Isaiah felt crushed by the weight of a world of wicked and worthless words pressing down upon him. Seeing God and hearing the flaming voices, singular in purpose of praise, exposed Isaiah’s own life of unclean speech. In that room, profane and purposeless talk held no place. But this did not end his story. He judged himself worthy of death, but God had more grace to give, as he does with us.

Some people have written bestsellers documenting their entrance into heaven. They claim to have died and returned to tell us what they saw. Suffice it to say, their accounts rarely match accounts of similar events recorded in Scripture. Those taken into the throne room — like Isaiah, for example — do not tell us about seeing their favorite loved ones or eating their favorite snacks.
“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne” (Isaiah 6:1), Isaiah begins. He details how the end of this King’s robe filled the entire temple. He documents mighty beings lit on fire, flying around the King’s throne, shouting, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of armies.” The foundations tremble at the sound of their thunderous voices (Isaiah 6:1–4).
Isaiah does not sigh with relief, or whistle for his long-lost dog. Eyes from the throne pierce him like sword thrusts. The prophet, in response, calls down a curse upon himself: “Woe is me! For I am lost” (Isaiah 6:5).
Isaiah unravels before the Holy One who knows him completely: every sin, every twisted motive, every secret deed. He throws the gavel down upon himself and immediately pleads guilty. Did he even know what sin was before this moment?
And as Isaiah sees what I take to be the preincarnate Son upon the throne (John 12:41), he smites himself for, of all things, the use of his tongue.
Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of armies! (Isaiah 6:5)
His eyes see the Holy King of Israel, the God of armies, and he does not run to sit on his lap, but falls to his face, confessing the evil, not only of his tongue, but of the tongues he lived among on earth. Here he did not lament that he dwelled among a people of sexual immorality, murder, or idolatry. What he said, and what the people said — their conversation — horrified him before the Righteous One.
The Sin of Careless Speech
If we each saw the Lord today, we would dread how unclean our mouths have been. Take inventory of yourself: hasty words, cursing words, violent words, lustful words, blaspheming words, false words, lying words, gossiping words, flattering words, harsh and belittling words. Just how many rats have proceeded from that sewer?
Paul, in bringing all humanity under condemnation before God, quotes the Psalms to indict us:
“Their throat is an open grave;they use their tongues to deceive.”“The venom of asps is under their lips.”“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” (Romans 3:13–14)
But this is the Old Testament, we may think. Isaiah and the psalmists didn’t know Christ as we do. Their God, all lightning and thunder, had not yet fully revealed his merciful side.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
Christianity tells the world what it does not wish to hear. We should not expect to be embraced by those whose thoughts and deeds contradict the truths of our faith. Nor should we seek to make our faith more palatable, lest the salt lose its savor.

There are times in history when Christianity feels its place in ­society coming under threat. As it finds itself pushed to the margins, two temptations emerge. The first is an angry sense of entitlement, an impulse to denounce the entire world and withdraw into cultural isolation. In the early twentieth century, American Fundamentalism offered a good example of this tendency, renouncing public engagement and defining itself against alcohol, evolution, the ­movies—characteristic productions of the society by which it felt attacked. Arguably, we see something of the same thing today in evangelical support for Donald Trump, though in this case populist Protestantism is contending for ­America’s future rather than retreating from its present. I dare say readers of The Christian Century wish that truculent evangelicals would take the Benedict ­Option.
The second tendency is more subtle and more seductive. While appearing to be valiant for truth, it conforms Christianity to the spirit of the age. If fundamentalist fist-shaking is the temptation of the ragamuffin masses, accommodation appeals to those who seek a seat at the table among ­society’s elite. And these elite aspirants often blame the masses when their invitation to high table fails to materialize.
Over the last few years, America has witnessed plenty of both tendencies. We’ve seen the anger of the evangelicals who think the country is being stolen from them, and we’ve detected the condescension of those who blame their less urbane coreligionists for the woes of the Church and the nation. Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is nothing new under the sun. As often as Christianity has had its cultured despisers, it has had adherents who respond by warring against the age or by making entreaties to the despisers—often reinterpreting the anti-Christian sentiments of the moment as fulfillments of the true faith.
Today, countless apologists insist that a rejection of Christian sexual morality is actually a fulfillment of the Christian imperative of love, which they gloss as the imperative to “include.” But one of the first of these apologists, and arguably the most sophisticated, was Friedrich Schleiermacher. He is credibly called the father of modern theology, which really means modern liberal Protestant theology. Liberal Protestants pioneered the tactic of labeling critics “anti-modern” rather than engaging their arguments. Only in the last few decades, as liberal Protestantism has declined as a cultural force, have historians recognized that theologies framed to reject modern individualism, subjectivism, and historicism are themselves uniquely modern.
