacturing” suggest “making with the hands.” Many of those working hands, however, already belong to computer-controlled industrial robots. In the world now upon us we need a new word, “mentafacturing,” to suggest “making things with our minds, doing things by our silent commands.” Integrated systems for computer-assisted design and computer-controlled manufacturing allow a programmer engineer to alter a product or create a new one by giving new instructions to the automated system from the computer terminal in his office or living room. Mass production is no longer obligatory; customized production becomes the norm. In a mentafacturing world, to imagine is to make. Creative imagining becomes a critically important ability, and the life of the mind the central arena of human endeavor. Considerable irony hides in the possibility that many Christian colleges will find it difficult to adapt to such an environment. The industrial past seems much more comfortable than the mentafacturing future.

In Every Home

What will life be like in a high tech, mentafacturing, information-based society? In each home, there will be a centrally located, compact, computer-and-communications center or “comcenter.” It will handle all voice and “print” communication, such as sending an electronic letter or receiving and displaying the latest news and weather forecasts. Most everyday transactions, especially banking and paying for purchases, will be conducted electronically. Many people will actually shop from their homes or offices electronically by using interactive computerized “yellow pages” called videotext, that give full pricing and product information on every item in an entire shopping mall. Videotext is already in wide use in France and is currently being used by test markets in the United States.

The comcenter will receive TV and radio programming, of course, but it will also play inexpensive laser video discs of digitally recorded music, entertainment, and education. One disc will contain a complete encyclopedia, another the Bible, a full unabridged concordance, and a complete home Bible study library, including all the best-known Bible commentaries. Other discs could offer the best Christian college professors in the nation delivering all the lectures for a liberal arts degree.

With the comcenter you can get a recommendation about a health problem from the health diagnosis data base, or legal advice from the legal advisory data base. You can get a stock market report and execute trading orders. You can check the library holdings of a distant seminary or university and get a copy of the desired pages. You can find just about any kind of information in thousands of on-line data bases, each with the latest information. Eventually, top caliber college freshmen raised with a comcenter at home and its equivalent at school will not want, or even know how, to function without one.

Student Recruitment

In such an environment, the critical question for Christian colleges is how to distinguish themselves adequately from secular alternatives to attract the necessary quantity and quality of students. It is those students who have in the past allowed Christian colleges to claim a leadership role in the church and society. The high tech challenge is not just a question of finding money for student computer access or video disc storage in the library. High technology raises for many prospective students the larger question of whether any Christian college education is worth the extra cost and effort.

Most students go to college because they expect a college education and diploma to help them obtain a fuller life and better job than they could otherwise expect. The steadily growing career emphasis of most Christian liberal arts colleges responds to this reality. The Christian liberal arts have often been called an education for living, but most Christians need to “make a living” as well. Most Christian students also seek a place where they can grow spiritually and socially, and most prefer not to go too far from home. They will not attend a college that cannot meet these expectations. If more than one college can meet all their criteria, however, most families will select the college with the lowest net cost after figuring in financial aid. The price discounting colleges use to attract the students they want further erodes their income and long-term vitality.

The thriving parachurch organizations and other Christian ministries that serve students on secular campuses and the less radical mood at most secular institutions have reduced the environmental advantage of the Christian campus. Large universities can provide students with access to the latest technology and may also have more status when a graduate goes high tech job hunting. Various estimates place the number of people who will need computer skills to do their jobs at between 50 and 75 percent by the end of the decade. Almost as many will also be using computers at home. Eventually, an education that does not provide thorough familiarity with the computer as a tool of daily life and learning will not be attractive at any price.

The Electronic College Guide

Increasing numbers of prospective students will make their first judgments about college options by entering their interests and abilities into a computer terminal that accesses a college information data base. For example, they will enter how far from home they want to go, how big a student body they would like, and what activities they want to participate in. The computer may take information about aptitudes and interests, high school grades and activities, and family finances, and recommend which college looks like the best choice. The system will eventually allow students to apply right on the spot through their terminal.

What Is High Technology?

First of all, what is technology, high, low, or otherwise? In The Technological Society, Jacques Ellul suggests that technology is what results from human striving for “greater efficiency.” Technology replaces spontaneous, “natural” ways of doing things with a consciously designed system of actions. Technology is about more efficient means, about the best way to achieve an objective.

In this broad sense, technology touches every aspect of modern life as a contradictory combination of the best and worst in mankind. Where technology allows good ends to be more efficiently achieved, it seems a blessing, a beautiful outworking of the image of God in people. Where technology dehumanizes and simply improves efficiency toward evil ends, technology seems a curse, another expression of human depravity.

Planting corn in straight rows and chopping the weeds with a hoe is a technological system. Automobiles, typewriters, injections of antibiotics, and nuclear missiles are technologies also. Each bears the fatal flaw in the technological definition of efficiency: technological solutions have to be applied to narrowly defined problems, and the increased yield or efficiency achieved in that narrow problem area normally creates new problems elsewhere. Planting corn in rows with all competing vegetation removed leaves the soil more vulnerable to erosion and the corn plants more vulnerable to pests and infestations that thrive on high concentrations of the host plant. Automobiles move people efficiently from one place to another (assuming that other technologies have provided smooth, safe highways and well-stocked service stations), but the efficiency in transportation is obtained at the cost of polluting the environment with noxious gases, to say nothing of the “inefficiency” of millions of human injuries and deaths caused by automobile accidents. Nuclear missiles are an immensely efficient technological system for destroying the life and property of “the enemy,” but the radioactive cloud will also rain on those who made the missile.

