Parker T. Williamson
editor-in-chief
There is a war going on that has little to do with
carpet bombs and anthrax scares. This contest rages between a
culture that exalts the autonomous self and Christians who
trust the Word of God.
Ever eager to undermine the Church’s faith, postmodern
libertarians have turned September 11 into an assault weapon
against “fundamentalism.” Sloppily defined, their
foe is described as any faith that claims allegiance to an “absolute.”
Writing in the current issue of
Christianity Today,
Ted Olson tracks various fronts on which this war is being
waged. He reports, “In publications and in meetings
around the world, the high-minded proclaim that the problem of
terrorism isn’t a problem of Islam – it’s a
problem with any religion that claims to be the only true
religion.”
The only true religion is, of course, precisely what
Christianity claims to be.
Scripture rejects a consumer approach to religion that
encourages people to pick their own deities or – if none
of the standard fare will do – simply to concoct one that
appeals to their personal proclivities. The Creator is not,
after all, the creature’s progeny.
Masquerading as modernity, religious relativism is hardly new.
Paul encountered it in the agora. Elijah confronted it at
Mount Carmel. And it appeared in the wilderness when a silly
little calf jumped out of Aaron’s stew pot.
Relativism’s origin is sin, the creature’s
determination to create gods in his own image. He can, of
course, but any such gods are, by virtue of their origin, not
God.
Ah, but there’s that “absolute” again, and
absolutes are out of sync with the current cultural bias,
repeated incessantly these days by the current General
Assembly moderator, whose stump speech in many of our
presbyteries declares that people who “absolutize”
their religion are, well, “fundamentalists.”
But what if the God whom we worship is not, as postmodernists
would have us believe, the product of our imagination? What if
God truly is God? What if God’s Word is true, not because
we say so but because God said so?
If that be the case – and revelation assures us that it
is – then declaring one’s allegiance to Jesus Christ
is an act of humility, not arrogance. Our refusal to
acknowledge alternatives – be they Caesar or Sophia –
is simply an expression of faithfulness.
Does that mean that Christians should go out and attack
Muslims who do not believe? Of course not! The very Christ
whom we worship created our Muslim neighbors.
Our task is not to bludgeon unbelievers, but to love our
neighbors as ourselves. This we do, by going into all of the
world, and proclaiming with humility this very good news: “God
so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever
believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
Parker T. Williamson is editor-in-chief of
The Layman.