A Christian Manifesto for the 21st Century—Chapter 1: The Abolition of Truth & Morality
The church must declare, as Scripture does, the total lordship of Christ who is the King of kings (Rev. 1:5). To deny this is to neuter the person and work of Christ. It is to neuter the good news. We must read Schaeffer because he calls us back to biblical faithfulness and a cultural engagement rooted in worldview formation.
Published in 1981, A Christian Manifesto reads like a forty-year-old prophecy come true. In it, Francis Schaeffer exposes the underlying issue of a society and a church that is adrift: “The basic problem of the Christians in this country . . . is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals” (17). To rephrase, Christians believe in bits and pieces of Christian truth, like the death and resurrection of Christ, but they fail to integrate that truth into a total view of life. With no worldview foundation, the church is left wandering and paralyzed in this chaotic age, unable to make sense of the larger picture.
The data on Christians and worldview thinking is striking. Recently, one study found only 37% of professing Christian pastors (!) have a biblical worldview. Such a finding is like learning only 37% percent of math teachers know the basics of multiplication. If you don’t know it, you’re not qualified for the job.
Such an alarming revelation should become a rallying cry to recapture a biblical worldview both in the pulpit and the pew. Sadly, the response is one of general apathy. For many Christian leaders, worldview training is optional because they misunderstand what it is.
Many Christians reduce worldview training to apologetics or dealing with various –isms. Such a task can seem overwhelming with endless arguments, facts, and thinkers to know. Such details are needful, but the discipline is much simpler. The biblical worldview simply integrates the doctrines of the faith to build a total view of reality. The biblical worldview is a synonym for the Christian faith.
Worldview thinking calls believers to live and think biblically throughout all of life. The framework of the Christian worldview is the storyline of Scripture—creation, fall, redemption, and new creation. The heart of the Christian worldview is the supremacy of Christ displayed in his universal Lordship (Col. 1:15–20). When rightly understood, worldview formation is vital and inescapable for Christian ministry.
How, then, did so many in the church lose the biblical worldview? Schaeffer demonstrates the problem by pointing to our inability to think in totals. Christians are concerned about isolated issues, but we fail to capture the heart of the problem. Schaeffer lists common concerns from the 1980s—pornography, abortion, the breakdown of the family (17). These are the bits and pieces that consumed his time and ours. Sadly, such issues remain critical today. Only we must add to his list—gender theory, LGBTQ issues, critical race theory, and a resurgent Marxism. These issues are merely symptoms of a deeper conflict between worldviews. But why are we stuck thinking in bits and pieces?
Two Culprits: Humanism and Pietism
A Christian Manifesto offers a Christian philosophy of government. Schaeffer uses the realm of government to make his point about how fragmented our thinking has become. Unlike any other part of life, to bring religion into the realms of government is off-limits. If someone dares to do so, let alone a pastor, they will be met with disgust from both inside and outside of the church. Today, such arguments will be written off as “Christian nationalism,” whatever that means. Yet, Scripture addresses all of life, including the political realm. Schaeffer identifies two culprits that direct us to think in bits and pieces—humanism and pietism.
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The Crushing Yoke of a Deconstructionist Pastor
Alexander Lang sees himself not as a an undershepherd called to comfort his sheep with the message of Christ crucified but as a Christendom-scented psychologist charged with fixing his patients. For pastors, the compassion fatigue problem is easy to solve. Yes, it can be exhausting to carry the sorrows of your people. But that exhaustion fades with every word of Scripture reminding me that I don’t have to keep that weight. I get to transfer it into the pierced hands of Christ whenever I point my sheep to their Good Shepherd who has killed their every sin and promised to dry their every tear. Lang doesn’t want to hand that load over to Jesus. No wonder he’s exhausted.
In a recent post on his blog, Alexander Lang wrote a detailed explanation for why he chose to step down as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Arlington Heights, Ill. Like so many other modern pastors, Lang laments, he could no longer endure the typical shepherd-sapping burdens of the ministry, burdens such as “the immense stress of the job” and “feeling lonely and isolated.”
Initially, many of the personal challenges Lang describes lined up with my own experiences as a parish pastor for 15 years. However, the more Lang described these particular challenges, the less convinced I was that we were sharing the same afflictions. I know what it’s like to feel momentarily exhausted at the end of the day after praying with a member in his darkest hour. I don’t know what it’s like to feel as though I have nowhere to unload the weight of my parishioner’s burdens. While I’ve been frustrated by the unclear desires or unreasonable demands of idiosyncratic members, I’ve never felt as though my “boss” is “every person who walks through the door of [my] community.” I only worry about one boss, the Triune God.
