Heavenly Father, we thank You so much for Your love to us. You have committed Yourself to us again and again. You care for us in Your provision day by day through just the practical details of our lives as You watch over Your whole creation with compassion. You have cared for us in sending Your Son to give Himself for us and You care for us by working through Your Spirit in our hearts every day. Father, we praise You for Your love and we pray that we may be those who commit ourselves to You and Your service in return. Teach us in our time together we ask for Jesus' sake, Amen. In class on Tuesday, we were talking about the breakdown of relationships and we were at the end of class, I think, discussing personal loneliness and the difficulty people have of making relationships and I want to say just a little bit finally here about the issue of the lust of community in our culture, in suburbia, but everywhere else as well. We're living in a context where most of us who have been raised in the last 20 to 30 years in American society have very little experience of community, community as it was traditionally experienced in this society, whether you were living in a rural area or in the city, but the practical reality for most of us is we have no experience of community at all and this is very challenging for the church, it's challenging for us as Christians, basically the only place where we still see any vestiges of community in our culture are in small rural areas where people still know their neighbors well and care for one another practically and in some sections of our inner cities where there are still some vestiges of community, though even there there is such a growth of fear that we see community breaking down, let me give an illustration of that before I turn to the suburbs where the most serious problem is. You remember three or four years ago there was a period during the heart of the summer where we had some heat waves here in St. Louis and also as far north as Chicago and particularly in Chicago quite a number of elderly people died during those heat waves and I was listening to a program on public radio about it in which they interviewed Martin Marty, the theologian who had been raised in the inner city of Chicago 40 or 50 years ago and he was describing what had happened at that point 40 or 50 years ago when there were very hot summers and of course far less people had air conditioning then today and he said at that time when there was very hot weather you would see everybody sitting at on their porches on their decks in the evening in the summer chatting with their neighbors but being outside where it was cooler and when it got really hot basically the whole community from the center of Chicago would go sleep on the beach and of course today nobody does this because everyone is afraid of everyone else and many of the elderly people who died died because they were afraid to even open their windows never mind to sit on their decks and porches and so some of the houses got as hot as 125 or 130 degrees inside if they didn't have air conditioning so a lot of people died just from heat exhaustion because they were frightened of their neighbors in the places where they live now that tells us something about the breakdown of community in the society in which we live and then the cities there's far more community still than there is in the suburbs and what has happened in our suburbs and those of you who live in suburbs and many of you probably do both where you come from and and here in the St. Louis area you will know that it's not at all easy to get to know your neighbors but if you think about the problem in the suburbs the challenge with all of us faces this we all live in half a dozen different communities if you think about a traditional city or suburban area or rural area basically people had one community they lived in a neighborhood they worked in the same neighborhood their children went to school in that neighborhood they went to church in that neighborhood and they had their entertainment in that neighborhood their sports and everything else whether it was little league or whatever else it was
the reality in which most of us live now is very different we live in an area I won't call it a neighborhood because most of them aren't neighborhoods at all in the sense of any meaning of neighbors we live in an area but we commute to somewhere else so we have one community will put it in quotes where we live we have a second community where we work often miles away from the place we live we have a third community where our children go to school often again miles away our youngest son for example went to the local high school in district and it's basically 25 minutes away by car and that was our local high school we go to church in a different community we have our entertainment in another community you know all of us have hundreds of superficial relationships in which we don't know anybody well
now that's one of the practical challenges that faces us now this isn't a consequence of some set of ideas to do with post modernism this is a practical social reality which has come about for all sorts of reasons when the primary ones being the fact that we all drive cars very long distances to anything we want to do but they're all sorts of other practical reasons for it as well but this practical reality is one of the fundamental reasons for the breakdown of community that people feel so lonely that they don't know how to make relationships but when they're in need especially if they have had to move away from their family for the sake of work they have nobody to turn to it's the reason why people need bidding services to get to know people are the opposite sex to get married to because they simply don't know anybody well now this isn't just a problem out there this is a problem in the church as well I hear students on this campus saying living on this campus they expected there to be more reality of community or living on Gulf Drive where there are many seminary families they expected there to be some reality of community but they experience very little