Bibliotheca Sacra 143 (Oct. 1986) 291-301.
Copyright © 1986 by
Thinking like a Christian
Part
4:
In but Not of the World
D. Bruce Lockerbie
An emphasis on thinking, on loving the Lord with
all one's
mind, shows rising concern among some evangelicals.
Such a
resurgence may be dated from the publication of
Frank E.
Gaebelein's Pattern of God's Truth, in print
since 1954; more
recently, Harry Blamires's
The Christian Mind and John Stott's
Your
Mind Matters
may still be found in Christian bookstores.1
Other
indicators of the flowering of evangelical scholarship are the
steady growth of periodicals such as Christian
Scholar's Review
and
lishers Weekly devotes four
pages to a survey by Leslie R. Keylock of
Moody
Bible Institute and Christianity Today, naming the "out-
standing evangelical Christian scholars" in
fields such as Old Tes-
tament, New Testament, theology,
church history, philosophy, and
others. His roster, based on a nominating list of 539
names, is
impressive, headed by F F
Bruce.2 Also encouraging is the con-
tinuing stream of books by
Arthur F Holmes, Nicholas Wolterstorff,
Alvin
Plantinga, Ronald H. Nash, and others whose topic is
a
reasonable faith.3 Beyond these books,
evangelical publishing
houses are to be commended for risking financial loss
in producing
purely academic books.
Spiritual
Immaturity
Yet in spite of these notable causes for hope,
the fact is that
evangelical Christianity remains possessed by
pietistic fervor at
291
292
Bibliotheca Sacra -
October-December 1986
the expense of intellectual rigor. This is known to
be true of many
congregations; others would argue
that it is also true of most
Christian
schools, colleges, and seminaries. For example the influ-
ence of so-called
"contemporary Christian music" is evident in the
evangelical subculture. Without arguing its
legitimacy as music,
its efficacy for evangelism, or its limitations on
the nourishment of
growing Christians, one may merely state that
spiritual imma-
turity prefers the familiar
over the unfamiliar, the popular over the
serious. Spiritual immaturity gravitates toward
ease rather than
rigor. Spiritual immaturity has money to spend on
entertainment
but precious little in its coffers for challenge or
conviction. Chris-
tians put their treasure
where their emotions reside, as Jesus said;
thus when the Thomas F. Staley Foundation's
"Distinguished
Christian
Scholar" appears on a Christian college campus for
several days of dawn-to-midnight pouring out—in
lectures, class-
room lessons, private interviews, faculty meetings,
administrative
councils, mealtime conversations, dormitory
lounge discussions—
he gives from his own learning and experience as a
Christian
husband, father, teacher, coach, writer,
speaker, scholar. He is
grateful for the honorarium paid, unless he
bothers to think about
the fact that the following night in the same
auditorium where he
called for thinking Christians, a group of surly
looking smart
alecks or scruffy clowns called "Noah and the
Animals" or "Pub-
licans and Sinners" will
be wailing into their microphones and
inundating their lyrics with cacaphonous
din. And the fee charged
to the college for this one-night stand would
support true Christian
scholarship ten times over.
Why is this so? Because, as one of these joyful
noisemakers
told this writer succinctly, "We give the
people what they want."
What
too many young people from evangelical homes and churches
enrolled in evangelical schools and colleges seem
to want is froth
and syrup and cotton candy served up by musical
lightweights
ignorant themselves of the relationship between
worship and the
beauty of holiness. As a consequence, the hymnody of
the
church—the legacy of Bernard of Clairvaux and Martin Luther, of
Isaac
Watts and Charles Wesley, Fanny Crosby and Reginald
Heber—not
to mention Bach, Handel, Mendelssohn, Bruckner,
and others—is in danger of disappearing altogether,
to be replaced
by often insipid songs.
Furthermore in too many instances the Christian
college is
little more than a holding pen where young adults can
"find them-
selves." What is shown in the advertisements for
Christian colleges
In but Not of the World 293
in evangelical periodicals? Students playing frisbee, students
hang-gliding, or relaxing on a
campus lawn. Where are the pho-
tographs of students in a
physics laboratory or library? Why must
admissions officers and public relations personnel
appeal to poten-
tial applicants as though
their institution were a nine-month
youth retreat where everyone sits around singing
mellow songs
about Jesus?
