“The human world is today as never before split into two camps, each of which understands the other as the embodiment of falsehood and itself as the embodiment of truth.”
Those words sound like they could have been headlines in the New York Times over the past weekend. Yet they were spoken way back in 1960 at Cambridge University, by then-Secretary General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld. He is quoted by the late D. Elton Trueblood in his 1969 book, The New Man for Our Time. Trueblood calls him a bit of a prophet in reflecting on the conflict between piety and activism in the time in which he was writing this book.
Recently, I’ve read through Luke’s Acts of the Apostles several times, and while reading Acts, I also read N.T. Wright’s new book, The Challenge of Acts: Rediscovering What the Church Was and Is. Coming from a long history of “restoring the early church” thinking – my home church in South Carolina was established in 1881, and my grandfather was named after Thomas Campbell himself – I can’t help but be greatly disturbed by the seemingly prophetic words of a Swedish United Nations Secretary General.
If you haven’t read Campbell’s Declaration and Address, I would encourage you to do so. Propositions 3 and 6 of that incredibly wise document could change much of the divisiveness in modern Christian thinking. To summarize, only what is expressly taught in Scripture, and not inferences of Scripture, can become the “tests of fellowship” among believers. It seems to me that what so many of us modern, Western Christians see as “the other as the embodiment of falsehood and itself as the embodiment of truth” fails to meet the simple truth of Campbell’s Declaration and Address.
The outcome of that attitude is that we convince ourselves we need to create a system of laws that clarify what we see as more than inferences of Scripture, and then judge anyone who might see something differently as “the embodiment of falsehood.” That means I can tap dance my way around declaring people struggling with transgender issues and same-sex marriage as “perverse and blasphemous,” without ever noting in the slightest way that heterosexual misconduct is impacting our culture much more than either of those issues.
Think about it. To the most challenging early church context we know of – Corinth, challenged by social, theological, moral, and ecclesiastical challenges of nearly every kind – Paul declares, “we preach Christ, and Him crucified.” (I Cor. 1:18-25) He regularly calls those believers “brothers and sisters.” He does address all sorts of issues at Corinth – but it never seems to be so judgmental. All the while he calls the Galatians, who may have been the kind of people we would be comfortable sitting next to in Sunday morning worship, “morons” on two different occasions.
What breaks my heart is that so often, as evangelicals often do, we confess that sin has negatively impacted creation, but we fail to recognize that sometimes the brokenness of our world impacts individuals differently. The world isn’t what God intended it to be. Isn’t that reason why creation groans in anticipation of the revelation of the children of God? (Romans 8:18-25) Why would I think, as arrogant as it sometimes sounds, that sin hasn’t impacted the very nature of what it means to be human? And I don’t mean that in any kind of judgmental way; I am not the person I would have been had sin never entered the world. I don’t mean that the fact that we lived in an imperfect world is an excuse for our sins. But I do mean that not everything I might view as “not what God intended” is because people make deliberate choices. I just don’t know how environment, what we eat and breathe, culture, and a host of other issues impact each of us, and not always in the same way. And when I forget that, I immediately become a person who sees the rest of the world as “the embodiment of falsehood” and myself as “the embodiment of truth.”
I am saying, as evangelicals often do – though seemingly only in a limited context – that sin has negatively impacted creation. The world isn’t what God intended it to be. Isn’t that reason why creation groans in anticipation of the revelation of the children of God? (Romans 8:18-25) Why would I think, as arrogant as it sometimes sounds, that sin hasn’t impacted the very nature of what it means to be human? And I don’t mean that in any kind of judgmental way; I am not the person I would have been had sin never entered the world. And when I forget that, I immediately become a person who sees the rest of the world as “the embodiment of falsehood” and myself as “the embodiment of truth.”
In the Western world, particularly the United States, we have allowed our political views to become “the embodiment of truth” that condemns those whom we see as “the embodiment of falsehood.” If that is us, we sound much more like believers in Galatia than those in Corinth.
The advance of science has complicated our world. But here is what I know that isn’t subject to the conclusions of science: to the extent that I love God and love my neighbor as I love myself (regardless of who my neighbor may be or what their behavior may be), I am “fulfilling the law.”
Honestly, it is high time evangelicals start believing the Bible they declare to be the trustworthy word of God!
Wye Huxford 