Amid charges of mismanagement, intolerance, and adultery, The Way International—considered a cult by some—appears to be deteriorating. Over the past year contributions have dropped by one-third, college enrollment has plummeted, attendance at their annual conference has declined, and at least three factions have splintered from the church. Many former members attribute the declines to current president L. Craig Martindale and the board of trustees.

Growth, Then Trouble

Starting in 1967 with a handful of people and the family farm, Victor Paul Wierwille founded and parlayed his new church into a multimillion-dollar empire, operating two colleges, two ranches, and a publishing concern. In recent years the group has shown a net profit of at least 26 million dollars. The Way’s phenomenal growth is traced, in part, to the Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) discipleship course developed by Wierwille. Over 100,000 people in all 50 states and 40 foreign countries have taken PFAL.

However, since the installation of Martindale as president and the subsequent death of Wierwille, The Way International has experienced setbacks. In 1985 the Internal Revenue Service revoked their tax-exempt status for engaging in political campaigns (it was regained this past October). The following year questions about the leadership began to surface when Chris Geer, ordained by The Way, presented a paper to The Way leadership and to The Way Corps (the missionary arm of the movement). The paper, called The Passing of the Patriarch, effectively established Geer’s spiritual authority, which, in turn, challenged Martindale’s leadership.

Damage Control

Because of this and other similar actions, resentment of the leadership quickly escalated to such an extent that Martindale held a special clergy meeting to discuss Geer’s criticisms. He confessed in a newsletter that “Situations needing to be addressed in the ministry have deteriorated.”

By January 1987, letters were circulating in The Way Corps calling for either the restoration or dismissal of the board, which includes Martindale. Fragmentation became inevitable the next month when four highly respected leaders of The Way—John Lynn, Ralph Dubofsky, Thomas Reahard, and Robert Belt—coauthored a letter to Martindale challenging the legitimacy of the current leadership.

As with a previous paper, everyone who signed the 37-page letter was dismissed or put under pressure to resign. In an attempt to control damages, Martindale met with Geer, won his political support, and had him renounce the four dissenters.

After being dismissed, Lynn openly accused the leadership of endorsing adultery and forced tithing, and negating the divinity of Christ. This marked the first open criticism of leadership on the specific issue of adultery.

Breaking Rank

The financial cost of this infighting has been high. Donations to “Abundant Sharing,” the group’s contribution plan, have reportedly fallen off by at least one-third. Enrollment at The Way College in Emporia, Kansas, dropped from 350 students to 90. And attendance at the annual Way-sponsored “Rock of Ages” festival was down by 3,000 people this past August.

Even more significant, at least three “alternative” ministries to The Way have developed within the last three months: The American Fellowship Services, founded by John Lynn; The Pacific West Fellowship, co-founded by Steve Sann; the Great Lakes Fellowship, cofounded by Paul Rawlins and Paul Till.

When asked about the differences between the new associations and The Way, Rawlins indicated they were major. “People are free here. We don’t have a hundred different things to tell the people to do. And we believe that Victor Paul Wierwille made mistakes with adultery and plagiarism. They still don’t want to believe that.”

By Keith Tolbert.

At about three million members, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (PCUSA) is bound to have criticism from within. In fact, most of the “Chapter Nine” organizations (special interest groups formally registered with the denomination) represent conservative agendas that include a return to evangelism and the unique authority of Scripture. And one such group, the Presbyterian Lay Committee (PLC), has been especially aggressive in its criticism.

The PLC’S main activity is the publication of the bimonthly Presbyterian Layman newspaper, whose circulation of 620,000 makes it the most widely received publication within the denomination. The paper aggressively challenges official church positions, especially on political issues. Critics of the Layman claim it is divisive; it has been formally accused by the denomination of “journalistic excess” for its unqualified criticism of denominational stands.

PLC president J. Robert Campbell points out that denominational investigations of the Layman have revealed no improprieties. The denomination’s general assembly, however, denied the PLC certain Chapter Nine privileges because of a technicality related to solicitation of funds. The assembly took no action against five other Chapter Nine groups who violated the same regulation.

Campbell objects to the denomination’s control of the Layman’s access to church membership lists—a primary source of potential subscribers. The general assembly last year ruled that leadership in local churches must authorize the release of membership lists; PLC has defied the ruling. “We contend that once a membership list is circulated to a congregation, it is public.”

Abrasive Style

Even among those who generally support the positions of the PLC, there is disagreement over whether defying a denominational mandate is a wise strategy. A recently adopted mission statement of Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns (PUBC), another Chapter Nine organization, states that PUBC is “committed to achieving [its] goals by exercising mutual forbearance in a loving and irenic spirit.”

“That may summarize the difference between us and the Layman,” said PUBC executive director Matthew Welde. “Not that they’re not loving, but they are more confrontational.”

Said Presbyterian pastor Tim Bayly, “The main concern of evangelicals [about the PLC] is that it tends to emphasize political and economic issues, as opposed to renewal issues.” Bayly added that theological conservatives in the denomination are more politically diverse than is portrayed by the Layman.

Nevertheless, almost all Presbyterians who identify with the renewal movement in the PCUSA ultimately consider the PLC an ally. Ervin Duggan, who serves on the executive committee of the Chapter Nine organization Presbyterians for Democracy and Religious Freedom, contends the PLC represents far more Presbyterians than does the denominational bureaucracy. Duggan observed, “It takes a lot of money to send a newspaper free to 600,000 people. A lot of those people send in checks. Meanwhile, the denomination’s official magazine, which it heavily subsidizes, is starving. Nobody wants to subscribe.”

Leftward Drift

Evangelicals within the denomination commonly attribute its decline in membership—almost 41,000 from 1985 to 1986—to the church’s leanings toward the political and theological Left. “We hear that a number of churches are hanging by their fingernails,” said Terry Schlossberg, who heads the Chapter Nine organization Presbyterians Pro-Life (PPL).

Duggan said it is especially difficult for people with young children to stay. “They [children] don’t learn the Ten Commandments at church because they’re too divisive. The only moral indignation is over the behavior of the U.S. government.”

Many evangelicals are troubled also by what they believe is a continuing theological drift leftward. Bayly and the PUBC’S Welde are among those who see signs that the church is moving in the direction of universalism. They cite statements in a study paper on Judaism, adopted last year, that they believe undermine the uniqueness of Christ. But George Telford, director of the denomination’s ministry unit on theology and worship, maintains the paper is “very explicit about the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and about Christian responsibility for witness to all people, including Jews.”

Despite his concerns, Welde believes that since 1983, the year of the North-South Presbyterian merger, the PCUSA has made an “honest effort to include evangelicals.” He said he is often approached for suggestions on filling vacant posts, adding that leadership changes in the denomination’s 11 seminaries in recent years have pleased theological conservatives.

But renewal leaders believe the denomination has a long way to go. And PPL’S Schlossberg thinks “too little has been done to coordinate the effort among renewal groups.” She adds, “We’re moving in that direction.”

By Randy Frame.

After six-and-a-half years of forced treatment in a Siberian psychiatric hospital, a Soviet Baptist evangelist is now living in the United States. Vladimir Khailo emigrated last month along with his wife, Maria, and 18 family members, including children, grandchildren, and sons and daughters-in-law. They are settling in the Chicago suburbs, assisted by a Ukrainian Baptist church in Berwyn, Illinois.

As Khailo, who was released from the hospital last March, announced his decision to come to the United States, the Soviets announced a new law prohibiting the commitment of “patently healthy” people to psychiatric hospitals. (see sidebar, p. 41) Steven Snyder, president of Christian Solidarity International (CSI—formerly Christian Response International), in suburban Washington, D.C., called the connection between the two announcements “ironic.”

CSI, along with U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), has been working for years to obtain Khailo’s freedom. Efforts have included petition and letter-writing drives by U.S. churchgoers, prayer campaigns, and diplomatic connections through a prominent businessman in the Netherlands.

A “Religious Schizophrenic”

Khailo was arrested in January 1980 and diagnosed as a “religious schizophrenic.” He had worked as a shoemaker in Krasny Lootch, a small coal-mining town in the Ukraine. A devout Christian, Khailo participated in evangelistic efforts and played an active role in the unregistered Baptist churches. “I wrote an open letter to the government explaining my beliefs, and in the letter I showed the methods that atheists are using to try to destroy the church,” Khailo told CHRISTIANITY TODAY. “From that time, terrible persecution started against me and my large family.”

Prior to his arrest, he was frequently called into KGB offices, forbidden to distribute religious books or hold worship services in his home, and urged to denounce his faith. His children were harassed at school. One of his daughters was attacked, and three of his sons were imprisoned. “This is a long and very sad story … not only my own experience, but the experience of many behind the Iron Curtain,” Khailo said.

During his six-and-a-half years in the psychiatric institution, Khailo said he underwent drug treatments that caused health problems. “While they were doing this, they demanded I go on television and deny God and what I was saying about the conditions in the Soviet Union,” he said. “I did not compromise.”

Help From The West

Meanwhile, Khailo’s story had filtered out to the West. CSI and other human-rights groups began spotlighting Khailo at rallies and in letter-writing campaigns. Representative Wolf, who is on the Congressional Human Rights Caucus executive committee, “adopted” Khailo and worked on his behalf both through Congress and in contacts with Soviet officials. It was Wolf who approached a Dutch businessman with influential ties in the USSR and elicited his help in the negotiations.

Khailo credited these combined efforts for his release from the psychiatric hospital in March 1987. “Prayer was number one, then action and intervention from people in the West and the Soviet Union,” he said.

After Khailo’s release, negotiations continued for the emigration of the family. In August, 13 members of the Khailo family went to Holland, where 7 others were later allowed to join them. The family, aided by CSI and Open Doors Ministry, stayed in the Netherlands and avoided press attention, hoping the rest of the family would soon be released. Last month, they decided to come to the U.S. and work for the others’ exit visas from here.

Nine Khailos remain in the Soviet Union, including two sons in prison, one in the army, and a son, a daughter-in-law, and grandchildren. CSI’S Snyder said the Soviets had indicated in negotiations that the entire family, including those in prison, would be allowed to leave. He said he is hoping the Soviets intend to keep that promise.