of it this isn't a problem simply out there this is a problem in the church as well and I want to come back to it later now there are some ideas as well as some sociological realities which are at the heart of this and the fundamental idea that is at the heart of it the heart of the problem here is the pursuit of happiness for the individual that's the fundamentally destructive element in our culture which breaks down community the sense of a lack of responsibility to other people we were talking about this with the issue of hospitality the other day and how this undermines the commitment to care for other people and to welcome them into our homes number five I want to say just a little bit about practical idolatry I want to go into this at length because we're going to do a extended section on idolatry later in the semester they just want to make some summary points here we are living in a culture which has no story no narrative remember I used that to a meta narrative earlier it has no meta narrative no story which gives ultimate meaning to our lives you have that article in your syllabus how the world lost its story which addresses this issue it's an excellent article which you all should read people around us have no account of human existence where we've come from of who we are of what we're here for of where we're going they have no story which gives ultimate meaning and hope and vision for their lives the consequence is that they develop idols of the mind that is people will believe anything no matter how irrational it is anything which gives them some sense of meaning to their existence it's why people believe the most bizarre ideas let's say like the heavensgate cult for example people seemingly rational people believing ideas which are completely irrational which have no evidential foundation at all people do not ask questions does this make sense is it reasonable they simply ask will it help me will it make me feel more hopeful so people have idols of the mind be they have no commandments to direct their lives we live in a society without moral direction people need to live with some sense of what they're living for with some sense of purpose some sense of direction and people have no sense of direction there are no commandments from above to tell them who they are to be and how they are to live and consequently they develop idols of the will people live for something which is going to provide goals for their life now for many that goal that idol is going to be work for many of our contemporaries work is the primary thing which gives them a sense of purpose in their daily lives and it becomes an idol one of our faculty wives said about her own brother-in-law who had ended up losing his wife and his children and many other things because he was so devoted to his work he said about himself I'm no longer a human being I'm a human doing work is one of the primary idols especially of men in our culture but increasingly of women to work ambition success making money so idols of the will something around which to direct the devotion of my will and see if people have no passion in their hearts to love God to glorify him forever and to enjoy him then they're going to live for something else they're going to develop some idol of the heart something that is going to give them pleasure and fulfillment some passion for their heart to devote itself to and that may be possessions or just the pursuit of personal pleasure or sexual fulfillment or the admiration of their own body just think of all those guys especially Dan at the gym and some of you probably join them and admire yourself in those big mirrors as you work out well there's lots of people whose body is their idol so idols of the heart you remember I quoted Robert Bella a few days ago in class Robert Bella he is a sociologist who's written lots of really excellent books one called Habits of the Heart and several others as well he's one of the most perceptive commentators on the culture in which we learned he says that Americans have two overriding goals in life personal success and vivid personal feelings that's idols of the will and idols of the heart personal success and vivid personal feelings so we live in a culture which is saturated with idolatry and of course one of the greatest idols and it contributes it's the fundamental contributing factor to the breakdown of relationships when the greatest idols is simply the idol of my own personal freedom and happiness which dominates the culture in which we live and I would just simply say this to us it is impossible to address any of the moral issues which we as Christians wrestle with in our society and long to see changed in terms of the laws of this nation it is impossible to challenge people in any of these areas whether it's sexuality or abortion or anything else it's impossible to challenge people in any of these areas unless we challenge this fundamental idol that is the idol that I have the right to decide for myself how to live my life and pursue my own happiness because until that idol is challenged it's not possible to change the laws about anything in the area of personal morality it's not possible
we can we can work as hard as we want to and we should work hard at trying to change laws to protect innocent human life to protect family and marriages institution but all of our efforts in those areas are absolutely in vain unless our nation as a nation is weaned from the idol of my own personal fulfillment that's the primary idol in this culture that I am free to do what I want to do and the overwhelming majority of Christians will define their life that way as well that's why it's so hard to practice something like church discipline in this culture you know this is an enormous problem something like 98% of our contemporaries will say that they believe that they have the right to have control over their own lives that includes the overwhelming majority of believers of Christian believers if we have any belief in God at all or sense of submission to him we can't say that oh God is the one who is in control of my life oh he is not not just in the