Charles

Often, in teaching and speaking on a biblical world and life view, I am asked, “Why is it so important to develop a Christian mind that knows how to think God’s thoughts after Him?” In one way or another, even recently in a seminar, I was asked that question again. I remember one person saying, “You sound like I have to be an intellectual to be a Christian.” If what is meant by being an intellectual is that you have to know philosophy and logic and all kinds of facts, then that is not necessarily what I mean. If, however, I mean knowing God’s word and our world, knowing how to live as a Kingdom disciple who loves God with his mind, heart, body, and soul, and knowing how to apply his or her heart unto wisdom, then I guess I do mean intellectual.

The Apostle Paul connects with this when he writes that we are to be transformed in our minds (Rom. 12:1, 2). Why? In order to know God’s good, perfect, and acceptable will. A kingdom disciple is to be characterized as someone who knows how to apply the Christian faith to all areas of life. If the Christian life is about God and not simply about us, then we must realize the centrality of knowing and doing God’s will. He is the King and we are his servants. Jesus said that a kingdom disciple must deny himself, take up the cross, and follow him. Life is about the Sovereign God.

The Westminster Divines had an understanding of the importance of this when they penned the first shorter catechism. “Q. What is man’s chief end? A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” They connected glorifying God with enjoying him. So must we!

We cannot enjoy God by leaving him out of any area of life, if it were really possible to do so. Joy comes as we know and do his will. Nancy Pearcey has written an outstanding book, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity, which in my opinion, should be the evangelical book of the year.

As I read this book and studied some of its sections with our CE&P staff, I reacted in a similar fashion as when I first read books like The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, or The Stone Lectures by Abraham Kuyper, or The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer, or The Defense of the Faith by Cornelius Van Til, or John Frame’s books on the Knowledge and Doctrine of God. Need I say more to communicate my feelings about this book?

Pearcey is an outstanding writer with the ability not only to express deep thoughts in a very readable way, but one who also understands a biblically reformed world and life view. My book, Making Kingdom Disciples, a New Framework, will be published in January 2005, and I found Total Truth to be a good companion book.

Pearcey is a familiar voice in the Presbyterian Church in America. She is a graduate of Covenant Theological Seminary. She has also completed graduate work at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, and studied with Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri. She exemplifies our philosophy of the importance of understanding the Word and the world and how to communicate apologetically with today’s audience. Each chapter in this volume is a goldmine in itself. James Sire, the author of The Universe Next Door and, most recently Renaming the Elephant, called Total Truth “The best work of cultural analysis from a Christian standpoint available today.” James Skillen commented, “Seldom does one find a book with serious content, historical depth, and Christian integrity that is also easy to read. If you feel lost in the fog of today’s cultural confusions, read this book.”

If resources were available, I would give each teaching elder in the PCA a copy of this book along with Making Kingdom Disciples. These are crucial topics and somehow we are not communicating kingdom living or world and life view clearly, according to most polls, statistics, and testimonies. People who profess to love Jesus are not making the connection of that love with a total worldview. This is not a new phenomenon but it has great impact in this postmodern and post-Christian world.

Whether we are called to redeem culture or make cultural transformation can be debated, but no one can question our calling to be kingdom disciples living out our faith in all of life, doing all to the glory of God. We are to be the “salt of the earth,” and the “light of the world.” We cannot do that by separating our faith from life. Pearcey points to dualistic philosophy (attempting to create a dichotomy between the secular and the sacred) a reality of western evangelicalism, and she is absolutely right. I see no greater threat to the church and its witness, especially at this moment in time, than dualism.

Christian influence has continued to wane in western Christianity because the average Christian has not understood total truth, the Sovereignty of God, or the Lordship of Christ. This book will challenge the believer to understand the reality that Christianity has accommodated itself to the culture around it, if in no other way than by making it a Sunday religion. It will also offer an explanation as to why so many Christians do not enjoy their Christian life experience.

