Almost every day newspapers tell of another war or revolution somewhere in the world. It is painfully clear that something is wrong with the human race. Why, with all our progress in education, science, technology, and philosophy, do violent conflicts remain? Why can’t we solve the human predicament?
We are living in what is called a new world—a world of revolutionary outlook and of dynamic change. But as the Bible puts it “there is no new thing under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9), and man can no more change his nature than the leopard can change his spots (Jer. 13:23).
The noted historian Arnold Toynbee once said that as long as original sin remains an element in human nature, Caesar will always have work to do. Toynbee believes there is no reason to expect any change in unredeemed human nature. There has been no perceptible variation in the average sample of human nature in the past, and so there is no ground, in the evidence of history, to expect any great variation in the future. All 6,000 years of recorded history, according to Toynbee’s study, reveal one truth: that man cannot save himself.
Pitirim A. Sorokin, a renowned sociologist and a former Russian revolutionary leader, searched exhaustively but found no cure for human ills in any human systems or schemes, whether political, economic, educational, or scientific. He said:
The shortest, the most efficient and the only practical way of really alleviating and shortening the crisis is by reintegrating its religious, moral, scientific, philosophical, and other values … primarily in the values of moral duty and the kingdom of God.… Without the Kingdom of God, we are doomed to a weary and torturing pilgrimage from calamity to calamity, from crisis to crisis, with only brief moments of transitory improvement for regaining our breath [see Sorokin’s The Reconstruction of Humanity, chaps. 1–3; Social and Cultural Dynamic; The Crisis of Our Age, chap. 9; Man and Society in Calamity, chap. 18].
Revolutionary Nature Of The Gospel
This biblical, historical, and sociological evidence offers good reason to rethink the revolutionary nature of the Gospel and to assume our solemn responsibility to preach the true Gospel. We need to give a reason for our hope to the people of the world who are being deceived by false doctrines and bewildered by false lights. First of all, we must tell the world that the Gospel is by its nature revolutionary. Christian world missions is a divine revolution. In the spiritual sense, Jesus Christ is the only true revolutionary leader. Christian revolution is timeless and spiritual, and the most powerful and dynamic in its implications for human lives. Compared with Jesus, all other revolutionary leaders are mere frauds; compared with Christianity, all other revolutionary doctrines are vain deceit. For only Jesus Christ can make a complete change in human nature and a fundamental transformation of the human value system.
Man spends too much time trying to change the world instead of trying to change the people who make the world what it is. World problems are an extension of individual problems. When man looks at the world, he sees himself, with all his fear, meaninglessness, hatred, and self-centeredness. The world cannot be changed so long as human nature remains unchanged.
Jesus Christ, the greatest revolutionary of all time, talked about change not in government but in the human heart. Most revolutions are accomplished by violence and by dramatic events, but not so with the spiritual revolution that Christ brings. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature. This is the revolution we need, and this is the intrinsic nature of the Gospel.
Revolutionary Power Of The Gospel
But in this activist generation, the power of the Gospel has been greatly underestimated or has been restated in terms of “social action” (“social activism” is a more accurate term, for reasons that I will state later). While some activists are certainly sincere in their efforts, few if any fully understand the true nature of the revolutionary power of the Gospel. Lacking this understanding, they mistakenly regard evangelism and social action as mutually exclusive. But the regenerating result of the preaching of the Gospel is not merely a “religious” matter; it affects the whole of a person’s life. The Christian is to place all his activities under the Lordship of Christ.
History shows that the preaching of the Gospel has been not only a highly effective form of social action but also a mighty revolutionary power. The job of preaching is to inject a leaven into the social and political order and infuse a new spiritual life into secular culture and civilization. The early disciples did that, and that handful of unlearned and ignorant and despised people was enabled by the Holy Spirit to turn the world upside down (Acts 17:6).
In the early history of the Christian Church, the Christian revolution swept all the way from Jerusalem across Asia Minor, Greece, and Macedonia to the gates of Rome. This has been described by the church fathers. They did not seek to set up new social, economic, or political systems. Their prime objective was winning men and women to Jesus Christ. From this, they felt, all other good results would flow. Historian W. Stanford Reid has written:
The impact of Christianity on the society of the Roman Empire was powerful for the elevation of the status of women, the care of the poor, the abolition of slavery. The Reformation may be said to have had an even greater political, economic, and social influence. Many ideas that are being talked about today, such as the equality of all persons, the rights of the individual, and the responsibility of people to “do their own thing,” are secularized versions of the teaching of Luther, Calvin, and their followers. Many of the social and political reforms of the nineteenth century likewise sprang directly out of the Evangelical Revival, leading to social and political action to protect exploited workers, to free Negro slaves, and to help the poor and downtrodden [“Preaching Is Social Action,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, June 4, 1971, page 11].
