Delighting in the Law of the Lord E-Book

Jerram Barrs

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 615

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Our culture has a few catch phrases: Be who you want to be; Do what makes you happy. We are told to do our own thing and follow our own rules, which often makes the Bible appear to be oppressively restrictive and hopelessly outdated, even to Christians! Responding to the misdirection of our society and misperceptions the church has of God's law, Professor Jerram Barrs helps readers recognize the beauty in and purpose of God's rules for living healthy, productive, and fulfilling lives. From the Old Testament to the New, Barrs demonstrates how God's commands to his people were intended to protect them from sin and direct them in godliness. Rejecting the idea that we can earn God's favor through good works, Barrs nevertheless highlights how God's commands should spur us to obedience and ultimately remind us of grace.

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“In simple, eloquent, and compelling prose, Jerram Barrs has given us a gripping account of how God’s law, understood through the grace released in Jesus Christ, is the best guide we could find. Barrs shows us the biblical path to a sane and balanced worldview, avoiding the pitfalls of utopian theocracy, libertarian naïveté, and cultural indifference. More than a guide, this book is an invitation to see God as our only comfort in life and in death. Delighting in the Law of the Lord is simply delightful!”

William Edgar, Professor of Apologetics, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia

“We live in morally confusing times—confusing for the culture, confusing for the church. We’ve lost the compass, and, truth be told, when it comes to personal or societal issues, most of us Christians simply don’t think of the law of God as providing much guidance. ‘Think again!’ says Jerram Barrs. In his winsome across-the-kitchen-table style, Barrs explains why we need to retrieve afresh one of God’s greatest gifts. Churches will love this resource!”

Nicholas Perrin, Franklin S. Dyrness Professor of Biblical Studies, Wheaton College

“Jerram characteristically begins with a relevant piece of cultural analysis, honed from his decades of outreach to unbelievers, in which he traces the declension in Western culture from deism to postmodernism. But God has not delivered his people from the hopelessness of secularism and relativism to have them render the joyless obedience of moralism and legalism. Jerram expounds the true nature and purpose of God’s law from the Psalms, which extol God’s law in light of the Bible story of creation and redemption, and he draws primarily on the Gospels for stories to illustrate how this perspective on God’s law works out in practice. All will find this book challenging and helpful, but I recommend it especially to those engaged in communication of the truth that is in Jesus, particularly preachers, Bible study groups, parents, and Christian schools.”

David Clyde Jones, Late Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology and Ethics, Covenant Theological Seminary; author, Biblical Christian Ethics

“Equally committed to the graciousness of God, the goodness of his law, and the calling of human beings to embody God’s moral character in all that we do, Jerram Barrs gently but decisively charts a course that falls into neither the ditch of meaningless moral relativism nor the choking grip of Christian legalism. He convincingly shows the biblical importance of the law as an essential guide to Christian discipleship, service, and happiness, both personally and within the larger realities of the church and society. Immersed in Scripture, theologically sound, and pastorally driven, Barrs writes from a lifetime of ministry that is both insightful and pastorally engaging. This catechesis of the way of the Lord should be in every ministry toolbox and is an absolute must-read by every Christian who wants to find greater integrity of life and deeper relationship with Christ, our fellow human beings, and God’s good creation.”

Michael D. Williams, Professor of Systematic Theology, Covenant Theological Seminary

Other Crossway Books by Jerram Barrs

Echoes of Eden: Reflections on Christianity, Literature, and the Arts

Learning Evangelism from Jesus

The Heart of Evangelism

Through His Eyes: God’s Perspective on Women in the Bible

Delighting in the Law of the Lord: God’s Alternative to Legalism and Moralism

Copyright © 2013 by Jerram Barrs Published by Crossway

1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Studio Gearbox

Cover image: The Bridgeman Art Library

First printing 2013

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. 2011 Text Edition. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked NIV are from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture references marked RSV are from The Revised Standard Version. Copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-3713-4Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-3715-8PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-3714-1ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-3716-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barrs, Jerram.

Delighting in the law of the Lord : God’s alternative to legalism and moralism / Jerram Barrs.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4335-3713-4 (tp)

1. Bible and law.  2. Law and gospel—Biblical teaching.  3. Law

(Theology)—Biblical teaching.  I. Title.

BS680.L33B37 2013

241'.2—dc232013014375

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

I dedicate this book to my much-loved father-in-law, my “Dad” since my own beloved father’s death in 1972. Dad, you were a beautiful model of a man who loved the Lord and who delighted in his law. Your service of firstfruits has been an inspiration to people all over this world. Now with full assurance, you know the Lord’s delight in you, and you, I am confident, gladly cast your crown at his feet every day, knowing that apart from Jesus all your labors would have been in vain. You lived out Psalm 1 every day of your life as you gave yourself to loving the Lord and following his commandments. Of you it could truly be said:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

Contents

1The Good Life (1): Do We Need God’s Laws Today?2The Good Life (2): Found in Christianity or Postmodernism?3The Source of Law: Humanity or God4The Beauty of the Law5The Giving of the Law at Sinai6Law and the Image of God (1)7Law and the Image of God (2)8The Spirit of the Law9Jesus Expounds the Law10Jesus Fulfills the Law11Jesus Overcomes the Curse of the Law12How Substantial Is the Healing We Can Expect?13How Have Different Traditions Understood the Law?14Jesus Challenges Additions to God’s Law15Jesus’s Attack on Legalism16Rules for the Family and Church?17Jesus Applies the Law18Jesus Shows Amazing Grace19Lessons from Jesus’s Two Approaches20To Whom Ought We to Show and Tell the Law?21The Law of God and Our Secular Society22Living as Salt and Light in and for the World23Old Testament Law: How Should We View It?24The New Covenant and the Law

1

THE GOOD LIFE (1)

Do We Need God’s Laws Today?

