Written by Bruce A. Little |
Monday, November 14, 2022
This is where accommodation leads; start down the path of cultural relevancy and one will soon be entangled by an accommodation to the spirit of the age.  In addition, it leads to a most catastrophic move by evangelicals to reimagine Christianity which follow a weakened view of Scripture. In the end, not only is the Christian witness compromised, but the true nature of the Christian calling is lost as it is not by might nor by power, but by God’s Spirit (Zech 4:6). The sacred is camouflaged so the world will not be offended as evangelicals accommodate the spirit of the age.

Francis Schaeffer in his concluding remarks of chapter one of the Great Evangelical Disaster, wrote: “Here is the great evangelical disaster—the failure of the evangelical world to stand for truth as truth. There is only one word for this—namely accommodation: the evangelical has accommodated to the world spirit of the age.” He goes on to say, “and let us understand that to accommodate to the world spirit about us in our age is nothing less than the most gross form of worldliness in the proper definition of that word.”
Accommodation was a logical conclusion of the growing evangelical commitment to sounding culturally relevant, which in time morphed into acting like the world while trying to maintain a moral difference. In the end this has proven neither to impress the world, nor maintain the moral distinction.
Furthermore, most evangelicals have little or no understanding of the philosophical scaffolding supporting the cultural response to which they attach themselves. Schaeffer calls accommodation the grossest form of worldliness. There was a time when worldliness (a word we seldom hear in sermons anymore) was when Christians engaged in activity such as playing cards, going to dances or to the cinema and so forth. If you did these things, you would be considered a worldly Christian thus confusing the distinction between Christianity and the world. The thought was by condemning such activity would keep the world out of the church. This was called legalism. Good intentions, just ineffective and wrong.
In fact, this thinking committed two mistakes. One: thinking that such activity was the main threat from the world against Christianity. Two: thinking that avoiding certain questionable activity would make a Christian spiritual.  However, the real threat of worldliness is thinking according to the spirit of the age. This was Schaeffer’s understanding of worldliness, and it is why he called accommodation the “most gross form of worldliness”.
He meant that evangelicals had brought the world into the church by their worldly thinking which came about because of a weakened view of Scripture and a softening on moral issues of the day. A little later, in the same chapter, Schaeffer noted that all of this led to some evangelicals (some in his day, but many more in our day) “to talk about a wider, richer Christianity and to become more deeply involved in culture, but at the same time to accommodate to the world spirit about us [evangelicals] at each crucial point.”
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Luke the historian and the theologian gives this call—we do know these things about Jesus—that he lived, taught, performed miracles, was hung on a cross and died, then rose from the dead, validating his claim to be the son of God, the savior of the world. When we realize these things about Jesus, we become part of something bigger than ourselves. We become part of this fire that has spread through the entire world.

A few years ago, my daughter and I were playing Battleship, and she shot misses on spaces C 8,9, and 10. Or that’s how I remember it and had it marked. But later she said “C9,” and I said, “you already tried that one, sweetie.” She said “No I didn’t. I shot J 8,9, and 10.” And I said, “No, I marked them; you said C 8,9, and 10.” She insisted just as vehemently, “No, Dad. I said J 8,9, and 10.” Now, of course, there’s a true answer to that question, but we’ll never recover it, because we were the only two people there, and we just flat out are both sure—even to this day!—that we were right.
That’s a bit of a parable, you might say—a silly example of a big problem in our world these days. Any truth seems to immediately get challenged by a flood of false claims. We live in the middle of an infodemic, as Ed Yost at The Atlantic termed it a couple of years back, and that infodemic wasn’t just about COVID and vaccines. It seems to be about everything—the environment, the government, foreign policy, race—you name it. A society awash in information has no way anymore to control and debunk false information. Now add in the power of AI and deepfakes, and, well…
And in a few things—a VERY few things—I’m an expert; I know a lot. But in most things, I hardly know this or that for sure for myself. It depends on who you read and where you get your news. How can you possibly know what’s true anymore? It’s easy to despair of knowing the truth on much anything, to just throw up your hands, say “Who knows?” and then go on with life as a cynic.