The Paradox of the
Christian Vocation
No wonder Charles Malik
so sternly judges evangelical colleges
for not having "yet attained the stature of
the fifty or one hundred
top universities of the world, which set the pace
and provide the
model for all other higher institutions of
learning."4 Malik also
asks why
they cannot provide a single
Nobel Prize winner in medicine or
physics or chemistry or biology
or any of the sciences, who is at the
same time a firm and
outspoken believer in the crucified and resur-
rected Jesus whose glory is
that he is now and forever at the very
right hand of God, and who
therefore is Lord of lords and King of
kings .... I mean a man who is
recognized and quoted by the scien-
tific community all over the
world ... just as, for instance, the contri-
butions of Maxwell or Einstein
or Planck or Fermi are
recognized ... and will at the
same time stand up in public and recite
the Nicene Creed and
declare that he believes every word of it.5
Can Malik be right to
indict Christians for their smugness,
their complacency, and their disinterest with the
result that, after
Billy
Graham, scarcely another household name familiar in Chris-
tianity's subculture would
register the slightest flicker of recogni-
tion in a
recently made by Nathan 0. Hatch. Describing the
incongruity
between "the sway of secularism" in
the world-at-large and "a heady
confidence" one is likely to find on the
campuses of evangelical
colleges, Hatch writes that "the jarring
disparity between these two
worlds testifies to how rarely the evangelical college
serves as a
bridge to issues and audiences beyond the safe
confines of the
evangelical world."6
Christian education, as represented by schools,
colleges, and
seminaries, remains in a puzzling posture, afraid
to be sufficiently
committed to living out the paradox of the
believer's vocation: living
in yet not of the world. Too often these
institutions swing toward
one extreme or the other. The first extreme may be
characterized as
Of but not in the world. Claiming to offer a
college-preparatory or
294
Bibliotheca Sacra -
October-December 1986
liberal arts education, the school or college
isolates itself by scru-
pulous admissions requirements
screening out unbelieving appli-
cants; statements of faith from applicants or from
parents on
behalf of their children; pledges to forbid indulgence
in sinful
pleasures (always the same list of notorious
iniquities, but never
mentioning gossip, cynicism, or rudeness in
chapel). The opposite
extreme is the institution that is both in
and of the world, so open
to all comers—faculty as well as students—and so
timid in assert-
ing the evangelical distinctives of its biblical world view that the
school or college has lost its Christian moorings.
Generally this
latter condition arises when the sine qua non
of Christian school-
ing evaporates. Gaebelein wrote, "The principle, ‘No Christian edu-
cation without Christian
teachers,' is not an oversimplification,
but rather the essential for effective work in this
field."7
In place of either extreme is needed a balanced
Christian
pedagogy, a balanced Christian curriculum, a
balanced under-
standing of the interdependence necessary to
loving God with one's
heart, soul, strength, and mind; a balanced
appreciation for the
multiple gifts of each member of the body of
Christ; a balance
between acknowledgment of one's own gifts and
humility in know-
ing how to use them.
Perhaps in making a start toward achieving
such a balance, the thrust of this article series
needs to be reex-
amined. Thinking like a
Christian is important; thinking has been
so disparaged and neglected by many in the church
that one
cannot speak of thinking like a Christian and
simply leave it there.
Thinking
must never become an abstraction, an idle pastime. For
the Christian there must also be action. Thinking
like a Christian
means speaking and acting like Jesus Christ.
Words, Words, Words
One
of the marks of maturity is thoughtful speech, the careful
choice of words. Mark Twain said somewhere that the
difference
between the right word and the nearly right word
is the difference
between lightning and the lightning bug. What a
person says
matters because what he says is a direct
reflection of who he is—or
who he may pretend to be! Jesus Himself put it plainly:
"For the
mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart"
(Matt.
the deepest recesses of one's being comes the dead
giveaway: the
words he says.
That is why language is so important for
Christians who wish
to think and act like Christ. Thought, speech, and
action are
In but Not of the World 295
inextricable. But if believers are
to think, speak, and act like
Christians,
they must become conscious that words are signs and
labels, that they identify the speaker's world view
They tell more
about
the speaker than many realize.
A dozen years ago this writer was invited to
speak at a college
near
his left eye hemorrhaged, leaving him totally blind
in that eye. To
anyone who asked about his eye he replied, "I've
had an accident
with my eye." Many kind people offered to pray
for the eye but no
one corrected the writer's use of language, and so
he went on
speaking about his accidental loss of vision. The
night before he
was to speak, he flew from
was rainy and foggy. When the plane landed, he sat
looking out at
the mist rolling in off
the illuminated sign identifying the airport. One
word seemed to
pulsate through the fog: "
thought seriously about that word and his
condition.