How do you think about the law of God? Many of God’s commandments were written down around thirty-five hundred years ago during the life of Moses; others come from the time of Jesus and his apostles, almost two thousand years ago. Do you sometimes think, “I personally don’t need laws written thousands of years ago to direct my life; I am quite capable of reflecting on the challenges I face each day and making up my own mind about what is right for me”? Or do you perhaps assume that the culture in which we live today knows better about how we should live than people from such distant times and different cultures? After all, we might reason, our scientific knowledge has advanced so much in terms of our understanding of the individual and society that it is no longer necessary for us to obey a moral code written in a time of comparative ignorance about human life.

In this first chapter, my plan is to begin to challenge such views. Our first challenge will be to set before us a brief passage from one of the psalms of David, for in this psalm we see David setting out his passionate belief that he needs God to teach him through God’s laws how he, David, ought to live. I suggest that the reader consider making these words of David a personal prayer, both for the reading of this book and, more importantly, for daily life.

Make me to know your ways, O LORD;

teach me your paths.

Lead me in your truth and teach me,

for you are the God of my salvation;

for you I wait all the day long.

Remember your mercy, O LORD, and your steadfast love,

for they have been from of old.

Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions;

according to your steadfast love remember me,

for the sake of your goodness, O LORD!

Good and upright is the LORD;

therefore he instructs sinners in the way.

He leads the humble in what is right,

and teaches the humble his way.

All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness,

for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.

For your name’s sake, O LORD,

pardon my guilt, for it is great.1

There are many beautiful things in this excerpt from Psalm 25. A repeated refrain is David’s longing to be taught by “the LORD.” Notice how, in the above text and in your Bible, capital letters are used for the name “LORD” to remind us that David is using God’s personal name, Yahweh, the name that refers to God’s everlasting faithfulness to his promises. David knows that he needs “the LORD” to show him how to live, for he understands that he is a sinner and that, therefore, he cannot be trusted to know what is right; so he humbles himself to ask the Lord to teach him. The Word of God teaches us that humility before the Lord is essential for each one of us as we come to reflect on how we are to live today, and tomorrow, and every other day of life in this world. Do I trust myself? Do I think I am wise enough to know how I should live? Or am I prepared to humble myself and ask my heavenly Father to teach me?

Notice, too, how David describes what he wants to learn about the right way to live: the right way to live is the way of the Lord. David desires to understand the paths in which the Lord walks, for David knows that there is no one else in the universe whose life is fully characterized by moral goodness. No one, except the Lord himself, lives the truly good life. David wants to be like God, to follow in the steps of love, mercy, and faithfulness that describe the way the Lord lives.

A third point to note here is that as soon as David reflects on the character of God, he cannot help but think about his own failure to be like God, his inability to walk steadfastly in the ways of the Lord. Because he realizes this inability and failure, David confesses his guilt. The more clearly he thinks about the character and pattern of the life of the Lord, the greater David’s sin seems to him. For us today, just as with David, any careful study of the law of God is going to have this uncomfortable element of revealing our sin and humbling us. The more we reflect on the ways of the Lord, the more our sins are exposed. So be prepared to see yourself in new and discomfiting ways!

We should also observe that the aspects of God’s character that David focuses on here are the love and gracious mercy of God, for these are central to any meditation on the ways of the Lord. As David says, “All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness” toward us. Another way to express this is to think about the great commandments as Jesus summarizes them for us: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”2

Just as with us, so it is with the Lord. The summary of all the law for us, of all the teaching of God’s Word, is that we are to love God and our neighbor. The reason for this is that all the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness. He desires that we be like him. David desires that he be like the Lord; he desires that all his thoughts, words, and actions be filled with steadfast love and faithfulness. The apostle Paul expresses the same idea this way: “Love is the fulfilling of the law.”3

Do we agree with David’s prayer? Do we believe that we need to humble ourselves before God and to ask him to teach us the way he walks, that we ought to desire to know God’s law so well that we will be convicted of our sins and led to confession? Before we try to answer these questions, perhaps it would be helpful for us to think about just why we might be tempted to believe that we know better as to how we should live than the laws in the Bible do, why we might feel that our culture today possesses greater knowledge of human behavior than the writers of God’s Word could possibly have had. To understand our own reactions, we need to think about our cultural setting. This is necessary, for all of us are deeply shaped by the society in which we live. Hear Paul’s words:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers [and sisters], by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.4

If we desire to understand what God’s good and acceptable and perfect will is for us, that is, his law, then we first need to reflect on the culture in which we live and on the ways it shapes us. Only then will our minds be renewed and our lives transformed. Without this cultural awareness we will be unconscious imitators of the patterns of life around us rather than people who walk in the ways of the Lord. And we will doubt that we need moral instruction from the distant past and from such different cultural settings.