sense that he is the sovereign Lord over history and over me as an individual but he is the Lordgiver and the judge who I'm accountable to and whose will I am to live in obedience to and there's no way that I could possibly say that oh I'm in charge of my life or that I have the right to have complete control over it or the freedom to do what I want to do for the Christian that's a nonsense statement and yet 98% of our contemporaries consistently make that statement about their own lives so we have an enormous problem of idolatry here hold on to your questions for a moment and we'll come to them later another way to express this would be this if there is nothing in heaven to worship we will worship something on the earth and Paul of course says this and later on we'll look at Romans 1 very carefully in what it says about idolatry a Paul says when we refused to have gotten our knowledge we worship and serve created things rather than the creator who is blessed forever now that's a description of the culture in which we live if we refuse to have gotten our knowledge we worship and serve created things rather than the creator who is blessed forever so if we don't have someone in heaven to worship we're going to worship someone something on earth adding says to point number six in this outline and that is the return to paganism the return to paganism and later on we're going to talk in some detail about the new age movement but we live in a context where you know people are fascinated by all sorts of new religions so on the fastest growing realities in the culture in which we live something like 30 to 35 percent of the population in this society are identified in somewhere rather with new age thinking and that's a very very rapid growth because back in the 60s there would have just been a handful of people maybe less than 1 percent of the population who would have identified themselves in any way as being a deerant self what we call today new age religion so it's been an extraordinary rapid growth in this area and it's one of the fascinating things about our culture and we'll try to analyze exactly what's happened because for the last 300 years our culture has been moving in the direction of rationalism and secularism secularism means literally that all there is is what goes on in this age in this life between birth and death and there's nobody up there in heaven we get rid of that all together and there's nothing down here in hell so life is just what secularism is as life is just completely contained in this experience we have between birth and death and that is it and it would have seemed impossible 30 years ago for many people in our culture that suddenly a huge proportion of our population was becoming involved in all sorts of pagan religions it would have seen if anybody had predicted this people would have said you just that's absurd how could this possibly happen because we're living in a society which has grown up which has grown beyond religion we no longer need God we can do without God in every form but suddenly we have a culture where people are believing in any kind of God and there's an extraordinary revival and interest in in every kind of pagan religion in the culture in which we live people believe in spirits of all sorts again and in quite a rational sorts of ways Leslie Newbygain puts it this way he says we have learned that what has come into being is not a secular society but a pagan society that's the culture in which we live and he says elsewhere that one of the striking things about this new paganism is that this post-Christian paganism is far more resistant to the gospel than pre-Christian paganism ever is post-Christian paganism is far more resistant to the gospel than pre-Christian paganism
now if any of you get involved if any of you are getting involved for the purpose of your paper in one of the new age groups that you can find advertised and on the bulletin board in boarders bookstore or bonds in noble or somewhere else or in the pages of your newspaper or what you can find on a website you know in terms of some local one if you get involved in something like that you will discover that many of the people in many age new age groups you will join are people who think they have truck Christianity it's one of the reasons why it's resistant when a couple of guys in this class two or three years ago got involved in a local new age group the ones who ended up having the words beating drums and doing some other interesting things they said everybody else in the group had basically been a member of a church at some point
they and of course they were involved either in nominal churches where there was no real spiritual vitality so they thought they had tried Christianity and it was just spiritually empty which of course it was in the context they were or they had been to liberal churches which had completely lost the gospel the generation ago and no longer preached any kind of biblical message at all so again they thought they had tried Christianity and found it wanting because it had nothing to say to them or they had gone to some evangelical very legalistic church where they were turned off completely by the substitute for Christianity that they discovered there the way we might describe the last section we've been looking at is with this kind of subtitle what is my neighbor thinking that's really what we've been talking about in this section consequences two we want to subtitle it with this what is my neighbor thinking about me what impact does this have on us as Christians in terms of the particular challenges that face us how do people think about us as Christians and how does this impact us and what challenges does this create for us so as we go through this section here I really want to look at three questions as we go back over some of these points in my last section what particular difficulties does this postmodern reality create for Christians in terms of how people think about us secondly are we being faithful as we seek to serve God facing these pressures you know how we being squeezed by our postmodern culture and thirdly what particular challenges does this create for us as we seek to reach out with a gospel so I want to think about those three questions as we go back over each of these areas not necessarily in the same order that we went over them in the first time but we'll begin with the area of truth the loss of truth in a postmodern culture now what is this going to mean for us now what are our neighbors thinking about us
