Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, June 2, 2024
Think Christianly, friends. When you do, you’ll find that the world is not just an arrow pointing to the heavens but a gift from the hand of the God who loves you. Delight in it, explore it, discover it, conquer it, and exercise dominion over it. When you know how to look you’ll find that written through the core of everything is Jesus’ smile, beckoning you in love to die and rise again.

We have an intellectual problem in the modern West. We’ve forgotten the intellectual underpinnings of all knowledge.
That’s Jesus by the way.
The resurrection of Jesus is the central beating fact of all existence. Our response to it is the core of our lives. Christians whose lives look the same as their neighbours are a deep sadness, a withered tree.
Anderson, who my writing has been meandering with for a little while now, states it like this:

God’s love in Jesus Christ is the open secret of the cosmos.
Called into Questions, 111
Our intellectual inquiry is supposed to start here. All our thinking is to start here. All our lives are to start here. Whatever you do for a living is dramatically shifted and changed by Jesus, as is everything else in your life.
This is what it is to think Christianly: to start with the revelation of God in Christ and then move outwards towards other disciplines.
How is Mathematics different? Or tax law? Or plumbing?
I suspect most of us want to say that I’m over-spiritualising things and that honestly most of life continues on unabated. I simply don’t think that can be true. The way we view the world has to start with Jesus.
There is no such thing as being ‘unbiased.’ You cannot start your thinking, or your doing, from a neutral place. That standpoint doesn’t exist. This all sounds very critical theory, but that isn’t what I mean. What I mean is that we are never formless and void, we are given as children a way of looking at the world. We are, as Anderson puts it, ‘indoctrinated into a way of seeing things.’
Everyone is. We all have it. This is what some people call ‘worldview.’ I’m not sure that’s the best framing, but the lens that we look at everything through is what we mean. You see life through lenses you’ve been given. I’m saying we should see life through Jesus lenses. We should also think through Jesus lenses.
This all sounds very academic, I appreciate. That is my propensity. What difference does it make to the average person? Well, everyone is thinking about their lives all the time. Everyone needs to learn to think Christianly.
How do you decide who to marry? Or what house to rent or buy?
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The greatest evidence of whether your pastor is called by God will be witnessed in his convictions about the doctrine of the church. Does he care enough to discipline wayward members? Is he more concerned about what the church looks like than its holiness and catholicity (the church universal)? Is he more concerned about being relational rather than theological, subjective rather than objective?

All Christians need to see the warning signs of a man who has not been truly called by God to the office of pastor. Here are five to consider:
1. No Formal Theological Training
Some churchgoers avoid asking or even caring whether or not their pastors have been properly trained for pastoral ministry. It sometimes happens in churches that anyone who says that he feels called to do ministry does it. We wouldn’t, of course, do this in any other calling. I would be negligent at best if I sent my sick loved one to a self-proclaimed medical doctor who said that he felt called but who also skipped the MCAT and an accredited medical school. But in some churches this hasn’t stopped us. As long as a person feels led, has a big heart, and can motivate the people, he may be given the title of pastor. Here are a series of questions you should ask your pastor:

From which reputable seminary did you receive your Master of Divinity degree?

Which faithful church body confirmed your internal calling?

When were you ordained to the office and hands laid upon you?

Have you learned the word of God in the original languages?

If the pastor took some classes from some Bible college or other religious university and skirted the hard work of obtaining a Divinitatis Magistrvm (Master of Divinity), why would you expect him to labor faithfully every week in the Word to rightly divide the truth to the glory of God and the profit of your soul?
2. No Creed
What your pastor believes is crucial to the well-being of your soul. I Timothy 4:16 commands a pastor to take heed to himself and to the doctrine, for in doing this he will save both himself and those who hear him. So what is your pastor’s doctrine? Since no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation, to which historical and collective expression of what Scripture teaches has he promised to honor?
This is why Protestants produced creeds and confessions. The Holy Spirit has worked powerfully in Christians who have gone before us.
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In a recent video, renowned psychologist and thinker Jordan B. Peterson made a scathing critique of the Church. He challenged churches to invite young men back — to make church a place where they are welcome. Here are my thoughts on several of Peterson’s points.

Yesterday, Jordan B Peterson, a now-famous psychologist and philosopher, published a video on his YouTube channel: “Message to the Christian Churches”. At the time of writing, the video had received almost half a million views. In it, Peterson criticises the Church — particularly Western churches — for their adherence to Woke ideology and their treatment of young men.
Four points — critiques of either the Church as a whole or Christian people — stand out to me. They certainly ring true.

The Church has Gone Woke

Maybe this is too broad of a generalisation. Nonetheless, it is sadly true for many churches and Christian organisations in Australia and the West.
Peterson rightly points this out in his video.
He argues that Western culture, in general, has embraced a deviant version of Original Sin that imputes responsibility for any number of social ills (from systemic patriarchy to environmental abuse) to masculine tendencies — what he sarcastically calls “damnable male ambition”.
In response, according to Peterson, our culture attempts to inculcate men with an “extremely damaging ideology” that disillusions them and saps them of a healthy, adventurous spirit.
“… young men… have come to believe, in pain, that every deep impulse that moves them out into the world for the adventure of their life — even that impulse drawing them to women — is nothing but the manifestation of a spirit that is essentially satanic in nature.” (Peterson)
Peterson argues that this inculcation is undertaken from childhood when boys are “hectored” for their toy preferences, through to grade school, where they are trained to conform to “a docile, harmless obedience”.
 “… our young people face a demoralisation that is perhaps unparalleled.” (Peterson)
In my opinion, the issue here is not the adherence to and support of a particular ideological framework (i.e., what is sometimes called “Woke” ideology), per se. Rather, it is the fact that the church is not ascribing to God the fundamental place that He deserves.
The Christian Church is now often answering to a “higher” authority than God and His Word. That authority is our culture — one dominated by neo-paganism and the institutions and structures that enforce it.
Christian faith demands so much more than secondary adherence to certain Biblical principles. As Paul points out, Christians’ whole lives are living sacrifices — totally committed to the worship and service of Christ (Romans 12:1).
We are called to be transformed by the renovation of our minds. Instead, Christians so often fall into conformity to the pattern of this world (Romans 12:2).
Nevertheless, we should not dismiss the concerns raised by those who hold to Woke ideology. Often, they are tapping into a genuine concern — one that Scripture has an answer for.
John Calvin writes,
“All truth is from God; and consequently, if wicked men have said anything that is true and just, we ought not to reject it; for it has come from God.”
The Church is not obliged to reject outright all of the ideas the world presents.
Nevertheless, our authority is God. We should interpret all worldly ideas through the paradigm of a Scriptural worldview and reject anything that conflicts with His Word.

Low Expectations for Christian Young People

Towards the end of his video, Peterson implores Churches to welcome young people — young men in particular — back to church. He urges them: “Put up a billboard. Say, ‘Young men are welcome here’.”
“The Christian Church is there to remind people — young men included, and perhaps even first and foremost — that they have a woman to find, a garden to walk in, a family to nurture, an ark to build, a land to conquer, a ladder to heaven to build and the utter terrible catastrophe of life to face stalwartly — in truth, devoted to love, and without fear.” (Peterson)
Importantly, however, Peterson exhorts churches to explain to young men what they can do. “Ask more, not less, of those you are inviting,” he says. “Ask more of them than anyone ever has.”
This is significant.
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