Consider some examples from the recent past. First, I am sure that many readers of this book were aware of the riots happening in August 2011 in London, and in many other parts of the United Kingdom. What was most troubling about the wanton damage and theft that accompanied these riots was the apparent absence of moral guilt or shame among many of the perpetrators of these crimes. I read interviews in which young people spoke proudly and defiantly about the destruction they had caused and the goods they had stolen from the stores that were broken into and looted. These young people came across as having no conscience about the people who were hurt, or even killed, or about the personal and financial damage done to those who had property stolen or ruined.

Or, for a different kind of example, consider typical court cases on matters of obscenity, like the prosecution arising from the exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs in Cincinnati, Ohio, some years ago:

Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio series sparked national attention in the early 1990s when it was included in The Perfect Moment, a traveling exhibition funded by National Endowment for the Arts. The portfolio includes some of Mapplethorpe’s most explicit imagery, including a self-portrait with a bullwhip inserted in his anus. Though his work had been regularly displayed in publicly funded exhibitions, conservative and religious organizations, such as the American Family Association, seized on this exhibition to vocally oppose government support for what they called “nothing more than the sensational presentation of potentially obscene material.” As a result, Mapplethorpe became something of a cause célèbre for both sides of the American culture war. The installation of The Perfect Moment in Cincinnati resulted in the unsuccessful prosecution of the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati and its director, Dennis Barrie, on charges of “pandering obscenity.”5

Another example is the various prosecutions and acquittals arising from the music and lyrics of the group 2 Live Crew:

In 1989, the group released their album, As Nasty As They Wanna Be, which also became the group’s most successful album. A large part of its success was due to the single “Me So Horny,” which was popular despite little radio rotation. The American Family Association (AFA) did not think the presence of a “Parental Advisory” sticker was enough to adequately warn listeners of what was inside the case. Jack Thompson, a lawyer affiliated with the AFA, met with Florida Governor Bob Martinez and convinced him to look into the album to see if it met the legal classification of obscenity. In 1990 action was taken at the local level and Nick Navarro, Broward County sheriff, received a ruling from County Circuit Court judge Mel Grossman that probable cause for obscenity violations existed. In response, Luther Campbell maintained that people should focus on issues relating to hunger and poverty rather than on the lyrical content of their music.Navarro warned record store owners that selling the album might be prosecutable. The 2 Live Crew then filed a suit against Navarro. That June, U.S. district court Judge Jose Gonzalez ruled the album obscene and illegal to sell. Charles Freeman, a local retailer, was arrested two days later, after selling a copy to an undercover police officer. This was followed by the arrest of three members of The 2 Live Crew after they performed some material from the album at a nightclub. They were acquitted soon after, as professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. testified at their trial in defense of their lyrics. Freeman’s conviction was overturned on appeal as well.6

In both of these cases jury members were interviewed after the acquittals. Many of them said something like this: “I think that these photographs (or these lyrics) are obscene. I do not want to see them (hear them); and I do not want my children to see them (hear them). But who am I to say that no one else should be able to see them (hear them) if they so wish? This is only my personal opinion. It is not my place to declare these photos (or these lyrics) objectively obscene.”

A fourth example comes from the visit of Pope John Paul II to St. Louis, Missouri, in January 1999. Those who live in the St. Louis area especially will remember how rapturously he was received in this city. His visit was the biggest event in the history of St. Louis, with up to a hundred thousand people turning out to hear him speak. He spoke with great passion about two moral issues in particular: sexual chastity and fidelity, and the sacredness of human life and the great moral evil of abortion. These talks were received with lengthy standing ovations.

However, one has to note with sadness that many of those who applauded him so fervently appear to have had no serious intention of putting his words into practice in their own personal lives. I do not say this to attack Roman Catholics in particular, for the same problems exist among the members of almost all churches.

I serve as the pastor officiating the ceremony in several weddings each year, and I am afraid I have come to assume that it is a rare couple who are not already having sexual intercourse before marriage. In the 1970s, when I was first ordained and began to take wedding services, I could be confident that eight out of ten couples who had grown up in Christian homes would be sexually chaste, though it was already rare at that time to find a young man or woman from a non-Christian home who had not been sexually active. Today, my sorrowful estimate is that it will only be one or two out of ten young couples, of whatever background, who have remained chaste until marriage.

A fifth example comes from a Christian student I heard interviewed on public radio about abortion. The student, clearly an evangelical believer, said, “I believe that abortion is the murder of an innocent human life.” She went on to say, “I also believe that abortion is a matter of personal choice and that, therefore, we ought not to have laws against abortion.” I hear many Christians who think and speak in a similar manner about abortion, and about many other moral issues, concerning which the historical church has taken an unequivocal stand, not only for the individual Christian’s life, but also for the life of society.

A sixth example comes from my own conversations with young people about Hitler and the Holocaust. Many are not prepared to condemn as absolute evil the slaughter of six million Jews and of many Gypsies, Christians, and mentally and physically disabled people, and countless others in the death camps of Nazi Germany. It is the same with the murders by Islamic terrorists. I hear many people expressing themselves with views like this: “I personally think the terrorist killings are wicked. But I have to recognize that, from their perspective, these are not crimes, but rather legitimate acts of protest against corrupt and evil regimes. So it all depends on one’s perspective as to whether one decides their acts are evil.”