After a dramatic arrival at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, the family prayed and sang hymns of thanks for their safe arrival in the United States. Berwyn’s Ukrainian Baptist Church, as one of the family’s cosponsors, is helping the Khailos make a new start. The church has provided two furnished apartments for the family and has asked the community to help with food, clothing, and other necessities. Church members are helping the Khailos learn English and find employment.

Pastor Olexa Harbuziuk said about half his congregation emigrated from the Ukraine and “know the condition behind the Iron Curtain.” Said Harbuziuk, “They felt it was their Christian obligation, not only to pray for them, but to help them practically. This is the way they can show their Christian love for those who suffer for the cause of faith.”

Khailo told reporters that during his time in the psychiatric institution, he never would have guessed he would one day be a “free man.” He said his plans are simple: “The most important thing for me is to be a good Christian and follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and to be a loyal citizen of my new country, the United States of America.”

By Kim A. Lawton in Chicago.

The Dissidents Are Coming

The psychiatric incarceration of political and religious dissidents like Vladimir Khailo has long been a sore point for the Soviets. CSI’S Steven Snyder said an estimated 20,000–50,000 people remain under detention in Soviet psychiatric clinics and many are reported to be dissidents. Khailo said, “Half of those people in the institutions are completely healthy people.”

Until recently, the Soviets denied any problems with psychiatric abuse, despite repeated charges from human-rights activists and Western psychiatrists. However, last summer some Soviet publications began speaking about the problem, and some signs of easing have occurred.

In December, one week prior to the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Washington, Soviet Baptist Anna Chertkova was released from the psychiatric hospital where she had been kept for 14 years. Chertkova was diagnosed as being “criminally insane” and sentenced in 1974 to an indefinite term in the hospital for “deliberately disseminating wrong and libelous information about the Soviet State and its social order.” She had distributed Bibles and other religious materials.

And last month, the official news agency Tass announced the adoption of a new law to curb abuses. According to Tass, the criminal code now makes the “illegal commitment of a patently healthy person to a mental hospital a criminal offense.” Also, Tass said new “legal guarantees against possible mistakes” have been established so that relatives may appeal doctors’ decisions.

Western observers are viewing the new law with caution. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) said he is “skeptical, but hopeful. If what they [the Soviets] say about glasnost [openness] carries any weight and is true,” Wolf said, “they’re going to be obligated to improve with regard to human rights.”

Snyder said that if the law is indeed enforced, the church in the West could be confronted with a situation it is not prepared to handle. He said a massive release of religious dissidents could lead to a mass exodus of Christians from the Soviet Union who have no place to go in the West.

Now that Khailo has come to the U.S., CSI will be marshaling Christian efforts for another prisoner of conscience, Nikolai Bioko. Bioko, also a Ukrainian Baptist, was first sentenced to ten years in prison in 1968. Released in 1977, Bioko was arrested again in 1980 and remains in a labor camp. He is said to be in very poor health.

Vladimir Khailo said he will be joining the effort from his new home. “My desire is that the Christians in the United States be alert and support those who are suffering and fighting for their faith—for all believers, not only in the Ukraine and in the Soviet Union, but all over the world.”

God the Master Technician

Even as pianos need constant tuning and regulating—not only when young and raw, but all through their careers of being used for brilliant concerts—so people who are being used as “instruments of righteousness”—or, in other words, living creative, fruitful lives—need constant refreshing, “tuning.” It came into my mind that receiving God’s strength in our weakness as we call out to Him for help is very similar to a piano receiving new brilliance when the hammers are made harder with the proper juice or made softer and more mellow with some pricks of the needle-like instrument. Our “Master Technician,” God, knows just what we need so that we are at times more “brilliant” for something we need to do, or more “mellow” or “soft” for other compositions we need to have come through us!

—Edith Schaeffer in Forever Music

Listening hearts

I am uneasy when comedians ridicule the idea of hearing from God.… I am even more concerned that believing Christians will buy into the ridicule and thereby miss the wonderful relationship with their living Lord.

The story is told that Joan of Arc was mocked with, “She says she hears God’s voice; why, I don’t hear His voice!” Joan replied, “Don’t you wish you did?”

—Virginia Law Shell in Good News (Nov./Dec. 1987)

“We has met the enemy and it is us!”

Twenty years ago, the question: “Does television shape our culture or merely reflect it?” held considerable interest for many scholars and social critics. The questions have largely disappeared as television has gradually become our culture.

—Patrick Michele, quoted in Media & Values (Summer/Fall 1987)

Trusting can be scary

Our need to be in charge of ourselves, others, and situations often makes our relationship with Christ life’s biggest power struggle. We are reluctant to relinquish our control and allow Him to run our lives. We may believe in Him and be active in the church and Christian causes, but trusting Him as Lord of everything in life can be scary. Even though we pray about our challenges and problems, all too often what we really want is strength to accomplish what we’ve already decided is best for ourselves and others.

Meanwhile we press on with our own priorities and plans. We remain the scriptwriter, casting director, choreographer, and producer of the drama of our own lives, in which we are the star performer.

—Lloyd Ogilvie in 12 Steps to Living Without Fear

Common denominator

Liberal democracy in a pluralistic society is an endless but fruitless search for the lowest common denominator that can serve as society’s moral bond. The more pluralistic the society, however, the more difficult it is to find a common denominator.

Let us try to explain the problem crudely and oversimply, but not entirely inaccurately. We did away with state churches in this country so that all Protestants could feel at home in it. We de-Protestantized the country so that Catholics, too, could feel at home in it. We have dechristianized the country to make Jews feel welcome, then dereligionized it so that atheists and agnostics may feel equally welcome. Now we are demoralizing the country so that deviants from accepted moral norms will not feel excluded. The lowest common denominator, we have discovered, is like the horizon, always approached but never reached.

—Francis Canavan, S.J., in Catholic Eye (Nov. 18, 1987)

Perfection

Perfect obedience would be perfect happiness if only we had perfect confidence in the power we were obeying.

—Hannah Whitall Smith in The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life

Fruits Of The Spirit

The Way of Christian Living, by John H. Timmerman (Eerdmans, 149 pp.; $7.95, paper); and The Spirituality of Gentleness, by Judith C. Lechman (Harper & Row, 184 pp.; $14.95, cloth).

The Spirit produces fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, and the others (Gal. 5:22–23). This study, by Calvin College professor John Timmerman, moves between understanding these biblical words and working them out in life.

Packaging is the curse of our age, says Timmerman. In contrast to vegetable vendor’s wagon, brimming with unpackaged freshness, we pick packaged spiritual fruit—sterile, finished, and promoted. His survey of God’s fruit stand is accessible to beginners and is equipped with discussion helps.

Timmerman’s chapter on gentleness begins with an extended illustration from C. S. Lewis: the medieval pattern of the brave, noble knight—strong enough to dare gentleness. Timmerman’s biblical models are David, Moses, and Christ. The last offers us the gift of imitating him through the courageous fruit of gentleness.

Lechman spends her entire book on gentleness, exploring 16 of its facets. Using the motif of the vine and branches, she moves from rooting (qualities such as openness, devotion) through grafting (surrender) and pruning (humility, healing) to bearing (respect, love).

The Spirituality of Gentleness is a book for concentrated exercise and growth. To scrutinize just one spiritual fruit so intensely might be daunting. But Lechman takes things a step at a time. If you come on this at the right time, reading and absorption can occur together.

Disciplines Of The Walk

Meditating on the Word, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. and trans. by David Mcl. Gracie (Cowley, 154 pp.; $6.95, paper); and Uncommon Prayer, by Kenneth Swanson (Ballantine/Epiphany, 243 pp.; $10.95, cloth).

The journey into the heart requires disciplines. Meditation and prayer form the foundation for the other disciplines. In Meditating on the Word, Bonhoeffer’s thoughts on passages from the Psalms are prefaced by four short essays on the discipline itself. Much of the book comes out of the period when Bonhoeffer was involved in the Confessing Church seminary at Finkenwalde.

In a letter to his brother-in-law (included here as “The Bible Alone”), Bonhoeffer states, “One cannot read the Bible the way one reads other books. One must be prepared to really question it. Only then will it open itself up.” His meditations—unpolished gems that they are—probe and open up the Bible.

Central to Swanson’s Uncommon Prayer is a model for classifying spiritualities. Extremes of piety vary from intellectual (Reformers such as Luther, Calvin) to emotional (Pascal, revivalism) on a vertical axis; or sensual (Celtic monasticism, Mother Teresa) to mystical (desert mothers and fathers, George Fox) on a horizontal axis. Swanson commends Juliana of Norwich as an example of balance.

Other chapters deal with prayer in community, spiritual friendship (both a historical survey and what to expect from a spiritual director), variety in prayer, and the life of prayer. Swanson, an eclectic Anglican, ranges widely over the Bible and church history for examples and tends to be inclusive where many would sort and toss. The result is a stimulating bouillabaisse, which leaves the sorting to the reader.

Going Through A Stage?

Deadly Sins and Saving Virtues, by Donald Capps (Fortress, 162 pp.; $10.95, paper); and A Practical Theology of Spirituality, by Lawrence O. Richards (Zondervan, 252 pp.; $17.95, cloth).

If you have ever wondered why the middle-aged are apathetic or four-year-olds are greedy—and what might be done about it—Donald Capps has a theory for you. They could be growing through a stage, and you should encourage the virtues of mercy and purpose. It all has to do with the seven deadly sins and the seven saving virtues, seen through the lens of Erik Eriksons’s life-cycle theory.

Capps approaches sins as personal faults that become habitual and arrive according to a developmental schedule, one to an age (gluttony at infancy, anger in early childhood, pride during adolescence, for instance). Saving virtues (temperance, patience, humility, and so forth) also follow a developmental sequence. Appearing at their God-appointed time, they should be cultivated for greatest effect.