He realized that he had been guilty of far worse
than the
casual, unthinking misuse of language. He had
carelessly
demeaned the Lord of the universe, Yahweh-jireh, the God-who-
provides. By telling friends of his
"accident," he had been saying, in
effect, "I live by chance in a world that is no
more than a vast cosmic
casino; I live by the random rules of a world governed
by happen-
stance and chaos. " For
to trust God means delivering over to Him
responsibility for all that is beyond
one's power to control. Provi-
dence does not mean that
Christians never have an automobile
collision; it means that Christians never have an accident.
Provi-
dence means that when
Christians encounter an incident of disap-
pointment or even death, the God
they serve provides the fortitude
they need to see them through their difficulties.
For such a God, the
word "accident" cannot be found in His
vocabulary. As someone
speaking on KBRT-
to say ‘Oops!’” So thinking Christians cannot
speak of luck, for-
tune, chance, or coincidence because they have been
called to
speak as God's envoys.
Worthy, not
Worthless, Words
Since man's Fall in
mass of humanity through His chosen messengers, as
the author
of the Epistle to the Hebrews declares:
"God... spoke long ago to
the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in
many ways"
296
Bibliotheca Sacra -
October-December 1986
(Heb.
1:1). Then God provided another voice—the Message and
Messenger
in One, the divine Logos, the eternal Word incarnate in
Jesus
Christ. This voice continues to speak, His message echoed
and reechoed by those who have accepted His
commission to be
spokesmen for the Father. The Prophet Jeremiah
records that
commission as he heard it: "If you repent, I
will restore you that you
may serve me. If you utter worthy, not worthless, words,
you will be
my spokesman" (Jer.
If God chooses, He can speak from a burning bush
or even
through the braying of a donkey. God is
perfectly capable of speak-
ing directly, unmistakably,
and terrifyingly, as on the walls of
Belshazzar's
palace.
Furthermore God will speak again with the
voice of a trumpet on the day of history's
consummation. He will
say to the dead, "Rise up!" and to the
living, "Come, for all things
are now ready." But for now God chooses to
speak through believ-
ers, His human messengers,
because God is personal, not a cosmic
cipher; God is historical, not mythic; He is verbal,
not
incomprehensible. God's attributes
include mind, intellect, rea-
son; with these God imagines and thinks. God
creates in His mind,
then speaks and acts through human agents. He
whispers His will
in the ear of the one who listens and obeys. He
calls by name,
"Samuel,
Samuel," to which the only appropriate reply is, "Speak,
for Thy servant is listening" (1 Sam.
"Whom
shall I send, and who will go for us?" To this challenge the
only appropriate response is, "Here am I. Send
me!" (Isa. 6:8). Of
course God has angels to do His bidding. But because
it is God's
pleasure to share responsibility for this planet
and this race's well-
being with mankind, the creatures made in His own
image, God
commissions willing ambassadors to speak the message
of truth,
the word of warning, the word of comfort, the word
of joy.
But God's commission carries with it a set of conditions,
qualifications to be met before one
can become His messenger. God
imposes careful standards on those who would be
His spokesmen.
If Christians meet God's
criterion, then their work will be effective;
if they fail to measure up, their work will be
useless. Some seem to
possess an exalted notion of their own
importance to the work of
God. They act as though Almighty God were so weak
and depen-
dent on them that the kingdom would collapse without
them to
hold it up. They are indispensable, or so they
think, and the need
God
has is so critical—the emergency so acute—that God will
accept any service they offer on their own terms. In
arrogance they
present themselves, like impure vessels, not
realizing that God
In but Not of the World 297
abhors their sin; they present themselves as leaky
vases, presum-
ing to contain the splendor
of God's grace; they present themselves
as damaged goods, remnants from a fire sale, and
expect to model
the righteousness of God.
But what conditions does God impose? God
evaluates the
content of the message: "If you utter
worthy, not worthless, words,
you will be My spokesman." What are
"worthless words"? In keep-
ing with the emphasis on
thinking like a Christian, it seems fitting
to assert that style and content, form and
message, are indivisible.
Careless,
imprecise, sloppy speech as a vehicle for communicating
the good news is unacceptable. As Trueblood wrote, "We must, as
Christians, stress excellence."8 Why does it matter how
a person
speaks or what he says? What difference does it make
if he says
"infer" when he means "imply," or
"uninterested" when he means
"disinterested"? Or so what if he speaks only the
gibberish of the
evangelical clubhouse? The fact is that much of
God-talk, if not
ungrammatical and malaprop,
is often threadbare from casual,
automatic, tongue-twitching overwork.
