Jesus and Salvation Series (Part 3)

Metaphors Of Our Cultural Shift

Welcome to the Summer 2006 study for the Koinonia Class of Calvary Baptist Church, Denver, Colorado. We’re looking at the issue of Jesus and Salvation, using the book “Is Jesus The Only Savior” [James R. Edwards, Is Jesus The Only Savior? (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: 2005)]. We encourage each person to buy a copy and follow along.

In his Introduction, titled “The Shore and the Current”, Edwards explains why this apologetic is needed. There has been a massive shift away from a respect for religion (and Christianity in particular) by those who shape our culture and influence public opinion.

Movies, television, magazines, books, universities, and the amplified voices of those who enforce Political Correctness have all made it harder for a Christian to speak up and say “I believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior”.

Rather, it is more common to hear someone talk about their “mix-and-match religion”. In “The DaVinci Code” movie the Opus Dei leader Bishop Aringarosa rejects “cafeteria Catholicism” in which people feel free to pick and choose which parts of the Catholic faith they want to incorporate in their own personally-devised faith. To see what he means, check out “Cafeteria Catholicism” for the perspective that describes the cafeteria approach and sees it as a good thing—the dominant view of the culture in which we live.

The point is that people want to design their own religion to suit. As a Realtor, I often see a similar phenomenon. A client will say, “I like this kitchen, the open floor plan of the first house we saw, and the location of the last house. Too bad we can’t pick out the best parts and combine them.” Well, with religion, some people think they can pick out “the best parts” and combine them (even if the various parts from different religions are in direct opposition to each other). What they end up with might be an attractive flower arrangement that will make them feel good and make no demands on them, but it will be a religion without roots.

For example, I often hear the phrase “judge not” as someone’s reason that they accept any belief, behavior, or lifestyle. It’s as if it is now impossible to call anything “sin” or “heresy” because we are not to judge someone else. Edwards refers to a study in which The Barna Research Group “concluded that American Christianity is suffering theological collapse. The primary commitments of church members seem to be to peace, the search for personal fulfillment, and the conviction that God judges no one.” (p. 4)

This is replacing a distortion of the command to “judge not” with a concept of “no Judge”. If there is no sin and therefore no ultimate Judge, then God (or whatever you want to call your own personal deity) devolves to irrelevance, or at the most nothing more than a benevolent dispenser of goodies (“cheap grace” as Dietrich Bonhoefer called it in “The Cost Of Discipleship”).

Edwards uses the metaphors of the shore (a fixed point—“the biblical testimony to Jesus as savior of the world”) and the current (“a riptide of cultural values and assumptions” that is the confluence of the currents of “Enlightenment rationalism and the scientific method, pluralism, moral relativism, postmodernism, the quest for peace, and the challenge of other religions”).

This current carries us along without our conscious awareness of its effect on us (because in the current, and without constant reference to the fixed point on the shore, we don’t sense that we are moving). Unless we learn to use and navigate that current to further our understanding and our faith we will drift farther and farther from the shore. That’s his intention with this book—to give us the tools so we can navigate the current and not be swept away by it.