The Berean Method

Hello everyone, I’m back after a Christmas break hiatus. This is somewhat a part 2 to a previous post I did a couple months ago. This topic has to do with another commonly held contradiction in the minds of many modern evangelicals.

I will first clarify that if one denies the existence of original sin, he is totally and logically free to believe in a free will that is present in humans. However, there are many verses in Scripture contrary to this belief that will be discussed later. But the majority of evangelicals still hold to some doctrine of original sin AND free will. The contradiction of these two doctrines will now be shown.

Let us define what is commonly called the “free will”. It is the uninfluenced and unaffected will to any outside force that is supposedly present in all people. Every person is totally able to choose whatever he/she desires. At first glance, this seems so obviously true, one can wonder why its even an issue. Yet, through this analogy, I hope to show that there is something superior to everyone, and every thing’s will; its nature.

Here is the analogy, thought up by my pastor:

There is a vulture flying around looking for food. It is flying over a road looking for a new (or old) carcass. On the horizon, it spots a rotting possum down on the road, but right next to the road, it sees a strawberry patch in the prime of ripeness. Now, that vulture has all the ability and the will to fly over to the strawberry field and feast on the delicious berries. In fact, there is no outside obstruction to prevent the vulture from doing that. So why would a vulture always choose the dead possum over the strawberries? Because a vulture is bound by its nature which tells it that is a scavenger that feeds on dead animals.

Now, pardon me for attempting to compare us to vultures, but as with every other living thing, we too have a nature that binds all of our actions. The Bible is very clear on this nature as the following verses will tell. As Paul says in Romans 7:18, he cannot carry out what he desires because of his sinful nature. Of course, after salvation, we are no longer slaves to sin, but to Christ (Rom. 6:6). Instead, we enter into a lifelong conflict between the flesh and the Spirit. However, I am talking about the unregenerate free will decision of salvation that is believed by many. An unsaved person doesn’t have the ability on his own to accept Christ. Referring back to the vulture analogy, our will is bound by our nature. In mans’ unregenerate state, he is completely bound to his sinful nature which is at constant odds with God (Romans 3:10-18). So, what would an unsaved person’s answer be when confronted with a decision to “accept” or “deny” Christ? It would always and forever be a resounding denial of the truth and power of the Gospel. God first has to change the heart of the person before he is willing to believe in Christ. He does this through the Holy Spirit and according to His timing of the salvation of His elect that He chose before the foundations of the world (Eph. 1:4-10).

The belief of an unregenerate free will is just one more way that we try to give ourselves more power and ability than we have. This is of course one of the many tendencies of the sinful nature. We are only as free as our nature will allow.

OK, so this post has nothing to do with the original goal of this blog, but as you can see, I changed my title to allow for this story. I just couldn’t leave this one out. And now I have the freedom to post other stuff.

But anyway, there are times when we are left only to chuckle at the latest happenings of our culture. Thanks to Rush Limbaugh for making my day a little brighter with this story. This ought to make your’s brighter too. This is sure to leave you laughing hysterically on one hand and shaking your head in disbelief on the other. Here’s the story:

Basically, the famous “Got Milk?” organization came up with a very clever marketing campaign to use in San Fransisco. The idea was to place adhesive cardboard strips, emblazened with the “Got Milk?” logo, and smelling of cookies, on the local bus stop shelters. I for one, think that is an awesome idea. No body wouldn’t want a bus stop smelling like cookies! And yet I stood corrected. There were some “complaints” brought to the Municipal Transportation Agency, as spokesperson Maggie Lynch said, “We got complaints” and “It is controversial”.

Now, I want you to take 10 seconds to come up with some possible complaints that would make this, of all things, controversial. (1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…10) OK, times up. I don’t think any of you came up with a complaint this outrageous. There were complaints that opposed the cookie-smelling strip because “the ads could be offensive to the poor and homeless who can’t afford to buy sweet treats”.

Let it be loudly declared that it is now possible to be offended by the reminder that I can’t afford something. Can you believe this? Imagine if we were to actually live our lives with this ability.

I’m at a stop light in my gray ‘89 Honda Accord, and a BMW Z9 pulls up beside me… HOW OFFENSIVE!

I’m at Guitar Center and I see a vintage 1958 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop Reissue… O, THE HUMANITY!

I’m still laughing.

Enjoy

Caleb

When looking over the landscape of the American evangelical church, one can quickly see a relatively new breed of churches in existence. Many of them are not tied to a particular denomination, and have sleek, modern looking buildings and decor. They seek to be non-conventional in almost every thing they do because the old way is outdated and irrelevant. Over all of their unique activites, they place an umbrella called “relevance”. They wish to appeal to the modern culture’s current fancies by reinventing the image of church. However, some of these churches miss the point of the duty of the church and the power of the Gospel of Christ, in all its solitary glory.

While the spectrum for these churches is quite large, one common thread runs through them all, and it is a thread that they outwardly and proudly display. This is the thread of “relevance”. When a church invokes this title as a part of their mission, one can usually assume certain characteristics to be found of the church. To these churches, being relevant is way more than just the act of avoiding being irrelevant. No, the word encompasses a new, somewhat revolutionary way of “doing church”. This almost obsessive desire to be relevant effects everything from the music, the preaching, the atmosphere, even the decor of the building. One local church writes in its values section of their website that:

“Just because a program or ministry reached the unchurched yesterday doesn’t mean it is effective today. We believe to win the lost we must be willing to continually change our methods but not the message.”

That quote pretty much sums up the mindset behind the “relevance movement” as I call it. According to it, we as a church, must look over the present society, and adapt our church doings to reflect what the culture desires. In other words, we must market the Gospel to appeal to our audience if we wish to have any hope of successful evangelism. The church previously quoted goes on to say:

“To win the unchurched we believe we must present the Gospel of Jesus Christ in fresh, creative ways (illustrated messages, dramas, video, etc.)”