Nor can Christians excuse themselves by
exclaiming, "What
difference does it make, just so the general idea
about the gospel
gets through?" Scripture does not suggest that
"in the beginning
was the general idea," or that at the
Incarnation, "the Vague Notion
became flesh and dwelt among us. "
Jesus of Nazareth is the defini-
tive Logos, divine Logic,
sublime Reason, the Alpha and Omega,
the eternal Word. The best attempts at articulating
this mystery
will always fall short of full expression, but that
gives Christians
no right to absolve themselves for selling out to
the cheap phrase,
the easy cliché.
Actions Speak Louder
than Words
This writer's father, the Reverend E. A.
Lockerbie, used to
challenge his congregation with this anonymous
quatrain:
We are writing a gospel, a chapter a day,
By the deeds that we do
and the words that we say.
Men read what we write, whether faithful and
true:
Tell me, what is the gospel according to you?
Christians should utter worthy words and then
have the grace
to act in ways that befit their speech. Two
particular areas of
behavior call for repentance, restoration, and
renewed dedication:
first, Christians' often oblivious absorption in
popular culture; and
second, their scandalous undermining of the family.
298
Bibliotheca Sacra -
October-December 1986
Muggeridge's vivid analogy of the
boiling frogs portrays the
uncritical immersion of many in today's popular
culture. "The
frogs are us," says Muggeridge,
"the water is our habitat, and the
Media,
by accustoming us to the gradual deterioration of our
values and our circumstances, ensure that the boiling
point comes
upon us unawares. "9
The most lethal aspect of popular culture, the
most overtly
satanic, is the music of death played and sung
by louts and per-
verts, by screeching men and
leering women whose caterwauling
now moves from recording disc and concert hall to
the family room
by way of television. By watching their music
videos and leafing
through the "heavy metal" fan
magazines, a person knows the
message of Def Leppard,
Twisted Sister, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden,
Black
Sabbath—or does he? No adult Christian—certainly no
Christian
educator in any field—can afford to ignore the blatant
summons to nihilism and even suicide explicit in
this poisonous
sound.
Still many Christians not only ignore its
dangers but seem to
revel in its blasphemy. When this writer visits
Christian colleges,
his accommodations are often in a dormitory guest
apartment.
Each
afternoon, as he returns to his room, he literally has to step
over the bodies of potential Christian leaders
sprawled beyond the
confines of the television lounge, temporarily
transfixed by the
diabolism of MTV Later that night, he may well
have to resort to
earplugs to lessen the throbbing din of Duran Duran, Motley Crue,
and Van Halen, blasting
from rooms where students, presumably
being taught to think like Christians, are doing
their homework.
These
campuses need to be invaded by Christians who will pro-
claim the lordship of Jesus Christ—not David Lee
Roth!—and
drive out the corrupting power of Satan.
At an evangelical college in the
in the student union with an older freshman, a man
of 25 but
looking 50—scant of hair and teeth, his face
marred, his arms
gouged by years of drug addiction. It was November.
The previous
summer on a street corner in
flyer announcing an evangelistic, meeting nearby.
There he had
heard the gospel for the first time. The next day,
momentarily clear
of his drugged state, he had returned to the
church and confessed
Christ.
The pastor saw something in this man and prevailed on his
own college to take the new convert into summer
school—even
though the man had dropped out of junior high school,
already an
addict at 14. The college took him; he had survived
summer school
In but Not of the World 299
and had been admitted to freshman standing.
Struggling with
both the demands of college and his newly redeemed
life, what
puzzled him most was the inconsistency of
professing Christians.
In the conversation in the lounge he paused for
a moment to
hear the music being piped from the main desk of the
student
union, one of the current Top 40. This young
Christian, with his
battered face and rotten teeth—yet radiating joy
in Christ— said,
"They
shouldn't oughta play that music here. These people
here,
they don't know what it means. They've never been on
the other
side of the door. But me, I've been on the other
side of the door, and,
Mister,
it means death!"
Christian education must be committed to life,
not death.
One's
course of study and his manner of living, must transcend the
best that the secular cosmos has to offer with the
best that the Lord
of heaven and earth has to give: abundant life,
life with a purpose
fulfilling itself day by day. A sure indication
that a person has begun
to experience that abundant life will be an
aroused sensitivity
toward the needs of others. Loving God with heart,
soul, strength,
and mind goes hand in hand with loving one's
neighbor. If a
professing Christian's heart is dull to the needs
of others, if his
jokes are frequently at the expense of ethnic
minorities, if his
respect for the opposite sex is minimal, if his
compassion for the
less gifted or less privileged seems stillborn, then
his religion suf-
fers from arrested
development and stunted growth.