Here is the situation and connection; Christians do not always “enjoy God,” because they do not understand what is necessary in order to do that. To glorify God, we have to do more than ask the blessing at mealtime or go to church on Sunday, even have family devotions, important as those things are. We have to see the inclusiveness of our Christian faith. Once we begin to do that, we begin to experience great freedom and challenge to live fully for God. As we do that, Pearcey’s contention along with the Westminster Divines, is that we begin to discover or rediscover the joy of the Christian life. She writes about many people who were genuinely desirous to be good Christians but at first had no understanding of how that touched every area of their lives.

After coming to realize the all-inclusiveness of the Christian life, one of the people mentioned said,”That’s when I rediscovered joy.” Pearcey writes, “Ordinary Christians working in business, industry, politics, factory work, and so on, are ‘the Church’s front-line troops’ in the spiritual battle. Are we taking seriously our duty to support them in their warfare? The church is nothing less than a training ground for sending out laypeople who are equipped to speak the gospel to the world.”

Our contention is that if self-conscious kingdom people see the totality of the Christian life and will seek to glorify God in every area of life, then the joy of the Lord will become more and more real. Pearcey’s thesis is “the key to recovering joy and purpose turned out to be a new understanding of Christianity as total truth-an insight that broke open the dam and poured the restoring waters of the gospel into the parched areas of life.”

I have often quoted Charles Malik, from his address at the dedication of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton in 1980. He challenged the audience to the twofold task of evangelism, that of saving the souls and that of saving the minds. He said, if we do one without the other, we will fail to save the souls. We understand the importance of developing a Christian mind committed to total truth, and with God’s help, determining to apply that faith to all of life. Never has it been more important for Christians to be intentionally missional in their approach to life. To impact the world, however, we must know how to teach, model, and explain this to future generations what we mean by Christianity being “total truth,” and how the joy of the Lord is connected with that perspective.

If you buy only one book this year, this would be the book at the top of the list.

“The purpose of a worldview is to explain our experience of the world-and any philosophy can be judged by how well it succeeds in doing so. When Christianity is tested, we discover that it alone explains and makes sense of the most basic and universal human experiences,” Pearcey.

This book deals with the second of the five great challenges facing the Christian community today, biotechnology. It proclaims hope for life today and tomorrow, and yet how it operates offers great threats and challenges to our very existence as human beings. Biotechnology is a diverse field, as in: stem cell research (either embryonic or adult stem cells), therapeutic cloning or reproductive cloning, gene patenting, genetic discrimination, germ line intervention, nanotechnology, and cybernetics. Christians cannot afford to be ignorant of this field because it touches our lives, directly or indirectly.

The contributors to this book are people very much involved in the biotech field. They confront their topics in a manner that underscores the challenge sounded by Chuck Colson in the introduction, “Christians must bring that influence to bear in public policy in order to keep moral truth attached to scientific progress. The whole idea of producing humans for body parts or for stem cells may sound appealing to some, but it will lead inevitably to the abolition of humankind and the ultimate end of Western civilization as we know it” (page 18).

There are three things that come through clearly from each writer. First, we must not take the route of the naturalists and attempt to dichotomize bioethics from biotechnology. We also must encourage and do whatever is necessary to establish legislation that will create guidelines as we move forward with biotech. Finally, Christians must bring their focus into the public arena and to impact the culture with Christian thought. Biotechnology is the challenge to the question, “what is human life?” Cameron clearly states the progression of this kind of thinking-if we can make life, then we can take life, and if we can do that, then we can “fake” life.

Presently there are as many as one half million to one million frozen embryos. What is an embryo? What can we do with the surplus? Can and should they be used for things like stem-cell research? Do we just let them live out their shelf life then discard them? These are the kinds of questions we face when we fail to ask up front if we should even produce embryos, especially in excess.

Then there is germ line intervention, which sounds appealing at first glance because it is similar to the science of eugenics, of attempting to improve people. Germ line intervention seeks to alter certain inherited disease-causing genes. However, is it moral and ethical to do something to a person’s germ line that not only touches that person’s life now, but also impacts children and grandchildren for generations to come?

Christians are required to believe in the sanctity of life, which must not be sacrificed in biotech. Cameron says in this book, “The human race faces a challenge of a new kind, for which our churches are ill-prepared and which poses enormous problems to governments.” Basically he was referring to problems such as cloning and stem cell research.

There is also a uniform caution throughout the book that challenges this idea, ‘if you can do it, it is right to do it.” We can clone, but is it right? We can create embryos in vitro or the petri dish, but is it right to do so?

There is another warning sounded clearly about the lure of biotechnology as a solution for such diseases as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. We often hear the positive side of biotechnology in this respect. However, in the reporting on the cloning of Dolly, the sheep in England, we did not often hear about the down side of such endeavors-tumor formations, failed attempts, transplant rejection, etc. A Christian cannot allow the idea that the human embryo is a commodity, a piece of property, or “raw materials” for experimentation to discard.

Is it ethical and morally right to attempt to eliminate those humans who have genetic defects? Should employers use genetic discrimination based on genetic defects? Is the philosophy, “the ends justify the means” a valid approach for Christians? It is no longer science fiction to think about a child who, because of genetic engineering, may have as many as five parents. This not only raises ethical and moral questions, but legal ones as well. Leon Kass, now chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, called it right when he said, “We …would be taking a major step into making man himself simply another one of the man-made things.” There must be strong laws in place, legislating and creating ethical boundaries. The risk is so enormous that without them, we could destroy ourselves, create monsters, and change the course of history.

It is so frustrating to try to write enough about this book to encourage you to read it, study it, and teach it to the covenant community. It will challenge, frighten, and yet lay out a course that will help you think and pray from an intelligent base of knowledge and truth. It must be integrated into the church’s curriculum of equipping kingdom disciples, if we are indeed committed to training and discipling God’s people to live in this world.

We have reviewed a number of books over the past several years dealing with Islam, the fastest growing religion globally and in North America. The 9/11 tragedy of terror, evil, and horror has been instrumental in raising the level of consciousness about Islam at home and abroad. Some Christians are beginning to realize we cannot afford to avoid this issue. It is a threat to Christianity, referred to by Muslims as a religion of infidels. It is a threat to our western way of life with is intentional integration of faith and life in all areas, including politics and religion.

The sooner Christians in mass awake to this challenge and prepare themselves to give a reason for the hope that we have in Christ, especially as it relates to reaching out to Muslims, the better off we will be.

This book, without a doubt, is one of the best sources for Christians to study. It could also have significant consequences for our Muslim population, if they would read and compare the differences. Zaka and Coleman, the first an easterner and the former a westerner, insist on looking at the evidence for the two religions in their original sources, the Holy Bible and the Noble Qur’an to examine the differences. They maintain when that happens, you are left with only one conclusion, and that being they are two different religions. They represent two different truth systems and two different ways to salvation.

There are so many things that I appreciate about this book, but due to space, I mention only a few. What we need to do, with God’s help, is to establish relationships with the Muslims around us. Dialogue versus confrontation is the best approach. As we do that, we also want to establish an opportunity to talk about our two faiths. What does each believe and why? We want to do that in a respectful way that does not dismiss the fact that both the Christian and the Muslim are image bearers of God. To do that, you examine the original sources of the two religions-the Noble Qur’an for Islam and the Holy Bible for Christians.

As the authors clearly illustrate, so much misunderstanding exists between the two religions and most of it is unjustified and without an authoritative base. Even from the beginning of the Islamic faith, the authors include a biographical sketch of Muhammad that illustrates this very point. So much hearsay and fragmented pieces must be dealt with in order to look at the truth.

The Truth About Islam gives us many charts of comparison along with the sources of where Christianity and Islam differ. These charts are important for two reasons. First, they clarify what both religions believe in key areas. Second, they will be useful for those seeking to dialogue with one another. For example: here is what the Noble Qur’an says and here is what the Holy Bible says. Here are their similarities and here are their differences. Specifically, they compare what the two sources say about prophets, since Muhammad is viewed as the prophet from Allah. This is essential for meaningful and respectful dialogue.

Living within our politically correct environment, there is the increasing claim that Christianity and Islam worship the same God and both are equally valid. We must know how to deal with that mindset. Both cannot be true, therefore, we need a base to compare, dialogue, and conclude. This book will definitely help in that area. The authors deal with a number of biblical models and they apply good common sense to communicating with Muslims. The dos and don’ts table in the final chapter could not be more practical and biblically sound.

Read this, study it with your adults and youth groups and then look for opportunities to apply what you learn. As the church, we cannot turn away from the present challenge confronting us in Islam.

Walking Away from Faith is a book I have been intending to review and bring to your attention since reading it. Ruth Tucker is another author I enjoy reading. She is the assistant professor of missiology at Calvin College. Her famous and award winning book, From Jerusalem to Irian Jara, was a delight to read.

Walking Away from Faith is a challenging and sobering book. It deals with situations that will cause you to think, pray, examine the word, and discuss it with other believers. While we have emphasized the biblical doctrine “perseverance of the saints,” most people translate that to mean “once saved always saved.” Tucker writes about those who “lost their faith.” She writes about those who have struggled with faith but she does not avoid the hard questions.

She states that “All of us in our faith fall somewhere on the vast, subjective spectrum that ranges from absolute certainty to unrestrained skepticism. Some profess a confident belief in God that is never questioned; others cling to a belief riddled with doubts, only a millimeter shy of unbelief.” How do we explain, she asks, the one who ministers faithfully in the church for many years only to finally walk away from the faith? She calls this a paradox that we usually try to avoid rather than confront. She also states that while the matter of one’s salvation is in the hands of the sovereign God, we need to listen to their stories, give them an honest hearing, dialogue with them, and reach in love to them.

She states that the most common “walk-away” is the one brought up in a Christian home, who makes a profession of faith as a young person, but drifts away during adolescence or young adulthood. She continues to state that they display more apathy than anger and rarely make any profession of atheism or agnosticism.

In the beginning of the book, she tells of relating the death of her mother in 1969 to her struggle with faith to a college class. She said, “when I finished sharing my story; the students began to open up more that ever.” It seemed that God either had no answers to the questions regarding doubt and losing one’s faith or he simply chose to be silent. You sense this attitude in many of the Psalms.

The book is filled with stories of people who once professed to be Christians but who later abandoned the faith. I’ll use one story from the book regarding Chuck Templeton. The chapter is entitled “A Tale of Two Evangelists”-Templeton and his close friend Billy Graham. Templeton finally identified himself as an agnostic, not an atheist, not a theist, not a skeptic, and certainly not indifferent. He was a pastor and evangelist from Toronto who started out with Billy Graham in the 1940s in the Youth for Christ movement. At the first rally, Billy leaned over to Templeton and said, “Pray for me Chuck, I’m scared to death.”

Templeton’s life began to become riddled with doubt and he eventually left the faith. He continued to admire Graham, though he could no longer walk with him in the faith. He wrote a book in 1996 entitled Farewell to God. He died three years later of Alzheimer’s disease. Billy Graham said of Templeton, “I love Chuck to this very day. He’s one of the few men I have ever loved in my life. He and I had been so close. But then all of a sudden, our paths were parting. He began to be a little cool to me then. I think…that Chuck felt sorry for me.”

In an interview with Lee Strobel before his death, Strobel asked whether he would like to believe, and Chuck responded, “of course! If I could, I would. I’m eighty-three years old. I’ve got Alzheimer’s. I’m dying, for goodness sake.” Though he maintained his fondness of Graham and said in the end, “I miss him,” but he could not return to the faith.

If you have never struggled with doubt and uncertainty you will probably not appreciate this book. However, if you have struggled with doubt or attempted to minister to someone who has, you will find encouragement, hope, and insights on how to live within that “paradox,” as Tucker calls it. In the conclusion she quotes the famous verse, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” She says, “Without the Lord’s help, my belief is utterly insufficient.” She acknowledges that our belief does not rest on our ability to believe. And with a stunning call to faith, she closes with the words of the Apostles’ Creed.

Here is another thought provoking book that deals with one of the most important issues facing the church today. How much latitude do we have in coming together with Christians who are not of the same theological stripe? Can we develop a unity in the body of Christ that transcends our particular denominational or theological persuasion? Can we do that in a way that does not finally compromise our theological integrity?

J. I. Packer, a noted theologian within the reformed tradition, and Thomas Oden, of Wesleyan Methodist lineage, have attempted to make an effort to define evangelicalism today. Is there a point of convergence where the ideas presented by the two authors come together in a meaningful way? One Faith answers that question in depth. I have had the privilege of participating in some of the conferences mentioned from which covenants and manifestos were drafted. These documents set the basic doctrines of the Christian faith together in a missional motif that could unify diverse groups of people.

Obviously, the concern is whether or not our Christianity, especially within the broader evangelical setting, is causing us to fragment into smaller and more isolated groups. On the other hand, are we coming together in ways that will allow us to express a common commitment to basic tenets of the Christian faith while allowing the freedom to adhere to our own theological and denominational distinctives?

Both authors write on the premise that there is a common theological consensus that draws us together into the broader movement of evangelicalism. They seek to develop a framework or foundation upon which the broader evangelical world can come together in a way that will give rise to a new ecumenical consensus. They cause us to identify what we are willing to give up to accomplish this.

Packer and Oden divide the broader evangelical community into two rails of the track. The Calvinists, Lutherans, and Baptists are on one part of the track while the Arminian, Wesleyan, Holiness, Charismatic and Pentecostals are on the other side. The purpose of this book, according to the authors, is not just to share information but also edify and determine whether there can be enough agreement to transcend those differences. “We decline to discuss secondary matters on which disagreements surface, such as variations on polity, modes and subjects of baptism, glossolalia, millennialism, theological epistemology and specifics of exegesis.” “This book celebrates the work of God in bringing evangelicals together in fundamentals, and that is the reality on which we labor to keep all eyes trained.”

One might be tempted to read up to this point and debate whether such a consensus could or should exist. However, whether we like it or not, we cannot dodge the issues raised in this book. If the question is not about us but about God, how much energy and effort does God want us to expend in focusing on the unity that transcends our particulars?

The authors begin by describing evangelicals as, “Those who read the Bible as God’s own Word, addressed personally to each of them here and now; and who live out a personal trust in, and love for Jesus Christ as the world’s only Lord and Saviour.” From there they state “historians categorize evangelicals as people who emphasize (1) the Bible as the Word of God, (2) the cross as the place where salvation is won, (3) conversion as a universal need and (4) missionary outreach as a universal task”

A plus of this book is it brings together in one place many of the statements, covenants, and declarations of the 20th century. These statements are in the missional genre, underscoring the global aspect of Christianity. Though they were produced in a missional setting, they challenge us to realize we are part of the one body of Christ worldwide and through all the ages.

The book contains sixteen chapters on the doctrines the authors believe are commonly held by evangelicals. They connect these doctrines to documents produced by the various evangelical movements of the 20th century, particularly the later part of that century. Naturally, they point to Billy Graham as the main catalyst behind the various movements within evangelicalism.

This book will push you out of your comfort zone at places, challenge you to focus on unity within the Body, and cause you to think seriously about how to experience and express our diversity and unity while respecting both. There is a wealth of information in this concise volume.