THE PROFOUND POWER OF TRUTH
So, here’s the question: How does it come that many non-Christians live lives as gallantly and as uprightly as many Christians?
I’m going to ignore what I judge to be nonsense—the nonsense that
non-Christians can’t and don’t—ever—do the right thing. There’s a sick
theology [many of the people that hold it are lovely, gentle and kind
people—they live better than their religious beliefs], a sick theology
that says non-Christians because they are non-Christians don’t really
love their parents, spouses, children, friends and such. I don’t have
the time, energy or interest right now to talk about non-Christians like
Lydia [Acts 16] or Cornelius [Acts 10] whose lives were beautiful
before they were offered the gospel of Jesus.
Nor am I interested in developing at length the point one more time
that no one—not anyone at any time in the history of the world—earned
life with God or that God ever required it of them. God gifted Adam and
Eve with life—they were supposed to live that gift out as a gift!
God gifted even the blessed and sinless Lord Jesus with life with
him. Jesus never thought he earned life with God; he never thought he
had to! Life with God is a gift, always, ceaselessly a gift. It was a
gift to Jesus and he lived it out as the Holy Father’s gift.
If there’s a single hair in our head that claims we earn life with
God or that he called us to earn it we ought to pluck it out and burn
it! Life with God begins with grace, is sustained by grace and is
completed by grace! Without the utterly free grace of God exhibited in,
through and as the Lord Jesus no one has life in fellowship with God!
“Life” with God is more than biological existence, it’s more than
forgiveness of sins—it’s a relationship of hearts, it is holy friendship
with and obedient response to the Sovereign God. By God’s very nature
the “life” that he offers must be of a certain quality. The gift he
gives is of that nature and a heart that exults in evil and contempt of
God cannot experience it. Light cannot fellowship darkness and God
cannot give to and enjoy peace with impenitent God-haters.
Back to the question: How is it that many non-Christians live lives as gallantly and uprightly as many Christians?
There is much I’m not sure of but I am sure that the moral/ethical
structure and response of God's elect people ancient and more ancient
had a lot in common with the non-elect. That is, much of what the elect
conceived of as "the right thing to do" was common to the non-elect
nations [you who have time or should make some time for such things, do
some reading on this
in Ancient Near Eastern Texts; read of the laws of
pagans like Hammurabi,1 the Mari tablets or [perhaps especially] the Laws of Eshnunna.]
Moral uprightness didn't begin with Abraham nor did it begin at
Sinai. [You might think it worth your time to look at the pieces on The
Torah that are on this site.]
Those in the Abrahamic family who were doing what was right were
doing right before God linked doing right to his covenant with Abraham.
Their prior doing right now became, in addition to what it was earlier, a
storying instrument. Israel would then say to those in other nations
who were doing what was right: "We do these things in Yahweh's name and
in pursuit and promotion of his purpose." Not everyone in the non-elect
nations was a moral jerk and while they believed [characteristically] in
the gods as rulers of their world and had certain rituals and festivals
to please the gods, they didn't love their wives and children and
husbands and parents because the gods had delivered divine rulebooks.
[This is complex—not obscure just complex—and it needs developed.]
Jews who would end up living among other nations would find
themselves doing the same things the non-elect were doing. They'd love
their children and such as the pagan citizens would be doing—often no
better and no worse. They'd be facing the same illnesses,
disappointments, worries and fears as the Babylonian populace would be
facing and they'd learn how to "handle them" in the same ways as these
Babylonians.
The Jews who were doing what was right would correctly be thanking
God for the ways and means by which they endured. The Babylonians who
were doing right would mistakenly thank the gods for the ways and means
of successful enduring. Both would owe God the thanks though the
non-elect wouldn't know it; but the desire to do well, to patiently
continue in doing what is right would be there in both Jews and
non-Jews.
God wasn't doing magic to enable the Jews to do [sometimes perhaps
poorly and in a desultory fashion] what many Babylonians might be doing
better. The non-existent gods weren't helping anyone so we know God was
helping the Babylonians as well as Israel
Since God rejected the Babylonians and all other nations as his elect
People we know he wasn’t helping Babylonians to live uprightly via a
covenant relationship with them. To be elect or non-elect had nothing to
do with moral excellence. God didn’t reject the Edomites or any other
nation because of immorality [see Romans 9:10-11] nor did he choose
Israel because of its moral uprightness [Deuteronomy 9:6; Exodus 34:9].
Israel's wisdom literature tells us that God uses all kinds of ways
to enrich, stabilize, empower and make his people devoutly wise but he
didn’t do it by magic. See Proverbs 1:8-9 and chapter 3, for example.
Children are urged to pay attention to the advice of upright parents.
We're not to think because that's true of Israel that it wasn't true of
Babylonians and Egyptians. God didn't give them the Story or the
experiences that were part of the Story he gave peculiarly to Israel but
he gave them everything else that was fine and lovely [do note Acts
14:16-17; 17:24-28]. The non-elect weren't utterly destitute of his
truth. Increasingly the human family suppressed the truth of God that
was in the world [be sure to see Romans 1:18-19] but to say it was
utterly obliterated from the planet is nonsense. To claim that only
Christians know what is honorable is nonsense! To claim that
non-Christians cannot and do not live as honorably as some Christians do
is obviously false.