I'll point a here truth claims are offensive to our contemporaries as long as we say to somebody this is my truth this is my faith this is where I go to church this is what I believe nobody minds nobody minds but as soon as we claim what I believe is the truth then we are consider arrogant for once you say to somebody this is not just my personal convictions this is the truth then of course what you're saying is Christ's claims are exclusive what we are going to say is that he is the only way to God as Jesus himself says no man comes to the Father but by me or as the Apostle say there is no other name given under heaven by which people may be saved now that claim that claim that Christianity is the truth that the message of Christ is exclusive that claim is considered intolerant and unloving it's even considered immoral now I want you to think about that this is considered by our contemporaries in immoral claim to say this is the truth now of the Greeks and the Romans at the time of the Apostles in the first century someone said this and you'll come across this quotation when you read Michael Greens book that it was not that men became so depraved that they abandoned the gods but the gods were so depraved that men abandoned them was not that men became so depraved that they abandoned the gods but the gods became so depraved that they abandoned men Christians have always assumed that we are on high moral ground but in this culture we are considered to be in the lowest moral place and when you can think about that maybe a hard idea for you one of the primary reasons why people have problems with Christianity is because they think it is immoral in making truth claims now that's a new problem that's a new problem that people think it is immoral that we make truth claims so this is our dilemma the primary scandal of the cross in our generation is the claim that Christianity is true that's the primary scandal it's the thing that people most don't want to hear there is enormous pressure consequently on the evangelical church to abandon this commitment to truth claims and so this brings us to point B are we going to hold on to the truth given this challenge are we going to hold on to the conviction that Christianity is the truth the only truth the absolute truth that Christ claims are exclusive that people can indeed only be saved through faith in Jesus Christ and we talked a little bit about this earlier but I want to express it this way now and how you see and I would say you're going to see more and more of this you already see a number of books very influential among evangelicals backing off from this claim suggesting that sincere Muslims and sincere Hindus and sincere everybody else are going to be saved but everybody who doesn't hear about Christ in this life is going to have another opportunity after death now that's not what the Bible teaches at all either of those things at all but there is a huge pressure you are all going to experience this pressure you're going to experience this pressure from the culture to back off from this truth claim this exclusive truth claim of the gospel and you're going to experience this pressure from within the church as well to back off from it so do we hold on to truth claims now I probably mentioned these statistics before but let me repeat them here remember I said that for our contemporaries somewhere between 66 and 70 percent over two-thirds of our contemporaries deny that there is such a thing as absolute truth and over 80 percent of generation X but for us in the church the worrying figures are these if you ask the same questions of people who profess to be evangelical Christian believers to believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior about 55 percent of people who claim to believe in Christ as their Savior will say they don't believe in absolute truth over half of the people in our churches right across this nation who say they personally have faith in Jesus Christ will also say that they think Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and everybody else will find their own way to God without the knowledge of Christ so this isn't just a problem in a few books the church as a whole is being squeezed by the culture in this direction so a tremendous challenge to us are we holding on to the truth or to put it in another way let's put it personally do you love the truth giver the one who claims himself to be the truth I am the way I am the truth and I am the life do you love Christ who is the truth giver without truth there is no gospel there is no Christianity he brews eleven six says the one who comes to God must believe that he exists of God is not just some vague notion in my head which I can turn into any shape I want to of God exists as the infinite personal God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Trinity this is who he is the holy and righteous and sovereign and loving and merciful God that's who he is and he is the same yesterday today and forever he does not change like a shifting shadow the one who comes to him must believe that he exists and John says in first John chapter 4 the first few verses that we must believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God who came in the flesh that is do we believe in the truth of the incarnation but Christ is the second person the Trinity who became man who was born as a human child and a stable the Son of God and the Son of Man do we believe that if we don't believe that then there is no gospel there is no Christian faith at all and Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 do we believe that Christ rose from the dead actually literally factually historically so that television cameras would have