The Myth of the Post-Christian World

On my Christmas list this year was the book Dominion by Tom Holland. It is subtitled, How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. When I first came across it online the title intrigued me as did the reviews, having received critical acclaim in both Christian and non-Christian circles. The prominent Christian author and pastor, Tim Keller, wrote, "It is hard to overstate the importance of Holland's book...". Ross Douthat of the New York Times called it "a galloping tour of Christianity's influence across the last 2,000 years" and captured the overall argument of the book by quoting from its pages calling the Christian faith, "the most influential framework for making sense of human existence that has ever existed."

Christianity's influence on the world is wide and deep. The other two Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam, have their own calendar years (5783 for the Jews, 1444-1445 for the Muslims) but both would defer to AD (Anno Domini - the year of our Lord) 2023 very shortly. There are countless other examples in Holland's book. 

From my own experience, just last week my church pastor recalled his years of ministry in Muslim Kuwait. Christianity is legal there but proselytism isn't - and yet every Christmas season the malls put up big Christmas trees and Christian Christmas carols are played throughout the concourses. You can be arrested for giving someone a Christian Bible in Muslim Kuwait but no one seems bothered by "Joy to the World" or "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing!" with their Christ-centered worship messages blaring from the speakers.

Moses led thousands of his enslaved countrymen out of Egypt to the edge of the Promised Land. King David slew his tens of thousands and Muhammad introduced Islam to the Arab world with the Qur'an and the sword. By contrast, Jesus shared His gospel with 12 apostles of low means with most of them deserting Him when He died a criminal's death on a Roman cross. Not the kind of script normally written for powerful revolutionaries. And yet, the Western world at least, instinctively patterns itself on His teachings and legacy. The thinking person must wonder why this is.

Holland cites many examples throughout history of people groups acting "Christianly" to advance their causes - in his words, "From Babylon to the Beatles, Saint Michael to #MeToo". Many have employed the Christian ethos - some legitimately, others hypocritically - to achieve their ends and there are no signs of this stopping anytime soon. Many are the special interests that seek gain on the motifs of oppression and martyrdom and many are the counterfeits. Whatever the motivations, twisted though they may be, all pay homage to Jesus Christ through imitation, however subtle the approach. Hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue, as they say.

It is assumed everywhere that we live in a post-Christian world, and Christians, fretting over depleted church memberships, tend to agree. According to a pre-Covid survey by Faith Communities Today (FACT) in the U.S., the median number of attendees of evangelical congregations has dropped to 65 from 137 in the year 2000. Interestingly, the culture is not entirely to blame; the Church herself is also at fault. A similar survey conducted in Canada found that 65% of Evangelical leaders don't make evangelism a priority. In fact, only 9% considered evangelism a high priority. 

Personal faith in Christ may not be in vogue these days (even in the Church) but the Western world isn't quite ready to quit Christendom (read: the Judeo-Christian ethic) in its many forms, according to Holland. The culture was formed over centuries and it won't be changed in a generation because of the rise of self-seeking special interest groups or "the Nones", meaning those who subscribe to no religious beliefs whatsoever.

Christians should be more concerned about widespread biblical illiteracy and the watering down of the faith among their own numbers, and not so much worried about the Judeo-Christian ethic's place in society. Sadly, many believers have forgotten the lesson from 2 Kings 6:15-17. God hasn't gone anywhere even if the Church, gripped by the fear of man, has a siege mentality. His help is near and His way is still the best thing for the human race on every level. Always has been. Always will be.

The Problem of God's Goodness - a Theodicy

This is based on the Book of Job as many theodicies are. A theodicy is an answer to the question of how a perfect and all-powerful God can permit the existence of evil. [Read Job 1:6-22]

The opening verses of the Book of Job have always raised questions in my mind as to whether or not this whole story is an actual historical event (or series of events) or if it is an Old Testament parable – a fictitious story with a true and heavenly meaning. The reason I questioned it was because of how the sequence of the disasters that befell Job are told to us. A servant runs up to him, reports a tragedy, says he’s the only one who survived – and this sequence gets replayed exactly the same way, one after the other, three more times. We can be forgiven for thinking that it sounds a little contrived. However, I’ve come to believe what some commentators say that the story of Job really happened but the biblical account is a re-telling of it in an ancient poetic and prose format.

