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HOW BIG IS YOUR GOD? |
| by Dr. Ed Bulkley |
Cost: $15.00  |
Carnal Christians
A recent poll indicates that evangelical Christians are getting divorced at a higher rate than the general population. Young people in the church are becoming sexually active at the same rate as unbelievers. Gang members, who call themselves Christians, meet in the balconies of local churches to exchange drugs and to plan battles with other gangs.
A well-known evangelical writer leaves his wife and reveals that he is a homosexual. Not content to destroy his own marriage, he begins a campaign to convince other Christians that homosexuality is compatible with Christianity and that the Church should be ashamed of itself for its "homophobia."
A group of clergy in Denver meet at a large synagogue to express their belief that abortion rights have their roots in ancient religion. Hundreds of people at the service bow their heads and pray that the right to abort babies will not be taken away from women.
An American president, a professing Christian, vetoes a ban on partial-birth abortions allowing thousands of babies to be murdered just seconds before they are completely delivered. Were the babies to exit the birth canal and be placed on a table for the brutal procedure, the doctor would be charged with murder. Eight inches makes all the legal difference.
Whether pagan or religious, liberal or evangelical, it seems to make little difference. Professing Christians watch the same television programs, read the same pornography, use the same vulgar language and depend on the same worldly cures for their psychological woes as those who reject the very notion of a holy God.
Practical Atheism
What is going on in the evangelical world? How can such outrages take place in the name of Christ? Why is there so much depression, divorce, and dysfunction? Why are Christian wives leaving their husbands and children at an ever-increasing rate? Why has sexual immorality become accepted as normal and purity is viewed as a quaint relic of the past?
The answer is practical atheism. It’s unbelief of the worst kind. You may wonder what unbelief has to do with you, a Christian, but, I encourage you to think the issue through with me, because our understanding of God and our attitudes toward Him have a major bearing upon our personal happiness and mental health.
"I’m not an atheist!" you might be thinking right now, and technically, that might be true. We believe that God exists. But are we acting like it? If not, we have become practical atheists. Take a moment to think this through with me.
Atheism Defined
Atheism is a dismal religion seeking to comprehend the universe without a Creator. It is represented in a variety of philosophical arenas: politics (Marxist communism), education (secular humanism), science (evolutionism), and religion (atheism proper).
There is an arrogant hopelessness in atheism mixed with a cynicism which springs from an inevitable world-view of meaninglessness. All existence for the true atheist is without purpose or design, since he believes there is no Master Designer.
The term "atheist" literally means "one without God" and refers to a person who claims to believe there is no Divine Being. Without being too technical, the term can be applied to people of various philosophical persuasions. Official card-carrying atheists are enthusiastic in their unbelief, having an almost evangelical zeal to convert others to their way of thinking. They gather for meetings, publish magazines, and contribute financially to efforts designed to inform the masses that all religion is a delusion. It is curious that such people deny God with an emotional intensity that could easily be misunderstood as personal hatred for a Being they say does not exist.
Educated Fools
Others believe they are scientific atheists. They smugly congratulate themselves on their intellectual objectivity and look down upon lesser-gifted humans with condescension. They draw government grants to create evolutionary dioramas in natural history museums which illustrate their patently unscientific beliefs about human origins. They pompously pronounce their theories as scientific fact, blithely ignoring established laws of science which contradict their interpretations of reality. Romans 1:22 describes this sort of atheist: "Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools."
Various Kinds of Atheists
There are intellectual atheists, casual atheists, committed atheists, chemical atheists, business atheists, embittered atheists, and evolutionary atheists. There are temporary atheists, atheists of convenience, political atheists and national atheists. But there are no actual atheists. Think about it. No one spends his life attempting to destroy something he believes is nonexistent. Still, there are some who continue to deny God.
Why Atheism is So Unpopular
Even in the worst of times, however, atheism has never been very popular. There is something, except among the most blasphemous, that shrinks back from openly declaring "There is no God!" Perhaps it is the sense of one’s own finiteness that forces a sincere human to admit that God could indeed exist outside of that person’s knowledge and experience. Or perhaps it is the nagging awareness that the empirical evidence in nature for God’s existence is overwhelming. It might even be one’s concern that there may come a day of accounting for our lives and actions.
Other sincere thinkers have had to admit that in the absence of a sovereign Lawgiver, all moral and ethical standards are mere necessities for civilized continuity. Evolutionary doctrines of "survival of the fittest" and "might makes right" become philosophically acceptable. Racisim, Nazi pogroms, abortion and other brands of genocide become defensible in a relativistic universe void of God.