observed an empty tomb and could have recorded his meeting the women in the garden and meeting his disciples on the Emmaus road and in the upper room and in Galilee before his ascension do we believe that this is the truth and Paul says if we don't then our faith is in vain and we're still in our sins and the people who have died of dead and that's it and he says we're of all men most to be pitted so why on earth would I do the things that I do and be prepared to endure the persecution I receive if this is not the truth and Paul says this if this isn't true then that's eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die without truth the gospel is meaningless and you have absolutely nothing to say to people out there if this isn't the truth so is this truth in the sense that this is who God is and is this truth in the sense that this is what historically happened the Christ was born of a virgin and died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven and is coming again if that's not true well I wouldn't be here teaching you that wouldn't be a Christian at all I would have committed suicide long ago exactly what the apostle says so are you holding on to truth because if you don't you have nothing whatsoever to say to the generation in which we live we must hold on to the truth and see here are we communicating truth to unbelievers no matter how difficult it is and how offensive it is we must communicate truth we are living in a culture which is dying because it's lost the truth that's the reality of the society in which we live it's dying because of the loss of truth there's a statement in the book of Amos towards the end of the prophecy of Amos in which he says the time is coming when there will be a famine for the word of God when people will stagger from east to west and from north to south looking for the word of God and they will not find it because there's a famine for well that's the time in which we live when I was speaking at the library conference a couple of weeks ago there are people there from far away as Alaska and southern California and up in Maine and down in Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi people from all over the nation and there were people who came there you know at that conference who said there are no churches in our community which are proclaiming and believing Christian truths and we are completely alone there are some that claim to be evangelical but they're either so bogged down in legalism that they have absolutely nothing to say to people or they're just you know it's just often a corner somewhere in some kind of vague spirituality which is not rooted in truth in any kind of way at all now people there who just went and said we never hear teaching like this where we encouraged to know that this is the truth which is going to transform our lives there there's a lot of people out there who are experiencing famine the famine for God's word and that's going to get worse so are we holding on to the truth and are we communicating truth to unbelievers if we're not careful people just hear us making religious noises like the music before Christmas in the stores root off for silent night or whatever it is that's what people hear unless we very carefully say I am talking about truth I'm not talking about my personal religious faith simply though of course I believe this personally I'm talking about truth no matter how difficult it is no matter how offensive it is we must talk about truth but it's imperative when we talk about truth that we speak it with love the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 415 he says speaking the truth in love we will grow up into Christ if we don't speak the truth with love we are first being disobedient to God and to the very nature of the gospel itself which is about the love of God in Jesus Christ but we are also going to cut off the possibility of communication to this generation
if we don't speak the truth in love people will not listen I have a problem with truth anyway but if you don't speak it with love people won't hear you and two passages in scripture which are going to be fundamental to everything I say in this class our first Peter 315 where Peter says always be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you but do it with gentleness and with respect and Paul and Colossians 4 verse 6 has let your conversation always be gracious season with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone Colossians 4 6 and first Peter 3 15 now if we don't obey that command because that's a command it's not a piece of advice you know if you feel like it you can be gracious and respectful and gentle and loving to people out there to unbelievers it's not advice this might be a good idea this is a command of the word of God if we don't communicate that way nobody will listen to a word we say and why should they how can we possibly claim that we are wanting to communicate the message of the grace of Jesus Christ if we do it in an ungracious manner one of our students put it this way to me last semester he said I realized that I had got to the point where I despised the non-Christians I was seeking to reach out to how can you possibly communicate the gospel of Christ to people you despise I thankfully God saved some people anyway because he's committed to saving people but he commands us to communicate with grace and with gentleness and respect I just got a letter on my email yesterday when it gave me the title of my lecture for a conference I'm going to be speaking at later this year and I was appalled by because the the title of the lecture I was given is why atheism is observed what atheist is going to come and hear such a lecture I certainly wouldn't I used to be an atheist and I would never have gone to a lecture given by somebody with that title and we're awful at doing this kind of thing and I'm going to write back I asked one of our secretaries to call right away I'm not speaking on that title I'm not coming if you give me that title I'm not going I don't care whose conference this is or where it's taking place I absolutely am not going to speak on such a subject I might speak on the subject why I'm not an atheist any longer but I'm never going to speak with that kind of title anywhere if we don't speak the truth with love we are dishonoring Christ and we will have nothing to say to the people around us we must hold on to the truth but we must communicate it in a way which commends the gospel to people I bring us to main point to here the loss of moral direction the loss of moral direction it's not only truth that is offensive in our culture we are living in a culture where