This book is profound because it addresses many questions that come up naturally in our lives like, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” I’ll come back to that at the end of the message but even more important than that is what this book addresses directly: the issue of God's goodness. And it is done brilliantly and paradoxically when you consider the mayhem and destruction in the story.

The book opens with an introduction of Job and we are told that he is wealthy and blessed and that he was righteous – blameless and upright, the opening verses tell us.

To begin with, Job portrays the picture of patience, hence the old saying that “So-and-so has the patience of Job”. Even in this severe trial, he still praises God. However, it doesn’t last. There are some underlying feelings and attitudes that God wants to expose in Job and deal with. Apparently even Job can run out of patience and we'll see how later on he questions God's integrity with his self-righteousness.

This morning we would do well to remember that God doesn’t fit into all the neat little boxes that the various cultures of the Christian Church have put Him in over the centuries. I would like us to look afresh at the God of the Bible who revealed Himself to man in the Old Testament in various ways and at various times and incarnated Himself in the New Testament in the Person of Jesus.

According to the Bible, all that happened to Job and his family was the result of a conversation between God and Satan, the Accuser. Neither Job nor his family and friends knew anything about this and were never told. That’s interesting to note. You and I have the privilege of seeing the whole show, as it were. Perhaps if Job and his family and friends had known, they would’ve handled things differently…but because they didn’t know, their ignorance of God emerged and their sinful assumptions were revealed.

It takes a little while to see what's happening here. Following the place where we left off in our reading this morning, we get introduced to Job’s three friends. For most of the remainder of the book, up to and including chapter 31, these three friends come to Job and try to get him to confess his sin and repent of it. When Job insists over and over again that he has not sinned and did nothing to deserve the calamity that has befallen him, they don’t believe him. They think he is just being resistant and they tell him that things won’t get any better until he confesses what he must before a holy God.

In chapter 32, we get introduced to a fourth man, Elihu, who brings a different perspective to all this. If you read through chapters 3-37 inclusive, you’ll get the gist of the back-and-forth conversation and you may even come to the conclusion that everything the three friends said is correct and accurate.

It is not till the end of the book that God arrives on the scene and reveals what's really going on. He rebukes and corrects the three friends as well as Job himself. While their words sounded good, their understanding of God was legalistic and they believed Him to be a punitive moralist, i.e., a God who lives to get even, to punish the bad people of the world and to reward the good. Listen to what one of the friends, Eliphaz, said in chapter 4:7-9,

“Stop and think! Do the innocent die? When have the upright been destroyed? My experience shows that those who plant trouble and cultivate evil will harvest the same. A breath from God destroys them. They vanish in a blast of his anger.”

What’s wrong with what he said? Surely, God does bless those who love Him and ultimately punishes the impenitent people of the world who work against His purposes. The Bible does not reveal to us a wrathless God. The Crucifixion is proof of that. That said, Eliphaz’s correct words were misapplied and that can lead to problems as it did for many historical characters of the Old Testament. The Pharisees and Sadducees of the New Testament had the same problem.

Before Jesus, it was just generally assumed in that society that God had His favorites and people who were physically disabled or emotionally or mentally afflicted in some way had unconfessed sin in them or there was sin in their parents’ or grandparents’ lives or…take it back as far as you like. Many prejudices were formed from that way of thinking. 

Their thinking is actually quite surprising. If they had but read the Psalms, Ecclesiastes or the prophets they would've seen that God doesn't play favorites. Jeremiah 12:1, “Righteous are You, O LORD, that I would plead my case with You; Indeed I would discuss matters of justice with You: Why has the way of the wicked prospered? Why are all those who deal in treachery at ease?” Because of their willful ignorance, they were inconsistent in their religious ideas which informed their social conditioning.

The truth is, not every overtly sinful person appeared to be cursed in some way. Many of them – like Zaccheus the tax collector – were very prosperous and seemingly blessed, despite being deceitful. In this same vein, Jesus had to correct the thinking of the religious people of His day.

