The Unauthorized Homily

By Bill Dunn

A commentary on the Scripture readings from the Sunday Lectionary

(Scripture readings for Sunday, June 22nd: Jeremiah 20:10-13; Romans 5:12-15; Matthew 10:26-33)

WORLD VIEWS IN CONFLICT

In this week’s second reading, from the epistle to the Romans, St. Paul explained: “Through one man (Adam) sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all men, inasmuch as all sinned.”

Paul’s message is that sin and death came into the world through the original sin of Adam, while forgiveness and eternal life came into the world through the obedience and sacrifice of Jesus. “For if by the transgression of the one the many died,” Paul wrote, “how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.”

Most people today, including many self-described Christians, say that Paul was using symbolic language. Either that, or he was speaking from ignorance if he literally believed what he wrote.

You see, the thinking today is that modern science has proven beyond a doubt that there really was no actual Adam. There was no single man who was supernaturally created by God. There was no one individual at the very beginning whom God made in His image, and into whom He breathed the breath of life.

The thinking today is that all the Book of Genesis stuff about Adam and Eve and original sin were simply traditional fables, folk legends, that someone finally wrote down. It’s all really a bunch of silly nonsense.

We now know, it is argued, that mankind emerged from a long and gradual evolutionary process. Even the broader interpretation that the physical aspect of humans may have evolved over time, while God infused Adam with an eternal soul and spirit at a specific point in history, is vehemently rejected.

Whether you label it “sinful” or not, our human nature was not shaped by some specific act of disobedience; it was shaped instead by millions of years of environmental adaptation and natural selection. The “survival of the fittest” dynamic caused us to be the way we are.

Many people attempt to mix this modern view with traditional Christian theology. They think that faith in Jesus can be just as vital, just as meaningful, even though the Genesis stories are nothing more than folk legends devoid of any truth.

But those who actively oppose Christianity are not so foggy in their thinking. They clearly understand the enormous stakes here. For example, science writer and self-proclaimed “joyous atheist,” G. Richard Bozarth, wrote: “Evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the son of god….If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing!”

Subtle, ain’t he?

The secular humanists and atheists such as Bozarth realize that there can be no compromise. They understand that this is a clash between two diametrically opposed world views. The one view holds that a supernatural Being called God designed and created mankind—regardless of the particular details of how and when it happened—while the other view holds, as the late Francis Shaeffer explained, “the idea that the final reality is impersonal matter or energy shaped into its present form by impersonal chance.”

(By the way, please watch Ben Stein’s fascinating movie, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” You will hear from their own lips how uncompromising and zealous the humanists and atheists truly are.)

These two opposing world views cannot be correct simultaneously. Unfortunately, many Christians don’t realize it, and out of insecurity or a sense of appeasement have bent over backwards to say that the two world views are compatible.

Shaeffer described this futile effort: “There is no way to mix these two total world views. They are separate entities and cannot be synthesized. Yet we must say that liberal theology, the very essence of it from the beginning, is an attempt to mix the two. Liberal theology tried to bring forth a mixture soon after the Enlightenment and has tried to synthesize these two views right up to our own day. But in each case when the chips are down these liberal theologians have always come down, as naturally as a ship coming into home port, on the side of the nonreligious humanists. They do this with certainty because what their liberal theology really is is humanism expressed in theological terms.”

You can tell which denominations fall into this category by the trendy, anti-biblical causes they support: abortion, homosexual marriage, euthanasia, cloning, embryonic stem cell research, Marxism, situational ethics, etc.

You can also tell which denominations are liberal and humanistic by their dwindling membership figures. The average person in the pew may not have thought it through as clearly as Bozarth, but he instinctively knows that if you remove all the key components of the faith—Creation, the Fall, the Virgin Birth, the Atonement, the Resurrection—then there’s not much left to get excited about.

Religion of this kind becomes nothing more than an A.C.L.U. or teachers’ union meeting with stained glass windows. People asking profound questions, such as, “Who am I?” “How did I get here?” “What is my purpose in life?” “What happens to me after death?” receive no answers and thus they leave in droves.

These two opposing views of ultimate reality are at the heart of the cultural war raging in our society today. The atheists and humanists know that this is a fierce battle to the death, which is why they have worked so hard to capture strategic targets: journalism, the entertainment industry, public education, and as we saw recently in California, activist judges.

On the other hand, far too many Christians don’t even know we’re at war. They think it’s possible to accept every faith-destroying atheistic principle, and as long as we all hold hands and sing “Kumbaya,” everything will be fine.

St. Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians: “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” He knew that if you strip Christianity of its supernatural components, there is nothing left. When will millions of modern Christians wake up and realize this basic fact?

©2008