Richards’s Practical Theology of Spirituality is a map for the spiritual journey, providing structure and models. Like Swanson’s book (reviewed above), it has seven concepts, drawn from biblical images: identity, intimacy, sinfulness, lordship, mortality, holiness, and commitment. Each concept has a personal and a corporate side—intimacy includes prayer of the heart and public worship; mortality, suffering, and compassion.

He seeks to define spirituality and to explore its applications. The result, in textbook format, is a comprehensive framework for spiritual growth and a methodology for evaluating approaches like those of Capps or Swanson.

By Larry Sibley, who teaches practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary.

God’s Little Platoons

Kingdoms in Conflict, by Charles Colson with Ellen Santilli Vaughn (Zondervan and William Morrow, 400 pp.; $15.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Beth Spring, a CT contributing editor and author of The Infertile Couple (D. C. Cook, 1987).

For an adult education class on contemporary issues last year, I searched extensively for a single volume that would address our increasingly urgent need to “think Christianly.” Beyond the fine works of several British authors, including John Stott and Harry Blamires, there was nothing on the market with a broadly gauged, critical, and objective view. Now there is.

Charles Colson’s latest book combines the tale-telling style of his earlier book, Loving God, with incisive commentary about contemporary issues in light of timeless biblical truth. With assistance from writer Ellen Santilli Vaughn and editor Judith Markham, he charts a straight path through the thicket of confusion that envelops Christians in politics today.

In a chillingly realistic 40-page prologue, Colson muses about how a born-again U.S. President, elected in 1996, copes with an international crisis in the Middle East. The President and his top advisers prayerfully neglect the threat of Jewish extremists to blow up Islam’s holy Dome of the Rock, rationalizing, “You can’t help but wonder if these could be events we’ve all waited for.” Meanwhile, the “Christian Broadcasting Company” urges its viewers to express “unqualified support for Israel.”

Tainting the President’s view of international events are grim political realities in an America where militant Christian believers have wrested control of one political party. Widespread disgust over moral deterioration led to an election in which the “Christian Republican” candidate promised to run the nation “on the Bible” and to “speak for God as well as the American people.”

No Imagination Needed

Colson did not have to use his imagination to come up with slogans like that: some of Pat Robertson’s followers have said the same. But Colson is no separatist; he believes such Christians blunder their way through the political process because they fundamentally misunderstand Christ’s message. Add to that a fascination with the methods of the world, a healthy dose of arrogance, and an inability to compromise, and the body of Christ in America finds itself dangerously close to becoming little more than one special-interest group among many.

Without balance and cooperation between the civic structures necessary to preserve order and justice, and shared Judeo-Christian values, Colson writes, America will “continue in turmoil.” Therefore, before the American experiment is damaged irreparably, Colson calls for a truce, proposing a different “path of reason and civility that recognizes the proper and necessary roles of both the political and the religious.”

Colson is uniquely equipped to describe that path. His years in the Nixon White House were spent conjuring positive publicity for presidential policies. Colson admits to having manipulated religious leaders, even scheduling preachers for Sunday worship at the White House with an eye toward political advantage. Lesson number one for today’s politically ambitious Christian leaders: Don’t fall for the blandishments of high officials, and reserve the right (and the capacity) to critique any ruling party.

Watergate sent Colson to prison, where he encountered the power of the gospel. He was stunned when then-Congress-man Al Quie offered to serve out Colson’s prison term so the disgraced White House aide could be with his family during a time of trouble. To Colson, this is the heart of Christ’s power to change lives. The kingdom law of love for others makes a difference in personal relationships; and it explains why “the influence of the Kingdom of God in the public arena is good for society as a whole.”

Lesson number two: Social involvement for the Christian is not a substitute for spirituality, but a natural consequence of commitment to Christ. Colson writes that the church’s primary functions are evangelism and ministry to spiritual needs, but at the same time, “as the principal visible manifestation of the Kingdom of God, it must be the conscience of society, the instrument of moral accountability.”

To illustrate how this can be accomplished, Colson recalls William Wilberforce’s antislavery fight in England, conducted from inside the British Parliament. Wilberforce did not want to impose a church-ruled state. Colson emphasizes that “the critical dynamic in the church-state tension is separation of institutional authority. Religion and politics can’t be separated—they inevitably overlap—but the institutions of church and state must preserve their separate and distinct roles.”

The Risk Of Irrelevance

In contrast to the success of Wilberforce’s Clapham Sect, Colson portrays the horror at the beginnings of World War II, as Hitler co-opted the church; and the British, blinded by utopian and mind-science philosophies of the day, failed to take the Nazi threat seriously.

Today’s challenges and pitfalls for the kingdom of God are no less compelling. Colson cites Poland, Nicaragua, and the Soviet Union as current battlefields. Meanwhile in the U.S., the church runs the risk of becoming irrelevant. Noting the PTL debacle and the heresies of feel-good evangelism, Colson writes, “Post-World War II Christianity is a religion of private comfort and blessing that fills the holes in life that pleasure, success, and money leave open.”

But Colson does not allow gloom to settle for long. He takes the reader on a tour of three unlikely places where the “little platoons” of the kingdom of God are exercising their faith appropriately. First, a dank prison in Walla Walla, Washington, where Colson’s Prison Fellowship volunteers helped alter a climate of violence, despair, and degradation by ministering to prisoners and pushing for legislative reform. Second, the Philippines, where “people power” challenged corruption and rigged elections. And finally, Northern Ireland, where reconciliation between warring Catholics and Protestants is occurring inside the prisons through the common bond of new faith in Christ.

In 1988 our own sectarian strife promises to heat up past the boiling point as two ordained ministers seek nomination for the presidency, claiming moral authority for vastly different agendas. While we are well insulated, for now, against the sort of street violence that mars Irish debate, our battles are waged by high-tech manipulation of public opinion and political image.

Colson worries that a church preoccupied with comfort, titillated by tales of Jim and Tammy, and (when convenient) incensed by moral decay is easy prey for manipulation—by Right or Left. Learning from the past and from the unfolding sagas around us is essential for Christlike social engagement. And attentiveness and obedience to God’s call on the lives of ordinary people is where authentic involvement begins. Christians must not ignore their duty to the city of man, but to botch their opportunities or to bully their way into control is grievous sin.

The Mufti Of Morality

Occupied Territory, by Cal Thomas (Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 232 pp.; $14.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a nationally syndicated columnist with Copley News Service.

Columnist Cal Thomas views his role in the news business a little like that of the military’s Special Forces in war. “The editorial pages of the nation’s newspapers are the territory, or marketplace of ideas, that must be penetrated and occupied in order to influence enough people to make a difference in our culture,” he writes, and hence Occupied Territory, his chosen title for this collection of his articles. If he is occupying the enemy’s territory by means of talent rather than force, that fact does not diminish Thomas’s confrontational edge.

A one-time aide to Jerry Falwell, Thomas may be the most unabashedly religious syndicated columnist writing for mainstream newspapers. Others, like William F. Buckley and Joseph Sobran, touch upon some of the same issues as Thomas, but Thomas makes morality the mainstay of his writing. “Clearly the values of the secular elite have failed,” he writes: “One need only look at the drug abuse, unwanted pregnancy, and illiteracy rates as proof.”

Overall, Thomas does his job well. Abortion, for instance, is one of his major concerns; he devotes more columns in Occupied Territory to this subject than to any other.

Thomas’s willingness to interject biblical morality into contemporary political debate—though without the direct scriptural references that would tire a secular audience—is also obvious with regard to AIDS. “The best way to avoid getting AIDS,” he writes, “is not to engage in the activity that causes it.”

He may be at his pungent best, however, in discussing the hypocrisy that often surrounds church-state issues. After Fresno, California, yanked Salvation Army ads, which proclaimed “Sharing Is Caring … God bless you,” from city buses, Thomas tartly commented that the city’s action “proves that intolerance has more than one face.”

He also took the unfashionable position of defending the Alabama parents in the school textbook case. Of the ACLU and the People for the American Way, which defended the texts’ humanistic ideology, Thomas observed “it is hypocritical to say that a view you support must not be censored and that one you oppose must be excluded, but hypocrisy has always been one of the liberal’s strongest suits.”

And as much as he worries about the issues that animate the Religious Right, he warns that movement against being seduced by secular power. “If the Church appears to be nothing more than a ratifying body for the policies of secular authorities, then the Kingdom of God risks being perceived as the kingdom of this world and thus loses its distinction.”

Using The Law To Send Signals

Nevertheless, there is a troubling aspect of Thomas’s advocacy of traditional values—namely, his willingness to use government to enforce intensely personal moral norms. For example, he applauds the Supreme Court’s refusal to void Georgia’s antisodomy law: “Had the court legitimized sodomy throughout the country by striking down the Georgia statute, it would have sent the wrong signal.” Yet there is something fundamentally offensive about police barging into bedrooms to monitor people’s sexual behavior. The criminal law should penalize coercive activities that threaten others, not send “signals” about what a majority considers proper or improper behavior.

Finally, Thomas is an unreconstructed hawk. Though his revulsion of the horrors of communism offers a welcome change from the naïve views of some religious leaders on the Left, Thomas ignores the moral ambiguities and practical problems arising from U.S. intervention in, for instance, Nicaragua’s civil war. Unfortunately, American military intervention has often caused more problems than it has solved.

Nevertheless, Thomas offers a refreshingly honest perspective in today’s political dialogue. He concludes Occupied Territory by arguing that “it is now time to replace timidity with boldness and to speak truth to a world that desperately needs something to believe in and someone of integrity to follow.” That is true for every Christian journalist.

Each Word Must Be A Sacrifice

Talking About God Is Dangerous: The Diary of a Russian Dissident, by Tatiana Goricheva (Crossroad, 103 pp.; $11.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Brian F. O’Connell, program coordinator of the National Association of Evangelicals’ Peace, Freedom and Security Studies.

It seems as though the first thing most Soviet dissidents do when they emigrate to the West is write a book about their travails. Some of these are important political statements, others detail the hardships of imprisonment in psychiatric hospitals and gulags, still others are narrations of the everyday Soviet life. In just over 100 pages, Tatiana Goricheva integrates all of these with a remarkable story of the sacrifices of following Christ in the Soviet Union.

