Sunday Sermons
Wise as Serpents
Wise as Serpents
“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).
As I ponder the above admonition given by Jesus I am impressed that the world is a dangerous place, and as a Christian I will be, from time, to time interacting with wolves, and often wolves in sheep’s clothing. Many of the objections, temptations, and arguments that we encounter will be tricky and might appear difficult to answer, yet the phrase innocent as doves reminds me that often the best answer is not a complicated response, but a simple truth. I have been reading the book Mere Christianity, which is actually a collection of radio broadcasts given by C.S. Lewis in England during the years 1942-1944. Lewis was asked by the BBC to give a series of wartime broadcasts on Christian faith. Lewis told friends that the reason he accepted the task was because in 1942 he believed that England had already become a “post-Christian” nation. Lewis once stated that “there are no ordinary people” and that “it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit”. Before we proceed let us remember that every person that we interact with, and every human being that we meet, will spend eternity somewhere. He also noted that the great religious struggle is not fought on a spectacular battleground, but within the ordinary human heart, when every morning we awake and feel the pressures of the day crowding in on us, and we must decide what sort of people we wish to be (Proverbs 4:23).
All men can see “right”
Listen to how people talk, both young and old, educated and uneducated, and they will say the same things, “How would you like it if someone did the same to you?” “Leave him alone, he isn’t doing any harm”. “That’s my seat, I was here first”. “What interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man’s behavior does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behavior which he expects the other man to know about”(Mere Christianity p. 3). Yet some will argue that different civilizations and ages have different moralities. But this is not really true. “I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked” (p. 6). See Romans 1:32; 2:24; 2 Samuel 12:14; 1 Timothy 5:14. This is one reason why God expects all men to seek after Him and repent (Acts 17:30), because down deep, every unbeliever does know that he has committed wrong. Lewis adds, “Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real right and wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining, ‘It’s not fair’ before you can say Jack Robinson” (p. 7). And yes, people will make excuses as to why they are not living up to this or that moral standard. “The question at the moment is not whether they are good excuses. The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we like it nor not, we believe in the Law of Nature (the existence of a universal moral law). If we do not believe in decent behavior, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently?” (p. 8)
Is morality only a human invention?
One mistake that people make is to assume that if we learned anything from our parents what we learned was of purely human origin. Yet that is not true. We learned mathematics from human teachers, but man did not invent mathematics (Colossians 1:16; 1 Thessalonians 2:13).
The Salem Witch Trials
Recently I saw a bumper sticker that said, “The last time politics and religion were combined people were burned at the stake”. Of course, one could counter, “The last time politics and unbelief were combined millions of Jews died”. Yet the argument from the Salem Witch Trials often surfaces for the purpose of seeking to discredit Christianity and make it appear to be a religion based on ignorance. Yet Lewis reminds us, “If we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbors or drive them mad or bring bad weather—surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these did” (p. 14). The point he is making is that it is no moral advance in a culture to turn a blind eye to people who are destroying others. The word “humane” is certainly the wrong term if you are describing a culture that ignores people who prey upon others and in the end drags them down to eternal ruin. In the Old Testament witches were put to death (Exodus 22:18), but this was not due to ignorance or cruelty, but rather because God understood what was at stake. In the New Testament the death penalty has been placed in the hands of a lawful civil authority (Romans 13:4), who may leave witches alone, yet witches remain just as dangerous.
The “Life-Force”
There are a good number of people in our culture who are not atheists, yet do not believe in God. They might believe in Evolution, but they believe that there is some impersonal life force that is driving evolution. Lewis observes, “One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences (like obeying Him). When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like the troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?” (pp. 26-27)
There is cause to be uneasy
Either by word or deed everyone admits that we are governed by a universal moral code (Genesis 20:9). It is clear that the Being behind the universe is “intensely interested in right conduct, fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty, and truthfulness” (p. 30). Such a standard reveals that God is good, but God is not soft, that is indulgent. People who believe in some impersonal force need to reconsider their thinking, because such a force would not forgive—and we all need forgiveness(Romans 3:23). “If it is pure impersonal mind, there may be no sense in asking it to make allowances for you or let you off, just as there is no sense in asking the multiplication table to let you off when you do you sums wrong” (p. 31). Yet if the universe is governed by a God of absolute goodness and holiness, then He is both the supreme terror (for we have violated goodness many times over) and our only possible ally. “Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger—according to the way you react to it” (p. 31). Consider Leviticus 10:1-3 or Luke 5:8-10. Christianity, God coming down and dying on the cross for our sins, and the command to repent, only makes sense when we understand the above truths. When we face the facts that we live in a moral universe, ruled by a God of absolute goodness and that we have violated such standards and desperately need to be forgiven—then the gospel makes perfect sense. “It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a God behind the law, and you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that God---it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor” (pp. 31-32).
The danger of wanting to be “comfortable”
“In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair” (p. 32). See 2 Timothy 4:2-4.
When the unbeliever tries to argue
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed to cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice was full of sense” (pp. 38-39). Hence, God says that man is without excuse, because even when unbelievers complain about the evil, injustices or suffering of the innocent they are admitting that they know about and understand that this world is governed by a universal moral standard. Of course some people do not like the world that God made, and especially that God gave them a free will, which naturally opens the door for abuses. “But there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on” (p. 48).
The nature of evil
“Evil is a parasite, not an original thing. The powers that enable evil to carry on are powers given it by goodness. All the things which enable a bad man to be effectively bad are in themselves good things—resolution, cleverness, existence itself” (p. 45). In fact, evil is a perversion of what is right or “spoiled goodness”. Speech that is evil is termed “rotten” or “corrupt speech”(Ephesians 4:29). This means that we were not born with any perverted desires, rather all our impulses are originally good. The very word perverted or perverse admits that what is being practiced is a twisted version of what was originally a good thing (Titus 3:11). Therefore, let us then live as innocently as doves, yet with an awareness as wise as serpents.
Mark Dunagan/Beaverton Church of Christ/503-644-9017
www.beavertonchurchofchrist.net/mdunagan@easystreet.com
