Reaching the "Happy-Thinking Pagan"

Every generation will try to get us to change the message.
—Ravi Zacharias

At Ohio State University, I participated in an open forum on a radio talk show. The host was an atheist.

From the start, callers were antagonistic. I could feel the tension as soon as the lines lit up. One angry woman, referring to abortion, said, “All you people have is an agenda you’re trying to promote. You want to take away our rights and invade our private lives.”

Abortion had not even been brought up.

“Just a minute,” I replied. “We didn’t even raise the subject.”

“What is your position on abortion, then?”

I said, “Can I ask you a question? On every university campus I visit, somebody stands up and says that God is an evil God to allow all this evil into our world. This person typically says, ‘A plane crashes: Thirty people die, and twenty people live. What kind of a God would arbitrarily choose some to live and some to die?’

“But when we play God and determine whether a child within a mother’s womb should live, we argue for that as a moral right. So when human beings are given the privilege of playing God, it’s called a moral right. When God plays God, we call it an immoral act. Can you justify this for me?”

That was the end of the conversation.

I feel called to minister to people such as this woman, whom I affectionately call a “happy-thinking pagan.”

Such a person believes this world and the success it affords are the greatest pursuit in life. He or she feels no need for anything transcendent. Life has been reduced to temporal pursuits disconnected from all the other disciplines necessary for life to be meaningfully engaged.

Some are completely unreflective; they don’t think enough to know they have no right to be happy. They borrow on capital they don’t have. Many of these people, though, are sophisticated thinkers in their field—scientists, mathematicians, computer engineers. They are specialists with a glaring weakness: They do not ask the questions of life itself.

What does the gospel sound like to the ears of the happy-thinking pagan? How can church leaders reach the people in today’s postmodern world?

Postmodern pathology

One characteristic of postmodern thinking is extreme relativism. At universities I visit, the exclusivity of Christ is raised in every forum: “How can you possibly talk about one God or one way when there are so many good options?”

Today, sensitivities are at an all-time high, and rightfully so. Tolerance of different races and religions had been lacking in previous years. But pluralism has given way to relativism. Most of the intellectual elite of this country completely disavow the idea of absolute truth.

At a Harvard forum, I established the law of noncontradiction (no statement can be true and false at the same time and in the same relationship). This law is a simple principle of logic you expect most students would have learned in Philosophy 101. But as in virtually every other setting, it stirred up quite a debate. Even though the law of noncontradiction is fundamental to rational discourse, the audience grew silent for several minutes after I described it. That the laws of logic apply to reality floors people, even though they use logic to attack Christian truths.

Here’s the rub: While the average secular person will believe something without subjecting it to rational critique, he disbelieves things on the basis that, he or she says, they are rationally inadmissible. So he critically attacks Christian assumptions using principles of logic that he doesn’t even hold.

Engaging someone who doesn’t believe in truth is difficult. But if the purveyors of postmodernism talk long enough, you will hear that the reason they disavow Christianity is because they do not see it as true. I call this their “smuggled-in epistemology”: They use the principles of logic to criticize our system but refuse to apply them to their beliefs.

When I was asked to do a lectureship in England, the inviting body wrote, “We have received one criticism of this seminar: “Will you be focusing too much on reason and logic and not deal with the postmodernist mind-set?'”

I smiled at that. English newspapers are filled with astrology, the occult, New Age thought—what years ago would have fallen under the general category of the bizarre. At the same time, Islam has made great inroads in England; Prince Charles is now patron of the Center for Islamic Studies at Oxford. Islam knows how damaging postmodern thinking is: It creates a huge vacuum often filled with something else.

Postmodernism is dangerous not only because of what it has done to the secular person, but also because it destroys our apologetic, our methods for determining truth. What’s happening in the West with the emergence of postmodernism is only what has been in much of Asia for centuries but under different banners. For many years, the Indian would say, “All roads lead to God because truth is never absolute.” (That assumption was not in keeping with classical Hinduism, but became popular.)

So, too, with the way postmodernism works. The point of engagement must come through the common ground that even the postmodernist assumes in disbelieving something. As Chesterton said, “In truth, there are only two kinds of people: those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don’t know it.”

At every university at which I’ve lectured, the intellectual questions eventually turn into questions of meaning. Often behind a difficult or angry question is a hurting heart; the intellect is intertwined with the heart. Nothing is as offensive as answers perceived to be mere words, uncaring of a human situation.

Once a couple walked up to me after a church service and began asking questions about the problem of evil. As I began answering their questions, I happened to glance at their baby, who had Down’s syndrome. Seeing their child, I had a whole new appreciation for their questions and the context behind them.

Postmodern aggression

In our postmodern culture, attacks against Christianity have principally come on two fronts. First, the academic world has made great gains in its philosophical and scientific exploits. It extrapolates those advances as giving credence to an agnostic or an atheistic worldview.

Unfortunately, the questions of today’s young person, who is the product of America’s intellectual bastions, have been left virtually unaddressed by the church. There is a danger when we give young people only a catalog of do’s and don’ts. So in these young minds, the gospel is not intellectually credible.