In contrast to many other books by Russian dissidents, Talking About God Is Dangerous is a brisk and well-written account that deeply moves the reader. It is more than a mere diary; it is the public and political declaration of a believer.

Tatiana’s transformation at age 26 was the explicitly miraculous work of the Holy Spirit. She was raised in an atheistic culture by rather ordinary nonbelieving parents. She went on to become an outstanding philosophy student, the pride of a Marxist society. Predictably, she was still unsatisfied.

“I was on a journey from nowhere to nowhere: I had no roots and would go into an empty, meaningless future.” After never saying a prayer in her entire life, she ran across the Lord’s Prayer in a yoga book and began to say it as a mantra. “I said it about six times, and then I was suddenly turned inside out. I understood—not with my ridiculous understanding, but with my whole being—that he exists. He, the living, personal God, who loves me and all creatures, who has created the world, who became a human being out of love, the crucified and risen God.”

“My life only began when God found me,” Tatiana states as she goes on to describe her personal spiritual pilgrimage, her involvement with the women’s movement in the 1970s, and the religious awakening in the Soviet Union today.

Of great interest is the interaction she experiences with other Christian faiths and nonbelievers. From these events we learn about the distinctives of her Orthodox Christianity as well as the practices of Soviet Catholics and Baptists. The tension-filled relationships between evangelical Baptists and Orthodox believers are intriguing, reflecting similar arguments in the West over mariology and icons.

The Value Of Suffering

Tatiana describes a vibrant Soviet Christian community, growing not despite persecution, but often because of it. “It is a pity,” she says, “that the West does not understand the value of suffering, its power to renew and purge. The experience of the persecuted Russian Church says to us quite clearly that suffering for God does not take us away from him, but on the contrary brings us nearer to him.” It is due to the stringent restriction and persecution, she continues, that the church in the Soviet Union “is attracting the best people in Russia.”

Her views of the Christian community in the West are equally strong. While lauding our freedom, she speaks to our often shallow religious experience. The reaction to her first viewing of a Western TV evangelist is revealing. “I thank God that we have atheism and no religious education. What this man said on the screen was likely to drive more people out of the Church than the clumsy chatter of our paid atheists. Dressed up in a posh way, the self-satisfied preacher had to talk of love. But the way in which he presented himself excluded any possibility of a sermon. He was a boring, bad actor with mechanical and studied gestures. He was faceless. For the first time I understood how dangerous it is to talk about God. Each word must be a sacrifice—filled to the brim with authenticity. Otherwise it is better to keep silent.”

While talking about God may indeed be dangerous, listening to Tatiana Goricheva speak about Christ and his effect on her life makes one glad she took the risk.

Diaries Of Spiritual Growth

Cry Pain, Cry Hope, by Elizabeth O’Connor (Word, 181 pp.; $11.95, hardcover); and Catching Sight of God, by Cheryl Forbes (Multnomah, 151 pp.; $9.95, cloth).

“The journey from the head to the heart, as we all know, is the longest distance we will ever cover,” writes Elizabeth O’Connor. It is a lifelong quest. And in Cry Pain, Cry Hope she probes a part of that journey, in search of a new sense of calling.

Cry Pain, Cry Hope combines meditation on the Book of Exodus, a search for a new ministry, and an exploration of O’Connor’s heart. She finds a calling, and Sarah’s Circle, a new ministry to the elderly and the homeless, emerges.

O’Connor deals with fear of change, aging, calling, and creativity, the place of small groups in ministry, empowerment of the elderly, money, mutual trust between the pilgrim and God, and praise. Her self-disclosure beckons the reader to walk with God.

From time to time, we each need to reaffirm our vocation or find a new one. Then we scan not only the Word and the job listings, but also our hearts.

Forbes’s Catching Sight of God offers a spiritual corneal transplant. In this year-long journal, Forbes lends us her eyes in order to open our own to the ever-present fingerprints of God. She begins with the tension between a November death and a Thanksgiving celebration, and then walks month by month through Advent, Lent, March house and yard cleaning, Easter, and on into the delights of summer and the gifts of fall.

Along with seeing God more clearly in the world, there is the bonus of a deeper acquaintance with the writer. Forbes offers us a sense of full personhood in the presence of God.

Despite its growing influence, business has a bad name. Daily newspapers and periodicals are replete with the latest escapades of our “business leaders.” Most recent in our minds are defense contractors’ exorbitant prices for screwdrivers and other small parts, and the insider trading scandal on Wall Street.

The atmosphere that permits such corruption has become pervasive, even among idealistic students. In a survey of 131 students majoring in business, researcher John Pearce discovered that students “judged the climate in American business to be essentially unethical by a ratio of 2 to 1.” Half the students accepted the idea that during their business careers they would engage in behavior that is less than ethical.

Studies by Pitney Bowes and Uniroyal bear out the students’ expectations. In a group of 800 managers surveyed anonymously, most felt pressure to compromise personal ethics for company goals. This was true of 59 percent for Pitney Bowes and 70 percent for Uniroyal. Prof. Archie B. Carroll of the University of Georgia surveyed a random sample of corporate managers throughout the United States in a similar study. His respondents revealed that 64 percent felt pressured to compromise personal ethics for company goals.

Business Ethics: An Academic Growth Industry

Corporate America is confused and searching for its ethical identity. The businessperson today is forced to ask a new set of questions: Is it ever right to use privileged information to advance one’s self-interest? Does a company have any obligation to help remedy social problems, such as poverty, pollution, and urban decay? Does a firm have a right to subject its employees to lie-detector, drug, or AIDS tests as a condition of employment? What, if anything, must business do to improve the work atmosphere? Is a personnel director ever justified in hiring or promoting someone on grounds other than competence? Is a manufacturer obliged to reveal product defects? Must business help fight racial and sexual discrimination in the workplace? What, if anything, does business owe the consumer?

The pragmatic business world has felt ill-equipped to deal with such a philosophical discussion. Their role, they would say, is to make a profit. The educational community, therefore, has created business-ethics education to equip the managers of the future.

In just 15 years, business ethics has achieved curriculum status in most schools of business. It is a growth industry, with new courses, books, and publications proliferating. A bibliography for 1976–80 listed over 2,000 published works on the subject. The 1981–85 edition lists nearly 5,000. Prior to 1978, a textbook on business ethics did not exist. Now, one may choose among dozens.

Discussions in academic circles accelerated when, in his 1977–78 annual report, Harvard University President Derek Bok asked “that the Harvard Business School curriculum be reviewed and redesigned to recognize the new social and ethical requirements for business leaders.” Bok noted that many executives spend up to half their time on government, regulatory, and community affairs. And yet most business curricula pay little attention to these issues and concern themselves primarily with matters of marketing, finance, production, and other more traditional problems of a firm.

Business-ethics courses are, in most cases, the study of values, not the teaching of values. Textbooks typically present the traditional philosophies and value systems, including biblical ones, that could be applied to business practice. Educator C. D. McQuillen argues that “… no attempt should be made to impose any one system of values, but to ensure that ethical and moral dimensions heretofore ignored in decision-making receive explicit recognition and consideration.” And in “How to Teach Ethics in a Basic Business Communications Class,” published in the Journal of Business Communication, the authors state, “The idea of a ‘universal ethic’ with accompanying guidelines that would be definite for all people at all times and in all places is a myth. The acceptance of what is right and good is determined by the culture in which the question arises.”

The business-ethics text Moral Issues in Business, by Vincent Barry, is one of the most thorough. It presents the major ethical problems and deals primarily with the relationship between business and society. Yet Barry himself believes most texts today have the effect of depersonalizing the subject. Readers may become aware of the broad range of social issues that involve business, but they remain ignorant of their own personal responsibilities. For example, a case study may look at a corporation’s struggle to develop fair hiring policies and the dilemmas it faces in the process. But it is up to the student to apply the problems in his own world, using his own standards of right and wrong.

Critics of current teaching methods are numerous. Harvard professor Pat Burr taught business ethics for years and concluded his students were no more moral for it. Mary Miller and Edward Miller argue in Business and Society Review that it is too late to teach ethics in college; values are already set. And Bok admits that “… in the strict sense, courses in ethics cannot realistically claim to make people morally better.” But he asserts that it is “plausible to suppose that students in these courses will become more aware of the reasons underlying moral principles, and more equipped to reason carefully in applying these principles to concrete cases.”

Ethicist Richard Konrad agrees, and adds that teaching ethics is important because the students will then perceive that the study of the subject is important.

However, research on the effectiveness of teaching business ethics suggests a decline in students’ ethical standards. Studies have shown that students with business majors are more accepting of questionable business practices than nonbusiness majors, and those with coursework in business ethics have shown a similar or greater tendency. It may be that business school graduates who have taken ethics courses simply become more sympathetic to those facing difficult ethical dilemmas.

Educator Larry Churchill aptly points out that values are taught while teaching because of the nature of the teacher-student relationship. Values are more caught than taught, and, Churchill asks, What is education letting students catch? The environment of the classroom and the institution, and the off-the-record opinions of the professor become messages to the student that contribute to his or her formulation of personal values.

Do our educational institutions strengthen a sense of personal and public morality? The evidence suggests they do not.

Putting Theory To Work

While business schools slosh through relativistic ethics, the business community has opted for practical solutions. Nearly all our major corporations are making some efforts to improve their moral and ethical climate. The most common tools are training seminars and ethical codes. The most effective action, however, is much less institutional. The firms maintaining the highest ethical standards are those where individual responsibility and personal integrity are encouraged and supported from the top all the way down. The key is leadership.

In their study of the values of managers, Barry Posner and Warren Schmidt concluded, “Managers perceive that pressures to conform to organizational standards are strong (and very few see these pressures diminishing). And, accordingly, the vast majority of managers believe that unethical behavior is largely dependent on the organizational climate—especially the actions of one’s immediate boss and peers.”

