{"id":6677,"date":"2013-12-06T09:28:30","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T09:28:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/?page_id=6677"},"modified":"2013-12-06T09:32:04","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T09:32:04","slug":"truth-truth","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/truth-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"‘MY TRUTH’? OR ‘THE TRUTH’?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Stephen Green<\/span><\/p>\n

First Published in Christian Voice November 2012<\/p>\n

Mark 12:32 And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he… <\/b><\/p>\n

We try to keep abreast of what is going on in our nation in the Christian Voice office and also to keep a look-out for trends, good and bad, in the church.\u00a0 We do make a point of not criticising churches or dignitaries, having been on the receiving end of less than pleasant comments ourselves from time to time.\u00a0 On top of that, the internet age has made too many intra-church squabbles public and it just doesn’t appear to me to be edifying for the enemies of Christ to read about our differences.<\/p>\n

Having said that, a number of movements today are challenging traditional Christian doctrine and it might be a good thing to take a critical look at them.\u00a0 Given what I have said above, we shall try in this brief discussion to be as generous as possible to those we are investigating: the Inclusive Church, the Modern Church and the Progressive Church.<\/p>\n

Inclusive Church<\/b><\/p>\n

The ‘Inclusive Church’ and their friends the ‘Accepting Evangelicals’ seem to be everywhere today.\u00a0 So what do \u2018include\u2019 and \u2018accept\u2019 actually mean?\u00a0 Well, they boil down to nothing more than including and accepting homosexuals.\u00a0 Quite a few otherwise normal churches adhere to the ideas of ‘acceptance’ and ‘inclusivity’ but they are taken to their logical limit in the Metropolitan Community Church, the so-called ‘gay church’.<\/p>\n

It seems on the face of it peculiar to found a church with the express intention of denying that a particular activity which the church has consistently held to be sinful for the best part of two thousand years isn’t sinful after all.\u00a0 The reason is that the MCC founders desperately wanted to be Christian and even more desperately wanted to cling on to their homosexuality.\u00a0 That is probably why they have regularly been accused of being gay first and Christian a long way second.<\/p>\n

For the \u2018inclusives\u2019, and they probably won’t agree with this, scripture is filtered through personal experience, or to be blunt, through personal prejudice.\u00a0 Any texts which do not accord with one’s fallible human viewpoint are explained away.<\/p>\n

Peter Greensmith, who posted his testimony of release from homosexuality on our youth website, ‘Soldiers of Christ’, says: ‘The MCC spoke of the God of love, yet never mentioned sin and judgement.’\u00a0 It is uncomfortable to realise that there are quite a few churches like that today, and I am not sure they do their congregations much of a favour.<\/p>\n

However, to be fair, at least such churches and their leaders are trying to make their doctrines fit into a Christian grid, however odd the results might look.\u00a0 The fact that they so desperately want to put a different slant on Leviticus 18:22 or the story of Sodom, or Romans 1, or the meaning of ‘arsenokoitai’ shows paradoxically a respect for scripture, rather than a disrespect.<\/p>\n

The ‘InclusiveChurch’ and the ‘Accepting Evangelicals’ so want<\/i><\/b> to be scriptural.\u00a0 And although they claim to be ‘accepting’ they really want to be accepted<\/i><\/b> by the church at large and of course to convince the church of their point of view.<\/p>\n

And therein lies the danger.\u00a0 Without going into the theology, which I have done elsewhere, any degree of success for the \u2018Inclusives\u2019 and their fashionable heresy would mean a dilution of the whole of Christian doctrine, whether that would be intended or not.\u00a0 So although I have time for people who respect scripture to the extent that the \u2018Inclusives\u2019 do, and concede that genuine Christians seeking the Lord Jesus Christ are found within their ranks, I still have to oppose their revisionism.<\/p>\n

The Modern Church movement<\/b><\/p>\n

The ‘Modern Church’ began at the end of the 19th century as part of a movement to defend what they saw as new scientific findings and liberal biblical scholarship against what they saw as ‘fundamentalism’.\u00a0 There is much common ground between the modernists and the ‘inclusive’ and ‘accepting’ folk.<\/p>\n

Then again, there is some common ground between Modern Church and those of us of a traditional, Biblical Christian disposition.\u00a0 They say: ‘We take an open\u2011minded and thoughtful approach to Christian faith.’\u00a0 So do we.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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They expect their theology to be ‘public: talking the language of ordinary people, not that of a religious club’ and ‘relevant: engaging with what is going on in society, informing our faith and how we live’.\u00a0 So do we.<\/p>\n

They venture to say: ‘It is possible to think and talk about God in ways that make sense in our time and culture’.\u00a0 Indeed it is, in fact God always makes sense in every time and culture.\u00a0 They like ‘Critical scholarship: keeping up to date with good research, examining the implications of new insights and discoveries.’\u00a0 Who doesn’t, unless the scholarship is criticising the Bible itself?<\/p>\n