Second, while our country’s intellectual skeptics attack us rationally, the arts attack us by appealing to the passions. Today there is no force greater in the molding of the North American mind than the invasion of the imagination by the medium of the visual.

Malcolm Muggeridge, quoting Simone Weil, said that in reality nothing is so beautiful as the good and nothing so monotonous and boring as evil. In our imagination, however, it’s reversed: Fictional good is boring and flat; fictional evil is varied, intriguing, attractive, full of charm.

Between intellectual attacks that pummel the mind and arts that provide immeasurable allurements, the idea of God in a pleasure-mad society is a hindrance. And so Christianity is increasingly relegated to the margins of society.

At the same time, Christianity seems to bear the brunt of society’s anger toward religion. The secular historian William Edward Hartpole Lecky said Christ was the supreme personality in history who motivated humanity to the best of ethical thinking. There has been none like him. Society itself recognizes this and hence expects of the Christian a higher standard.

But as understandable as that is, American culture, or at least the cultural elite, has become particularly vicious in its anti-Christian attacks. The whole episode of the film The Last Temptation of Christ said more about us as a culture in North America than anything in recent memory.

All of the Middle East banned the film, as did India. We are long past talking about whether an unbeliever should be punished for being irreverent. Chesterton said now a person is considered irreverent for being a believer. In the West, Islam and Hinduism could never be so mocked with impunity. So the media will never engage in it because they see those religions as culturally protected. But Christianity, being transcultural, is open to such criticism.

Secularism has bred irreverence, which has come on the heels of so much pleasure, so much indulgence. This is not a sign merely of arrogance; this is a sign of emptiness. Chesterton said that meaninglessness ultimately comes not from being weary of pain but from being weary of pleasure.

Postmodern evangelism

We do our universities a disservice when we brand them as lost causes. In spite of the advances of postmodernism, the gospel is gaining a hearing among our thinking elite. We see this in all arenas—politics, business, academics, the arts. There are some frightfully honest students out there. When their questions are respectfully dealt with, many admit their vulnerability.

Even though the search for meaning is debunked today, it is still rigorously pursued. The postmodern world is still a world where technology and means play a greater role than people and relationships. But the cries of the human heart can be smothered only so long. And in these yearnings, the search for significance and fulfillment continues.

At universities, much of the hostility toward me is mitigated because of my racial background; audiences seem to have more acceptance for someone who is not Caucasian. I have felt more antagonism from faculty than from students.

Other religious groups are not so much hostile as suspicious; they want to see what I’m going to say about them. But when there is tension at the beginning of a lectureship, I’ve never sensed it at the end. In every setting the response has been overwhelmingly gratifying.

The temptation when speaking to the happy-thinking pagan is to become angry. It can be frustrating seeing how society has desacralized everything. But Jesus resisted the temptation of outrage and the quick-fix of condemnation. He spent most of his time preparing the wineskins before pouring new wine into them. Our tendency is to start pouring the wine into skins that will only burst.

At a university in Thailand, I was speaking about existentialism, Marxism, pantheism, and Christianity. A Muslim stood up and said, “You have just insulted your God by mentioning Karl Marx and Jean Paul Sartre in the same sentence that you mentioned Christ.”

I could feel the irritation welling up inside me. I wanted to retort, “I have done nowhere near what the Muslim world has done in stripping Christ of his deity.” Instead, I paused, took a drink of water, and said, “I deeply appreciate your sensitivity. I know where you are coming from. But don’t forget you also used all three names in the sentence as you raised the question for me.”

I continued, “Did you mean to equate them by naming the three of them?”

“No,” he said.

“Neither did I. Mentioning two names in the same sentence is hardly suggesting they are equal. But I want to commend you for your sensitivity because in many cultures we have lost reverence for the name of God.”

We must critique alternative beliefs to Christianity in a way that encourages people to listen. If you can make any religion look idiotic, chances are you haven’t understood that religion. You can’t take treasured beliefs from the past and mock them.

After I spoke at Brigham Young University, a well-groomed student came to me and said, “Dr. Zacharias, you didn’t directly attack Mormonism. Was there a reason?”

“Of course,” I said. “I was assigned a subject on which to speak, and the subject was getting to the truth: Who is Jesus? I lectured on that.

“If I had been asked to deal with the differences between Mormonism and orthodox Christianity, I would have done so. But I still would have done so graciously.”

“I just want to thank you for that approach,” he said. “Two weeks ago there was a man on campus who came on his own invitation and started crying down hellfire and brimstone. He was escorted off campus.”

The old Indian proverb holds true: Once you’ve cut off a person’s nose, there’s no point giving him a rose to smell. We tend to think being kind and listening to the opposition implies we have sacrificed the message. But we need to learn how to handle critique, how to address an antagonist. Even while you wrestle with the ideas of an opponent, you must keep the dignity of the opponent intact.