But here’s the thing—there’s no doubt that my daughter and I did play Battleship. Even if we can’t be certain of every detail of the past, we can be certain of some things—and here’s the important point—certain enough to act.
To switch the example, if you want to drive from Washington, DC down to Charlottesville, VA, you can get out a map and figure out the route. Now are you truly, 100%, no matter what, certain you read the map correctly? Is it truly impossible that you misread the map? Of course not. But you still get on the road and start driving.
Or maybe you get directions these days more by trust. You let the Waze lady, or the Apple Maps voice, or the Google Maps Voice direct—you just do what she says. Now do you absolutely, no matter what, know that the GPS hasn’t made an error? That the programmers didn’t mess up, or that the phone didn’t get north and south backwards? No, you can’t know it in that sense. But you DO get in the car and trust that voice and start driving.
Even if you don’t have true, undeniable, perfect epistemic certainty, you can live your life, you act on what you know to be true.
In our education system, we teach people to question assumptions, to overturn ideas, to test if what they think is really true. The ancient philosopher Aristotle said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
BUT the purpose of that questioning is to find out what really is true and correct and good, not to wallow in uncertainty forever!
And the biblical historian Luke wrote to make sure we realize that we can be certain of the gospel, certain enough to stake our lives on it.
Luke’s history is a two-part narrative, starting with the Gospel of Luke, which bears his name. That got us to Easter. Now he brings us further with the book of Acts. Starting with the beginning of the book, v.1-3, Luke tells what we know about Jesus:
“In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.”
Luke packs a lot in here, first that we are reading the sequel, or maybe better put, we’re reading volume 2. Luke had always planned this to be a 2-book series, so to speak, and he makes it clear right at the start. Look at his first words: “In my first book”—that this is the continuation of the story he has been telling since chapter 1 of the gospel that bears his name.
In fact, if we look at the way he addresses this in v.1—“O Theophilus”—he’s meaning to tie this book tightly to what he had already written. In antiquity, if you wrote a multivolume work, you added a preface to the first volume that was supposed to apply to the entire series. And Luke is widely recognized as a detailed and accurate historian. What he writes comports very well with what we know of the Roman world of the time and his style matches that of other historical authors.
So, the purpose statement for both books is really verse 4 of chapter 1 of the Gospel of Luke. There Luke writes:
“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.”
Luke had spent years with the apostle Paul, and he had also spent years researching what he wrote. Later in Acts, he begins saying, “we” as in “We did this; we went here; etc.,” meaning that later he becomes an eyewitness, but he carefully researched everything before he became part of the events himself.
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Christians ever identified themselves by inner desires?  Don’t we all experience a multitude of desires we deal with besides sexual ones?  As a single female Christian, it never occurred to me to identify myself related to any sexual desires.  I am not alone.  Among Christians, there are life-long single men and women, widowed men and women, divorced men and women, who have obeyed God’s commandments while remaining celibate during periods of their lives.  Furthermore, they never identified themselves by any desires they experienced during those same periods of their lives.

Dear Dr. Johnson:
I read your USA Today article, “I’m a gay, celibate pastor of a conservative church.”  Here’s a trick for de-scalation.”  My first thought was why would a Christian–—and a pastor at that–—take an issue controversially engaged and involving believers of a specific church and denomination out to the world–—a world that generally mocks Christianity and Christians? A second thought came immediately–— that this is not “de-escalation,” is it?  If anything, it’s a bold escalation bringing an unbelieving world into the church’s business.
Perhaps it’s time someone other than a married man or woman address you due to our mutually-deprived lives in accordance with God’s righteous laws–—deprived but not unfulfilled or unfruitful.  To begin with, you state you’ve been investigated by church authorities . . . because of your sexual orientation.”  As this issue is long-standing and quite public, you appear to miss the focus, that is, your promotion of “gay Christian identity” more so than your inner conflict.  You appear to insist on identifying yourself by desires.  Since when in Christianity’s history have Christians ever identified themselves by inner desires?  Don’t we all experience a multitude of desires we deal with besides sexual ones?  As a single female Christian at 80 years of age, it never occurred to me to identify myself related to any sexual desires.  I am not alone.  Among Christians, there are life-long single men and women, widowed men and women, divorced men and women, who have obeyed God’s commandments while remaining celibate during periods of their lives.  Furthermore, they never identified themselves by any desires they experienced during those same periods of their lives.