War, disease, sorrow or impending death may bring even the most dedicated enemy of God to a moment of reluctant acknowledgement of His existence. When his atheism was questioned, Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev was quoted as saying, "I’m an atheist! I am an atheist! God knows I’m an atheist!" And Chairman Mao commented to Richard Nixon, "When I go to heaven to see God, I’ll tell him that for the present it is better to have Taiwan under the care of the United States."
Universally, regardless of location, culture or century, mankind has found it necessary to acknowledge God in philosophy, organized and casual religion, ethical and moral standards, law, government and in day-to-day personal living.
The Worst Kind of Atheism
In spite of this, there exists a form of unbelief that is more dangerous and pervasive than all others. I call it "practical atheism." It is a way of life which acknowledges God intellectually, philosophically, and even religiously, but denies His existence in day-to-day actions.
We live in a generation of practical atheism. It has invaded our homes, neighborhoods, schools, stores, courts — and even our churches. Yes, there are Christian "atheists," too. These are people who profess to follow Jesus Christ, yet in their daily lives, they show that they do not believe. Titus writes about such people: "They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him" (Titus 1:16).
The Results of Practical Atheism
Practical atheism can creep into all of our lives. It takes many forms, some of which may surprise you. The results of practical atheism are devastating to mental health, marriages, families, children and parents, church fellowships and the entire Body of Christ. As people of the world see the impact of unbelief in our lives, they have a right to ask, "How big is your God?"
The New Experts on the Inner Man
As a direct consequence of rejecting God, a new hybrid of expert on human thought has arisen. Psychologists and psychiatrists have assumed the mantels of all three of their historical predecessors — priests, philosophers, and scientists — and have established themselves as the experts on the Inner Man (mind/heart/soul/spirit/emotions).
Claiming near-divine ability to understand, interpret and heal the spiritual part of man, these new high-priest social scientists have led the way toward functional atheism. They skillfully shuffle theological, philosophical and scientific cards into one new deck, making up the rules of their mind-game as they move through the corridors of power.
Why Psychology is So Popular
It is little wonder, then, that psychology is the most popular major in many colleges, universities, Bible institutes and seminaries. There is an intoxicating sense of power in believing we are able to explain why our relatives and neighbors act the way they do. We comfort ourselves, thinking that we will finally understand and cure our own dysfunctions by studying the theories of Freud, Jung, Skinner and Rogers, and yet the final resolution always seems just beyond our grasp. We find that the heart of man is secretive and illusive and cannot be measured or analyzed by scientific methods.
The Bible’s View
In contrast to psychology’s popular but mistaken image of omniscience, the Bible tells us that the human heart is unavailable for empirical study. Jeremiah writes, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9, KJV). The answer, of course, is found in the following verse. "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve" (Jeremiah 17:10, NIV). Only God is able to understand the Inner Man.
Is Psychology a Better Way?
It is ironic, then, that many Christians have accepted the idea that psychology has found a better way of dealing with the soul of man than with the truths of Scripture alone and they believe that to find true healing for our inner wounds we must integrate psychological "findings" with Biblical principles.
A Form of Godliness without Power
I recently sat in the office of the president of a well-known conservative seminary. He was upset with me for having reported on our national radio broadcast, Return to the Word, that the seminary was moving away from biblical orthodoxy as psychology progressively displaced the role of Biblical theology in its curricula. Our conversation went something like this:
"You’re saying that we’re becoming liberal," the seminary president said in a hurt tone of voice. "I assure you, that is not the case!"
"Well, then," I replied, "let me ask you a question. Do you believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God?"
Without hesitation, he firmly replied, "Absolutely."
"Let me ask another question," I continued. "Do you believe that the Bible is sufficient to meet every inner need of man?"
He hesitated for a moment, then with a tinge of embarrassment replied, "We believe that it is thoroughly sufficient for salvific issues."
"And what about issues of sanctification?" I pressed. "Is the Bible, by itself, sufficient to bring the believer to wholeness — to heal the deepest wounds of the human heart?"
He looked down. After a long pause, he finally looked up at me and said, "No. We also need other truths that God has revealed through nature and research."
Having admitted that his institution no longer believes that God has provided sufficient information in His Word to sanctify the believer, the president’s stated position is that psychology is essential for the healing of the Inner Man. In terms of Biblical sanctification, this sincere leader of a formerly conservative seminary has become a practical atheist. And worse, yet, he was unwilling to consider the Biblical alternative or to even think it through.
(Excerpt from Ed's book, How Big Is Your God?. You can order the book from Return to the Word, at 1-888-GOD'S WORD [1-888-463-7967].)
How Big Is Our God?
Is it any wonder our world looks at unbelieving Christians and laughs? Let’s all ask ourselves, how big is our God? Is He the God described in the Bible — loving and omnipotent — or is our god a pitiful myth of antiquity? The way we live will reveal how big our God really is. |
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