Luke 13:1-4 reads, “About this time Jesus was informed that Pilate had murdered some people from Galilee as they were offering sacrifices at the Temple. Jesus asked, ‘Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other people from Galilee? Is that why they suffered? Not at all! And you will perish, too, unless you repent of your sins and turn to God. And what about the eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? No.’”

Jesus taught something new and different here. He shattered the people’s assumptions about the afflicted by saying that people who experience tragedy and grief in some way aren’t necessarily the worst of people. And while it’s true that we can bring grief on ourselves by our misdeeds, it is also true that we experience difficulties simply because they’re a fact of life in a fallen world. In other words, just because you’re suffering in some way doesn’t necessarily mean that God is punishing you because you are somehow morally inferior to others. And the opposite is equally true. Just because things are going your way and are "living the dream" doesn’t mean that you are morally superior to others. 

Jesus is shifting the focus from that day's traditional religious/cultural norms to the need of all people to repent of their sin.

Getting back to Job and his friends now, in chapter 31, Job makes his final appeal. Verses 2-8 read, “For what has God above chosen for us? What is our inheritance from the Almighty on high? Isn’t it calamity for the wicked and misfortune for those who do evil? Doesn’t he see everything I do and every step I take? Have I lied to anyone or deceived anyone? Let God weigh me on the scales of justice, for he knows my integrity. If I have strayed from his pathway, or if my heart has lusted for what my eyes have seen, or if I am guilty of any other sin, then let someone else eat the crops I have planted. Let all that I have planted be uprooted.”

There you have it. His sin is laid bare before God but is perhaps still hidden from Job himself. Job is waxing indignant, saying in effect, “Let God come and judge me and if I’m guilty, let Him destroy all I have.” Job is confident in his own righteousness to the point where he implies that God will most certainly vindicate him and if He doesn't, then there is something wrong with God's justice. Job touted his own righteousness thereby indirectly bringing God's sense of justice into question.

Elihu, the fourth man, saw it right away. He was introduced to us in chapter 32 and in verses 2 and 3, after Job’s appeal, we read, “Elihu burned with anger. He burned with anger at Job because he justified himself rather than God. He burned also at Job’s three friends because they had found no answer although they declared Job to be in the wrong.” In the chapters that follow, Elihu tells Job that he needs to put away his growing self-righteousness and, in humility, trust and submit to God as he goes through this trial. Elihu knew what he was talking about more than the others.

By chapter 38, God has had enough of all the speculating and arguing and He goes on the offensive by challenging Job directly about his ignorance of who God is. Job 38:2-4, “Who is this who questions my wisdom with such ignorant words? Brace yourself like a man, because I have some questions for you and you must answer them. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? Tell me, if you know so much.” During the next couple of chapters, God continues to challenge Job on just how much he really knows which, in the end, proves to be not that much, if anything at all.

But there’s more. God is just getting started with him and by the time we reach chapter 40:8, God asks Job the critical question, the one He set him up for, the one that addresses, I believe, the root flaw in Job. God asks, “Will you discredit my justice and condemn me just to prove you are right?” That question is a deeply searching one for Job and, by extension, for you and me.

So, again, Job and his friends were talking out of their religious educations. It was all academic, what their culture taught. Their arguments were religiously on point but their hearts weren’t right because while they knew about God, they didn't actually know Him. Job has retreated very much into self-justification and at the end of the book, God has a lot more to say in correcting Job than He does with correcting Job’s friends, though all had to repent of their words and attitudes.

You've heard it said many times that God looks on the heart. God is not impressed by our religious credentials. He sees right through them to the underlying self-righteousness. Job’s and his friends’ religious ideas were actually preventing them from knowing God and thinking and acting righteously for its own sake.

Satan posed his cynical question back in chapter 1:9, “Does Job fear God for nothing? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land…But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has and he will surely curse You to Your face.”

And Satan wasn't entirely wrong. Self-righteousness can be hard to detect. To exalt ourselves before God is to attempt to belittle Him. If we keep on asking God why He doesn’t vindicate us – or others - right away, when we think He ought to, we are accusing Him of being unjust and that is blasphemy. This is what Job had to repent of, the buried notion…the subtle lie that was first uttered in the Garden of Eden…that God is not always righteous and is not good.

