The Truth War (8 page)

Paul says in Romans 9:31–32 that “Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law.” In other words, regardless of how meticulous they may have been in their external observance of God's law, their
unbelief
was sufficient to exclude them from the kingdom. “They being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:3–4). They doubted the truth of Christ, and that proved spiritually fatal in spite of how well they had perfected an external display of piety.

Notice: Paul expressly says they were pursuing righteousness. But they were looking for it in all the wrong places. Because they clung to wrong
beliefs
about the righteousness God requires and rejected the righteousness Christ would have provided for them, they were eternally condemned. Their failure was first of all an error about a vital article of faith, not merely a flaw in their practice. Their whole belief system (not merely their behavior) was wrong. Unbelief was enough to condemn them, regardless of how they acted.

It is not kindness at all, but the worst form of cruelty, to suggest that what people believe doesn't really matter much if they feel spiritual and do good. In fact, on the face of it, that claim is a blatant contradiction of the gospel message.

Besides,
real
righteousness simply cannot exist in isolation from belief in the truth. To make the case for any concept of “practical good” that subsists apart from sound doctrine, one quickly has to remove just about everything that is
truly
righteous from the definition of
good.
Naturally, it doesn't take very long for that kind of thinking to undermine the foundations of Christianity itself.

Brian McLaren, for example, goes so far as to suggest that followers of other religions can also be followers of Christ in practical terms without leaving other religions or identifying with Christianity. “I don't believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion,” he says. “It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus
and
remain within their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts.”
³

McLaren is leading the parade for those who do not seem to think wrong beliefs, superstition, false religion, and false gods are evils that people need to be delivered from. Instead, he suggests that even the false religions themselves may ultimately be redeemable:

Although I don't hope all Buddhists will become (cultural) Christians, I do hope all who feel so called will become Buddhist followers of Jesus; I believe they should be given that opportunity and invitation. I don't hope all Jews or Hindus will become members of the Christian religion. But I do hope all who feel so called will become Jewish or Hindu followers of Jesus.

Ultimately, I hope that Jesus will save Buddhism, Islam and every other religion, including the Christian religion, which often seems to need saving about as much as any other religion does. (In this context, I do wish all Christians would become followers of Jesus, but perhaps this is too much to ask. After all, I'm not doing such a hot job of it myself.)
⁴

The logical starting point of McLaren's book A Generous Orthodoxy is his belief that doctrinal distinctives are of “marginal” value.
⁵
A predictably postmodern dubiousness seems to color McLaren's treatment of practically all objective truth claims—and it's a skepticism that extends even to the authority of Scripture itself. He seems deeply suspicious of any truth-based definition of orthodoxy. He writes as if orthopraxy (practical righteousness) were what really matters most. In fact, one gets the impression from the book that he thinks right behavior automatically trumps right belief. When McLaren finally gives a description of what he means by orthodoxy, even that turns out to be about “how we search for a kind of truth . . .”
⁶
rather than about the truth itself.

Despite his well-known preference for ambiguity, McLaren is surprisingly frank about his perspective on this. He believes both the church's methodology and the Christian message itself need to be constantly in flux: “Our message and methodology have changed, do change, and must change if we are faithful to the ongoing and unchanging mission of Jesus Christ.”
⁷
He says the message changes “not because we've got it wrong and we're closer to finally ‘getting it right,'” but because the “context” of the culture in which we live is dynamic. We must, after all, keep up with these postmodern times.

Notice: McLaren acknowledges that an ever-changing message does not bring anyone any closer to “getting it right,” and he is not the least bit troubled by that. In the final analysis, he says, “‘getting it right' is beside the point: the point is ‘being and doing good' as followers of Jesus in our unique time and place, fitting in with the ongoing story of God's saving love for planet Earth.”
⁸
All of that is an exemplary statement of the typical postmodern perspective.

But the thing to notice here is that in McLaren's system, orthodoxy is really all about practice, not about true beliefs. While acknowledging that this idea is “scandalous,” he nonetheless affirms it as the central message of his book.
⁹
It is frankly hard to see such a perspective as anything other than plain, old-fashioned unbelief, rooted in a rejection of the clear teaching of Scripture. McLaren has elevated the sinner's own good works above the importance of faith grounded in the truth of the gospel. No wonder he feels such an affinity with Buddhists and Hindus—at the end of the day, many of his ideas about the role of righteousness and good works in religion are not fundamentally different from theirs.

And bear in mind that in McLaren's own moral hierarchy, one of the highest values (if not the supreme virtue by which all others are measured) is a particular notion of “humility”—namely, the standard postmodern species of humility, which starts with the assumption that certainty, assurance, and bold convictions are arrogant and therefore wrong. So the ramifications of McLaren's continual stress on right
practice
apart from an equal stress on right
belief
turn out to be profound. “Right practice” by his definition virtually begins with the relinquishment of all certainty about “right belief.” One gets the distinct impression that objective, propositional truth means so little to McLaren that he would consider a broad-minded Hindu who always tries to speak positively and tolerantly about others' beliefs a better “Christian” than the preacher who openly curses someone else for teaching a wrong view of the law and gospel.

That, of course, would make the apostle Paul a bad Christian (Galatians 1:8–9)—not to mention Jesus (Matthew 23).