Furthermore loving God by loving others begins
at home, with
love and gratitude, respect and honor for one's
parents; love and
graciousness, respect and fidelity
for one's wife or husband; love
and patience, respect and responsibility for one's
children. The
single most distressing characteristic in evangelical
Christianity—
unthinkable only a generation ago—is the sinful
neglect of biblical
standards
for loving and cherishing each other. Laxity has been
permitted to creep into today's understanding of
family obliga-
tions, resulting in a shoulder-shrugging
neutrality toward mar-
riage vows and abdication of
authority with regard to the bringing
up of children. The world fosters the
self-centered ideal, favors the
institutionalizing of the elderly,
promotes live-in fornication rather
than lifelong marriage, tosses off the blame for
unruly children on
the rest of society. All this is in place of
accepting God-ordained
roles as members of a Christian family.
For all this the writer's generation is at fault
for not having had
the courage to oppose the incursion of decadence
into the home
and church, the school and seminary. On the younger
generation,
300
Bibliotheca Sacra -
October-December 1986
then, falls the burden to help redeem from folly an
evangelical
Christian
subculture not far removed from having the word "Ich-
abod" inscribed as its
motto: "The glory of the Lord has departed."
Now,
as never before, is needed the youthful enthusiasm of today's
Christian
generation, along with their flaming sense of mission,
the passion of their first love for God, to lead
believers back in
repentance, restoration, and renewal to the wisdom
that is
Jesus
Christ.
In the summer of 1918 a Presbyterian minister
named William
Hiram
Foulkes stood on the railway platform opposite the
Stony
Brook
Assembly conference grounds, now the campus of The
Stony Brook School. Waiting for his train
to
met another Presbyterian, Calvin Laufer, who told Foulkes that a
melody had been running through his mind for several
days.
Laufer hummed his original tune, and on the train to
the city
William
Hiram Foulkes wrote his hymn, called "Stony
Brook." The
next evening, the congregation at the Assembly sang
it for the first
time.10 May this first stanza
be like a closing prayer:
Take Thou our minds, dear Lord, we humbly pray;
Give us the mind of Christ each passing day;
Teach us to know the truth that sets us free;
Grant us in all our thoughts to honor Thee.
May Christians today go forth in the name of Christ. Thanks
be to God! 12
Editor's Note
This is the fourth in a series of four articles
delivered by the author as the W H.
Notes
1 Frank
E. Gaebelein, The
Pattern of God's Truth: Problems of Integration in
Christian
Education
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1954); Harry Blamires,
The
Christian Mind
(London: SPCK, 1966); John R. W. Stott, Your Mind Matters
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity
Press, 1973).
2 Leslie
R. Keylock, "The Renaissance of Evangelical
Protestantism," Publishers
Weekly,
3 Arthur
E Holmes, All Truth Is God's Truth (
Press,
1983); Arthur E Holmes, ed., The Making of a
Christian Mind (Downers
Grove,
IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985); Nicholas Wolterstorff, Educatingfor
Responsi-
ble Action (
1980);
Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff,
eds., Faith and Rationality:
Reason
and Belief in God
(Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1983);
Ronald
H. Nash, Christian Faith and Historical Understanding (
Zondervan
Publishing House, 1984). Also the four articles in this series in
In but Not of the World 301
expanded form are to be published by Multnomah
Press under the title Thinking
like a Christian.
4
Charles Malik,
A Christian Critique of the University (
InterVarsity Press), p. 29.
5 Ibid.,
pp. 51-52.
6
Nathan O. Hatch, "
ing," The Reformed
Journal 35 (September 1985):12.
7
Frank E. Gaebelein,
Christian Education in a Democracy (
University
Press, 1951), p. 47.
8
D. Elton Trueblood,
Toward a Christian Philosophy of Higher Education, ed.
John
Paul von Grueningen (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1957), p. 167.
9
"Living through an
Apocalypse," Christianity Today,
10 William Hiram Foulkes,
"Take Thou Our Minds, Dear Lord," Present Day
Hymns
and Why They Were Written, comp. John Barnes Pratt (
Barnes,
1940), pp. 42-43.
11
"Take Thou Our Minds, Dear
Lord," The Hymnal (
Board of Christian Education, 1933).
12
The writer wishes to express gratitude
to his colleague, John M. Kenney,
chairman of the Bible department at The Stony
Brook School, who was an encour-
agement in the preparation of
these articles by his thoughtful criticism.
This
material is cited with gracious permission from:
Dr.
Please report any errors to Ted Hildebrandt
at: