“In our society we are free to
believe anything we want to believe as long as we don’t actually think it’s
true.” Ravi Zacharias, in his book Jesus Among other Gods, said that. He was talking about our skewed understanding
of religious belief. (I’ll explain in
a later post why I’ve put religious
in italics). Now days we can hang Buddhist prayer flags, put up Festivus poles,
don turbans, hold séances, and carve fertility goddesses and no one will bug
us. But if we let anyone know that we take any of it seriously – especially if
any of it is Christian – then we’re discounted and marked as peculiar and even
dangerous – see Janet Napolitano’s description of a terrorist, or Chris
Matthews’ mocking of those who “don’t believe in evolution.”
We need to get this straightened
out. As Christians we’re standing around strumming guitars and singing I Can Only Imagine while secularists
make mincemeat out of our beliefs and they’re doing so because we haven’t stood
up for what we believe, let alone for
why we believe it. Sometimes we try
to support our reliance on scripture, but since we don’t know much about the
historical accuracy of the Bible, that falls flat. We try to back up our moral
firmness and we’re told we’re not “loving.” We attempt to present the gospel
and no one can fathom that he even needs to be saved. Things are really off-kilter.
Let’s get a grip, folks, and look at the assumptions and motivations that
rumble about underneath this growing rift.