How have we come to this, that people around us, including our fellow Christians, find it so difficult to make objective or absolute moral judgments? We need to go back some distance in time to understand our path to this present dilemma. We will begin with some brief reflections on what is often referred to as modernism, looking first at deism, then at secular humanism. Then we will turn to postmodernism.

MODERNISM (1): DEISMOR NATURAL RELIGION,A NEW PATH

In Psalm 25 David wrote about the path of the Lord. Deism may be described as a new path in religion that some began to take during the early 1600s. Deism arose in the context of an understandable reaction to the religious wars and the persecutions that followed the period of the Reformation. Many, both inside and outside the church, reacted to these shocking departures from the gospel of Christ (such as taking up arms against fellow Christians or putting them on trial and burning them to death as heretics). Others went much further and also rejected the institutional churches, their claims to authority, and their doctrines.

One of the leaders of this rejection of the Christian churches was Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who is known as the “father of deism.” He argued that churches are always fighting over beliefs and practices, and that, therefore, it is necessary for all people of sense and good will to get back to the basics of true Christianity. He declared that all beliefs about God, and all the ways of life that arise from those belief systems, are the same at their roots. Therefore, he argued, it is right for us to find the common notions that are present in all religious beliefs, and to discern what we consider to be true in the religions and churches that we find around us. He rejected the authority of churches and Scriptures and argued, instead, that in ourselves we have two means of judging that are perfectly adequate to enable us to come to notions of truth and goodness, and to live the good life.

Our reason: we will evaluate religious claims for ourselves.Our conscience: we can ask what seems right about God to us.

Herbert came up with a kind of common-denominator religion, one he thought all people of good will would believe and follow. He removed all the distinctive doctrines of Christianity (the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, Jesus’s incarnation, his substitutionary death) and taught that the true religion, which every person of sense and moral virtue could acknowledge, consists of honor for God and moral behavior to our fellow humans.

Herbert’s ideas were very influential, and over the following 150 years there was a flourishing of deist thought and writing. One very significant example is Matthew Tindal, who wrote Christianity as Old as Creation, published in 1730 in England. Its subtitle is The Gospel, a Republication of the Religion of Nature. He was called “the great apostle of deism,” and his book, “the Bible of deism.” He made the following basic points:

God is fair, so all peoples must know the truth about God, and all religions must lead to God.All religions teach us to honor God.All religions teach us to do what is right—God’s moral commandments are self-evidently good.There will be an afterlife with rewards and punishments.Our personal calling is the pursuit of our individual happiness.It is obvious that we should all work for the common good.

Many deists in Tindal’s day, in the eighteenth century, continued to attend church. The same is true in our day. And like today, many pastors and churches became deist rather than genuinely Christian in any biblical sense, though they continued to call themselves Christian. “Our religion,” they said, “is the true Christianity.” What was once thought of as Christian came to be considered narrow, rigid, doctrinaire, harsh, intolerant, and unloving, far removed from the true spirit of Jesus.

In deist settings, then as today, the Bible was still respected as containing much that is good and true, and there remained some sense of accountability to God. However, the final authority became the individual’s conscience and reason; and the final goal of life became the pursuit of personal happiness, the pursuit of one’s own definition of the good life.

For churchgoers and for some outside the church (though in declining numbers) the Bible was still seen as a source to be considered for moral direction. However, in our day the individual has become increasingly the final source of moral authority over such questions as sexual fidelity, homosexuality, human life issues like abortion and euthanasia, truth telling, theft, and so forth. This is so for present-day deists in a way that would have been unthinkable for the eighteenth-century deist, who regarded such moral issues as crystal clear. One might say that in the eighteenth century, deists simply assumed that what the Bible taught was self-evident moral truth. This is no longer the case for deists today; and often it is no longer the case even for those who think of themselves as Bible-believing Christians.

MODERNISM (2): SECULAR HUMANISM,THE NEXT STEP

The next step along the path away from Christianity was the declaration that it is not just the churches that are the problem, but religions in general and the Christian religion in particular. The secular humanists developed a more consistent modernism and proclaimed: “We do not need any traditional religion. Why should we humans bother with God at all?” For the secular humanist this world is simply material. There is only the natural world, and we humans are a part of this natural world. Time and chance, and the process of evolution working on matter and energy, are a sufficient source and explanation of everything that exists.

Humanism’s basic thrust is deep optimism about reason and human nature. What will be our guide along the path of life? Secular humanists set out their answer in the following beliefs:

We must put our trust in reason. There is no need for revelation (the Bible) at all. In place of revelation from some imagined god, human reason will lead us into all the truth and answer all our questions.The application of the scientific method as we use our reason in the scientific endeavor will enable us to understand the world around us and to control the forces of nature, thereby creating a better world. Science will also enable us to understand and to control the human person and to solve our problems. This later application of reason and science in order to understand and solve the problems of individuals and societies began to develop in new and powerful ways at the beginning of the twentieth century.Human nature is basically good. We just need education and the right laws and social structures to create a new world order, an enduring citadel of peace, prosperity, and happiness here on earth.We as humans can figure out what is good for ourselves. Ethics does not need religion or God. The enlightened individual knows what is best for himself or herself and is able to live a moral, happy, and productive life without any need for divine revelation or intervention.