The Modern Church also encourage ‘Open discussion: freedom to explore ideas, ask questions and change our minds without fear of disapproval’.\u00a0 We are all for that.\u00a0 They also have a ‘Willingness to change: so that what we believe now can be expressed in the things our churches do and say.’\u00a0 I am not sure what that means, but we should all be willing to change and be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus (Romans 8:29).<\/p>\n

Syncretism<\/b><\/p>\n

However, the ModernChurch inclines also to syncretism, when they ‘understand’ that ‘Genuine faith is committed to the search for truth, wherever it comes from.’\u00a0 Wherever it comes from?\u00a0 and they ‘expect (their) theology to be\u00a0 respectful: willing to learn from others, within and outside Christianity, since we accept that we don’t have all the answers.’<\/p>\n

Now hang on a minute.\u00a0 We<\/i><\/b> may not have all the answers, but God<\/i><\/b> has all the answers in Christ through the Holy Spirit and Scripture conveys the mind of God in Christ, who is the incarnate Word.\u00a0 In a masterpiece of self-parody, the Modern Church website says: ‘We never have absolute certainty.’\u00a0 Are they absolutely certain of that?<\/p>\n

In being open to ideas ‘outside Christianity’ and searching for truth ‘wherever it comes from’, Modern Church is embarking, as I suggested, on syncretism, which we can define as ‘the attempted reconciliation or union of different or opposing principles, practices, or parties, as in philosophy or religion.’<\/p>\n

The different religions in the world hold different and indeed opposing beliefs.\u00a0 A pagan or an Animist is polytheistic, worshipping aspects of creation, rivers, the sea, death, fertility, for example.\u00a0 A Buddhist or a Sikh is pantheistic, believing in an impersonal god existing in everything.\u00a0 A Christian or a Jew believes in a personal and approachable God, distinct from his creation.\u00a0 Only one can be right, even at an entry-level.<\/p>\n

Progressive Christianity<\/b><\/p>\n

The Progressive Christianity Network goes a few steps further, indeed, a few steps too far.\u00a0 It also has a nod towards inclusivity, inviting ‘all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting that they become like us in order to be acceptable’.\u00a0 This includes, but is ‘not limited to’ ‘believers and agnostics, conventional Christians and questioning sceptics’ and rather strangely, ‘those who hope for a better world and those who have lost hope’.<\/p>\n

PCN also ‘find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty, more value in questioning than in absolutes.’\u00a0 On Planet PCN is better to travel than to arrive.\u00a0 Like the Modern Church, they so have to avoid those absolutes.\u00a0 Absolutes are absolutely forbidden in PCN.<\/p>\n

Their website says they are a place ‘where contemporary thought and understanding matter as much as scripture and tradition’, which is really to say the former trump the latter.\u00a0 If you are going, right at the outset, to set ‘contemporary thought and understanding’, or to put it another way, ‘early-twenty-first-century opinions’, over the eternal word of God, you open yourself up to every wrong-headed idea going.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So it is that if ModernChurch verges on the syncretistic, the Progressive Christianity Network goes the whole Postmodern hog.\u00a0 In Progressive Christianity what is true for you is true, for you.\u00a0 What is true for me, is also true, for me, that is.\u00a0 There are many \u2018stories\u2019, and many ‘truths’.<\/p>\n

This is said explicitly in something called ‘the Eight Points first formulated by the Center for Progressive Christianity in America’.\u00a0 The ‘8 points’ are valued by PCN ‘not as a creed or a statement of faith’, (of course not) ‘but as an expression of how we live as Christians.’<\/p>\n

PCN claim to be ‘Christians who…<\/p>\n

‘1. Have found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus.’\u00a0 They mustn’t be too dogmatic.\u00a0 They have not found ‘the way’ to the Father in Jesus Christ.\u00a0 They have only found\u00a0 ‘an approach’.<\/p>\n

It gets worse.\u00a0 The Progressive Christianity Network:<\/p>\n

‘2. Recognise the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the gateway to God’s realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us.’<\/p>\n

Are Postmodern Progressive ‘Christians’ Christians?<\/b><\/p>\n

So are the PCN Christians at all or are they just pretending?\u00a0 Acts 11:26 tells us that the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch, after the persecution which arose about Stephen.\u00a0 And in that persecution, Saul had sought out those who were of ‘this way’ (Acts 9:2).\u00a0 And ‘the way’ which was being persecuted, first by the Jewish leaders, and then by the Romans, did not merely claim that Jesus was just one ‘gateway’ to God among many.<\/p>\n

Rather, the Apostle Peter told the masses:<\/p>\n

Acts 2:36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.<\/b><\/p>\n

He went even further in front of the Sanhedrin, when examined about the miraculous healing of the lame man:<\/p>\n

Acts 4:10 Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. 11 This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. 12\u00a0 Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. <\/b><\/p>\n

There is not the slightest scope for a Postmodern interpretation of that passage.\u00a0 There is no other gateway to God apart from that found in Christ Jesus.\u00a0 Is everyone saved by his own truth?\u00a0 What did the Lord himself say, and what was the imperative for the Apostles?<\/p>\n