Even a secular historian, William E. H. Lecky, has recognized that the Evangelical Revival spared England from the throes and calamity of a revolution like the French.
These historical facts reveal the truth that Christianity is not a mere “religion” but an ever-renewing and revolutionary power. They encourage us to revitalize evangelistic efforts and to revive a revolutionary spirit to challenge the social activists.
Revolutionary Spirit Of The Gospel
Since the weapons of the Christian’s warfare are not carnal, his strategy of revolution cannot be in the form of frontal assault upon the world or its governments, nor can it employ violence, as the “new breed” clergymen advocate. Christian revolution should be primarily a revolution in the “inner man” (Eph. 3:15) “by the renewing of the mind” (Rom. 12:2). Real social uplift and enduring national renovation can be achieved only through the regeneration of individuals. The social radicals put the cart before the horse by stressing solely the salvation of social structures and by erroneously translating the biblical truths of “sin” as “exploitation” and “salvation” as “liberation” or “social revolution.” They are keenly interested in attacking the corruption of government, but they overlook the alarming corruption of man—such common matters as organized crime, adultery, fornication, murder, looting, kidnapping, pornographic literature, and unwholesome films and television programs.
Evangelicals must put on the whole armor of God, challenge the radical social activists, and pray that they may be rescued from the snare of the devil, who is trying to deceive the world, even God’s elect, with his new strategy—the new social gospel (social activism).
1. First of all, evangelicals must make it clear that while a Christian must never lose his deep sense of concern about the vital problems of mankind, nonetheless, as a true revolutionary, he must carefully discern the difference between what the late L. Nelson Bell called “ ‘involvement’ in the world for Christ’s sake” and “ ‘entanglement’ in the ways of the world by Satan’s power.” Moreover, in order to be involved he must first thoroughly study the problems and know how to be involved; otherwise, he is likely to get entangled in the horizontal perplexities and fall deeper and deeper into the snares of the devil.
2. Evangelicals must make clear the difference between “social activism” and “social action.” Social activism is “love in word and in speech, but not in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18). The actions yielded by “social activism” are such things as wild street demonstrations and violent looting and burning, actions that are motivated not by love but by hate. Those who engage in social action go to war-torn and poverty-ridden countries with the Gospel, food, medicine, doctors and nurses, and relief funds, at the risk of their own safety and lives; the social activists stay behind, preaching in air-conditioned churches or shouting slogans on the street for “peace, peace when there is no peace.”
The social radicals are not aware of the tragic fact that under the Communist regime there is only a worse form of capitalism: its boss is the Party, which has no concern for the individual or social concern whatsoever. The Communists use “poverty” as a political weapon, but do not really care for the poor. The exploitation and oppression are more cruel under the “reign of terror” of Communist regimes than under any form of colonialism, feudalism, or despotism!
3. Evangelicals must make it clear that while the true revolutionaries maintain a sense of social concern, they never follow the god of the social radicals, who demands change in social structures, not in individuals.
4. Evangelicals must show that the true revolutionaries are different from the frauds who deal only with surface phenomena, who offer only aspirin to a society suffering from a tumor. What the world needs is not something that merely dulls the pain but something that cuts deep enough to change the basic unit of society: man. Social action without a vertical and transcendental relation with God only creates horizontal anxieties and perplexities!
Furthermore, social radicals are actually ignorant of the social issues; they are rarely experts in the social sciences. They demand immediate change or destruction of social structures, but provide no plan for a new society. They can be likened to the fool in a Chinese story who tried to help a plant grow faster by pulling it higher. Of course, his “action” only caused the plant to wither and die.
5. Evangelicals must challenge social radicals to distinguish between true repentance and “social repentance.” The Bible says, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret; but worldly grief produces death” (2 Cor. 7:10). This was the bitter experience of many former Russian Marxists, who after their conversion to Christ came to understand that they had only a sort of “social repentance”—a sense of guilt before the peasant and the proletariat but not before God. They confessed that, in the words of Nicolas Zernov, “a Russian [Marxist] intellectual as an individual is often a mild and loving creature, but his creed [Marxism] constrains him to hate.”
6. Lastly, above all, evangelicals must challenge social radicals to be aware of the danger of the new strategy of the old serpent. Satan is very subtle. He is familiar with the trends of theology and knows that evangelicals have refuted the old social gospel. Now he is preaching a new social gospel (social activism) in using “social concern” and “social justice” as pretenses and has raised a group within the New Left to be his preachers, penetrating to all walks of life, especially to the young intellectuals. On the other hand, the international Communists are using a more devilish form of brain washing to change the mentality of the free world. Among those who advance their cause are well-meaning but naïve theologians and preachers who “refused to love the truth,” and instead “believe a lie”!