By now, I hope that some of you are beginning to see some of the errors of this thinking. Churches that operate under beliefs such as those previously quoted are allowing the ever-changing culture (i.e. the world) to dictate the way they function. This is a dangerous thing to do considering that the world is majorly made up of lost people in bondage to their sinful nature. This is not what to Bible wants the Church to be influenced by (Romans 12:2). Also, consider some of the implications behind those quotes. According to the quotes, the power of the Gospel is not in the Gospel itself, but in the packaging of it. As I said before, some of these churches build their existence on the mission to be attractive to the culture in order to draw them through their doors. This mindset doubts the power of both the preaching of the true Gospel and the ordinary means of grace outlined to us by God in His Word. The culture doesn’t want verse-by-verse, expository preaching of the Bible, they want “5 Steps to have a better…”. So following the cultures desires, the church becomes Dr. Phil with a few Bible verses; and this is just what these churches “preach”. Scripture gives us a different picture on how the church should deal with society.

In the first chapter of Romans, the Holy Spirit, through Paul, tells us that in the Gospel, the power of God for salvation and a righteousness for believers is found. In 1 Corinthians 15:2, Paul again tells us that we are saved through the preaching of the Gospel. That is how God has ordained for His elect to be brought to Him. The Great Commission tells us simply to teach what Jesus taught, and God will do the rest. We don’t have to strategize a bunch of bells and whistles as bait to unbelievers. For it is not by our doing that God’s sheep are drawn to Him. 1 Corinthians 1:17 puts it perfectly:

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

The Gospel gets watered down when it has to go through the filter of what’s relevant to the culture. It is a paradox when it comes to this; while there is nothing more relevant in the universe to any culture of any time than the Gospel, unregenerate man will view the Gospel as the least relevant thing in the universe. God must first open the eyes of the unbeliever before he can see his need for the salvation that comes through faith in Jesus Christ. And He does this through the Gospel alone.

There are presuppositions that are held by many Christians that are a product of human logic, not necessarily having substantial Biblical support. One of these assumptions is the doctrine of the “age of accountability” as it is called. In many circles, it is one of those unspoken rules of thumb; it is touted as “what has to be true”. However, this doctrine possesses some clear fallacies that are not hard to uncover if proper examination is applied.

Let us first observe the definition and nature of this doctrine. This belief simply states that people who die before reaching an opportunity of understanding of salvation, repentance, etc (i.e. infants, mentally handicapped, etc.) will not be held accountable by God for their sins since they never had the chance to ask for forgiveness. The logic makes sense to finite human conceptions of justice, innocence, and mercy. Is there a more appropriate picture of innocence on earth than a newborn human baby? To think that the precious child would have to bear the wrath of God if he/she died is an unthinkable, if not barbaric thought. I understand there is immense emotion tied to this issue, since it concerns many parents whose children died at a young age. In the midst of such grief, it is comforting to invoke this doctrine as means of assurance of the child’s well-being. Yet, we need to look at God’s revealed Word to us to formulate our beliefs.

Now, I have called and will continue to call the “age of accountability” a doctrine because it is held by many with the same intensity as other true doctrines of Scripture, and for lack of a better word. Yet, it is really nothing more than a logical conclusion. Statements that are normally associated with the belief are ones that begin like, “God wouldn’t do…”, “God isn’t a God that would…”. Note the use of the word “would”. This word is used to imply truth without specific evidence. We say it when we don’t have actual proof to verify a claim, but may have previous events or behavior to give the claim some validity. This is totally fine when dealing with other people, but it is dangerous to assume things about God’s character that aren’t revealed in the Bible. For God’s definition of justice and mercy are far superior to the measly conceptions of our finite minds. Echoed throughout the Bible in chapters and verses such as Job 38 and Isaiah 40:13, our limited depravity and God immeasurable glory is clear.

Aside from the flawed nature of this doctrine, there are some distinct theological and Scriptural problems to be noted. Let’s examine another one of the basic premises of this doctrine and compare them to what we know to be true from the Bible. One of the first pillars of this belief is that we all aren’t really sinful until we knowingly and intentionally commit a sin. Even though this is rarely stated, it is essential to the doctrine. For age of accountability to function, there cannot be any sin already present in humans from conception. If there was, there would be grounds for the person to be held accountable. However, from a brief look at God’s Word, we find that there is sin from the moment of conception; we all bear the curse of Adam without doing anything (Psalm 51:5). We are in complete rebellion towards God from birth and are abhorrent and offensive to His glory.

By now, some of you might be turning red at my post. Almost everyone either knows someone who has gone through the tragedy of losing a child, or lost one themselves. They would be right to say to me, “What’s the hope?!”, “We can’t help the fact that some babies die!”, “Is all the comfort we are to give to grieving parents is a short “too bad”, and be done with it?” There is a hope and it is one that is often forgotten in the doctrine of age of accountability. Is God surprised when one of the people He created in His image dies? When an infant dies, does God freak out, not knowing what to do with the soul? Absolutely not! Could God, in His omniscience, chose all babies that will die young to be His children? We can’t concretely back up that claim, but it sure wouldn’t be outside God’s power. We do know this from Scripture; that God is infinitely just AND infinitely merciful (Neh. 9:31, Micah 7:18, Rom. 11:32). So to answer the question, “What happens to babies that die before a realization of salvation?”, we can’t make a concrete claim Biblically. But we can take comfort in the fact that God is merciful and perfect and what ever happens to the infants will be a part of His perfect plan for His glory.