Re (1): evangelism

Jean,

There is always a balance to everything in life, and your letter reveals to me where my last newsletter may have failed to provide the counterperspective. I strive for balance and fair-minded consideration, and as much as I might wish I could cover all the bases at one time in any given mailing, I fear this is an all but hopeless impossibility. Regardless, (and not in any way to negate what you are saying) there is certainly a very valid time and place for generalizations as long as we recognize that every individual is unique and must be treated with respect and dignity; furthermore—and you know this already—it would be very difficult and expensive for your church to organize a program that was capable of meeting and equipping each missionary according to his or her unique needs. I suppose the important thing is that we ourselves keep our internal directiveness and gently remind others to do the same. Perhaps you could suggest this person-centered focus at one of the next sessions, to help direct the dialog in this direction? Cost and practicality aside, I have never seen a group yet that could not be perfected or that would not benefit from a renewed focus and vision.

I have written of this aspect of the usefulness of generalizations in previous sends, so I will close with a few of those excerpts here, as they encapsulate the thought I wish to bring to remembrance today: a thought that hopefully counterbalances this week’s send. I once wrote of what my first philosophy class taught me my first semester in college:

It is not that I did not realize this before, but it was strongly impressed on me that my opponents were very real people, people who were intelligent, who had feelings, who often had reasons that were equally compelling and valid. Almost all had the same ultimate goal in mind, though their route to arriving at this end was drastically different than my own. In sum, my counterargument suddenly had a face, and that made all the difference in the world.

There are at least two points that can be gleaned from this: 1) We, as human beings, are often quick to dismiss, label, and stereotype other people and causes. This has its usefulness in helping us understand the world around us—we wouldn’t get very far in understanding anything if we couldn’t build conceptual models to help us wrap our minds around the surroundings in which we live—but we have to realize that these labels and classifications can also cloud our perception of the bigger picture, and 2) as Christians we have a responsibility to stand up for what is right and to speak the truth while being ever mindful that without love our words are nothing. We must always realize that those who disagree with us are not our enemies, but are people who grope about in darkness. (And there may even be times that we are the ones who are wrong, a possibility we should always be careful to consider!) We are to help them through the haze as much as they will allow us, not savagely kick them as though they were somehow responsible for the fog in which they grapple. We must be very sensitive to the people involved while being unrelenting in our stance against injustice and evil.

The second newsletter I wish to cite is “The ‘Reluctant Messenger’” (January 28, 2002). After a brief discussion of American African civil rights leaders Booker T. Washington, I move on to W.E.B. Du Bois:

Let us move on briefly to Du Bois, and then we will arrive at our “feature presentation.” W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was a very highly educated black leader (Fisk, Harvard, Berlin) and much more uncompromising than Washington, whom, while he greatly respected and applauded him, felt the latter had unwittingly fostered an attitude that could ultimately prove lethal to the cause: namely, that of the black man bending to accept a position of inferiority and that of the white man feeling justified in keeping it this way. Du Bois’ sociological observations are very poignant and powerful and well worth reading. In particular, his message was one of sweeping scope; that is, he did not feel it wise to make the most of the moment when it might compromise the long haul. He writes, in his typically powerful rhetoric: “. . . The bright ideals of the past,—physical freedom, political power, the training of brains and the training of hands,—all these in turn have waxed and waned, until even the last grows dim and overcast. Are they all wrong,—all false? No, not that, but each alone is over-simple and incomplete,—the dreams of a credulous race-childhood, or the fond imaginings of the other world which does not know and does not want to know our power. To be really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded into one. . . .” From here, Du Bois sets out a comprehensive list of the objectives of which he feels the defenders of black equality should never lose sight.

This is equally true in all of life. Life is complex, and generalizations and oversimplifications are common. Of course, that is not to say that these have no place in conceptualizing the world, but when they lose sight of their ultimate purpose of understanding reality—when they serve to restrict life more than interpret it—then they have ceased from their usefulness. And yet, we all tend to cling to them, their comfort and safety keeping us effectively locked out from having to grow, adapt, and expand our horizons. Nowhere is this more evident than in the journey of the serious Christian, honestly seeking, wishing to forge an entire Christian world-view consistent with the Scriptures on all points. It becomes so tempting to hold up one section of the Gospel or another because it aligns with our personal views or serves our own self-serving interests, instead of trying to see God’s perspective in the matter: instead of trying to see it for the unified whole that it is. And how could it be otherwise? The very God we serve, the very Trinity itself, is held together by a delicate system of “checks and balances” if you will, God’s righteous anger and His love, His judgment and His compassion, His jealousy and His loyalty: each of these many attributes of the Triune God are held together in complete balance by the sheer perfection of His essence, which we often conceptualize as love. He is indeed the God where the reconciliation of opposites meet.

On a more human level, the same could be said for evaluating the contributions of any one person to society. On this, the late Francis Schaeffer writes movingly, in words that I find very comforting, being the fledgling artist and author that I am:

Every artist has the problem of making an individual work of art and, as well, building up a total body of work. No artist can say everything he might want to say or build everything he might want to build into a single work. It is true that some art forms, such as the epic and the novel, lend themselves to larger conceptions and more complex treatments, but even there not everything that an artist wants to do can be done in one piece. Therefore, we cannot judge an artist’s work from one piece. No art critic or art historian can do that. We must judge an artist’s performance and an artist’s world-view on the basis of as much of that artist’s work as we can.

There is a parallel here with the sermon. No single sermon can say everything that needs to be said. And no one can judge a minister’s total theology or the content of his faith on the basis of a single sermon. The man who tries to put everything into one sermon is a very poor preacher indeed. Even the Bible is an extended body of books, and it cannot be read as if any one book or any one chapter included the whole; it must be read from beginning to end. And if that is true of the Word of God, how much more is it true of an artist’s work!

If you are a Christian artist, therefore, you must not freeze up just because you can’t do everything at once. Don’t be afraid to write a love poem simply because you cannot put into it everything of the Christian message. Yet, if a man is to be an artist, his goal should be in a lifetime to produce a wide and deep body of work from which his world-view will show forth.

If all these things be true about humans, how much more so of an infinitely complex God seeking to set His principles down in writing through the agency of His humble servants with all their many imperfections and weaknesses! Let’s all be cautious that our cherished beliefs and ideas really do line up with His standards and that we don’t use Him and His words as a convenient scapegoat on which to hang our own agendas. The Scriptures can easily be twisted to say anything by unscrupulous minds. Further, we must be ever cautious to the very best of our abilities not to read the values of our culture and society into His words, cultural values which may at first have the appearance of wisdom, but are only so much dross in light of the timeless message of an eternal God. We may never get it right, but treading softly with a heightened sense of awareness in regard to our own tendency toward folly will go a long way, particularly (or should I say only?) when combined with fervent prayer face down before a gracious God. You may think these words are merely my best attempt at elegant prose—that they don’t match reality, or as Kierkegaard says: “In relation to their systems most systematizers are like a man who builds an enormous castle and lives in a shack close by; they do not live in their own enormous systematic buildings”—but I do my very best to live by them and am painfully aware of them when I fall short. In sum, I do not know how to write otherwise and still speak the truth.

Anyway, this may be a unique way to reply to your e-mail, and while I could have simply summarized this counterbalance, I felt that the words I wrote then still have power today and it seems a shame to retype it all from scratch, you know? ;)

Thanks for writing and for sharing your thoughts.

God bless,
Eric