absolute moral commandments are an offense to the people around us as long as I say to people this is my lifestyle these are my values this is the way I personally choose the live then we're acceptable as soon as we say to people this is for you too you shall not God has commanded this for all men and women as soon as we say that we are considered disrespectful intolerant judgmental and loving we are considered immoral I'm serious we are considered immoral when we make absolute moral statements
the judgment of God is equally an offense to our contemporaries because as I said earlier personal freedom is the greatest idol of our culture to tell people that God is going to hold them to account and judge them for their lifestyle is outrageous to them God is declared immoral because we say that he is the judge and measure of human behavior and we are considered immoral for making such a claim that really is the moment in which we live that's how we are considered that's how your neighbor thinks about you if they realize that that's what you say so this is a challenge to us again
are we holding on to God's commandments are we committed to obedience to the law of God
or are we so shaped by the culture and are we bowing to the idol of personal freedom so that we too resist God as our law giver and judge again let me put it very personally do we love God as my law giver and my judge do we love God in his holiness that's certainly what the scripture calls us to again let me give you some figures somewhere between 35 and 40 percent of people in this society say that they personally believe in Jesus Christ then are born again so more than a third between 35 and 40 percent but when Gallup did a very very careful survey of how people live only 10 percent one in 10 acknowledge that their life is affected in any way by their beliefs those are the figures
while 35 to 40 percent let's say four out of 10 Americans the day say they have put their faith in Jesus Christ as their personal savior and they have been born again only about one in 10 acknowledge that this is having any impact on their lives at all but the New Testament teaches us that faith without works is dead it's still born now I'm not saying that only 10 percent of Americans are truly Christian believers God's the one who could tell us but those figures reveal to us just how deeply impacted the church is by the loss of God's law and by the idol of personal freedom again just think of the problem in our churches of practicing church discipline many people be horrified by the notion that we should discipline somebody for committing adultery or for malicious gossip or for treating their workers badly and dishonestly but the scripture commands us to practice church discipline in such areas but most people would be appalled they just leave and go to another church which wouldn't certainly discipline them because most churches do never practice church discipline most evangelical churches don't ever practice church discipline it's extraordinarily challenging to build in this culture I know because I've been a past myself for many years and we practice church discipline for people who were dishonest at work who were greedy in the way they treated their employees for people who got involved in homosexual practice for people who committed adultery for people who were malicious gossipers we discipline people in all those areas very challenging it's very challenging so what about us are we holding on to the commandments of God ourselves do we love the Lordgiver rather than our own personal freedom the great temptation to us is to do what Paul speaks of in Galatians 5 13 he says for freedom Christ has set you free but don't let your freedom become a license for your sinful nature and living in this culture that's one of the biggest challenges that you and I are ever going to face our freedom will become a license to our own sinful nature in the class in which I graduated from here back in 1971 the seminar is much smaller than they're about 15 of us my estimation is three or probably four I think four of my classmates wrecked their ministry through committing adultery so what's where's your heart
where's your heart in terms of your love for God your acknowledgement have him as your Lordgiver and judge and your love for his commandments can you say like David how I love your law it is my meditation all the day you want to be able to say that but you love the law of God and you're committed to walking in God's ways I'm not talking about legalism the Bible does not encourage us to develop all our own sets of rules about what books we should read and music we should listen to and all kinds of other ridiculous things that we come up with for ourselves and our children and young people and our churches it's got nothing whatsoever to do with what the New Testament teaches nothing about the law of God over commandments that God has given us he forbids us to add to his law and the apostle Paul tells us that all this stuff has an appearance of wisdom but it has no value in restraining the sinful nature but I am always under law to Jesus Christ you know if one of the greatest weaknesses of evangelical churches in general right now right across the denominations when the greatest weaknesses is the failure to teach the moral commandments of God if we don't teach God's commandments but what's going to happen is either we're just going to simply copy the culture in the way we live just bow to the idol of personal freedom and our own sinful passions or we're going to develop our own rules masses of legalism and that's