When Schleiermacher was a young man, an older, confessional Protestantism still had ownership of institutional culture in his native Germany. But even then society was in transition, and ­Christianity was losing ground among elites. The first generation of historical critics was shaking old Reformation certainties. Theology, once queen of the sciences and the crown of university education, was subject to fundamental challenges from Enlightenment thinking. The empiricism of thinkers such as David Hume called into question the traditional proofs for God’s existence and the credibility of miracles. Influenced by Hume, Immanuel Kant ruled out-of-bounds any possibility of knowing transcendent realities. In effect, Kantian philosophy, which rapidly came to dominate German intellectual life, made it impossible to sustain classical Christian theism. In the world of Kant and his successors, God was perhaps useful as a presupposition by which to anchor moral duty—what Kant called a “postulate” of practical reason—but theological notions served no substantive purpose. At the same time, Romanticism was placing sentiment or feeling at the heart of what it means to be human. This, too, ran counter to inherited forms of Christianity, with their dogmas and systematic theologies full of close arguments and fine ­distinctions. Christianity was being cordoned off from the influential modes of inquiry that inspired excitement and enjoyed the prestige of the new.
It was in this context that Schleiermacher produced his brilliant work On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. He did not dispute Kant’s strictures against metaphysics, which entailed that we cannot know God’s revelation and thereby denied that Christian doctrine has authority. Instead, he attacked Kant’s reliance on argument and analysis. God, Schleiermacher insisted, is not a postulate. He is rather the object of our most intense emotions. Religion is thus a matter of feelings, not of reason. The purpose of doctrine, therefore, is not to convey knowledge but to evoke intense ­feelings that move our souls. We do not “know” God; rather, we commune with God in an “­immediate feeling.”
One rightly marvels at Schleiermacher’s ability to concede all of Kant’s philosophical points while advancing a passionate case for the enduring relevance of pious emotions. At one point, ­Schleiermacher notes that Christianity is heatedly rejected by those influenced by Enlightenment thought—and the passion of unbelief indicates that religion has great power and significance. Yet it is not so much Schleiermacher’s argument as his strategy that is instructive. Rather than defend Christian orthodoxy, he concedes the ground claimed by religion’s cultured despisers. He redefines Christianity to make it accord with the assumptions of its critics. He argues that ­Christianity is not characterized by irrational credulity, because it is not concerned with beliefs at all, but rather with feelings. By Schleiermacher’s way of thinking, Christian beliefs are symbols, cherished because they evoke the “immediate feeling” that links us to the divine.
With this approach, Schleiermacher was free to partake of the rising criticism of theological systems. He need not defend the authority of doctrine or of those who believed that Christian doctrine made objective claims about reality. By turning the dogmatic faith of previous generations into a religion of feelings and intuitions, he construed Christian doctrines as expressions of religious sentiment rather than as statements of objective truth. For example, predestination was not for him a matter of divine action effecting the eternal decision or decree of God, which divided the human race into elect and reprobate. Rather, it was a conceptual-­poetic expression of the feeling of absolute dependence upon God, which Christianity evokes and Christians experience.
Schleiermacher is long dead, as is the Enlightenment audience he sought to address. But the problem of Christianity and its cultured despisers has not disappeared. It has become increasingly evident in recent decades. Powerful forces of secularism, metaphysical materialism, and scientism, among other factors, have driven religion from its former places of influence. One need only note that very nearly all private universities in the United States were founded by religious groups and were for a long time anchored in a religious tradition, only to become secular in the last two generations. In response to this pressure, Christianity has once again put forward those who seek to persuade its despisers that the faith is not inimical to polite society.
In the mid-1990s, a sustained effort was made to rehabilitate and defend the intellectual and academic integrity of orthodox Christians. The leaders of this movement, the historians Mark Noll and George Marsden, made valiant cases for the Christian mind. In The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Noll argued that American evangelicalism was hamstrung by its commitment to indefensible positions that lacked intellectual credibility. It consequently attracted the scorn of educated people outside the Church. Worse still, the lack of intellectual standards made life hard for thoughtful individuals within the Church. Noll focused on dispensationalism and literal six-day creation, arguing that these commitments were not defensible by the canons of reason, nor were they necessary for a rigorously orthodox Christian faith.
The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind was a bestseller and named Book of the Year by Christianity Today, the flagship evangelical magazine whose purpose was, in part, to articulate a Christianity that avoided the excesses of fundamentalism while defending orthodox Christianity. Shortly afterward, Marsden argued for what he dubbed “the outrageous idea of Christian scholarship” in a monograph of the same name. The historical portion of his case was based on research he had earlier published on the Christian origins of many of America’s most significant institutions of higher education. Marsden concluded that Christianity’s cultured despisers were simply wrong when they claimed that faith set a person at odds with the life of the mind. In the constructive portion of his case, Marsden argued that Christian scholars could cultivate careful respect for the canons of academic discourse and thoughtful, honest engagement with other academics within the guild without compromising their faith.
