Several years ago, I was talking with a former fundamentalist who had left the ministry to enter politics. I realized how far he had strayed from fundamentalism when he said, “You know, Smith, I respect your intelligence. How in the world can you still believe in the authority of Scripture?”
I knew he would argue against a rational defense, so I took a different tack. “At one time in my life, I thought about taking your position,” I said, “because there was so much in the Bible I found distasteful. But then I realized it was my distaste rather than my disbelief that was causing the problem. I didn’t want to believe the parts of Scripture that commanded me to act. I didn’t want to lose control of my life and make obedience more important than knowledge.”
He didn’t change his mind, but I think he went away respecting the fact that intellectual integrity could make you submit to Scripture.
Since then I’ve done more thinking on the subject. If I remove the parts of Scripture I dislike, and five of my friends do likewise, the six of us could pretty well scrap the whole book through our distaste for obedience, rebellion against authority, and worship of knowledge. I know myself well enough to know I’m not God-like enough to be that authoritative. Honesty compels me to accept the authority of Scripture.
Intellectual integrity, however, is not abundant in the Christian community. In fact, I find more of it in business than I do in religion. There’s a simple reason: business uses the language of figures. Politics, religion, and education don’t lend themselves to bottom-line evaluation.
The Mantle of Spirituality
Take, for instance, the way we spiritualize the nonspiritual. One of the jobs of a “successful” pastor is to make the irresponsible comfortable. If a thousand members are giving, on the average, two percent of their income, you probably have a very successful budget. But it’s far short of what healthy Christians should contribute.
The pastor, however, brags on the size of the budget as if everybody were doing what they ought to do. Instead of talking about the irresponsibility of not giving what they should, he makes them comfortable about having met the budget.
Or take the politics of a church. Any group of people working together is a political organization. Church leaders must control the political structure, because that’s what gets their programs carried out. That part of the job is pure politics. Other parts of the job are truly spiritual-but perhaps only 25 percent. The 75 percent could be done by any capable Rotarian.
It is dishonest to throw the mantle of spirituality (the 25 percent) over the rest-to get up and say, “We have spent a long time praying about this and feel definite Spirit leadership in this slate of officers”-if in reality they’ve been selected for purely political reasons. There is, of course, nothing inherently dishonest in political dynamics.
I’ll Pray For You, Etc.
How many times do we promise to pray for someone when we have no intention of doing so? It does, however, get the person out of the office smoothly.
Or how about dropping God’s name? If I’ve been invited to the presidential prayer breakfast, I somehow make sure my friends know about it. That way I get in one lick for God and two licks for me.
Or how about preaching the imminent return of Christ while setting up a religious industry without any real belief in that happening? I’ve often wondered how book publishers negotiate royalty contracts with people who write about Jesus coming back any minute. Do they put in contingency clauses?
Who’s in the Family?
I’ve been very interested in Robert Schuller’s book Self-Esteem: The New Reformation. I’m an admirer of him, and when I attended a dinner the other night with some of his leaders, they gave me a copy. I read it to see if I would find where I might differ with Bob. In my mind I wanted him to be right, because I like the inspiration, the positive thinking.
But there is a theological problem in assuming that because we are creatures of God, we are children of God. I believe we are all creatures of God, and through the new birth, we become children of God. If we all start as children of God, there’s no reason for the new birth. And without that, there’s no reason for Christ to have come.
People who point to Christ as a “perfect example” are badly overengineering the product. I have a high-precision German sports car, and if I could find a highway with no speed limit, my car would be perfect for it. It cruises at 100 mph. When I’m forced to hold it to 55 mph, it doesn’t operate right. I have spent a lot of money for wasted precision.
Similarly, if God meant Christ to be simply a perfect example, the Son was way overengineered. Any human being who is better than I am is a good enough example for me. I already have Mother Teresa; what do I need with a perfect example? I’d be much better off becoming the disciple of someone only 15 percent better than I am than getting depressed by a perfect man. If Christ is an example, nobody needs him; but if he’s a sacrifice, everyone does.
Knowledge vs. Faith
Where does knowledge stop and faith begin? In the sphere of knowledge, I’m duty-bound to follow wherever the facts lead. I cannot take a dogmatic position. With faith, however, I have no other alternative but to take a dogmatic position, because I have no knowledge to base the faith on. I can come to my need for faith intellectually, but I cannot come to faith intellectually.
Much of higher education is an attempt to escape the vulnerability of faith, because you feel so silly saying to someone, “I don’t know, but I believe it.” This, however, is obviously what Christ wants. In faith we have obedience. In knowledge we have affirmation, but God knows the human heart well enough to know we don’t always utilize information properly. There’d never be any wars or suicides if we knew how to use our information.
I was having tea with Izzy Stone, now professor of Greek at American University in Washington after Joe McCarthy ran him out of the newspaper business by accusing him of being a Communist. I asked him, as a non-Christian, if theology was faith and philosophy was knowledge. He said, “No, all knowledge is based on faith.”
It reminded me of the precocious young man who was taken to visit Einstein. After a short visit, they walked out onto the porch, and the young man pointed to a tree: “Dr. Einstein, do we know that tree is there?”
“Only by faith,” Einstein replied.
The Church as Policeman
I was playing golf with the head of a financial company. Out of the blue he asked me, “Do you think God will take away my money because I’m not active in a church?”
“What makes you think he will?” I asked.
