Commentary by Warren Smith
I was having lunch recently
with
“We are so far over the Rubicon,”
Ashcraft said, “that conservatives are advocating positions that a generation
ago would have been the liberal position.”
President Bush’s faith-based
initiatives, or his No Child Left Behind
education program, are examples of programs many conservatives have embraced
that will give the federal government power that a generation ago not even
the most statist liberals could
have hoped for.
Ashcraft’s expression --
“over the Rubicon” -- sent me scrambling both to my history books and to my
theology books. How did we get here? Is there any way back?
First the history: The phrase
“over the Rubicon” originated when Julius Caesar moved his forces over the
Rubicon -- a small creek, really -- into
Now, the theology: I believe
the Rubicon that many Christians
crossed actually took place many years ago. In the 18th century, with the
rise of the Enlightenment, and then in the 19th century, with the rise of
American transcendentalism, the American church became besieged. The church
essentially became separatist -- it
separated from the culture, hoping that the culture would just leave it alone
to practice its faith and worship. Alas, though, that was not to be, and eventually
the church, in desperation, fought back. But by then -- by the mid-20th century
-- we had become so thoroughly secularized, so far “over the Rubicon” that
we could not find our way back. Our methods became the methods of the world.
We were both in the world and of the world, and we didn’t know what to do
about it.
So, we came to believe a
lie. That lie is that modern culture is essentially amoral. And we came to
believe that we could use the methods of modernity -- technology, pop culture
and many more -- without compromising the message. David Wells, in his No Place For Truth, powerfully refutes
this presupposition. “It is because many evangelicals believe in the innocence
of modern culture and for that reason exploit it and are exploited by it that
they are unable to believe in all of the truth that once characterized…Protestant
orthodoxy.”
Wells argues for the recovery
of a legitimate, biblically based “evangelical theology.” He says that while
evangelicals are among the loudest critics of “secular humanism,” they don’t
know that their own theology is currently both secular and humanistic. He
also suggests that many of our most influential churches -- large, program
driven and well-marketed to their local communities -- are afraid to parse
out too much theology, for fear of “turning off” those who fill their pews.
He says that we have forgotten that this attitude is, too, a derivative of
our theology -- a bad theology which believes that Christ alone is not sufficient
to draw men to Himself. “The question at issue, then, is not whether we will
have a theology but whether it will be a good or bad one.”
My friend Tom Ashcraft is
right. We are well “over the Rubicon.” Julius, once over the Rubicon, resorted
to tyranny to hold his kingdom together. The question for the church today
is whether we will resort to the tyranny of what the world holds as true in
order to hold our kingdom together, or whether we will fight our way back
to the Kingdom of God’s own truth.
Warren Smith is the president of World Newspaper Publishing (WNP),
which owns seven Christian newspapers as well as the Evangelical Press
News Service and the Christian Newspaper Association. WNP's papers and news
service touch more than 2.5-million Christian readers a month. This
article originally appeared in The Charlotte World and is reprinted with permission.