Here I Stand

I rented the film Luther last week. I don’t think that this movie did very well at the box office even though it portrays the life of one of the most influential men in history. Actually, Gerda’s parents said that their pastor went and saw it and he was the only one in the theatre. That didn’t surprise me because when I watched it at home, I was alone too.

Martin Luther turned Christianity upside down because of his conviction that the scriptures had sole authority over all matters of faith. Sadly, in Luther’s day, he once wrote, “Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.”

Sadly, even in our day fallacy, religious hocus-pocus and hypocrisy drive the Hummers while truth takes a bus.

Consider this quote that I found that describes a church growth movement that is becoming very prevalent among Evangelicals: The movement is called Emergent; it’s the Church growth philosophy that dominated last year’s church planting summit in Vancouver. Here is how this movement is defined:
"...many individual Christians are deconstructing each area of their Christian faith and analyzing it piece by piece. Each individual experiences his or her own unique journey through this deconstruction process. One observed phenomenon is that many Christians subsequently start to reconstruct their Christianity thus finding a faith that, while basically Christian, is often distinct from the more established churches…. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_Church)

This is nothing more than a restatement of Liberal Christianity, but what is frightening is that it is coming from the pens and keyboards of Christian leaders who would otherwise classify themselves as conservative, likely only because they voted that way.

The Church must always be on guard against the leaven of the Pharisees, it works its way into the church and its presence is difficult to discern. The cleverest of Satan’s perversions of the gospel is to use rhetoric that sounds biblical and Evangelical but the meaning is slowly being twisted to mean something completely different.

Look at the first phrase in the quote, “many individual Christians are deconstructing each area of their Christian faith.” What do they mean by “Deconstructing?”

One definition describes it as “a philosophical theory of criticism… that seeks to expose deep-seated contradictions in a work by delving below its surface meaning.”

It is a term that is tied to the Philosophy of postmodernism,
“Like postmodernism, deconstructionism…. refutes any attempts to produce a history, or a truth. In other words, the multiplicities and contingencies of human experience necessarily bring knowledge down to the local and specific level, and challenge the tendency to centralize power through the claims of an ultimate truth which must be accepted or obeyed by all.” (http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/ decon-body.html).

Maybe this approach to Christianity does not worry or bother you, in fact it sounds like a good idea. Let me ask you, what if this philosophy was applied to other areas of life? What if we said, “let’s deconstruct modern medicine?” Would you want an Emergent doctor to tell you that lump in your breast is just an air bubble because that’s the truth that he prefers? Would you trust your kids to an Emergent doctor, or an Emergent teacher?

How about accountants; would you trust your finances to an Emergent accountant? How about the finances of the church? Is money more important than doctrine in the church? Of course not!

So why should your faith, which determines the eternal destiny of your soul be any less important?

This is an important and relevant issue in our church. Eldon once told me about a church that he attended where the pastor was known for his conservatism. Once a visiting pastor preached a message that was blatantly Liberal. Eldon noticed that the members either didn’t care or could not discern that there was a problem. That’s a frightening thought for any pastor who values the Word of God and loves his Church.
Let’s turn to the authority of our faith and see what it has to say

9 For we are God's co-workers. You are God's field, God's building. 10 According to God's grace that was given to me, as a skilled master builder I have laid a foundation, and another builds on it. But each one must be careful how he builds on it, 11 because no one can lay any other foundation than what has been laid--that is, Jesus Christ. 12 If anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or straw, 13 each one's work will become obvious, for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire; the fire will test the quality of each one's work. 14 If anyone's work that he has built survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone's work is burned up, it will be lost, but he will be saved; yet it will be like an escape through fire. 16 Don't you know that you are God's sanctuary and that the Spirit of God lives in you? 17 If anyone ruins God's sanctuary, God will ruin him; for God's sanctuary is holy, and that is what you are.
1 Corinthians 3:9-17

Instead of deconstructing the Christian… instead of tearing it down, we ought to be building upon it with the Word of God. As Luther once said, “You should not believe your conscience and your feelings more than the word which the Lord who receives sinners preaches to you.”

I have noticed a subtle theological slide over the past few years, maybe it’s been going on longer. We’re like a frog who does not notice that he is slowly being boiled in a kettle.

We need to be aware of the forces that are at work to dilute our consciences and convictions. In his book, “The Gagging of God,” DA Carson explains some of the elements of our culture that wage war against the truth. He prefaces them with these ominous words,
“In my most sober moods I sometimes wonder if the ugly face of what I refer to as philosophical pluralism is the most dangerous threat to the gospel since the rise of the Gnostic heresy in the second century….” (p 10).

They are:
1. Secularism: the marginalization of religion. Christianity has become something that many Christians do for an hour on Sunday morning, but has no impact on the other 167 hours of the week.
2. New Age Theosophy: This is the prevalent religious world view of our society and pervades our culture and the church. Carson writes that in the New Age movement, “the focus is self, evil is reinterpreted and thus emasculated; and any notion of ... God whose wrath has been and will be displayed is utterly repugnant.” (41).
a. Carson warns that “There are two important implications for the preacher of the Gospel.” First, “a person who is largely biblically illiterate but who has absorbed substantial doses of New Age theosophy will hear us to be saying things we do not really mean…. ‘Sin’ will be read as ‘bad things’ or perhaps ‘bad karma’- but not at all as something whose badness derives from its offensiveness to the God who has made us and to whom we must give an account.” (41)
b. The second implication of the prevalence of the New Age movement is “that many ostensible believers inside our churches… have inevitably picked up the surrounding chatter and, being poorly grounded in scripture and theology, have incorporated into their understanding of Christianity some frankly incompatible elements…. In this framework, there is going on… a ‘Battle for the mind’” within Evangelicalism. (41-42)
3. Rising biblical illiteracy
4. Vague but emphatic appeals to the cosmic Christ
5. The sheer pragmatism of Baby Busters: the age cohort born after 1960 are described as Gen-X’ers and Baby Busters, because they represent a bust in the Baby Boom that came after WWII and prior to the invention of the Pill. “Busters live with all sorts of logical inconsistencies…. They are cynical, not idealistic. They vehemently deny the existence of absolutes…. Their emotions so rule their heads that very frequently no amount of argumentation is adequate.” (45)
6. The hegemony of Pop Culture:
7. Rugged Individualism that is veering toward narcissism
8. Freudian Fraud: where human nature and conduct is reduced to elements of matter, energy, time and chance. It has created a therapeutic culture bulldozing moral responsibility.

These are some of the elements that are at war with our traditional understanding of Christianity. These are some of the cultural forces that would deconstruct the faith once delivered to the Saints, the faith that you accepted when you decided to become a Christian.

The watchword of the Reformers was Semplera Reformanda- “always reforming,” not deforming to the lowest common denominator, not conforming to culture, but being shaped and molded and reformed by the Word of God into the image of His Son.

We need to wake up, open our eyes and have the courage of Luther to say, “Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen!” The hope for the church is not found in the next and the newest, but in the ancient and absolute truth of the Bible.

I want to suggest three things that we can do to defend ourselves from the forces of deconstructionism:
1.

Learn to think biblically- read the Bible and filter everything through a biblical worldview.
2. Become a Student of history. Most of the error that is creeping into the church is simply a rehash of ancient heresies.
3. Don't allow yourself to be swayed by every wind of doctrine. Educate yourself on the philosophies

that are at war with your faith.