 

So, Satan told God that man will only make good choices if there is something in it for him. After Satan made his accusation, he left and we don’t see him again in this whole drama. And so you may ask, why would a good God put poor Job through the ringer just to prove a point with Satan? Well, that was only part of it. God has nothing to prove to Satan but He did show Satan that Job was capable of choosing the right thing apart from his own self-interest.

 

So, what about us? We have the capacity within us to honor God and do the right thing for nothing in return. Will we do it just because it is the right thing no matter how ridiculous it makes us look? Your answer to that question defines your true religion. The Christian author Phillip Yancey wrote that the choices we make matter very much to God. That is very clear in the story of Job.

 

We declare His goodness intrinsically when we put aside the notions of our righteousness and walk in true heartfelt obedience to Him. That is right living and, by the way, that is all Jesus did. He walked in perfect obedience to His Father thereby testifying that God is good. In Luke 18 Jesus replied to the rich ruler, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.” Jesus wasn’t denying His goodness. He was saying that if you call Him good, that’s the same thing as believing He is God because goodness belongs to God alone, so they should give serious thought to what they’re saying.

 

It’s time to wind up the message but when looking at all of this, and considering our own lives, there are some lingering questions. As I mentioned at the beginning, we like to ask, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” The theologian will give us the short answer that there are no good people so bad things happen to everyone.

 

Still, many awful things happen in the world to innocent people, as Jesus said. Just look at all the school shootings. Those kids and teachers did nothing to deserve that. So, my answer to the question of why people go through the trials they do is ‘I don’t know’. Nor do I understand why good things happen to bad people. But I do know this – and so do you: good and bad things happen to good and bad people and have since the beginning of time. Jesus said God is good to the just and the unjust, and just like His Father, He doesn’t tell us why.

 

In this trial, God was teaching Job what it means to be a child of His. Knowing God means more than just acquiring knowledge about Him. It meant Job growing up and learning to choose the right thing and not necessarily the religiously correct thing - and we often confuse the two. That was God’s will for him and it is God’s will for you and me. If we are going to live with Him forever and run the universe together with Him, which is our inheritance, we had better get to know Him and for us that means following Jesus. And Jesus said we will have trouble in this life but to fear not because He has overcome the world.

 

It is in the trials we endure in this life that we learn about the goodness of our Father in Heaven. It is because He is good that He refines us, by trial if He so chooses, and deals with the sinful muck in our hearts - that often only He can see - because to make us like Jesus is what He wants for us more than anything. As St. Augustine said, “You have made us for Yourself, oh God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” Our problem is that we don't always know our true rest and we all need to be taught what that means.

 

Another question. Why is this God’s will? It’s because everything is ultimately for His glory and He wants to share it with us. Two things to keep in mind: First, God will not be denied His glory in His creation. And second, He wants to show His glory to His people. Does that seem wrong to you? Someone once told me that only an insecure and egotistical God is preoccupied with and jealous of His own glory - and yet, God emphasizes and jealously regards His glory all throughout the Bible.

 

Consider this: If God is truly God, then there is no higher being than Him. If God was to worship anything other than Himself, He would be worshipping something less than Himself and that is sin. All who bear His image find their righteousness in being God-centered, including God Himself. But He is not self-centered in the way you and I are self-centered.

At Calvary, the justice and goodness of God were on full display. At the behest of God, the King of righteousness died a wrathful and substitutionary death for us, who are like Job...or worse. Two men died with Him - one met God and embraced His righteousness and heaven was his. The other one met God, too, and balked at Him and bitterly retreated into his own righteousness. In Job, God revealed the folly of any so-called righteousness apart from His and in Christ, He sets the choice before us, either to accept or reject it.

In the end, Job made his peace with God. In 42:5 he finally admitted, "I had heard of You by the hearing of my ear, but now my eye sees You. Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes." That is where he found his strange comfort in the storm and that is where we will find ours – in repentance and in trusting our very good God simply because He is God and loving and trusting Him are the right things to do. And when we come to that place we won't want to be anywhere else.