Letters

It’s Balance That Is Needed

What Philip Yancey saw in that October gay-rights march [“We Have No Right to Scorn,” Jan. 15] was the two extremes we evangelicals should seek to avoid: morality without sensitivity and sensitivity without morality. Jesus’ response to the woman caught in the act of adultery shows the right balance—“Neither do I condemn you” and “Go now and leave your life of sin.” Let’s just be sure we’re not “turned off” to morality because it’s voiced harshly by self-righteous people, or “turned on” to the compromising positions of others because they exhibit sensitivity. It is the proper wedding of morality and sensitivity that makes us respond in a manner that is truly Christian.

REV. BOB PARKS

Mission Hills Baptist Church

Littleton, Colo.

Having read over and over the story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery as an example of how we (Christians and/or straights) should approach the gay community, let me make these points: (1) I would not have been among those “Christian protesters” nor do I condone their behavior; (2) I do not want gays persecuted, prosecuted, or discriminated against for conduct between consenting adults; (3) I want government and health organizations to push for medical research and do all possible to help those suffering from AIDS; (4) I will gladly stand before God’s altar in any church alongside any gay and ask God’s forgiveness for the sins we each have committed.

But after making those points clear, I want to point out that I cannot say to a gay that I forgive him/her, because first, the sin is not against me but against God and his/her partners. Second, to be forgiven by God we must acknowledge our sin and ask forgiveness; these people will not do that because they will not accept the fact that they are committing a sin. You who quote that story never comment on the last phrase, “… leave your life of sin.” None of the gay marchers accept that teaching.

SHIRLEY FLEENER

Manhattan, Kans.

The issue is not so much whether Christian mission mandates the offer of saving grace to the morally deviant AIDS victim. That is readily acknowledged, of course. What is deficient in Yancey’s article is the seeming lack of awareness as to the ever-present endeavor of moral and spiritual deviance to confuse. The singing of “Jesus Loves You …” does not represent a valid expression of gospel proclamation or intent any more than the Philippian psychic’s pronouncements (Acts 16:17) represented a call to truth.

The infusion of truth and elevated rhetoric into the promotion of evil is one of the oldest ploys for the obscuring of the divine mandates of righteousness and biblical compliance.

REV. BURL RATZSCH

First Baptist Church

Akron, Iowa

I would suggest that not only is there “no right to scorn,” there is every reason for repentance. While the general evangelical community may not be yelling slogans at gay civil rights protests, they continue to dismiss alternative positions on homosexuality and the Bible as mere liberal relativism. Whether yelling slogans at a parade or from the more dignified platform of the pulpit, evangelicals’ preoccupation with moral decency and antigay rhetoric may well have jeopardized an evangelical witness to the gospel itself.

TIM PHILLIPS

Evangelicals Concerned

Chicago Region

Western Springs, Ill.

Electronic witness

I enjoyed “The Wireless Gospel” [Jan. 15]. Radio and television are good ways to spread the gospel; many will listen to television preachers who would never go to church. I was “born again” by reading my Bible and listening to TV preachers. The problem is that the authentic and the counterfeit preach side by side.

ELSIE GRAHAM

Olmito, Tex.

Surely your picture of Paul Rader in action on the cover was more fascinating to me than to most of your readers. It brought back memories of the late Ivan Panin’s stories about Rader and his brother Lyell, a noted chemist. Mr. Panin could have said about Paul Rader as he did once after a stay with brother Lyell in New York: “He’s a steam engine in breeches.” Thank you for your story about “The Wireless Gospel.”

J. S. BENTLEY

Bible Numerics

Niagara Falls, Ont., Canada

Test Your Eq

I always thought the people in my church were evangelicals. After all, we believe in the traditional doctrines. But then I asked some church friends if they’d caught Dobson’s show on Thursday. “Who’s Dobson?” they asked, with all seriousness When some others thought “Joni and Friends” was a puppet show, I knew our church’s evangelical standing was in grave danger.

