 The other war  The Layman Volume 34, Number 7, Posted November 30, 2001
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. |
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