Most ordinary Americans would not identify themselves with these basic beliefs of secular humanism. Most have not completely lost some kind of belief in God or some sense of the afterlife. But in truth, all of us, whether we have ever thought about it or not, whether we recognize it or not, are impacted by these convictions of deism and secular humanism.

Modernism has had the effect of seriously undermining any claims to religious, doctrinal, or moral authority, whether of God, of Christ, of creeds, of churches, or of church leaders. The deep conviction of people around us, and of each one of us, is this: “I can think things through for myself and come to my own conclusions about God, doctrine, and morals.” Modernism also undermines all our sense of accountability to God. We create a god in our own image, a god who will not hold us accountable and who would never dream of judging us.

POSTMODERNISM: EXISTENTIALISM,A DEAD END

With existentialism or postmodernism, the new road taken by modernism loses its way, and has, perhaps, come to a dead end.7 The path to the good life peters out, disappearing in the woods of skepticism and irrationality. Existentialism is simply a consistent atheism. The existentialist recognizes that without God, everything changes. In Europe, the way people thought was deeply influenced by the World Wars. In the United States, the Vietnam War had something of the same effect. Postmodernism comes to several bleak conclusions:

Reason is inadequate to find objective or absolute truth. Because we are finite, truth is forever beyond us.Science is not our savior, for technology produces not only good but evil. Scientific research has created weapons of mass destruction for modern warfare: nuclear arsenals and biological and chemical weapons with unimaginable consequences. Our technological society has had such an impact on the world of nature that, rather than bringing about a glorious future, it offers instead environmental disasters that could threaten and destroy human life. Technology controls and dehumanizes us even in the ways it reaches into our homes through television and the Internet.There are a deep loss of optimism about human nature and a growing recognition that humans can do terrible evil.There are no sure grounds for hope about the future. We are alone in the universe, with nothing to cling to or to trust in.There is no sure and certain morality, for everything is ultimately relative.

For most ordinary Americans, and for a much smaller number of Europeans, such a vision is too stark and too bleak. Especially in the United States, there is still a strong strain of modernist optimism among people. However, the postmodern skeptical way of seeing human life has a deep impact on the alienation of many young people. We see this in movies like The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, many of the films of Woody Allen, American Beauty, or the sci-fi series The Matrix. The first Matrix movie was hailed by many Christians because it appeared to have a glimpse of possible redemption. Later, however, deep pessimism about the human condition became evident. We also see this bleakness in many television shows and in much music listened to by younger generations.

This postmodern way of thinking impacts everyone by increasing our doubts about finding truth, by causing us to question the value of reason, and by making us cynical about respect for authority; at odds with truth, reason, and authority is postmodernism’s passionate emphasis on the centrality of the individual. What is the effect of this skepticism on ordinary people? We may summarize the consequences with the following simple though desperately destructive statements:

There is no objective truth.There is no absolute truth.There is only personal truth.You have your truth; I have mine.

Adding to this uncertainty about knowing truth is the fact that we live in an increasingly pluralistic society. We have, in the United States today, the most religiously diverse society the world has ever seen. What does this pluralism of belief have to do with the growth of cynicism? Postmodernism teaches that this pluralism of belief is the way it ought to be, for it insists that there is no one truth which describes reality; that our finite grasp on reality is so tenuous that there can be nothing but the belief systems of individuals or cultural groups; and that none of these can claim either the status of truth or even superiority over any of the others. Anyone who claims to speak truth is greeted with skepticism. Sometimes this skepticism is polite, but frequently it is bitter, mocking, and abusive.

In addition, postmodernism stresses that in knowing, I am never free. I always come to every issue with prejudices, with beliefs, with a background—and these “glasses” determine what I see. Some postmodernists emphasize the “shared knowledge” (or prejudices) of various communities, while others stress the isolation of the individual knower. But whichever of these approaches is espoused, the overall result is an increasing skepticism about any kind of truth claim.

So reason is a weak tool and can never lead us to true knowledge, for it is constrained by our prejudices. Reason and the claim to possess knowledge are weapons used by the powerful to maintain their power and interests at the expense of the powerless. Knowledge becomes a weapon in the culture wars for various groups to reinforce their already held positions, and to use against each other. This recognition that knowledge is sometimes used as a weapon to suppress others and their views feeds the drift to cynicism and the questioning of people’s motives.

The consequence of this loss of confidence in reason, and the accompanying loss of confidence in there being truth, is that Western societies have raised a generation of skeptics and cynics. Consider the dwarves in C. S. Lewis’s Last Battle. Lewis writes that they were so reluctant to be taken in, they could no longer be taken out of their skeptical and cynical attitude. Hope was now impossible for them. In Europe this problem is far more advanced; the cynicism of Lewis’s dwarves is almost universal in France, Britain, and in most European countries.

Young people, in particular, are deeply pessimistic and cynical about what life holds for them. The deeper philosophical skepticism that is at the heart of our culture is made worse by the social and familial settings in which great numbers of young people spend their early years. Many grow up in homes where they receive no moral direction from their parents; and if no teacher, church member, or friend reaches out to lead them to the Lord and his paths, we find a generation without any moral compass. Some grow up in settings with little practical hope of escaping problems of poverty, unemployment, poor education, and social deprivation of every kind. Many more, from every social class, have the added burden of being raised in families where there are such betrayal of trust, such failure of commitment and parenting, such wounding of hope and love, that deep alienation and a suspicious attitude toward all people are no surprise.