what you get actually we need to teach God's law because God's law is beautiful it describes the way God walks you know that's not an image for our culture it's not a new one and we've got to walk the walk but that's what the Bible itself says this is the way God walks and we are called to walk like him he's created us to be his image to be like him his character stands behind all his moral commandments and that's the way he calls us to be and to love his commandments to recognize as Paul says the law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good and the law is spiritual it sets out the way of life the spirit desires me to live so the love God's law we need to stop there and I'll open it up just for the last few minutes for questions here yes sir that's a very good question yeah what a couple of generations ago all the laws of the nation could be found in a small stack of books a couple of feet high and today libraries of law and yes there's a huge problem here and it's a great question see there are several ways when can put it if you lose the notion that there is a transcendent moral law but that is we are governed by the rule of law rather than the rule of men and the laws men make that's that has dreadful consequences for a culture because you've no longer got moral principles which govern you you have to become legalistic and that's the way law has become in this society that's why every time congress passes a law you know it it has to have a book this wide explaining it because nobody's interested in obeying the spirit of the law you become reduced to obedience the letter of the law there's not a question of what's right and wrong it's a question of am I legal and the government can never afford lawyers who are as bright as the lawyers that any company can afford and that's why the laws have to be like that so you've got to make them so detailed they've got to become legalistic because there's no longer any personal restraint as a sense of rather I've got to be right according for the letter of the law so if I can find the loophole that you all have to watch this when you're filling in your taxes you committed to obeying the spirit of the law or you're constantly trying to find loopholes to avoid your responsibilities
in any area but businesses spend enormous amounts of money hiring lawyers to find what holes in laws the government passes because nobody cares about the spirit of the law I'm not saying nobody I'm exaggerating here some people do there's a few but the majority of people are only concerned with being right according to the letter of the law legalistic righteousness and we have an extraordinary dilemma going on in our culture at the moment on the one hand everybody wants more personal freedom that's the great cry and everybody's complaining about the intrusion of government into their life everybody it's true on the right and it's true on the left just choose different areas you think I'm not making any political statement here in principle I don't believe in doing that you won't ever find out where I stand politically but it's true on the right and it's true on the left you know people on both sides of the political debate are constantly complaining about the intrusion of government into some area one side complains about the intrusion of government into business we need a laissez-faire attitude to let capitalism just have its free reign we need less laws about the environment less laws about labor etc etc and people on the other side saying the same thing in all sorts of other areas and we need less laws interfering with personal freedom in all sorts of different issues but at the same time everybody's also complaining about the breakdown of law in the culture so people on the right are saying we want less government but they're also saying we want more government when it comes to crime we want harsher sentences more presence more police they want less government we want more government you know everybody is speaking out of both sides of their mouth at the same time no matter which part of the political spectrum they're coming from France is shaped used to put it this way said the great cry for freedom in our culture is like a hammer blow destroying the society in which we live the more personal freedom people demand the less sinners restrained and the more laws you need and the stronger government you need so we have this bizarre paradox right now everybody's crying for personal freedom but government is growing all the time it has to to deal with the excesses of personal freedom whether it's excesses on the personal level or the corporate level it doesn't really make any difference the same issue so set aside whatever political prejudices you have from whichever direction I'm going to just try to think about the issue if people are not committed to the law the moral law of God from the heart and respect for one another in a sense of constant moral obligation to each other then they have to be restrained by laws more and more laws which have to become more and more detailed to deal with every way that people try to get around them so there's a wonderful essay about this by Solzenitsyn when Solzenitsyn came from the Soviet Union after having been imprisoned for years and he was finally exiled to the west you know he was greeted as a tremendous hero for his personal courage but as soon as he got here he started pointing out the problems in our culture and people didn't like it very much but there should be an essay of his in your syllabus there where it's called a world split apart by Solzenitsyn and it's an address he gave it Harvard at Harvard graduation it's a very insightful commentary on our life and he addresses this issue of the loss of a transcendent moral law the growth of personal freedom and the consequent rise of legalism you know the very question that you're asking it's a huge problem in the culture in which we live okay we'll have to stop here but I know lots more of you have questions so maybe we'll start class next Tuesday with some questions because I know I've just been raising problems all over the place