Specifically, why would any believer choose to self-identify oneself with a biblically-communicated deviant desire?  Both Plato and Aquinas taught: “It is sexual vice, among all vices, that has the greatest tendency to destroy rationality.  Sexual desire can seriously cloud the intellect even in the best of circumstances, but when its objects are contra naturam, indulgence makes the very idea of an objective, natural order of things hateful.”
Further on in the article, you confess: “I’ve found myself at times curled up in a ball on my office floor weeping.”  You do not define or describe exactly on what basis you wept.  Was it because you struggle with your desires?  Was it because you feel persecuted?  Was it perhaps a combination of both?  What it reveals is that you weren’t “gay.”  You were, in fact, “miserable.”  I haven’t curled up in a ball, but I know what it is to weep before the Lord.  They were times of recognizing sinfulness in diverse areas of my life and God’s many, many mercies and acts of grace in my life for which I knew I didn’t deserve.  We all need to humbly weep over any sinful desires, e.g., lust for power, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life, and more.
Now permit me to specifically address your insistence on identifying yourself as “gay.”  The word “gay” is essentially a euphemism, isn’t it?  It’s “a mild or pleasant word used instead of one that is unpleasant or offensive,” according to the dictionary.  In other words, it’s a cover-up word.  It’s used instead of “deviancy,” “homosexual,” “lesbian,” or even “sodomite.”  It softens something that is biblically very offensive to God.  I can’t remember anyone being willing to call himself/herself a “deviant Christian,” a “homosexual Christian,” a “lesbian Christian,” or “a sodomite Christian.”  Would you be more honest to use any one of the genuine words for what you are claiming?  If you chose the actual word for the sin and sinful temptation you struggle with, would you choose to so identify yourself then as such a believer first, and secondly as a minister of the Gospel? Those terms sound terrible, don’t they?  Well, truth reveals the awfulness of sin and temptation.
I’m sorry if someone or others have hurt you unkindly and unnecessarily.  Many of us have been hurt by fellow believers.  At the same time, we have to do some soul-searching in order to ensure we did not do or say anything that deserved honest, loving, rebuke.  As a pastor, you must be aware that there are many diverse sexually immoral desires even believers struggle against.  So far, none of those are employed to identify one’s Christian faith.  Do you really want that door opened?  If alleged “gay” Christians insist on being so identified, wouldn’t the rest of us feel the need to identify ourselves otherwise?  Do Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican priests need to outwardly identify their sexuality?  Wouldn’t that become a quagmire for the church?
For millennia, there have been single or bachelor pastors/priests.  It did not provoke unwarranted curiosity.  Hopefully, the majority practiced celibacy, not as a sacrifice but as an act of obedience and love for God’s holy law.  The same is true for non-clerical men and women who devoted themselves to God’s holy and righteous moral standards.
Back to bringing the world into this ecclesiastical issue:  Wasn’t it unwise to do so?  Would the Holy Spirit lead you to put fellow believers and your fellow elders into a position to be further mocked and scorned by the world?  Was love the driving force or a desire for affirmation and sympathy by the many unbelieving “gays” and others who will take your article and run with it to hurt Christians who humbly seek to follow God’s commands?
A shepherd’s vocation is to protect the sheep—not to expose them to danger or derision.  It’s not too late for you to rethink and relinquish identifying your faith by an immoral and sinful desire.
I’m just a single Christian woman who has lived a long life accepting all the limitations and proscriptions our most compassionate God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—communicated to the unmarried knowing they represent His love.  But I’ve never felt any need to identify my faith by any desires, especially any morally sinful desires.
Sincerely in Christ,Helen Louise Herndon
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.