“Codes of conduct” are designed to create a more positive climate. The vast majority of companies today have such a document outlining their creed. The codes generally express a recognition of responsibility to multiple groups (stockholders, employees, customers, etc.) and the conduct through which that responsibility will be fulfilled. Some go so far as to define the company’s role in society and specify that each member of the organization has the responsibility, equal with his position, to uphold this creed and stand liable for his conduct.

Many observers, however, categorize codes of conduct as hypocrisy. Gary Edwards, executive director of the Center of Ethics, Responsibilities and Values at the College of Saint Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota, says, “Most of these documents came out of corporate legal departments and have very limited utility.” In a sense, then, they can be merely public-relations instruments to assuage growing criticism.

However, it would be grossly unfair to categorize all codes as useless. Many, such as Hewlett-Packard’s “What’s the HP Way?,” J. C. Penney’s “The Penney Idea,” and Johnson and Johnson’s “Our Credo,” are extremely powerful tools guiding every aspect of their businesses toward higher ideals and standards. James O’Toole, writing in Vanguard Management, says, “The bind comes in applying personal standards of behavior to organizational behavior. That requires real leadership.” It is all very well to publish codes that urge adherence to these standards, O’Toole says, but a leader in the organization must establish the ethical tone. “If he is beyond reproach, if she rewards right behavior in others, and if he is totally intolerant of wrongdoing, the chances are that nearly everyone in an organization will also behave ethically.”

In The Hard Problems of Management: Gaining the Ethics Edge, Mark Pastin writes that “in high-ethics firms, responsibility is individual rather than collective, with individuals assuming personal responsibility for actions of the firm. These firms’ ground rules mandate that individuals are responsible to themselves.”

Likewise, Donald Seibert, past chairman of J. C. Penney, says, “As we struggle to develop precise guidelines—as we write and rewrite codes of conduct at the national and company level—our ultimate control and our final hope rests with the individual. No set of rules can cover all the variables, nor anticipate all the possibilities for moral slippage.”

Business Ethics And Biblical Clarity

The corporation’s ethical crisis has been caused by the loss of a biblical world view, and by an exponential acceleration in social and technological change.

Schools have responded with the teaching of business ethics, couched in relativistic thinking that brings more confusion than clarity. Business itself recognizes the key element of leadership, but struggles to know how to proceed.

Christians therefore need to realize that in the present ethical upheaval they have a unique opportunity. Corporation presidents are calling for personal integrity and leadership. There is an unsettledness in the workplace about how things should be done and how people should be treated. Others will follow those willing to live out their personal convictions—and Christians need to lead.

But the Christian layperson needs a great deal of help. Clergy have failed to maintain effective dialogue with the laity about the realities of the workplace. As a result, they look elsewhere for guidance. For example, in one study several hundred corporate managers were asked whom they usually consult on ethical matters in their job. They listed clergy last (ninth), behind even “No one (work it out myself).”

Michael Novak, resident scholar in religion and public policy at the American Enterprise Institute, has called for a “theology of the corporation.” He points out the inadequacy of current Christian thinking to answer the difficult social questions being asked by businessmen and academicians. Just as necessary, however, is an apologetic for the layperson who sits in the pew on Sunday, but lives in the workplace Monday through Friday. He or she needs to be equipped with a practical Christian view of his or her role.

First, the Christian layperson needs to learn confidence that, in the midst of growing ambiguity in the workplace, the Word of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit together promise to direct us into truth. Granted there are no simple blueprints, no exhaustive lists of “do’s” and “don’ts” to follow. And yet Christianity offers a set of guiding principles resting on a foundation of bedrock. These principles give a Christian business manager a frame of reference that can help in choosing the best alternative in a given situation. In addition, these principles build in the Christian manager a deep-seated character of wisdom and discernment that goes beyond do’s and don’ts.

Furthermore, the Christian layperson needs the assurance that truth, and his or her faith in that truth, will win out. God promises to be the provider of all our needs in this life and our Rewarder in eternity. Job security (or rather insecurity) has probably never been a more potent force than it is today. Whether it reveals itself in the form of fear, intense loyalty, or insatiable ambition, it is a kind of idolatry that permeates American materialistic society. We can only walk with real integrity when we know that we are first and foremost under the authority of God and confident of his perfect love for our lives. Unless we believe that our actions have standing in eternity, our courage to choose the right course will be severely compromised.

The Christian layperson must learn that his or her job is not merely to earn a wage to provide for the family. The first reason we work is that God has ordained that we should. God intended that each Christian should use the unique, creative abilities God has given him or her for a God-given task.

Part of that divine assignment is to be an example on the job. “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how will it be made salty again?… You are the light of the world … Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:13–16). The salt is our personal integrity acted out in our work by the grace of God in our lives. The light is the truth about God expressed in myriad ways. We shed light when we share the simple gospel message with another employee, or when we defend a difficult business decision with a finely tuned, biblically based rationale.

Corporate Theology: Another Look At Stewardship

It is beyond the scope of this article to offer a practical theology for corporate managers. However, one line of inquiry that is essential in developing such a workaday theology concerns stewardship.

To many Christians, stewardship is limited to the idea of charitable giving and possibly to the management of time and talent. But in its widest sense, stewardship springs from the doctrine of Creation, wherein God created the heavens and earth, and instructed humankind to have dominion over the earth (Gen. 1:28). As Joseph McAuliffe has aptly pointed out, the Greek word for steward, oikonomos, is the same word from which we derive economics or economist.Titus 1:7a is an example of its use: “For the overseer must be above reproach as God’s steward.”

Church leaders were to be not only of high integrity, but economically minded in the allocation of God’s resources. The businessperson, similarly, is accountable to God for the way in which an enterprise is administered. A single accountability should govern both his striving for productivity and his sense of justice and fairness.

This concept of stewardship could provide a Christian response to the current call for more social responsibility on the part of business. It could also help Christian managers to weigh properly the impact of their decisions in a more comprehensive way than the profit motive now allows. The stewardship concept could help businessmen relate their responsibility to manage for maximum profits to a much higher authority.

How the business community resolves its ethical crisis will greatly affect every aspect of our society. Christians must not remain as observers. Instead, we must offer a reasoned defense—and application—of the biblical values we hold dear. We need boldness and leadership in the business community.

Why A Business Crisis Now?

There are two forces causing the decline in business morality today.

First, the biblical world view of the previous two centuries has been eroded by a more relativistic view of right and wrong. Irving Kristol, professor at New York University and member of the Wall Street Journal’s board of contributors, writes in Two Cheers for Capitalism that “institutions of our society have lost their vital connection with the values which are supposed to govern the private lives of our citizenry.” He says we must first clarify what constitutes a virtuous life and then shape our institutions accordingly. Without a set of moral convictions generally agreed upon and personally internalized, the profit motive quickly gets out of hand.

Overlaid on moral deterioration is this century’s rapid acceleration of technology. New, difficult moral choices and a whole new complexity of relationships have been created. New technologies, for instance, make nuclear energy and offshore oil drilling possible, but g their promise of economic progress must be weighed against their previously unknown threat of environmental destruction.

Microelectronic technology, for another example, increases the speed of communication, but also brings cultures into conflict. The ethical standards of business in Indonesia and California, once buffered by thousands of miles of ocean, now must be resolved by managers who can communicate across that ocean faster than turn-of-the-century managers could communicate across the street.

For such issues, the law is an inadequate guide. When the bribing of foreign government officials first came to light in the seventies, the practice was not illegal by American law, and it was the “common practice” of that foreign country. Nevertheless, moral outrage brought about adoption of an antibribery law.

By Daniel E. Maltby.

Daniel E. Maltby is vice-president of International Leadership Group, an organization committed to the development of value-driven leaders.

Last year we were treated to stories about the Unitarian pastor who ended a sermon on aids by handing out condoms to his congregation and about a prominent pastor in Hawaii who said he is developing a “theology of condoms.”

Let’s face it: with Jim and Tammy, and Oral, and preachers waxing philosophical on condoms, it was a bad year for the clergy.

Of course, we need complete information on AIDS and its prevention. Religious communities must minister to those who are victims of this new and terrible disease. But let it also be said that the popular slogan Safe Sex is a lie. Condoms or not, sex is risky. As someone who ministers at a place where we have nearly 150 weddings a year (Duke University Chapel), I think it is time to tell couples that “There’s no ‘safe sex.’ ”

Booming Weddings, Busted Marriages

Susan Littwin, in her perceptive study The Postponed Generation (Morrow, 1986), notes that “committed, lasting relationships are a critical aspect of maturity. Today’s young adults are having more trouble with relationships than with almost any other area of their lives. They are having problems for two reasons: (1) They have trouble with commitment in general, … a subheading of their overall reluctance to define themselves. (2) The menu of choices makes life more confusing … they are in unmapped territory, looking for trails of crumbs.”

Don’t believe the hype about marriage being back in style, says Littwin; statistics are misleading. There is “a wedding boom. But there is no marriage boom.” We have shifted, she says, from a society of families to a nation of individuals—singles bars, Lean Cuisine self-contained dinners, Club Med trips. Of today’s young adults she says, “These are special children, brought up to be individuals.… They never felt they had a role to play in the community or the family, and certainly never believed that they might have to sacrifice their individuality.”

Adolescence goes on and on. Just “living together” keeps commitment in limbo. Somehow, these “special children” reason, there has to be a way to find love without risk. So a recent New York Times article speaks of this as “The Uncommitted Generation,” where sex and love are merely experience in “Being Alone—Together.”

Does anyone ever grow up, except the hard way? Maturity has to do with facing facts, coming to terms with reality—a none-too-easy task for those whose parents have given them so much for nothing, whose constant support and subsidy led them to believe they could have life and safety too.

Perhaps this accounts for the “grimness” of most rituals for Christian marriage. Into the satin-and-white-lace world of the wedding is inserted grim talk of “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.” There they are, in their sexual prime, with all their equipment in good working order, so full of promise. And here I am speaking of sickness, poverty, and death. How typical of a preacher to spoil someone else’s party, they say.