We cannot go to a university with the attitude, “I’m here to deal with your tough questions.” I always begin by telling them a little bit about my life. I often tell about my struggles as a teenager when I nearly committed suicide in a New Delhi hospital. My stated vulnerability gives me an entry point. But even with a hard-edged question, I answer with graciousness. I have to earn the right to be heard every time I get up to speak.

“I’m going to defend why Jesus Christ is the only way to God,” I might say. “You may disagree with that, but if you do, make sure your arguments counter the arguments I’m now presenting to you.”

One key is the willingness to say, “I’m not sure how well I will deal with what you’re going to say, but give me a chance. I have struggled with these issues.”

I also plead with my audience: “Let’s both agree these matters are important. And if we both agree they are important, let’s get more light then heat. Let’s try to find some answers, because hiding behind words is not going to solve the problem.”

Whether it is a business or academic setting, their heart-warming response is an indicator that people are hungry for answers.

Postmodern common ground

Although it is difficult to reach someone whose framework doesn’t allow any common ground, opportunities are unprecedented. Here are several:

Being present in pain. The church still meets people in the transition points. Marriages break down. Children commit suicide and leave parents helpless. Death and suffering are everywhere.

Christ’s teaching is restorative; it is therapeutic in the sense that it provides answers to our needs. Life’s difficulties make the questioner more reachable. God often enters our lives through our brokenness to show that we’re not as autonomous as we think. But Christ’s teaching is therapeutic because it is true. That truth has greater implications for life than just being therapeutic. It is not just a “feel better” but a “know better” situation. Truth demands a commitment. The question of truth has to emerge; everything else hangs on it.

Somebody who responds to a watered-down gospel will only make more work for someone else down the road; the hard work of discipleship has to be done. That is one danger of reaching nonbelievers solely through the medium of art. What the arts should do is create legitimate hungers that only God is big enough to fill. But at some point, art has to give way to reason. The visual has to be anchored beyond itself.

Preaching engagingly. Our preaching can and should anchor the imagination. We need to give our audiences more credit. They want to think. We assume sometimes they don’t. It is fatal to assume that everything we preach should be on the bottom shelf, where people don’t have to reach for it. We wind up talking down to people and perpetuating the fallacious idea that spiritual pursuit is handed to you. It isn’t. You reach out; you seek; you knock; you search; you find.

Jesus spoke in parables not only to reveal truth but also to disclose the heart of the listener, to see how much that listener wanted to pursue the truth. Having to reach is indispensable to spiritual maturity.

When you preach engaging the mind—keeping the idea within reach—you are complimenting your audience; they recognize they need to reach for that slightly higher level, that they need to stand on their toes to grasp what you’re saying. (In reaching the heart, we can’t forget the mind. Balance is the key word.)

Helping people make connections. In a fragmented society, the role of the preacher is undoubtedly one of the most difficult. Many people in the pews see Christianity as disjointed from day-to-day life. They see it as one aspect of their lives, something they do in addition to everything else. Nothing is connected for them. There is no unity in the diversity of their roles. One of the important roles of the preacher is to be a connector. The pastor is the only person who can help them make sense of it all.

What has helped me in making the connection for others is to see a sermon as incorporating three components: the argument (or proclamation), the illustration, and the application. The Scriptures provide the truth; the arts, poetry, literature, or current events provide the illustrations; and the application should go right to daily living. This approach helps connect ideas with concrete reality.

But a pastor must work hard to connect fragmented lives. Most professions afford the luxury of one line of thinking. If I am a biology teacher, for example, biology is my discipline and all I need to still study. But a pastor or Christian teacher today has to keep up with so many fields because the audience is so diverse, and the pastor is looked up to for wisdom in trying to connect it all. This demands much study and is a tall order. With knowledge growing exponentially, it’s easy to wind up sounding ignorant.

A. W. Tozer said that we are all ignorant, only in different subjects. Some pastors might not be given to philosophical thinking, but all of us wrestle with these issues at some level. We need to rise to the level we can.

I recommend that pastors formulate a book list representing five of the major worldviews. Take three-by-five cards and write down the fundamental beliefs of each. What are the basic doctrines of this worldview? Who are the leading thinkers advocating it?

Preachers must work hard at being familiar with the leading thinkers of our day. The ideas of Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, for example, give firsthand insight into deconstruction, a worldview that trumpets the meaninglessness of meaning. The reading is difficult, but you’ll get a feel for our times. If one is not given to this type of content, then it is still important to know where to direct the inquirer who struggles with these issues.

One of the names being resurrected on university campuses today is Ayn Rand, an egocentric humanist popular twenty years ago. I gained an awareness of that in my latest couple of open forums, so I hurried back to reread We the Living and her other works. Our listeners respect firsthand knowledge.

Staying faithful to our calling. If our preaching leads people to genuine worship, we will help meet the deepest longing of the heart and mind; the secular worldviews have left them bankrupt.

Every generation will try to get us to change the message, but wisdom is justified by her children. We are called to be faithful to our calling in the Word. And God has promised to honor those who honor him.