Unlike Schleiermacher, Noll and Marsden are careful to sustain full-blooded affirmations of orthodox Christian faith. And unlike ­Schleiermacher’s, I find their arguments convincing. There is nothing about belief in the saving death and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ that undermines intellectual rigor or compromises academic standards—­unless, of course, those standards are deemed above criticism from the get-go. But there can be no doubt that the extraordinarily positive reception of Noll’s and Marsden’s ideas came about because university-­educated Evangelicals in the 1990s were anxious to be reassured. The universities they attended increasingly told them that their faith was disqualifying. Noll and ­Marsden argued otherwise, showing that a person of faith who ­engaged in self-criticism and discarded ­untenable beliefs could participate fully in modern ­intellectual life.
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There is a purpose in painful situations. It is not a waste of emotions and feelings. God is working in our painful experiences. If we subscribe to the notions of false preachers who purport that saints cannot and should not go through tough times, we shall rob ourselves of the opportunity to know God in ways only painful moments can afford. 

Life consists of many seasons: birth, growth, education, work, graduation, and death. Feelings and experiences often beyond our control are spread out between those seasons. Firstly, we have the experiences of happiness that come from events around us, which cause us much gladness. We all want to be caught up in endless days of joy, happiness, and gladness because, as they say, a merry heart is a good medicine (Proverbs 17:22). Secondly, we have experiences of pain caused by sickness, traumas of life, and death. We naturally do not want to be in a state of pain for long because pain crushes the spirit and deprives us of the joy of life. We, to a great extent, may not have control of these circumstances; however, we can choose to learn from them and become who God is preparing us to be through it all.
So, why should we seek to face pains in our lives rather than avoiding them?
Pain Builds Perseverance
Our pain is not a waste of feelings because God uses it to develop in us a heart of perseverance (the ability to withstand pressure during tough times). Good times do not give the human heart mental strength and tenacity like painful times. In the pains of life, we stretch our mental muscles, training them to be resilient and forge forward, especially in times of adversity. James 1:2-4 reminds us to count it all joy when we meet trials of every kind. Why? Because it produces a critical growth path for us – we become complete and lack in nothing. Also, James says that at the end of perseverance is an eternal inheritance – the crown of life (James 1:12). Paul reiterates this thought in Romans 5:3-5 in his appeal to the Romans. Most objectively, pain builds our character and hope. Athletes who beat their bodies through pain exhibit more discipline and perform much better in the races than those who lazied themselves in basic training without physical challenge. That is what the mind of one who runs away from pain will become – unfit for the pressures of life awaiting. Don’t run!
Pain is Seasonal and Purposeful
Secondly, we need not avoid pain because the truth is that pain is not eternal but seasonal. That means it comes and goes. In this world, scripture reminds us there is time for everything under the sun (Eccl. 3:1-8). Knowing that pain will not always be there lets us learn from it when it comes, allowing us to depend on God for strength for that season. The Psalmist says that even in the valley of the shadow of death, the good Shepherd is there with us. And just as every season has its purpose, Paul points out that the purpose of afflictions and pain is to renew our inner man (2 Cor. 4:16) while it prepares for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Cor. 4:17-18). The other purpose pain has is helping us to focus on the things eternal and not things tertiary and temporary. In Jeremiah 29:11, one of the most misquoted and misapplied scriptures, God reached out to his people, Israel, while they were in captivity under cruel masters and reminded them of his plan. Though the time for their freedom was 70 years to come, God told them that their captivity and slavery were within his plan to accomplish his purpose. He knew his plans were for their ultimate good, not evil. Don’t run!
Pain is a Sanctifying Tool in God’s Hands
Sanctification is the process God uses to make the believer more and more into the person of Christ. It means to purify and make whole. In 2 Cor. 12:1-10, Paul shares his incredible experience with the Lord and how he used infirmity to teach him humility – a character quality we must all have to represent Christ effectively (Philippians 2:1-11).
In addition to this example, scripture is replete with the stories of people who endured suffering and pain as God molded them into the people he wanted them to be. Think about Job, who learned to trust God through the darkest patches of life, refrained from cursing God (Job 2:9), avoided talking ill of him, and praised him in the storm.
God also sends sufferings and trials to help us build positive Christian character, weaning us from sin. According to James, various trials produce perseverance, making us mature, complete, and lacking nothing (James 1:2-4). The one who learns to focus on God in times of pain will find these moments as a catapult in the hands of God, ready to plunge them into deeper levels of relationship and growth in the Lord.
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