OPINION:
DEAR DR. E: Someone recently referred me to the following statement posted on the Wesleyan Church website under the heading, “What Can We Do About Racism?” Because you were president of a Wesleyan university for nearly 20 years, I’m curious to know how you’d respond.
Here’s the church‘s post: “We have explained to those that believe Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a violent/terrorist group that there are fringe groups being misrepresented as part of BLM, and over eighty different groups use the name to identify themselves. If conservative Christians don’t want to be lumped in with the KKK, they can’t lump violent protesters in with all those who make the claim that black lives matter.” I’m looking forward to your take on this one. — BIBLICAL CHRISTIAN FROM INDIANA
DEAR BIBLICAL: I’m going to be very straightforward and pull no punches. My leadership role in this denomination for nearly two decades warrants it.
Frankly, I think this post is offensive and stupid. The fact is that no (as in zero) “conservative Christian” that I know of even remotely aligns with the Ku Klux Klan.
True Christians find such an organization anathema to their faith. Every conservative, evangelical, Catholic or Orthodox believer I have ever rubbed elbows with condemns the KKK as vociferously as they do Black Lives Matter. And for good reason: Both of these organizations are hateful and racist by definition.
Suggesting a false equivalency between conservative Christianity and the KKK is ridiculous.
This statement by the Wesleyan Church is as inane as it is arrogant. It betrays what the “smart folks” really think of their church’s rank-and-file members. Such insults should be condemned with the loudest voice.
DEAR DR. E: Your consistent response to questions is too cognitive. It betrays an antiquated worldview that is laden with empiricist/modernist assumptions. Christianity is more about forming love in your gut than it is about informing your conscious mind. — FELLOW CHRISTIAN EDUCATOR
DEAR FELLOW EDUCATOR: Your question (or should I say accusation) is very interesting.
We could expend a lot of ink debating this issue, but out of respect to the limitations of this column, I’ll discipline myself to simply asking the obvious: Upon what definition of “love in the gut” will your worldview be based? Mine? Yours? Your pastor’s? Your denomination’s? Who will decide?
Will “love” have an objective and stable definition, or will it be fluid and move with society and popular opinion? Will it be measured by the laws of nature and nature’s God; what C.S. Lewis defined as the universal Tao in his book “Mere Christianity,” or will this thing that you call “love in the gut” be subject to the “imagination” of my politics or yours?
Will love be defined by revelation and reason, or will it be dictated by politics and power? Who decides? You? Me? Democrats? Republicans? Donald Trump? President Biden? Who?
Another seminal work by Lewis foreshadows your thinking.
In “The Abolition of Man,” his analogy of “the green book” warns that academics such as you and me are at risk of becoming men without chests when we take the postmodern scalpel of subjective opinions and, thereby, cut from our souls what is objective, immutable and true.
This ghastly surgery severs the head from the heart, fact from faith, and belief from behavior, and leaves us gasping for life that can only be found in the objective Truth of Christ and the Truth of Scripture.
Jesus described it well: When we start governing our lives by “the gut” rather than God, we become whitewashed tombs that are superficially attractive but full of nothing but the old bones of spiritual, intellectual, and moral decay.
Oh, and I do have one final question: Doesn’t the Christian quadrilateral protect us from the false dichotomies you imply? Doesn’t the tradition, experience, reason, and revelation of the Church serve as the antidote to the fallacy of mutual exclusivity you seem to embrace? Rational vs. relational? Cognitive vs. emotional? Doesn’t the way of Christ demand that we honor both?
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