So, what are the consequences of our intellectual and social climate for vast numbers of people?

Loss of belief in truth. There is nothing that can make sense of the human condition, so the conclusion is, “meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.”Loss of hope, both for this world and for one’s own life. There is no story that gives us ground for hope for our solar system, our planet, the human race, or my own future, so there is no alternative but cynicism and apathy.Loss of respect for authority. There is no one and no thing that deserves my trust or obedience, so there is no one to whom I may turn with the confidence that they will give me answers or meaning.Loss of respect for everything sacred. Religions, like all other claims to truth, are simply power games, and anything or anyone that any group has held to be sacred or precious should be scorned and held up for ridicule; consequently there is a delight in shocking the viewer or listener. (I hardly need to give you examples here, for we see them repeatedly in our cultural setting.)Loss of moral certainty. There are no transcendent moral commandments; there is no “you shall” or “you shall not.” There are no commandments that come from above for this generation. No one individual, no group, no authority, no religion, no sacred book, no god, has the right to tell anyone else how they ought to live. In such a society there is inevitably cynicism about claims to moral certainty.

You may reply, “This does not affect me, or many of the people I know.” I want to challenge that claim. Cynicism is corrosive—it works like a cancer, taking over all that is healthy and hopeful, and we are all affected by it.

Now that we see something of what has shaped the attitudes of our hearts and minds, perhaps we can turn back to Psalm 25 and pray that the Lord would enable us to make the words of David our own heartfelt cry, our own prayer that the Lord will be gracious to us, and that he will teach us his paths, in order that we may walk in the ways of the Lord, and so may live his good life.

Make me to know your ways, O LORD;

teach me your paths.

Lead me in your truth and teach me,

for you are the God of my salvation;

for you I wait all the day long.

Remember your mercy, O LORD, and your steadfast love,

for they have been from of old.

Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions;

according to your steadfast love remember me,

for the sake of your goodness, O LORD!

Good and upright is the LORD;

therefore he instructs sinners in the way.

He leads the humble in what is right,

and teaches the humble his way.

All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness,

for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.

For your name’s sake, O LORD,

pardon my guilt, for it is great.

Questions for Personal Reflection and Group Discussion

1. Read Psalm 25:4–11 and set down for yourself what in particular you pray for as you ask the Lord to teach you to walk in his paths.

2. Do you see any aspects of our postmodern culture that you consider to be helpful to us as Christian believers, aspects for which we ought to be thankful? This may seem a strange question after the challenging things that I have written about the loss of truth and of moral certainty in our postmodern setting. However, Scripture charges us always to be ready to discern what is good and helpful in any human setting. If you reflect on this question with care, you will soon see that there are many very lovely aspects of our postmodern cultural context.

3. What are some aspects of our postmodern culture that you consider to be most challenging for Christians? Which two make teaching a difficult calling? Almost all of us teach in some setting, whether it is one-on-one with a friend or a more formal situation teaching children, teenagers, or adults in a school, in a Sunday school class, or in a Bible study. What makes people reluctant to hear you and to accept any challenges you might bring to their lives?

4. What are two aspects of our postmodern culture that create problems for you in your own personal life as someone seeking to be faithful to the Lord?

5. What two aspects of our postmodern culture bring pressures on you as a parent as you commit yourself to raising godly children in our contemporary setting? (Or if you do not have children, try to imagine the challenges of being a parent in our postmodern times.)

1 Psalm 25:4–11.

2 Matthew 22:37–40.

3 Romans 13:10.

4 Romans 12:1–2 (see ESVfootnote 1).

5 ”Robert Mapplethorpe,” accessed May 21, 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe. I would not usually quote a Wikipedia article, unless it had extensive and authoritative referencing (which the article on Mapplethorpe does have). In addition, in this case, the Wikipedia article simply summarizes what was widely reported at the time in the media.

6 “2 Live Crew,” accessed May 21, 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Live_Crew. Again, the Wikipedia article is both well footnoted and a clear and helpful summary of what was commonly reported at the time.

7 No one yet knows what will follow postmodernism. The prayer of the Christian must be that the Lord will have mercy on us and that he will grant to us, to our churches, and to our cultures a renewal, restoration, and reformation of faith and life.

2

THE GOOD LIFE (2)

Found in Christianity or Postmodernism?

In the first chapter we followed in the steps of deism, secular humanism, and postmodernism to find where these schools of thinking might lead us, and to see whether they would fulfill their initial promise of the good life, a life of moral beauty without any input from the Christian faith or the Christian God. Should we draw from that brief and discouraging survey the conclusion that all our neighbors are thoroughly postmodern in their thinking and lifestyle, that they are all committed atheists, or that they have no solid moral convictions and no sense of guilt or shame when they do wrong? That is not the conclusion I wish to draw, for it would not be accurate.

This past century witnessed a loss of biblical content to people’s views of God, of truth, and of moral convictions. As we have seen, this loss is far more advanced in Europe than in the United States. However, there are no people who are thoroughly consistent in holding to postmodern skepticism about truth or about moral law. No one is a moral relativist all the time. Indeed, anyone who does have complete doubt about the possibility of knowing anything truly will go rapidly insane. Extreme skepticism rarely happens (thank God!), though occasionally uncertainty about finding truth can have devastating consequences. I have met people who have become mentally and emotionally paralyzed by their deep doubts and their suspicion that life is ultimately absurd.1

In such situations the three great needs are: first, prayer for the work of God in the person’s heart; second, believers living a life that is characterized by meaning and hope; and third, a strong, committed love for the individual who has become trapped in the pit of despair. Only when such a person is deeply loved and is able to observe a meaningful and hopeful life firsthand can he or she begin to think clearly again about questions of truth and moral order. The Lord can and does deliver people who come to such desperate places. That is the theme of Psalm 107, a psalm that describes God’s unfailing love for those who lose their way in life.

Some wandered in desert wastes,

finding no way to a city to dwell in;

hungry and thirsty,

their soul fainted within them.

Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,

and he delivered them from their distress.

He led them by a straight way

till they reached a city to dwell in.

Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,

prisoners in affliction and irons,

for they had rebelled against the words of God,

and spurned the counsel of the Most High.

So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor;

they fell down, with none to help.

Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,

and he delivered them from their distress.

He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,

and burst their bonds apart.

Some were fools through their sinful ways,

and because of their iniquities suffered affliction;

they loathed any kind of food,

and they drew near to the gates of death.

Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,

and he delivered them from their distress.

He sent out his word and healed them,

and delivered them from their destruction.2

Scripture encourages us never to give up on the Lord, no matter how desperate a person’s life seems; and never to give up on praying for people, on living faithfully, and on being full of hope before them and loving them. Psalm 107 finishes:

Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things;

let them consider the steadfast love of the LORD.3

Thankfully, of course, most people do not come to this extremity of distress as they strive to live in our postmodern setting—a setting that undermines truth and meaning, hope and moral order. Instead, both within and outside the churches, most people are in two minds, living in a state of confusion about whether certainty of truth and certainty of objective moral standards are possible.

In big questions of truth, questions concerning God and ultimate meaning, people are deeply in doubt. In poll after poll, George Barna has found that approximately two-thirds of Americans agree with statements such as the following: “There is no such thing as absolute truth. People can define truth in different ways and still be correct.” Among people under thirty, the numbers rise to around 80 percent. Many opinion polls confirm this widespread skepticism as to whether truth is possible. Our personal observations also confirm this trend when we watch television, listen to the radio, read the press, or have conversations with neighbors, coworkers, or classmates.

And yet, when it comes to matters of truth with regard to everyday life, everybody operates as if truth can be known with complete confidence. Everyone knows which side of the road to drive on, and all are aware of the necessity of stopping at red lights—except when they are ill, drunk, or being criminally foolish. Everyone knows that the sun will rise each morning and that the universe has a rational and trustworthy order to it—unless they are insane or, in very rare cases, become so troubled by postmodern skepticism that they can no longer function. Everyone knows that all human relationships depend on truthfulness in what is communicated, and on trusting the truthfulness of others—except, again, when people are mentally impaired through illness or through drink or drugs, or they are being hypocritical or purposefully misleading. We live, and we have to live each day, in the confidence that truth can be known. There is honor even among thieves; they have to be able to know when truth is being spoken in order to carry out a robbery or to dispose of stolen goods.

The same situation holds when we think about matters of moral order, or moral law. We have to know that some things are right and others are wrong. Just as with issues of truth, we find that people are pulled in two directions. They express doubt about ultimate moral certainty and about particular moral choices. All around us we find two views struggling with each other: the one we might label traditional or, more properly, Christian; the other, skeptical, relative, or postmodern. People do not think clearly, and this is true of almost all, whether claiming to be Christian or non-Christian. If we listen to people, even to ourselves, we find expressions of now one, now the other of these two ways of seeing our world.

This confusion and lack of clarity are revealed in the ways people respond to different questions. If asked regarding absolute truth or absolute moral standards—unalterable laws of right and wrong in human behavior—most people will answer in ways that show their commitment to relativism. The same is true if they are asked concerning a woman’s right to choose regarding abortion, or about people’s sexual freedom. As we saw in several of our examples in the first chapter, people may have strong views themselves against abortion, or pornography, or lyrics encouraging sexual violence against women, or unfaithfulness in marriage; but when they are asked whether everyone should have the same views, they claim no right to make such statements or “impose” their personal views on others; in other words, they express moral relativism.

However, if asked about the rise in crime or about lawlessness in their cities related to drugs and gang warfare, most people, though not all, will insist that we need stronger laws, harsher sentences, more police enforcement, and the like. If we ask about the sexual molestation of children,4 or about those who prey on the elderly to steal their money, or about other such acts against the defenseless, almost everyone will declare such behavior wicked and abominable. People respond passionately about such matters, believing with complete confidence that there is objective (nonrelative) evil done, that there is true guilt, and that there must be punishment.

To help us understand these confused responses, we will look more carefully at the two views that vie for our allegiance.

A CHRISTIAN (TRADITIONAL) VIEW

In a Christian or traditional view, morality and law are fixed and eternal. This firm belief in a universal moral law carries with it several other convictions that bear on the moral consciousness of all people.

First, there is a belief that all people are accountable to God, or to objective standards or principles of truth, justice, equity, and goodness. At the time of the founding of our nation, the views of almost everyone were shaped by a Judeo-Christian understanding, even among those who were not Christians. This was true of deists like Jefferson, and even of rationalists like Benjamin Franklin, as well as of people who professed Christian faith, such as John Witherspoon or George Washington. Today it is rather different. While over 90 percent of Americans say, “I believe in God,” there is not much content to that belief, and for many of us there is only a hazy relationship between the existence of God and ultimate moral law in the universe. Yet, when pushed on issues like child molestation, almost all Americans will affirm absolute notions of moral law.

Second, there is a widely held belief that morality and good laws express people’s responsibilities to one another. People recognize that we live in community and that, therefore, objective moral standards, and also society’s laws, must be applied to our relationships with our neighbors. Most Americans live this way and are deeply offended when individuals, businesses, or political figures act against these laws and responsibilities.

I cannot imagine anyone defending dairy producers who watered down their milk, then added melamine to it to increase the levels of protein, and then marketed this mixture as dried milk powder for babies. People are sickened by such appalling greed, and by the accompanying failure to reflect on the damage to the health of the babies who were given this milk to drink: malnutrition, kidney stones, kidney failure, severe illness, and in several cases, infant death. What is more horrifying is that those who perpetrated such wickedness did so in full awareness that great numbers of cats and dogs had become sick and died a year earlier when melamine was added to pet food for the same purpose of increasing measurable levels of protein.

Even those who espouse relativism in principle and who teach that morals are relative will take a passionately “traditional” view in actual cases, and they will do this without realizing the inconsistency and contradiction in what they are communicating. An example is my wife’s teacher at a university in the St. Louis area, where Vicki was taking courses toward a Master of Arts in French and education. One of the professors teaching an education course was a passionate relativist. One evening, he spent four hours of lecture time insisting that his class of present and would-be teachers should never impose their own moral values on their students in school—whether they were teaching at the primary, secondary, or tertiary level. He used examples about sexuality, homosexuality, pornography, human life, and other issues of personal moral choice.

The very next week he spent much of the four hours inveighing against the loss of truthfulness among students, the growing disrespect for authority, the widespread cheating on exams, and the casual practice of plagiarism when pupils download material from the Internet and paste it into their papers without attribution. It never seemed to occur to him that he was being grossly inconsistent. When it came to issues that mattered to him as a teacher, he had a firm set of objective moral standards and laws, and a strong sense of the moral responsibility of his students.

Third, despite what many have been taught (that humans are born basically good), there is still a widespread recognition that human beings are sinful from the heart and that we all need to be restrained by moral teaching in schools and churches, and by laws and law officers. Benjamin Franklin insisted that people need to be taught morality and law—even though he appears to have had no Christian belief himself. He thought such instruction was necessary to train people in what is right and to help restrain the human tendency to selfishness and evil. About a month before his death Franklin wrote to a friend, Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale University, in reply to Stiles’s inquiry about Franklin’s views on religion:

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble.5

Today, even though many people would not state the issues in the same manner as Franklin did, yet most of our neighbors realize that children need discipline and instruction. Even those who do not provide moral instruction and discipline for their own children somehow believe that it is the responsibility of the schools or the government to do something about these matters. That was my mother’s experience as a teacher of first- through third-grade children in a small country school in the south of England. The parents expected that she would teach their children reading, writing, and math; but they also expected her to teach them manners and morals.

We should note here that this is one of the areas where people become open to the gospel of Christ, because God’s image and God’s moral wisdom—both present in all human beings—act as a goad on their consciences when they find themselves in positions of responsibility for their children. Many people become open to attending church and thinking about the Christian faith when they start their families. They recognize that their sons and daughters are not morally perfect, that they have struggles with self-centeredness, pride, resistance to authority, and many other issues. New parents look out at the surrounding culture and realize that it is not giving much moral direction to their sons and daughters. They feel inadequately prepared to instruct their children themselves, and so they send (if not bring) them to church in the hope that they will get assistance in this task.

This sense of responsibility in parents is a wonderful quality, for it is one of those areas where the Holy Spirit brings his testimony to bear on people’s hearts and draws them toward the truth. Such areas of the Spirit’s witness are always present in people’s lives, as Paul declares to the pagans in Lystra: “He has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.”6

One of the most powerful means of witness is the need for moral order and for mutual moral obligation between people, what some call natural law. While such an expression is, in a sense, appropriate because this is a constant human reality, the Bible does not refer to this reality as natural law, but rather it credits God as the author of these laws known by all peoples on the earth. He is the true source of this moral wisdom and the law on the human heart; and he gives both of these generously to all people.7

This universal reality of moral wisdom and law is one of the primary reasons that C. S. Lewis’s books Mere Christianity, The Abolition of Man, and the Narnia stories and science fiction trilogy have been so greatly used by God to draw people to faith in Christ. This is also true of the apologetic work of Francis Schaeffer,8 and of the preaching and books of Tim Keller, such as The Reason for God.

Our task is to pray for wisdom in order to be sensitive to these areas of the Spirit’s testimony in a person’s heart or in a particular human culture, and then cooperate with God’s work by sharing the good news of who the true God is, and that he is the author and giver of moral law. In such a case, where we experience a sense of our obligation to others, we may pray (to adapt Psalm 119:18),

Open my [their] eyes, that I [they] may behold

wondrous things out of your law.