Take the words and the ritual as the church’s earnest, countercultural effort to help folk to face facts. We Christians know of no happiness save that which arises as a by-product of commitment to another. We have no definition of love (a cross being on our altar) that is sacrifice-or risk-free. Relationships between men and women that go beyond merely hanging around take time, hard work, tough mindedness, and a host of other mundane virtues.

So forgive our grim talk at your pretty wedding. Welcome to reality. Life, you can be sure, has its grim side. Don’t settle for anything less than a promise that will enable you to persevere in your love. Not all your days will be Saturdays in June.

Proving The Law Of Gravity

Yet perhaps, just perhaps, these postponed young adults know this truth better than the rest of us. Some of them have learned about Christian marriage the hard way, by finding out that the alleged risk-free alternatives and so-called casual sex do not work. Now they stand before the church ready to testify that love without the risk of commitment is hardly love at all.

In a course of mine, I asked seminarians to share case studies of their pastoral experience. One student pastor presented a case wherein a woman asked her pastor, “What does the United Methodist Church believe about premarital sex?”

The pastor, a beneficiary of seminary training, asked, “What do you think about premarital sex?”

The parishioner persisted. “I know that pastors don’t approve.”

“Some pastors,” he said. “Older pastors.”

“Isn’t the Bible against people just living together?” she asked.

“The Bible is a culturally conditioned book that must be read with interpretative sophistication,” he said. “The main thing is to be sure that you’re open, trusting, loving, and caring.”

I asked the gathered students what they thought of this episode. One young man, sans shoes, wearing a tank top and blue jeans, was first to speak: “This is a bunch of garbage.”

“I take it you don’t care for the pastor’s handling of this,” I said.

“No!” he said. “It’s lousy counseling and even worse pastoring. The woman asks a straightforward, direct question. But the pastor refuses to answer. Perhaps he doesn’t even know an answer. Instead, he says, in effect, ‘You dummy, that isn’t your question. You don’t really want to know what the church or the Bible says, you want to know what you think.’ Why won’t the pastor do what he’s ordained to do?”

Rather flippantly, I remarked, “Well now, aren’t we being conservative!” This young man—tank-topped, postponed—looked at me earnestly and said, “I’ve lived through three or four of these so-called relationships. I’m here to tell you there’s no way for them to be open, trusting, loving, and caring, no way in hell without a promise. I hurt some good people in order to find that out. I wish the church had told me. I might have still learned the hard way. But I wish the church had told me.”

The English writer G. K. Chesterton once said that if a man comes to a cliff and keeps walking, he won’t break the law of gravity; he’ll prove it.

So, welcome the postponed generation back to the church. They have been out in the cold long enough. Some of them have learned things you cannot learn in books. Tell them: There is no better time than now for commitment, and there is no better place than here.

William H. Willimon is minister to the university and professor of the practice of Christian ministry at Duke University. His latest book, with Robert L. Wilson, is Rekindling the Flame: Strategies for a Vital United Methodism.

Berlin was in a festive mood the weekend I arrived. The yearlong celebration of the seven-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the city was coming to a climax with a giant fireworks display. Everywhere, colorful banners and posters heralded the anniversary. And the carnival, which occupied the famous Street of the Seventeenth of June, was thronged with visitors and residents, seeking to enjoy the final days of the Jahresfest. But the glitter of the festivities gave way to a sense of tragedy as I once again made a pilgrimage to Potsdam Square to view the Berlin Wall.

August 13, 1961, is etched in the memories of many people. On that bleak day East German police units shattered the early morning hours by unrolling barbed wire across the imaginary line that divided the Soviet occupied section of the city from the sections assigned to the Western powers. The one remaining hole in the Iron Curtain was now sealed. For over 26 years the wall has stood as a symbol of repression and of the apparent permanence of the partition of Germany into two competing states.

From the observation platform built by the West Berliners, I could see the wall in all its hideous strength. Actually the term wall is a misnomer. The wall is in fact a strip of mined no man’s land built on the entire 165-kilometer perimeter of West Berlin and flanked on both sides by a solid wall mass. There are guard towers at regular intervals. This cunningly designed structure has been fortified so as to make escape—over, under, or through it—virtually impossible. Although the communist government of the so-called German Democratic Republic (GDR) espouses the virtues of socialism, it finds the wall necessary in order to keep its political-economic system working.

My weekend in West Berlin was followed by a trip across the wall to spend a week “behind the Iron Curtain.” There I was forcefully reminded of a great truth: God can and does work good for his people in spite of, and even through, oppressive circumstances. Despite the loss of freedom and even the loss of life it has produced, the wall has been used by God as an instrument of blessing to the praise of his power and goodness. Three learning opportunites I had while in East Germany—church statistics, a conversion story, and a visionary’s hope—bored this into my consciousness.

Believers Who Stay

First came some impersonal statistics that carry personal meaning for the churches beyond the wall. The flow of people fleeing from the East to the West, which had been on a continual rise prior to August 13, 1961, has been virtually stopped by the presence of the Berlin Wall. Among the refugees of the 1950s were many faithful members of the churches of the GDR.

A case in point is the Union of Free Evangelical Churches, a small denomination that is a conglomerate of the Baptists, Plymouth Brethren, and Pentecostals. Before the Berlin Wall, the group numbered about 35,000. Each year their churches reported a combined net loss of between 700 and 800 members. The future of the denomination was in question, for many important lay leaders and supportive members were fleeing to the West. The coming of the wall changed all that. Since 1961 net losses have been cut to about 300 yearly, and these are mostly due to deaths.

Many Christians in the GDR now suggest the political climate there has so improved since the 1950s that no one needs to flee for religious reasons. Christians, these believers declare, have a responsibility to remain in the GDR under these improved conditions and to serve as missionaries to their own people. When a family does emigrate to the West, those who stay behind feel abandoned and wonder if in fact economic considerations motivated the move. The wall, they say, is God’s sign that East German Christians need to remain in their country. Some Christians in the GDR even believe that God allowed the wall to be built partly to insure the survival of the church in that land.

The Death And Life Of Richard

God’s ability to bring blessing out of the Berlin Wall was also underscored as I listened to the conversion story of a young East Berliner. Richard grew up in the shadow of the wall. His father’s commitment as a member of the Communist party insured that the strict socialist world view Richard was taught in school would be reaffirmed in the home. But despite party indoctrination, the Berlin Wall continually raised for him the question of life in the West and gave him a gnawing sense of imprisonment. Western television programs heightened this feeling by depicting life in America, which became for him “the promised land.”

Richard decided to find a way through the wall. But as he traveled its perimeter, he came to the depressing conclusion that it was impenetrable. Then he decided to escape another way. Given his relatively good income, he could apply to visit Cuba and abandon the airplane during the stopover in Canada. But obtaining clearance for such a trip could take years. Doubts arose in Richard’s mind as to whether life in the West would bring satisfaction. He decided to commit suicide.

The suicide attempt came shortly after Richard entered the military service required of all East German young men. One night he took an overdose of barbiturates. But his attempt was foiled. When he did not rise at morning roll call, he was discovered and rushed to the hospital. Richard’s miraculous recovery without brain damage or internal injuries awakened in him the thought that possibly there was a God who had spared him for some purpose.

Soon thereafter Richard was invited to a youth evangelistic week at a Berlin Baptist church. The logical presentation of the Christian faith by the evangelist, the encouraging words of the youth counselors, and the warmth and acceptance of the Christians he encountered there were new and welcome experiences. As the week drew to a close, he became convinced that faith in Christ was the answer to his needs.

Richard still lives at home. His parents have slowly accepted him as a Christian, even though he and his father hold sharply divergent views. During a recent trip to the West, his father even brought back the compact Bible Richard had requested. He is now contemplating what God has for his future and is open to the possibility of theological education and pastoral service.

Were he now able to flee across the wall to the West, Richard would not avail himself of the opportunity. The Lord has given him the contentment to live in the GDR. He believes he has a mission to fulfill—to serve his people as an ambassador for Christ.

An Heirloom Of Hope

What do East German Christians think as they look at the Berlin Wall? I asked this question of a young pastor living in East Berlin. He had accompanied me to the Brandenburg Gate, where the dividing power of the wall is most visible, running across the old Berlin landmark street Unter den Linden.

His first response was the word Ohnmacht—impotence. Then he sought to open a window into this feeling of powerlessness. He had no harsh words for his own government, but spoke of the wider world political-economic situation that had moved the East German government to take this desperate move in 1961. I understood and sympathized with his portrayal of the East-West struggle and the inequities that exist.

His description led me to think of the superhuman principalities and powers Paul mentions in Ephesians. My friend was right. No one human being or government was responsible for the wall. Rather, the world is in the thrall of powers beyond human analysis.

As I was contemplating this, he declared that one day the wall would be tom down. His prophecy was not for me, however, but for his two children. In them the dream of full human rights must be kept alive, this visionary told me, and this through the teaching of Christian parents.

This was the third learning experience: this hideous wall provides the focal point for passing on a dream from parent to child. The dream that becomes the heirloom of Christian families in the East, however, goes far beyond hope for the eventual eradication of a divided Germany. It looks to the elimination of the fears and rivalries that divide the world.

My friend spoke of the day when people will once more move freely where a wall used to be. But of greater significance is his personal commitment to the God who tears down walls. One day the principalities and powers against which all Christians are called to struggle as a united, international body will be defeated. And God’s reign over Earth will come in its fullness.

For over 26 years the Berlin Wall has stood as a monument to injustice. But by viewing the wall from the other side, I was reminded that no evil in this world is so great that it lies beyond God’s power to bring good out of evil. For the one who has eyes to see, God can use the Berlin Wall as an illustration of the coming kingdom that breaks into the present. What lies beyond the wall? Beyond the Berlin Wall, there is God.

Stanley J. Grenz is professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics, North American Baptist Seminary, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Aurora, Illinois (pop. 90,000), sits in the middle of small farms, 30 miles west of metropolitan Chicago. The amoebic spread of suburban Chicago has not yet engulfed its small-town distinctives, and all along Randall Road, the community’s northern approach, fields of corn and soybeans guard its rural virginity.