So I devised a test that accurately determines a person’s EQ (Evangelical Quotient). Just five questions will reveal if you and your friends are truly evangelical.

1. Which of the following is not an evangelical institution? (YFC/BGEA/IVCF/ACLU). Chuck Swindoll’s “Insight for Living.”

2. Which of these colors cannot be found in the Wordless Book? (red/gold/blue/black).

3. The correct zip code for Wheaton, Illinois, is: (21795/45450/60187/92013).

4. Aslan is: (an Old Testament patriarch/an Asian missions agency/a figure in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles/an early New Testament manuscript).

5. In the song, “The B-I-B-L-E,” the second line is: (“It helps me, Lord, to see”/“Its truth will set me free”/“Yes, that’s the Book for me”).

If you missed three or more, it’s not too late. Pray, fast, and listen daily to Chuck Swindoll’s “Insight for Living.”

Eutychus

Bring on Pentecost!

Re: “Great Commission Deadline” (Jan. 15): Lack of data is a problem in thinking about the Great Commission, but there is an even greater problem with our North American skepticism about available data. Our cynical, secular culture has trained us to disbelieve that God is doing great things in faraway places. Evidence the statement in your article that “we could have a Pentecost every day with 3,000 saved in China,” and “it would take 900 years before all of China would be saved.” There is ample evidence that church growth in China far surpasses a Pentecost every day. In fact, there may be a Pentecost every three hours now taking place in China—and without the planning or foresight of Western mission agencies. What might God do if we really put our resources to the task? The problem is, if God did it, would anyone believe it?

REV. DENNIS M. MULDER

World Home Bible League

South Holland, Ill.

Real ecumenicity?

Terry Muck’s assessment of the Moral Majority as “a model of ecumenicity of the best sort” [“Home to Lynchburg,” Jan. 15] mistakes the working of a political pressure group using religious vocabulary for a true joining of believers in a common cause for faith. By this standard it could be said that the great ecumenical event of history was the one that brought together such diverse groups as Pharisees, Sadducees, and Romans for the common cause of dealing with the national threat of Jesus of Nazareth. Each could claim a motivation of patriotism and piety while, ironically, ignoring and abusing the real issue of faith in their midst.

REV. JAMES N. FOSTER

The Reformed Churches of Currytown and Sprakers

Sprakers, N.Y.

Lewis: Appreciation or depreciation?

J. I. Packer’s column “What Lewis Was and Wasn’t [Jan. 15] is a skillful endeavor to discredit Lewis without accountability. While his final sentence serves as a disclaimer, Packer manages within ten concise paragraphs to raise the just-right bothersome questions to a highly refined evangelical conscience concerning Lewis’s skill as a debater and author, the vitality of his conversion, his theology, the motive for his orthodoxy, and his choices in lifestyle and intimates.

Having read a considerable amount of Lewis’s writings, I recognize the validity of some of Packer’s statements. I am left to question, however, Packer’s motives. Is it to warn a vulnerable readership of the dangers of a mortal Lewis? Or is it to discredit a strong man whose “catholic” (non-Roman!) views might undermine certain of the author’s cherished positions? I wonder.

Granting Lewis his fair share of flaws and inconsistencies, Packer’s column seems more a depreciation than an appreciation of the man who elicited from him the conclusion: “Thank you, Mr. Lewis, for being you. I wouldn’t have missed you for the world.”

MIRIAM HUFFMAN ROCKNESS

Lake Wales, Fla.

Doctrinal parameters

James Hitchcock is to be commended for his article “Boundary Markers for Belief” (Jan. 15), but his discussion of John Henry Newman’s doctrine of development is misleading. While the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine was completed (just barely) before Newman’s formal conversion to Rome, it can be argued that he converted to Rome—that is, he mentally assented to the claims of that church—well before the work was even completed. Indeed, it was probably the act of writing the book that led to his formal conversion.

