Stretched Past the Breaking Point

There has always been a tendency for the church not just to adapt to its culture but to compromise itself in the process. It happens in many ways. In the past, we have explored some of these here, but I recently experienced a striking example of this that is worth reviewing.

I was a visitor at a large congregation. I will not identify it other than to say that it was a church where what I am about to describe would at one time have been shocking.

The sermon that Sunday focused on John 14:6 and the famous “I am the way and the truth and the life” statement made by Jesus. To say that there have been many sermons focusing on this would be a serious understatement, but this day’s sermon was quite different.

The message began by reviewing the way our culture has become hypersensitive to these kinds of “exclusive” claims. They are seen as “aggressions,” and people are often highly offended by them. How, it was asked, should Christians respond to all that?

The sermon then moved to a few examples of famous phrases from various works of literature that are often used in isolation to mean almost the opposite of what they mean when you look at them in context. With that in mind, the minister asked: How should we understand John 14:6?

At this point, things began to get interesting. This preacher said we need to reexamine the context of this passage. That context, he claimed, is what precedes it in John 13 when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet and told them to love one another.

That is, of course, part of the context of John 14, but what should we make of that? Here is where the sermon began to get dicey. According to the preacher, when Jesus said, “I am the way,” He was simply talking about the way of love from John 13. How do we know that is the only focus here? Because “the way” of John 14 is the same Greek word as “the way” of 1 Corinthians 12:31, which is the introduction to 1 Corinthians 13, the “love chapter.” Yes, I kid you not; that was his explanation.

Remember that the problem this minister was trying to address was our culture’s rejection of the exclusive claims that most people think Jesus is making in John 14:6, but the preacher claimed that is just a misunderstanding of that passage. When Jesus was at the last supper with His closest disciples, He was reminding them to love one another. That is the whole point, it was claimed, that Jesus was making in the “I am the way” of John 14:6. It was not an exclusive claim—it was just Jesus reminding His disciples that He is love, and they should follow Him by loving one another.

If we explain this to those in our culture, said this minister, they can realize there is nothing here to offend them. It was just Jesus telling His followers to be loving. What could be less offensive and exclusionary than that? Furthermore, the minister made a very dramatic appeal when stating this.

Especially given the venue, I was at this point in a bit of exegetical, theological shock. When the sermon began, the minister had quoted the whole phrase from Jesus, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” However, as the sermon moved along, the only focus was on “the way.” Talk about ignoring the context! The phrase “and the truth and the life” was simply forgotten. Then there is what follows immediately, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” What about the larger context of John’s gospel found in the often-ignored context of John 3:16? That is John 3:18, “Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

This minister was very convincing. I don’t know what the hundreds of people present were thinking about it, but some utterly false ideas had just been introduced into their minds. The problem began with the assumption that the biblical teaching can be made compatible with the “offend no one” dictum of our culture. Christianity is and always has been offensive to many people. The Bible calls the gospel foolishness—not because it is, but because it seemed so to people in the culture of that time. It still does.

In John 4, when the Samaritan woman questions Jesus about the proper way to worship God, He tells her very bluntly that the Samaritan worship was never correct: “You Samaritans worship what you do not know” (John 4:22). Furthermore, that even Jerusalem temple worship is about is about to be retired: “a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:23). That is just one example of this. There are many others in Scripture. Jesus says the Samaritans' worship is incorrect. He is not harsh, but He most certainly is excluding something.

The sermon I heard conveniently avoided the claim of Jesus that He is “the truth.” There is something implicit yet unavoidable in the “never confront or offend people’s beliefs” attitude in our culture. That something is truth relativism. Our culture insists that people’s beliefs are off limits to any challenge or criticism. That can only be the case if everyone has their truth and contradictions and conflicts between those “truths” just don’t matter. The only thing that matters is that no one is offended, questioned, or challenged. The amusing contradiction here is that this “offend no one” is held as what must be an unassailable, absolute truth!

This is always at least in the background of many discussions in our culture. When we say something like, “We believe Jesus, and we believe the faith He delivered to us is true,” that will not necessarily offend people as an exclusive claim. What people in our culture often hear with this is “I hold firmly to my personal faith.” That can even seem like a good thing to our culture. Good, that is, as long as it is just personal, but that is not what Jesus presents, it is not what the apostles taught, and it is not what we should be presenting to our culture. What Jesus is saying in John 14 and what the Bible says everywhere is that the Christian faith is true in that very strong sense of being an accurate description of reality. If your personal faith does not comport with that sense, then your personal faith is incorrect. When this is downplayed, as it was in the sermon I heard, the Christian faith has been essentially compromised.

As I left the auditorium of that congregation, all these thoughts were boiling in my mind. I had this fleeting notion of wanting to stand up and say, “I would like a few minutes for rebuttal.” I did not, of course. It would have been pointless in that setting. Perhaps this is my substitute.

I think the gospel may be in more danger from this attitude than from almost anything else right now. The desire of many to reimagine Christianity in a way that makes it more palatable to our culture is powerful, but when it is attempted, the result is an imaginary Christianity. Such a Christianity sometimes retains enough of the form to pose as the real thing, but it is empty, and, in the end, worthless. As we see in this example, it requires a radical distortion of the Bible. When that advances far enough, there is nothing left. Scripture is stretched beyond the breaking point.

* Kent B. True is the alter ego of Harold N. Orndorff, Jr., a retired campus minister who has taught college and seminary courses in the fields of apologetics, philosophy, ethics, and logic. Lately, he enjoys studying his grandchildren, who are very interesting ones and all. Contact him, if you must, at hnoii@hotmail.com.