Let’s Get Back to the Center

The Western world has experienced radical changes, some desirable and some undesirable. Among the latter is the flight from the God of the Bible and from Christianity. God has been remolded in man’s image; man has deified himself in the place of God. We hear much of the post-Christian era, the God who failed, or the great whatever.

Secularism has become enthroned, and religion is being rooted out of American life. But with the repudiation of biblical Christianity, America has had to face searching questions for which no adequate answers have as yet appeared. “Who am I?” “What am I here for?” “What meaning and purpose remains in life?” “Can modern man any longer be certain of anything?” These and other questions press for answers.

Accompanying them is the moral decline resulting from the retreat from standards. This freedom from absolutes leaves only one question: “How do you feel about it?” If you feel all right, then it is all right. Thus fornication, adultery, lying, cheating, and stealing are justified. So man is being propelled away from God, away from the Bible, away from absolutes, away from responsibility, and into the perilous freedom of anarchy and the ultimate destruction of self.

Science has largely pre-empted the place of theology. Outer space is to the fore; the God of space and time is forsaken. On the one hand, earth shots to the moon and its occupation by men and machines and, on the other hand, the exploration of the center of the earth in a coring operation, are major objectives. Philosophically, scientists have moved away from the absolute to the relative. So also with psychology and psychiatry. Neither of these sciences has any integrating principle except that everybody is sick and needs help.

The same diversity and drift mark contemporary Christianity. One may run the gamut from Congregational structures to monolithic Romanism; from theological neo-liberalism to fundamentalism. He may pick the ontological approach of conservative theology or the existentialist approach of Bultmannian speculation. Certainly modern theology is moving not centripetally but centrifugally. Can nothing be done to overcome these centrifugal forces and replace them with forces that drive man once more toward the center?

In the midst of this multiplicity of voices the Christian must speak. What he must say is not new, but it is tried, tested, and true. He must speak the word of Jesus of Nazareth: “You must be born again.” In accordance with the profound truth of Genesis 1–3, Jesus was saying that there is something so wrong with man that he must be recreated. He is estranged from his Creator, and his condition is hopeless.

The Christian must tell modern man that God has made us for himself and that our hearts will be restless until they find their rest in him. But there is rest for the restless and hope for the hopeless. There is light amid darkness and despair and death. Whatever rest and hope and light there are derive from the Gospel: “that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3b, 4). Thus the solution to man’s estrangement is the new birth. This is the miracle that sets men free from sin and death.

Gladys Is No Lady

Some theologians have lately been reducing God to the impersonal ground of our being. Calling on God in prayer, one says, is pointless, because God can’t hear. He has advised Christians concerned about the weather to call the Weather Bureau.

Some of us have been listening to the Weather Bureau lately. Even if God can’t hear, we can. We hear about Cleo, Dora, Gladys, and some others. These really are not ladies, of course, but wild, untamable hurricanes that the meteorologists designate as persons. They trace the path of these personified elemental powers and then take cover—for if God is no longer “up” and “out there,” these ladies are; and being temperamental and capricious they just might come down and unsettle the ground of our being.

The Christian Church needs a theology of nature. There is a God “up there” who rides the wild winds of the storm and speaks through elemental cosmic powers that even space-age men cannot bring under control. Gladys remains “up there.” She is no lady, but the voice of the Almighty who speaks through the storms, who disturbs the ground of our ordered lives, and who flings our possessions like chips to the cosmic winds.

Look up and out there—the ground of being you see may be your own. For He in whom we live and move and have our being is in the storm. The wild wind is also his voice. And if he speaks through the storm, he can also hear the still small voice of prayer—and hearing once again declare: Peace, be still.

Moral Maturity Without Spiritual Guidance

In an address to the freshmen at the opening of the 218th academic year of Princeton University, President Robert F. Goheen announced that this class is the first to enter Princeton free of the traditional requirement of attending religious exercises. “The maturing and shaping of the moral and spiritual structure of your lives,” he said, “must be largely your own affair. By and large your professors and advisors will be engaged in helping you grow and deepen intellectually. That is their primary business.” Freedom from religious exercises was granted, Dr. Goheen said, “in the belief that the majority of you will seek the chapel or the church of your choice more freely and sincerely.”

Princeton is notable for its Christian heritage. Names like Jonathan Edwards, John Witherspoon, James McCosh, Francis L. Patton, and Woodrow Wilson link it to the Calvinist tradition so influential in the founding and development of our democracy. At the 200th anniversary of Princeton’s Nassau Hall, where the Continental Congress met in 1783, Professor John Baillie of Edinburgh quoted the Westminster Shorter Catechism (“Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever”) and said that Western civilization is doomed to swift disintegration and decay if it should cease to be aware of itself as standing within that context.

Many who value Princeton’s spiritual heritage cannot but regret the decision of university authorities to leave to freshmen “the maturing and shaping of the moral and spiritual structure” of their lives. Elsewhere in his address, Dr. Goheen pointed to “the symbolism of the library and the chapel as roads which remain open.” But is symbolism enough?

It may be that in following the precedent of most other universities Princeton has fallen into what may be called the fallacy of precocity. The majority of its freshmen class, which is one of the most highly selected in the country, are eighteen years old. The tendency of the American college and university to mistake immaturity for maturity and to provide so little moral and spiritual guidance of students is an abdication of responsibility.

Princeton is a private institution with liberty to go as far as it feels right in the moral and spiritual development of its students. And it should not be overlooked that the university has a well-developed department of religion and a chaplain who is a committed Christian. Nevertheless, a feeling of regret persists that Princeton is giving up so vital a part of its responsibility for its students.

The Religious Liberty Issue

Whether the church of Rome will emerge from its medieval attitude toward religious liberty was a major item of debate at the start of the Vatican Council’s third session. Most American cardinals have supported a religious liberty declaration; their stand was applauded in violation of council rules. Cardinals from Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Brazil have strongly opposed any religious liberty declaration as a danger to the Catholic faith.

It will be important to note the views of prelates in every land where Catholicism is the entrenched majority religion. In the United States, religious freedom is assured by the Constitution whether Rome likes it or not. What Rome does in countries where a Vatican concordat makes Romanism the preferred religion will be decisive. In recent decades the Vatican has spoken increasingly of “separated brethren.” It will be easier for majorities of “separated brethren” in non-Catholic lands to discuss separation when their fellow Protestants in Catholic lands are viewed no longer as bastards in the family of God but as sons.

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