“My family tells me he will.”
They’re using religion to police him.
This goes on all the time. I was listening to the tape of a Christian friend’s funeral. The minister said, “Jesus got lonesome in heaven and took Chuck home to be with him.”
How is that widow supposed to feel toward such a capricious Lord? I thought to myself, If Jesus wasn’t with Chuck all the time, then Chuck isn’t with Jesus now!
I was speaking at a political meeting in our state capital, and after the meeting, at the very last, an attractive young man walked up and said, “Fred, do you have anything to tell my wife who has just lost a two-year-old son?” He paused and then added, “Do you think it was due to my early sins?”
I don’t know who had put that idea in his head, but I wrote both of them a long letter about the nature of God as I saw it-a God who doesn’t carry out grudges against unsuspecting children. They were greatly relieved.
It’s also dishonest to use religion to police people positively. Look at some of our money-raising schemes. I see no evidence that if you give God $100, he’ll give you $200 back. Yet whole groups of Christians promote this idea.
I know a successful Christian businesswoman who had the idea God ran her business. When I saw her beginning to get sloppy in her management, I felt I needed to tell her the business had succeeded because she was an exceptional person, and she’d better keep her hands on. If she “let God run it” alone, she’d go broke.
Christian organizations write letters asking for money, usually claiming that it’s obvious God is blessing their efforts because of the good results. That’s not obvious. That’s putting God on a very short leash. He’s bigger than last month’s statistics.
Ask wealthy Christians what their favorite verses of Scripture are. Generally, you’ll hear verses that promise blessings; their Christianity is a reward system. What they’re doing is humanizing God according to current standards of success.
I was speaking one night at a polo club to a group of very affluent people. One woman, dripping with diamonds, came up afterward to tell about her hobby: the stock market. “Fred, it’s just so wonderful to watch God work. The other night about 3:00 A.M. God woke me up and told me to buy Johnson & Johnson at 35.” (This was during the Tylenol problem.) “Fred, do you know it’s now at 50?”
I’m sure there are atheists and general materialists of all types who bought at 35 and enjoyed selling at 50. The truth is, stock trading is her hobby, and she’s very knowledgeable. Like a lot of other people, she somehow sensed that the poisonings were not J&J’s fault and the price would rebound quickly. But in her mind, she is convinced God has a golden ticker tape up in heaven and is paying very close attention to it to bless his people. Particularly the already rich.
Discipline, Ritual, Reality
I was taught to go to church twice on Sunday. So when I moved to an area where they didn’t have Sunday evening service, I didn’t know what to do. I felt guilty. It took me a long time to work through this, to get to the place where I could say to my wife, “Let’s stay home.” I love church, but we can worship without being in the sanctuary.
We need to be more honest with young Christians about that. For example, we tell a person to have a specific daily time for prayer and Bible study. That’s fine. But instead of laying it on as a duty, we need to explain it for what it is: “You are new; here is a discipline you’ll find healthy. Most mature Christians take up a routine for reading the Scripture. But it’s nothing more than a good discipline to set aside a daily time with God.” He isn’t tied to our schedule.
We must be honest with people about what is a discipline, what is a ritual, and what is reality.
People are so different in how they can best approach Scripture. I went to a church where a mathematician was the leading elder. He was very strong on studying the Bible consecutively. It just broke his heart not to go straight through the Bible. Others like to skip around, pick and choose. If we tell new Christians to dive right into certain parts of the Old Testament, we’ll turn many of them off. After all, we’re not trying to fulfill some point system but to develop a relationship with God.
Doubts and Beliefs
I was at a college in Florida where a medical doctor made the mistake of opening his speech by listing his doubts. He asked me later what I thought of his talk. I said, “I’ve found that I have no right to give a group my doubts, because when I find an answer, I can never get that group back together to finish the discussion. So while I live with my doubts, I only preach my beliefs.”
It’s tempting to express your doubts, because it makes you feel comfortable and real. But it’s much more helpful to focus on the positive. I remember a bull session with Baylor students, talking about the minimum you can do and be a good Christian. One foreign student spoke up: “I’m not interested in the minimum; I’m interested in the maximum.” I suddenly realized she was the one with intellectual integrity. We were trying to get into heaven on the cheapest general-admission ticket; she was in love with God.
Theology and Integrity
Intellectual integrity must even invade the study of theology. If systematic theology were examined with utmost care, it would be weakened a great deal, because many things have been pushed into boxes that really don’t fit. Too many theologians have a great mind for God but little heart for God. They come laboriously to the point of granting permission for intellectuals to believe in God. To me, this borders on arrogance.
I asked a Jewish philosopher, “Why aren’t all great theologians saints?”
He said, “It’s simple. Theology embodies one-upmanship. It views itself as the top of the intellectual ladder. If a theologian says to me, ‘What do you do?’ and I say I’m a scientist, he will say, ‘I am the one who studies the one who made what you study.’ “
In the end, I guess, that’s what makes intellectual integrity such a perplexing problem for all Christians. We’re all theologians to a degree. We all study God and the Bible. And there’s an almost irresistible temptation to take excessive pride in knowing the one, true God. But thinking we’re not accountable to the rest of humanity because God, by his grace, has chosen to bless us is the surest way to spoil all he’s done. Humility is still the surest way to genuine intellectual integrity.
Fred Smith is president of Fred Smith Associates, Dallas, Texas.
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