Why have our experiences been so different? I don’t think it’s because I’m a better pastor than Lang. I think it’s because I’m a pastor and he is something else entirely. Read through Lang’s essay and you’ll notice he doesn’t mention Jesus a single time. Look at his website’s “about” page and you’ll see this is hardly an oversight. “Restorative Faith is a progressive Christian movement designed to rescue the Christian faith from antiquated doctrine and recast Christianity in a new light,” he tells us. “We are here to break down the Christian faith one piece at a time so we can rebuild it into something that is actually worth believing.”
The stated aim of his deconstructionist charge makes it easy to pinpoint why Lang found the pastoral ministry so much more exhausting than I do.
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Trials Are Gardens for Lies
When your trials and temptations come, don’t let Satan and his schemes have your ear. Don’t assume that God’s sovereignty over all things means that temptation is from him. Rather, in your suffering, remember that he’s a good and perfect Father. He’s the giver of every good thing you might lose, and he’s the giver of every comfort or pleasure you might crave. And better than any of his other gifts, he holds out himself, the gift that surpasses every other one.
What verses do you reach for most often when you pause to give thanks to God?
Maybe you’re bowing over a home-cooked meal after an especially long and frustrating day. Maybe God came through in a moment of more acute desperation or need — at the office, with the kids, over the family budget. Maybe you and your friends got to do that thing you love to do together (but rarely get the chance to anymore). Maybe you simply felt the warmth of the sun on your skin after a week of overcast skies. And you know that meal, that friend, that sun is from God, and so you want to thank him. What verses come to mind?
One comes to mind for me, one I’ve leaned on countless times in prayer:
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:17)
It’s a heart-warming, soul-stirring perspective: Every good thing you have, you have from God. In just a few words, James pulls every conceivable blessing — from the smallest snacks or shortest conversations to the weightier gifts of children, churches, homes, and health — all under the brilliant umbrella of the Father’s love.
Recently, though, as I slowly read through James again, I stumbled over the familiar verse because of the verse immediately before it. What would you expect to read before such an immense statement of God’s lavish generosity? Probably not this:
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above . . . (James 1:16–17)
Don’t be Deceived?
What could be deceiving about a cherished truth like this? To understand the deception at work among these good and perfect gifts (and the real power of the verse), we have to follow the thread back to the previous paragraph.
Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. (James 1:12)
The apostle James writes to a suffering people, a people bearing heavy trials. He begins his letter, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2). He says that because some were tempted to grumble and despair. They wanted to give up. They also started pointing fingers at God. As James writes in verses 13–14,
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
While God stands over all that transpires, and sovereignly works all things for the good of those who love him, no one can ever say that temptations come from him. He never devises evil. He’s not trying to make you stumble, but holding out his hand to keep you upright.
No, temptations arise from our own desires, which gets to a second problem James addresses in his letter: the problem of worldliness. Christians were growing faint under painful opposition. They were also giving in to sinful, fleshly desires (James 4:1–3). They were seeking comfort and relief in indulgence. They had formed an adulterous friendship with the world (James 4:4). So, James says to the church,
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above . . . (James 1:16–17)
What might suffering people hear in such a warning?
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Add a Little Extra Beauty
If God chooses to add a little extra beauty, shouldn’t I? In those matters God calls me to do, shouldn’t I go beyond merely getting them done and instead add an extra bit of effort? Wouldn’t I be most closely imitating him if I went beyond merely completing the task and chose instead to do it with joy, with excellence, with a desire to in some way make it beautiful?
The sky was still dark as I left the house this morning. When I went overseas just three weeks ago the sun had already risen by this time and I was walking in dawn’s early light. But summer has given way to fall and the nights have quickly grown longer. I press “play” in my Bible app and set out.
I round a bend and in the corner of my eye see an unusually bright star in the southern sky. I make a note to look it up when I return, though I know I’ll probably have forgotten by then. I realize my mind has wandered and while I still hear David Cochran Heath’s voice in my AirPods, I have lost track of chapter and verse. “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD,” I hear him say, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch…” Ah yes, Jeremiah 23, one of the sweetest chapters in the whole book. “And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’”
My plan prompts me to skip ahead to Jeremiah 26, then to Psalm 77 and James 2. When I’ve heard “for as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead” it is time to pray and, as it happens, to turn to the southeast. I begin to thank the Lord for giving me the precious gift of faith and to ask him to help me be diligent in showing my faith by my works. As I glance toward where the sun will soon rise, I see that the sky has begun to turn shades of pink and purple.
I spend some time confessing sin and making requests on behalf of family members, and while I do so the sky continues to brighten.
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