This pastoral calm is rudely violated as one approaches the city’s northern limits. There, rising out of the cornfields like a mountain jutting upward from a grassy plain, is a massive Hindu temple with spires that dwarf a Congregational church’s white steeple two pastures away.

So unusual is the sight—a picture clipped from National Geographic and pasted in the middle of a Norman Rockwell postcard—that at first it defies identification: State Farm Insurance Company’s latest venture into modern architecture, perhaps? A theater-in-the-field? A rube millionaire’s silly quest for culture? No, it is indeed a Hindu temple, complete with its traditional stone gateway (gopuram) and statues of Indian gods.

But how did it get here?

It got here as part of a growing trend, a nationwide influx of world religions. In past generations, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam reached our shores predominantly in the form of scholarly studies or popularized cults. We learned about them through missionary reports and college world-religions courses; we observed shadowy imitations of their practices through Hare Krishna gurus, imported meditation techniques, and black professional athletes changing their names to Ali and Abdul.

But now we are faced with these religions in their pure forms. Temples and mosques proclaim the oneness of Brahman, the path of Buddha, and the greatness of Allah in ways that would not embarrass adherents in India, Japan, or Saudi Arabia. Orthodox Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims now live in our neighborhoods, send their children to school with our children, and vote in our elections. And their numbers, along with their influence, are growing.

Islam, with an estimated 3 million adherents nationwide (approximately half immigrants and half black Muslims), is the eighth-largest religious denomination in the United States, larger than the Episcopal Church or the Assemblies of God. Although the first mosque in the United States was started in 1934 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, most of Islam’s 600 mosques today tend to be in larger metropolitan areas. Approximately two-thirds are made up primarily of immigrants from the Middle East, Asia, and India.

Buddhists in the United States can be divided into two groups: Japanese Buddhists—the largest groups being the Buddhist Church of America (the Jodo Shinshu sect), with 100 churches and 100,000 members, and the Nichiren Shoshu sect, which claims 46 community centers, six temples, and 500,000 members; and Buddhists from South and Southeast-Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, and India, a growing community whose considerable size is hard to measure and must be estimated from the size of immigrant communities in various metropolitan areas. In Chicago, for example, the Vietnamese immigrant community numbers about 10,000, 80 percent of whom are practicing Buddhists.

The size of the Hindu community is also hard to estimate, although there are over 40 Hindu temples scattered throughout the country. Since the Indian population in most metropolitan areas is of significant size (100,000 in metro New York, for example), and since much Hindu worship takes place in the home, we can assume a large, uncounted number of practicing Hindus.

Together, these three faiths make up less than 4 percent of the total American population (85% Christian, 2% Jewish, 9% no faith). Yet combined, their nearly 800 places of worship make them a larger group than scores of familiar Christian denominations. Further, since the immigration laws favor professionally trained people (doctors, lawyers, and engineers), Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims have a relatively influential demographic profile. Separated from homeland and culture, they tend to cling to the faith of their roots with a high degree of commitment.

Hinduism: Clash Of World Views

Perhaps it is that sense of commitment more than anything else that concerns middle-American Christians. Consider the reaction of the Aurora community when they first heard in 1982 of the plans to build a Hindu temple on their city’s edge. The city council, which had to give approval for a building permit, was deluged with calls and letters from fearful citizens. At subsequent public meetings to debate the issue, the Hindus were accused of being rat worshipers, drug abusers, and part of an Indian government plot to buy up American land. Letters protesting the temple poured into the Aurora Beacon-News, outnumbering supporting letters by an estimated 20 to 1.

“Biblically oriented Christians in this community were naturally afraid of the propagation of a polytheistic faith in their community,” remembers John Riggs, pastor of the Union Congregational Church, close by the temple site. “I don’t think they were the ones making the irrational claims about rat worship and animal sacrifice. But they very definitely were concerned about the effect on their children and their children’s children.”

Riggs’s wife wrote a letter to the newspaper reminding citizens that violation of Deuteronomy 20’s prohibition of worshiping idols put the whole community in danger of God’s judgment. Riggs himself became vocal in the local ministerial association, and he regularly commented on the Hindu threat in a column he writes for a small-circulation neighborhood newspaper.

In the end, the city council approved the building plan—and Riggs was not shattered. “I thank God for the religious freedom we have in this country. I realize that if we were to deny that to this group, we would be putting our own freedoms in danger. But I wanted to make sure we demonstrated a strong Christian witness in this community, and point up the incompatibility of Hindu and Christian beliefs. Frankly, I’m concerned about the erosion of the basic Christian values that have shaped our society, and the competition the world religions present to those values.”

The wave of non-Christian immigrants claiming allegiance to one of the world religions does not upset us as much as the fact that we find ourselves so vulnerable to their potential for influencing—negatively, some say—our public way of life, which has heretofore been based on Christian values.

“The crucial religious issue is something quite different from the growing numbers of Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims in this country,” says theologian Carl Henry. “At issue is the weakness of Western civilization in the face of competing world views. Modern naturalism nullifies the classic concept of one universal God over history. This trend toward scientism is hospitable to Asian religions that reject a Creator-creation distinction and encourage the theory that all religions are essentially one. In the world of tomorrow, Christianity will need to fend for itself either in a secularized social milieu of intellectual atheism that empties the churches, or in a society where a religious sense of many coexisting gods saturates civic culture.”

In short, the religions are coming, and our spiritual defenses are vulnerable. What is it we are to do?

Buddhism: Quietly Fitting In

The first time Jim Ziesemer, pastor of the Hope Evangelical Lutheran Church in West Chicago, Illinois, heard about Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism was when two women knocked on his parsonage door one Sunday afternoon and told him the Nichiren Shoshu Temple was to be built across the road from his church. “To say I was surprised would be an understatement,” says Jim. “We built our new church here in 1982 in an area full of Chicago commuters. Since then we have come to expect building announcements about new subdivisions, shopping centers, and high tech industrial parks. But a Buddhist temple caught us all by surprise.”

The temple is the regional headquarters of Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, a form of Buddhism that takes its name from a thirteenth-century Japanese Buddhist saint who claimed to bring knowledge that made the teachings of Gautama Buddha complete. Although the principle practices of these Buddhists take place in members’ homes through daily chanting of ritualized scriptures, regular services are held weekly at the temple. For certain holidays and special occasions, members come to the temple from a 17-state area, drawing from an estimated membership of 7,000.

According to Mr. Nakabayashi, head of the NSA Center (the church’s lay organization for recruiting members and coordinating lay support), his church has received a warm welcome not only from the community in West Chicago, but from people throughout the Midwest. As he told members at a recent worship service celebrating the death date of the sect’s founder, Nichiren Daishonin, “Who would have believed the tremendous growth we have experienced since building this temple here only six years ago?” The congregation of 400, made up of perhaps 20 percent Japanese immigrants, 50 percent black Americans, and 30 percent white Americans, responded with an enthusiastic ovation.

Not all American Buddhists have had the same kind of warm experience in their communities. Some discrimination exists. Isolated incidents of “religious persecution” do make headlines: Hindus in Aurora, Muslims in Michigan and Oklahoma, Buddhists in Washington, D.C. Yet the majority would claim that the United States Constitution’s freedom of religion clauses are not only preached, but practiced in grassroots America. “At first, when people at work find out you’re a Buddhist, they give you a funny look,” says Eric Carlson, an engineer in Des Plaines, Illinois. “But they get used to it. We have good discussions and they find out we’re after the same things: world peace, good relationships, happiness. We end up getting along just fine.”

Further, if Christians were presented with the two alternatives, toleration versus persecution, the vast majority would advocate toleration based on more than our country’s legal requirements. Most would point to the biblical admonition to “Love your neighbor as yourself” as one of the two great commandments of Christian behavior.

“I don’t recall any overly negative concern about the Buddhist temple,” said Pastor Ziesemer. “One woman from the neighborhood did call me and ask me what was being built across from our church. When I told her it was a Buddhist temple, she said, ‘A what?’ It took her a few minutes to regain her composure. But I would say that after the surprise wore off, our people simply accepted the temple as a fact. I think that if any of them meet temple members in their neighborhood, at school, or on the job, the reaction to them is simply one of being a good neighbor: helping and loving them as Christ commanded.”

Islam: Evangelistic Fire

Within a few blocks of the old gray stone building at 63 E. Adams Street in the heart of downtown Chicago, one finds the world-famous Chicago Art Institute, the massive Field Museum of Natural History, the Adler Planetarium, the Chicago Public Library Cultural Center, and the corporate headquarters of some of the nation’s most powerful businesses, including the Standard Oil Company, Borg Warner, First National Bank of Chicago, and the Quaker Oats Company. Yet, as you walk into the rooms on the third floor of this most typical of old Chicago-style business buildings, one hears neither esoteric museum discussions nor business talk.

What one does hear five times a day is the chanting of prayers to Allah. In a large oriental-carpeted room, men from the banks and businesses of downtown Chicago gather here at dawn, noon, afternoon, sundown, and evening to spend ten minutes reciting qur’anic prayers in unison. Since 1976 the Downtown Islamic Center has provided a religious refuge for the faithful, 90 percent of whom are immigrants from the Middle East who have come to the United States to pursue business opportunities.

The center also connects these believers with Muslims worldwide. A large map showing the distribution and concentration of Islam hangs on the wall (one in four people in the world is Muslim, a footnote proclaims). Books line the wall of the foyer: copies of the Holy Qur’an, The Glorious Qur’an, Islam and the Crisis of the Modern World, Islam: The Religion of the Future are just a few of the titles. The director, Yakub Patel, describes the activities of the center, and as he does so he communicates a forceful enthusiasm about his faith:

“Our purpose is to disseminate information about Islam. Over 200 people, professionals, clerks, students, come here for Friday prayers, which include a special Sabbath lecture in both English and Arabic. Twenty percent of those people are Afro-American, the rest immigrant Middle Easterners.

“There are many centers like this in the Chicago area. Over 6 million Muslims now live in the United States. We have much in common with the Christian and Jewish faiths. We believe in universal brotherhood of all men. We believe in very strict moral standards. Our creed is simple: There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. Anyone who can sincerely say that is a Muslim.”