What is currently called “high technology” or, more popularly, “high tech,” can be distinguished from other technologies by the crucial role of information codes or systems. This special role of information has made the computer the most obvious symbol of the information society, though the same focus exists in other high tech areas. For example, genetic engineering seeks to solve a vast array of problems by directly altering the DNA information code that controls cell activity. Traditional plant and animal breeding technology works slowly with naturally available genetic material. High technology gene splicing can create totally “new” plants or animals with combinations of characteristics that would never exist normally. The key is understanding and manipulating the information code of the cell.

In a totally different arena, organizational management traditionally has focused on getting things done by controlling the efforts of other people. The high tech approach to management steps back and views the organization as an abstracted open systems model, constructed (usually on a computer) of information that describes what is happening inside and outside the organization. Managerial decisions are made to affect the appearance of the computerized model.

Because the information-based approach is such an efficient technology, high speed information and communication systems are the essence of current high technology. Systems that create, capture, move, organize, and retrieve information have high payoff and thus high priority. The revolution in electronic communications systems during the twentieth century is a direct response to the fundamental maxim of the high technology information society: knowledge is power, and knowledge is directly proportional to the speed and accuracy of our information. High technology is restructuring the industrialized mass-society in which we have been living and giving us new options and new versions of timeless human problems.

God can “think” things into existence. He created the universe by his word. Now humanity with high tech tools moves from manufacturing to mentafacturing. As man’s high tech tools make his powers more godlike, the results of not using them with divine wisdom become all the more dangerous. To a man with only a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In the mentafacturing high tech world, everything looks like an information system. But where is the wisdom in all the knowledge, and who will define worthwhile knowledge with almost unlimited information? That is the question God has given us to answer in the age of high technology.

RICHARD KRIECBAUM

Some of these systems do not now, and may never, allow students to identify and select only distinctly Christian colleges. Christian colleges will need to be on such systems. They may also need to develop their own system, with a data base that enables student prospects and their parents to avoid catalog rhetoric with objective information that really helps students get a feel for the important differences among various Christian colleges and know whether they will “fit in.” The computer will alter the ways students obtain their information and make their decisions about colleges. Christian colleges will have to anticipate such changes.

High Tech Teachers And Learners

What becomes of teaching and learning in such a high tech environment? Electronic modes of learning will profoundly alter the role of the Christian college teacher. Successful professors will devote much of their time to developing self-paced courses and course elements on various electronic media. This activity will require them to spend much of their time deciding what needs to be learned. Their live interaction with students will be devoted to discussion based on what the student has already mastered in the electronic learning systems. Almost every live-taught course will have as a prerequisite certain mastery scores obtained through electronic learning. The definition of a college degree will be restated to acknowledge these new approaches, and the nature of a college education will reflect the increased importance of personal interaction and small seminars in the high technology setting.

The New Christian Liberal Arts

The college curriculum is a zero-sum game; if something is added something must be dropped. When modern foreign languages were added, for example, Greek and Latin requirements were eliminated. In addition to obvious additions such as computer courses, three areas will require more curricular attention: creativity, futuring, and normative theory.

With so much information so readily available, creativity and problem-solving skills will become increasingly important. Christians view creativity as one of humanity’s highest activities. The mentafacturing environment will provide immensely powerful tools that will require commensurate creativity. The proclivity of a technology to create new problems as it achieves its objective, plus the tendency of high-speed naked information to provide half truths and disguise reality, will intensify the need for leaders who can devise supratechnological solutions to complex problems. Such creativity can be taught—but what will be replaced in the curriculum? The decision will not be an easy one to make.

The Christian college experience will also have to develop in students more tolerance for instability, rapid change, high levels of uncertainty, and future-focused thinking. A few futurists are working in some Christian colleges already. Many more will be needed to prepare Christian leaders to help individuals, organizations, and the church sort out alternatives and act wisely. Futuring can be learned, but it takes time.

Most theory is simply descriptive. If the future is like the past, theory predicts what is likely to occur. This presents Christians with two serious problems. We do not expect the future to necessarily be like the past, nor can describing what does happen substitute for describing what should happen. Normative theory will have renewed importance and replace simple descriptive or predictive theory. Christian colleges will have to be sure their graduates know how to distinguish between typical and normal, common and correct, how things are and how they ought to be.

All these new learning goals and methods will require older elements of the Christian liberal arts curriculum to be reshaped or replaced. Education will be much more individualized. Word processing will be the normal vehicle for creating “written” work of all kinds. Spelling errors will be automatically eliminated. Learning how to learn will be an even higher priority as colleges discover how to prepare and continue to serve life-long learners.

The Future Of The Christian College

Christian colleges have a wide variety of alternative futures. Some of these futures are more desirable than others, and nothing guarantees the significant survival of any Christian college except its ability to continue meeting the needs of the church and society it serves. The Christian college is in a special position to resist the dehumanizing effects of ubiquitous high-speed electronic information and communication systems. It has to be able to help the church distinguish between mere information and the worthwhile knowledge that can lead to true wisdom. It must find ways to change its academic programs without involving the faculty and administration in a destructive “academic war.” It must find wise ways of dealing with the human hurts that are the constant companion of rapid change.

Technology is assuming the role of prophet in society, telling us which way to go by showing us how to get there. But prophets only lead when people follow. As a prophet, technology is arbitrary and witless. The question is where are the true prophetic voices that will teach people how to develop and use technology wisely, how to master technology rather than serve it blindly? Perhaps some of those prophetic voices and the wise “followers” will come from the Christian colleges; perhaps not. Each Christian college must prayerfully write its own future as it attempts to take the greatest advantage of the high tech revolution.