Hitchcock rightly summarizes two of Newman’s conclusions: that every doctrinal development must be contained “at least in embryo” in Scripture, and that no such development may “negate authentic earlier doctrine.” But these two conclusions forced Newman to still another conclusion that Hitchcock overlooks: If certain well-developed doctrines are outgrowths of ideas that are contained in Scripture in embryonic form only, then someone must determine which fully developed doctrines are proper products of the embryo and which are mutants. Newman concluded that the Church, and ultimately the Pope, must be the final judge of doctrinal issues. This belief left him little option but to convert formally, and it later led him to acquiese to Pius IV’s claim of papal infallibility.

Whatever the mechanics of doctrinal development, evangelicals must reaffirm that Scripture alone is the final arbiter of doctrine. Our reasonings about doctrine must be continually measured against, and supported by, the Word of God.

DAVID W. CARMICHAEL

White Plains, N.Y.

I would like to take issue with one point of Professor Hitchcock’s otherwise fine article. He asks for a balance between personal experience and a faith based upon doctrinal orthodoxy that can be dead and barren. While there can be no argument that dead and barren lives can be found associated with any doctrinal stance, however rigorous, I fear he was implying that the more theological we become, the more “nitpicking” we become and the less we resort to a simple biblical faith.

I hope Hitchcock is not saying this. It would be like saying we have to balance out our commitment to God with commitment to the world. If we are mandated to teach the teachings of Jesus to the world and to obey them ourselves, then we are also mandated to meditate upon them that we might know them, thus being good theologians.

DANIEL MANN

Brooklyn, N.Y.

Precise language

I appreciated David Wells’s essay on euphemistic language [“How to Avoid Offensive Language While Saying Absolutely Nothing,” Jan. 15], but his opening salvo, specifically regarding “drug abuse,” is off target. “Abuse implies that there is a proper use,” he says, and there is obviously no “proper use of pot, crack, angel dust, and heroin.” True enough; but what about tranquilizers, pain medication, and other prescription drugs (to say nothing of over-the-counter drugs)? They have their proper and even essential uses, but the abuse of such drugs is a major part of the overall drug problem.

Even with regard to “recreational drugs,” however—and there is a target!—dropping the word “abuse” would leave us worse off, not better. Grammatically, “drug abuse” means abusing drugs, but in practice it also reminds us what those substances do to our bodies. Let’s not give up that impact for mere precision of language.

REV. JOHN M. SALMON

Westminster Church

Piqua, Ohio

Wells’s point that we often use words to obfuscate, rather than communicate, is well taken, but I would like to take issue with his statement “Secularism assumes there is no moral or transcendent order related to what we do and before which we are accountable.” Many ethical secularists do recognize an impersonal “natural order” and unreservedly acknowledge a “reap what you sow,” cause-and-effect moral order. Catholicism and liberal Protestantism are better prepared to defend a moral social order without appealing to distinctively Christian theological beliefs in a pluralistic society than Orthodox Protestantism, since they recognize the valid, though less explicit, revelation of divine order inherent in natural theology and law spoken of by some psalmists and by Paul in Romans 1.

True, the self-interested moralism this conviction engenders falls far short of our gospel ethic of self-sacrificial love; but it can certainly provide the basis for a healthy, well-ordered society and, in fact, did so in our own culture until an excessively subjective individualism, not secularism, produced a widespread denial of normative ethics.

CAROL A. DWORKOWSKI

Annapolis, Md.

I thought Wells was fighting straw enemies. We talk about “drug and alcohol abuse” because it’s an accurate way to discuss the issue. We talk about fetuses because that’s what they are. The use of the word “lifestyle” reflects our pluralistic culture. And should we always call sexual sin by name? Did Jesus say to the woman caught in adultery, “You are an adulterer”? (Granted, he didn’t talk about her “lifestyle” either!) I believe some of the motive behind the “sexual preference” language is grace. That grace might really be motivated by the compassion of Jesus.

LYNNE M. BAAB

Seattle, Wash.

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