Monday, July 24, 2017

558 - Expert Opinion

Spirituality Column No. 558
July 25, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Expert Opinion
By Bob Walters

Not long ago I heard Ravi Zacharias describe the decline of Christian authority in our American culture.  And he did it in a loving but effective way.
 
Perhaps the best-known and most widely well-regarded Christian apologist of our age, Zacharias presented the following scenario.  Suppose a public policy panel were convened to discuss the authority and trustworthiness of Christianity.  And now suppose – to provide fair (politically correct) and circumspect (“both sides”) dissection of the topic – the well-rounded panel included a philosopher, a “religious studies” professor, a journalist, a social scientist, an atheist, a feminist, a gay rights activist, a Rabbi, a Muslim cleric, a Catholic priest and an evangelical Christian minister, the last two with deep faith in Christ and thorough academic and preaching knowledge of the Bible.
 
Among that group, which two “expert” voices would be rejected out of hand by secular culture at large as inadequate describers of Christianity because of their bigotry, sexism and their scripturally sound but politically incorrect views on gender identity, right to life and traditional marriage that come with true scriptural comprehension?
 
Of course, Zacharias surmised, it would be the knowledgeable Christians.  Likely, even the Muslim cleric (think of that) and Rabbi would be more trusted: a bleak notion.
 
This isn’t just to set up a “straw man” – an unrealistic example presented to be easily knocked down.  The historic and founding fact of our culture, our United States government, and most of the Western world is the authority of Christianity.  Yet the dismantling and disparaging of authority based on Jesus Christ is a reality in the contemporary world. It has become not only culturally OK but generally revered to be “expert” at anything so long, oxymoronically, as one rejects definitive Christian truth.
 
And let’s assert right here that claiming “Christian authority” is far different from saying, specifically, that America is a “Christian nation.”  I think it is fair to describe America as a secular nation.  Its founders were mostly Christian but the Enlightenment era that so heavily promoted “the rights of man” also created in the 18th century a sort of hybrid philosophical environment.  It strengthened humanity’s view of personal freedom and self-determination, but also depended vigorously and finally upon Christian values of love, charity and service to others to make responsible cultural freedom possible.
 
Those of us who understand Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6) understand that what is most important is what Jesus has already done for us, not what a “Christian” government is supposed to do for us.  Yes, we are compelled in love to “do for others,” but Jesus on the cross freed us both from the slavery of our sins and from the confining legalistic coercion of false, worldly, soul-stifling masters.
 
In Christ, the new, eternal game in town was and still is gracious, selfless love.
 
I like Zacharias’s “panel” example because it reveals the pervasive tyranny of secularism’s fresh slavery: man-made morality and its attempt to overwrite humanity’s ultimate freedom won through Christ’s expression on the cross of God’s infinite love.
 
Shall we trust the authority of legalism’s whip … or of love’s grace?
 
I prefer to be expert on the latter.
 
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) posits: gracious, selfless love is a one way street toward Jesus. The secular world asks, “What’s in it for me?”

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