Mark 16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. 16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. <\/b><\/p>\n

That is a far cry from recognising the ‘faithfulness’ of those who are not members of the body of Christ.\u00a0 Those who do not choose the narrow path of Christ are damned, in his own words. The Apostle Paul agreed, adding the necessity to add verbal confession to heart belief:<\/p>\n

Rom 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. <\/b><\/p>\n

And whatever is going on their hearts, that outward confession seems beyond the ‘Progressive Christians’.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u00a0All things under his feet<\/b><\/p>\n

The Roman persecution arose because the Christians refused to acknowledge that worshipping Caesar was true even for those who worshipped Caesar.\u00a0 They insisted that there was one higher than Caesar, indeed, one higher than every earthly and spiritual power.\u00a0 As Paul reminds the Christians in Ephesus, God the Father has exalted the Lord Jesus by his power:<\/p>\n

Eph 1:20\u00a0 Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, 21\u00a0 Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: 22\u00a0 And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, 23\u00a0 Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. <\/b><\/p>\n

No Christian can admit there are other ways to God, when Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, has told Timothy:<\/p>\n

1Tim 2:5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; <\/b><\/p>\n

The scribe with whom we opened told Jesus he had spoken ‘the truth’, not ‘truth for me’.<\/p>\n

The Apostle Thomas wanted to know ‘the way’ Jesus was going to heaven.\u00a0 And he received his famous and dramatic answer:<\/p>\n

John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. <\/b><\/p>\n

Christ Jesus himself is ‘the way’, not ‘a way’.\u00a0 On top of that he is ‘the truth’, not ‘a truth’, or ‘truth for Thomas’, but the objective truth.\u00a0 If other people’s ways are not ‘the way’ which is Christ, they are not the way to God.\u00a0 And if their ‘truth’ is not Jesus Christ, their ‘truth’ is not true even for them.<\/p>\n

A limit to tolerance<\/b><\/p>\n

The website christianity.co.nz says this:<\/p>\n

‘Tolerance of other views is one of the pillars of Postmodernism. However, there is one group of people to whom this tolerance is not extended, those who believe truth to be important! This intolerance is especially directed to those who think others might be wrong. Postmodern analyst Frederick Turner, for instance, in “The Future of the Gods: Notes Towards a Postmodern Religion”, calls for tolerance and syncretism. Yet, in the same article he calls evangelical Christianity a “junk religion”!’<\/p>\n

The Lord Jesus had a fascinating philosophical discussion with Pilate, which concluded with our Lord speaking about ‘the truth’, an expression, by the way, which occurs 88 times in the Bible, 68 of them in the New Testament:<\/p>\n

John 18:37 Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.<\/b><\/p>\n

But Pilate, just like those in the Progressive Christianity Network, simply did not get it:<\/p>\n

John 18:38 Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Perhaps Pilate was the first Postmodernist.\u00a0 But he was also presiding, or attempting to preside, over a court of law.\u00a0 In a court of law the truth matters.\u00a0 Now it may be that the accused has completely convinced himself that he did not do the break-in of which he is accused.\u00a0 But it does not matter a jot that this\u00a0 belief is ‘true for him’ if the whole street saw him smash the window and climb in.\u00a0 The court must find out the truth of the matter, not ‘a truth’.\u00a0 In practical life, Postmodernism fails the test.\u00a0 The court of law is where the rubber hits the road and the Postmodernism of PCN has no grip on the road of reality.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/b><\/p>\n

In a final twist, the ‘Progressive Christians’ ‘Understand the sharing of bread and wine in Jesus’ name to be a representation of an ancient vision of God’s feast for all peoples.’<\/p>\n

Well, if they understand it like that, they have a different feast from the one which the Lord actually instituted, which was a Passover feast, not the tabernacles feast for all nations, but a communion with the Lord’s body and blood (1Cor 10:16), a remembrance of his passion and sacrifice (Luke 22:19), which shows the Lord’s death until he returns (1 Cor 11:26)..<\/p>\n

Without communion, and without confessing Jesus Christ as the living expression of the truth from an objective viewpoint, it is impossible to acknowledge those Postmodernists who claim to be Christians as Christians at all.\u00a0 If everyone’s ‘truth’ is equally valid, there is no need for evangelism, or to pray for labourers to be sent into the harvest field.\u00a0 As the Lord’s disciples are those who keep his words and do them, no Postmodernist can qualify.\u00a0 Anyone can say they are a Christian.\u00a0 It is rather convenient on occasions to do so.\u00a0 But a tree is known by its fruits, and there just wouldn’t be enough evidence to convict any Postmodernist of being a part of the Body of Christ.\u00a0 We must pray that those sucked unwittingly into this anti-Christian movement will repent and find salvation in that name which is above every name, and believe and confess the Lord Jesus Christ as the<\/i><\/b> way, the<\/i><\/b> truth and the<\/i><\/b> life.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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