No one except the grossest hypocrite would ever suggest that how we act is utterly immaterial as long as we subscribe to the right creeds and confessions. McLaren nevertheless begins his book with precisely that kind of caricature. He claims that “many orthodoxies have always and everywhere assumed that ortho
doxy
(right thinking and opinion about the gospel) and ortho
praxy
(right practice of the gospel) could and should be separated, so that one could at least be proud of getting an A in orthodoxy even when one earned a D in orthopraxy, which is only an elective class anyway.”
¹⁰

In reality, no true Christian anywhere has ever deliberately advocated such a twisted view of orthodoxy. Scripture is clear: “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also” (James 2:26). A high view of orthodoxy cannot nullify or undermine the importance of orthopraxy
.
That might
seem
to be the case if you start with the presupposition that certainty and strong convictions are always wrong and arguments about the truth value of propositions are always arrogant. But surely from a biblical perspective we can recognize the truth of James 2 without automatically discounting sound doctrine and settled assurance altogether.

BIBLICAL ORTHODOXY
ENCOMPASSES ORTHOPRAXY.
BOTH RIGHT DOCTRINE
AND RIGHT LIVING ARE
ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL
AND TOTALLY INSEPARABLE
FOR THE TRUE CHILD
OF GOD. THAT IS THE
CONSISTENT TEACHING OF
CHRIST HIMSELF.

Biblical orthodoxy encompasses orthopraxy. Both right doctrine and right living are absolutely essential and totally inseparable for the true child of God. That is the consistent teaching of Christ Himself. “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31–32).

Furthermore, Scripture does clearly and consistently teach the primacy of right belief as the foundation of right behavior. In other words, righteous living is properly seen as a fruit of authentic faith, and never the other way around. Pious actions devoid of any real love for the truth do not even constitute genuine orthopraxy by any measure. On the contrary, that is the worst kind of self-righteousness hypocrisy.

So truth is worth fighting over. As we have seen, it is the one thing in this world the church is supposed to fight for. Lose that fight and all else is lost.

It is obvious to most sensible people that not every point of truth is of
equal
importance, and therefore every trifling disagreement does not need to be pursued with equal fervor. In fact, one of the most important points in the whole issue of spiritual warfare is the question of what is insignificant and what is really worth fighting for. (I addressed that question in some detail more than a decade ago in a book titled
Reckless Faith.
¹¹
It is a question that deserves more careful consideration than most Christians evidently care to give it.)

But Brian McLaren leapfrogs over that part of the discussion, because one of his fundamental presuppositions is that there is really not much in the realm of propositional truth that
is
worth fighting over. He gives a somewhat qualified affirmation of the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. He then repeatedly insinuates that once you get past those two ancient creeds, the only issues at stake are mere “denominational distinctives” and doctrinal trivia that should all be relegated to the “marginal” category.
¹²

That is simply not an honest assessment of what is happening in the Truth War today. The main battlegrounds—the ideas McLaren himself spends most of his book attacking—are the objectivity and knowability of truth as it is revealed in God's Word. So what is
really
at stake are the very same truths the serpent sought to subvert when he asked Eve, “Has God indeed said . . . ?” (Genesis 3:1). They are the same truths that have
always
been at the heart of the Truth War—the inspiration, authority, inerrancy, sufficiency, and perspicuity (clarity) of Scripture—not to mention several essential aspects of the gospel message. Surely
those
are issues that cannot be swept aside or discounted as marginal in the name of a twisted notion of charity or false humility. When you reflect on how much of the Christian message is undermined by postmodernist notions about truth, it turns out the current controversies are infinitely more serious than McLaren wants to pretend.

Furthermore, when you realize that
not one
of those issues is mentioned in the two creeds McLaren names (because those doctrines weren't even seriously challenged by the early heretics the creeds were written to answer)—it should be instantly obvious that there are several very crucial doctrines worth fighting for beyond the few that are catalogued in a couple of Christendom's most ancient creeds. The vast majority of Christians throughout history have also understood that the truth of the gospel is even worth
dying
for. It is frankly difficult to see how anyone viewing truth from a post-modernist perspective could ever begin to understand why.

Truth—including historical facts, assurance, and objective, distinct, knowable, authoritative propositions that demand to be embraced as true—is an essential concept in authentic Christianity. All the other aspects of religious experience flow from the truth we believe and simply give expression to it. Take away the ground of truth, and all you have is fluctuating religious sentiment.

Remember, the apostle Paul called the church “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). We have a duty to uphold the truth and to wield the sword of God's Word against every human speculation and every worldly hypothesis raised up against the knowledge of God. The struggle will continue until every thought is brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). The church
must
pursue that fight, and if church leaders are not setting the example, they are not being faithful to their calling.

WHY APOSTASY IS SUCH A THREAT

Ever since that day in the garden when the serpent tempted Eve, he has relentlessly attacked the truth with lies, using the same strategies over and over to sow doubt and disbelief in the human mind. “We are not ignorant of his devices” (2 Corinthians 2:11).

The form of his evil dialectic rarely changes. He
questions
the truth God has revealed (“Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?” [Genesis 3:1]). Then he
contradicts
what God has said (“You will not surely die” [v. 4]). Finally, he
concocts
an alternative version of “truth”
(“God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” [v. 5]). The devil's alternative credo often has a few carefully chosen elements of truth in the mix—but always diluted and thoroughly blended with falsehoods, contradictions, misrepresentations, distortions, and every other imaginable perversion of reality. Add it all up and the bottom line is a big lie.