Like everyone else in the center, Patel is a volunteer worker. His vocation is engineering, but he makes it clear that “the mosque is the center of my life,” and he spends many hours directing its mission, which in Christian terms could be called discipling of believers and evangelizing nonbelievers.

In those twin desires, Muslims are no different from members of other religious traditions. All claim truth. That is why there are religions: they give definitive answers to life’s most perplexing questions—Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I ultimately going? And because they give definitive answers, they demand choice. The Qur’an says, “There is no god but Allah and he alone is almighty. This is the right path.” The Bible says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” Choose, brothers and sisters. As Richard Baxter said in The Reformed Pastor, “To be a Christian is not a matter of opinion.” Indeed. It is a matter of conscious choice.

So to represent the Christian faith well, we must tell the truth. We must proclaim the gospel in our sermons, recite the commandments about how to behave, and endorse the biblical revelation fully as the final answer. Nothing is gained by denying the unbreakable steel cable that connects truth and Christianity. To do so ultimately presents Christianity as something else—a nice philosophy or way of thinking rather then the steely faith of our fathers Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Jesus, and Paul.

To put it more bluntly, if we do not teach the truth about Abraham and Jesus, Muslims will teach their truth about Abraham and Muhammad. They already do.

For the past two years, Muslims in the Chicago area have used a traditional Islamic celebration, Idd-Ud-Adha (an annual feast honoring the prophet Abraham’s extraordinary example of sacrifice and obedience to God), as an opportunity to explain their beliefs to non-Muslims. They have made it an evangelistic service. They invite over 200 business and social acquaintances to listen to readings from the Qur’an and ask questions of both immigrant and American-born Muslims. The explanations are, for the most part, even-handed and fair. Questions are sincere; answers are thoughtful. “Our purpose is for us to understand one another,” said Hasnain Ashrafi, one of the organizers of the event. “The difference between religions is of secondary importance—fear for the morality of our children in a secular, faithless world is our biggest concern, a concern we think we share with Christians.”

The moral strength of devout Muslims is legendary, witnessed, for example, by the program’s announcement of serving nonalcoholic drinks only. It is indeed something Christians can identify with. Yet, listening to the speeches about the greatness of Allah and the faithfulness of his Qur’an, one also cannot help detecting a further purpose in this evening’s happenings: to win converts to Islam. The table of free literature on Islam and free copies of pamphlets explaining its teaching is all too familiar to those who have grown up in churches with tract racks prominent in the foyer.

The presentation is not unpleasant. One soon learns that Christians are not the only ones adept at evangelizing. Zeal for one’s cause means telling others about it; convincing them means changing their minds about faith. The two go together. Yet it seems the whole world has discovered that the best way to do this is to be gentle as doves about it.

Christianity: Truth And Love

Is there anything at all distinctive about the Christian approach to evangelism, something that sets it apart from being one more item on a grocery list of religions? Yes, and it starts with the cushion of love that surrounds our truth. Richard Baxter warned that we not make our creeds, our claims to truth “any longer than God made them.” In so saying, Baxter was reflecting another astounding fact about the teachings of Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus turned the Torah teaching about loving one’s neighbor into an incredibly profound law of grace, he turned the teaching of truth into a graceful law. Without losing any of the value and importance of being right, he taught a way that moved from a warlike imposition of arbitrary values into a graceful experience of love in action.

Jesus did this in two ways. One was to remind us constantly of our human limitations. We are finite creatures, he taught, who cannot hope to understand things as fully as he did. He revealed this as much by the way he taught as anything. He unfolded truth slowly to his disciples, only as much as they were able to take at any one time. Some truths he couched in language that would only be understood by those who had “ears to hear.” Paul perhaps capsulized the reason for this best when he said poetically, “Now we only see in a glass darkly, soon we shall see face to face.” The lesson is clear: the truth is absolute and final, but our understanding of the truth will never be, this side of heaven.

Second, by frequently reminding us of our own sinfulness, Jesus (and Paul after him) taught us empathy for our neighbors. Theologian Kenneth Kantzer once said that “the level of one’s tolerance for those of other faiths is a true test of our understanding of the doctrine of original sin.” The only proper response to our own sin is humility, not only before God, but before our fellow men. Jesus modeled this. The Philippians 2 ode to his humility recalls that even “though he was God, [he] did not demand and cling to his rights as God, but laid aside his mighty power and glory, taking the disguise of a slave and becoming like men, and he humbled himself even further, going so far as actually to die a criminal’s death on a cross.” One of Jesus’ most unique and valuable contributions to religious behavior was his command to speak the truth in love.

The Bible teaches over and over again that we cannot shirk our duty to speak the truth. As G. K. Chesterton noted, “The man who is not ready to argue is ready to sneer.” There is no middle ground between speaking truth and remaining silent. One can, however, argue lovingly for the truth, and thereby become something special in today’s hard scrabble rush for religious market share.

Speaking The Truth In Love

It is emotionally satisfying to love one’s neighbor. It is intellectually stimulating to argue for the truth. The challenge of living the Christian life, however, is to be able to integrate the two.

In 1978 Ron Itano got down on his knees, prayed a prayer of repentance, and asked Jesus Christ to be lord of his life. “It was like the end of a long journey,” says Ron. “All the religious questions I had been asking all my life were answered in that one prayer.”

Religious questions came naturally to Ron, grandson of a Japanese Buddhist priest. Because the rest of his family still belongs to the Buddhist church, Ron sometimes wonders why he did not become Buddhist. Family, culture, and early childhood experiences all pushed him in that direction. “But my parents didn’t insist I become Buddhist. I remember going to services in my grandfather’s temple. But it didn’t appeal. I didn’t understand the service and no one bothered to explain it to me.” Fortunately, a Christian businessman decided it was worth explaining his faith to this young Japanese insurance underwriter.

“I met Paul Asp on the commuter train to downtown Chicago. Something attracted me to him. He always seemed so happy, so much on top of life. He was kind to me. Over the months we became friends. Then he told me about Christ.”

What Paul said made sense to Ron. He began to study the Bible and finally dedicated his life to Christ. “Paul’s friendship made a big difference,” says Ron. “I’ll always be thankful he took time to care and tell me about his faith.”

Two things happen when the light of the gospel strikes fire in a person’s soul. One is an incredible sense of trust in God where doubt and fear formerly existed. The other is a sudden recognition of truth that drives away the former darkness. The road to trust in God is paved with the smaller bricks of trust in men. The road to understanding is paved with clearly presented religious truths.

Two questions we all must ask ourselves about our Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim neighbors: Are we doing our part to develop trust and love with them, trust that may lead to the more ultimate Trust? And are we articulate enough about our own search for faith, so we can convincingly, lovingly, present it to others?

Positive answers to those questions tell us that we are prepared to face the challenge of world religions, to aid a change of heart that leads to a change of mind.

Watertight Love

Does it make sense to apply a love ethic to the very people who live by philosophies we feel are threatening our way of life? Doesn’t that weaken our position?

This question is particularly crucial because it appears that our “competitors,” such as the Nichiren Shoshu Buddhists, are beating us to the punch in applying their own version of the law of love to the unchurched, underprivileged members of our society. One of the three pillars of Nichiren Buddhist faith is “practice for others,” which means aggressively telling others about the benefits of practicing Buddhism.

The Christian tradition demands the same kind of commitment. As a “law” applied by the Christian church over the last 20 centuries, love has borne remarkable spiritual fruit. One major reason the church of the first and second centuries grew was because its members gained a reputation for not only preaching this unusual ethic of love but actually putting it into practice.

Still, there are dangers. Christian love, if nothing else, is a risky proposition. Love makes one vulnerable—and perhaps there are some practical limits to that vulnerability. Perhaps love is sometimes so risky that temporary withdrawal from neighbors is called for. This is especially true for those who are not yet spiritually mature.

The spoken and unspoken concern in communities where foreign faiths are growing is the threat to the faith of children. “Soon after the Buddhist temple was built my daughter began kindergarten,” said Pastor Ziesemer. “The chief priest’s son was in her class. It wasn’t a problem for her—or us, I guess. The only time I can remember her mentioning it was when she said he brought the neatest show-and-tell things of anyone in the class. I feel good about her going to school with him. But I wouldn’t allow her to go to the temple to observe a worship service. Kids are so strongly attracted to the strange and different. Look at the girls trying to dress like Madonna, or boys trying to imitate punk rockers.”

In some situations, the concern can extend beyond the spiritually immature to include the institutional church, especially when it is operating in a hostile environment. Sometimes the social milieu is so dangerous, so secular, that not only are those weak in the faith endangered, but the church itself runs the risk of being identified with, or overrun by, the secular. It is in that context that Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, cautions them not to be yoked to unbelievers for fear the church would become identified with pagan practice.

Further, sometimes withdrawal is required to prepare for future engagement. Jesus spent much time with his disciples before embarking on a public ministry where he scandalously ate with publicans and sinners. Jesus’ entire ministry beat out a steady rhythm between active engagement of the forces of the world, strategic withdrawal to gain spiritual strength, and then active engagement again.

Interestingly, the Buddha also taught that teaching effectiveness should sometimes color the form and frequency that love for neighbor takes. He used the analogy of watertight and cracked water pots: If we have a choice of teaching the truth to those who will retain the truth and those who will not, we should start with those who will retain it, and only then go to those who will let much slip through the cracks.

Love is a powerful, many-faceted emotion; “Love your neighbor as yourself” is as true a command as exists in Scripture.

What does give us direction in applying the command to love our neighbor? Perhaps some understanding can be found in the very purpose of our love. Christian love is not to be undemanding, void of direction. As strongly as the Bible commands loving one’s neighbor as oneself, it also commands that we preach the gospel to all nations.

Thus, our love is to be pragmatic—not selfishly, but full of pragmatic concern about spreading the Good News. It must be consistent with our belief that without the gospel, all men and women will end up in eternal punishment. Can there be a more loving motivation than that to teach, as well as love?

By Terry Muck.