[Have you noticed that hard-liner Calvinists who [in keeping with the
creed] claim all non-Christians are God-hating rebels worthy only of
ceaseless, eternal and conscious torment—have you noticed that they
treat them otherwise? They hire them and fully expect honesty. They hire
them to look after their children or nurse their elderly parents or
treat their illnesses if they are hospitalized? Have you noticed that
they react angrily if they aren’t treated well by workers in restaurants
and elsewhere as if these “abusers” could do anything about their
behavior? What nonsense we can believe. We say of someone that he is
morally straight-jacketed at birth that it’s impossible for him to behave
in honor or compassion unless God works a moral miracle on him and then
we rage against him because he doesn’t act in honesty, honor or
compassion because God hasn’t worked that miracle on him!]
Moving on. It’s no mark of special wisdom to observe that America has
suppressed the truth of God; but what do we mean when we say “America”
has suppressed the truth of God in unrighteousness? Do we mean that
every citizen of the USA is a moral degenerate? No one in America lives
decently, generously or patiently except Christians? Are we to believe
that all the senators and members of congress are decadent villains and
that all the laws they promote are without exception corrupt and are
meant to generate moral villainy?
Say they’re non-Christians if that’s the case! Say many of them are
essentially self-serving and roguish if that’s the case! But, bless me,
we’re to believe that the Hebrew-Christian scriptures and good influence
hasn’t shaped Americans [or whoever] to some degree and at some level?
Has everyone who is now a Christian lived a life of moral degradation
until the day when by faith they placed their lives in God’s hands to
be his servants? Have they not in their tens of thousands lived [not
sinless lives but] lives of love of parents and what is honorable prior
to their becoming Christians? Of course they have! During those years
the magnificent God was at work in them; during those years though they
hadn’t made a personal commitment to God in and through Jesus he
maintained a commitment to them as his created children.
There is a grossly distorted system of doctrine that claims that
everyone who has not given his/her life over to Jesus is totally
depraved and wholly in favor of all that’s evil and wholly opposed to
all that’s good. This doctrine is a system and that view is necessitated
by other parts of their system. Because that specific view is held it
means that all the goodness and kindness and self-sacrifice we see in
the world is not only not good—it’s positively sinful! Ask John Piper
and his ilk—he’ll tell you that’s his conviction.
How does God promote, generate and sustain faith and love and honor and all the virtues in this life of ours?
The first thing we need to remember is this: It is God who does it! It doesn’t matter how many instruments he uses—it is God who does it.
Secondly, we need to remember that God is the one who initiates and sustains such a work—humans
don’t! Humans didn’t create themselves, didn’t determine their nature
as human beings and don’t exist “in and of themselves.” Humans can’t
breathe by themselves so you know they can’t think or live or believe
“in and of themselves”. If people come to believe in the Lord Jesus it
is because—many obvious things—someone brought the gospel to them and
the truth of the gospel drew them to God. Humans don’t draw
themselves—the presented beauty, grace, power, goodness, holiness and
love of God drew them [see John 12:32-33].
Listen, humans don’t exist “in and of themselves.” It doesn’t matter
than many think otherwise. They exist within the will and purpose of God
toward the human family.
Then there’s this. God by his gospel [Old Testament—Hebrews
4:1-2 as well as New Testament] has gathered around him down the
centuries men and women who have borne witness of and for him and
through their lives and their Story have shaped entire nations and their
convictions. In this way God has shaped cultures that have admired and
lived out virtues and changed nations for the better. Such people enable
hosts of people to look skyward and say, “The heavens declare the glory
of God and the sky shows his handiwork.” Such people, following their
Lord [Matthew 11:25] make this massive universe a home and stamp it: THE
HOLY FATHER’S PLACE.
Some believers speak as if they alone know what sin/evil is. There is
ugly “Christian imperialism” here. Not only is it ugly it is
counterproductive because wiser believers know that Hebrew—Christian
teaching has shaped nations so that they too recognize evil when they
see it. It’s true that slavery in many brutal and sophisticated forms
exist today near and far but no one doubts that the best face of America
[or wherever] will no longer stand for pre-Wilberforce or pre-Martin
Luther King days.
It doesn’t matter if it were true [and it isn’t true] that only
Christians urged the abolition of slavery—the fact is that millions in
the general populace stood up and said, “No more!”
Truth embodied in people, embodied in people shaped by truth is
powerful and beautiful and Transformative. All truth is God’s truth and
God has given truth into the hands of humans—Christians and
non-Christians alike. God gifted non-believing scientists—medical and
otherwise—with truth that has blessed his world. They may be few and far
between but there have been non-believing scientists, social workers,
manufacturers, teachers and others who devoted their time, energy and
health and finally their lives in pursuit of truth. This is the work of
God. The source of all truth that is truth is the magnificent God, the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who rejoices in all his
works—including the human family.
So, it’s God, God’s doings, God’s loving initiative that we learn
through God’s Story that climaxes in Jesus that enables us all to live
with honor. As part of his Purpose God choose [and chooses] out
ordinary, run-of-the-mill people, morally no better and no worse than
other people, to bear witness to the truth of all that.
So, that’s it! Truth—that’s the entire story?
No! God and the truth about God, that’s the entire Story.
So it’s nothing but teaching? [That was Augustine’s complaint against
Pelagius. “What you offer is nothing but teaching,” is a fair summary
of an aspect of Augustine’s argument. In the course of the long argument
Augustine came up with his distorted message that was systematized by
Calvin and expressed as a creed in the Westminster Confession.]
How does it come that some believe the truth of God and many don’t?
This is a profoundly interesting question for another time but whatever
the answer is, we’re not to dismiss the power of God and his truth. We
can deny the incredible nature of a mother’s love for a child because
the child holds her in contempt.
There’s more than one form of “power”.
(1) See: http://www.thenagain.info/Classes/Sources/Hammurabi-Prologue.html
