This week I was reading in a little book of sermons by J. Gresham Machen, a church leader and ardent defender of Christianity in the 20th century, and I came across a passage that struck me as very insightful even now as we approach the second decade of the 21st century. Machen’s book is entitled “God Transcendent,” and it contains twenty addresses, mostly sermons which he preached in the decades prior to his death on January 1, 1937. The sermon from which this passage is taken is entitled “The Good Fight of Faith,” a reference to Paul’s pastoral counsel in 1 Timothy 6:12. In it, Machen explains to the ministers-in-training who were his audience that they will face a deadly battle when they go out into gospel ministry, and he declares:
The redemptive religion known as Christianity is contending, in our own church and in all the larger churches of the world, against a totally alien type of religion. As always, the enemy conceals his most dangerous assaults under pious phrases and half truths. The shibboleths of the adversary have sometimes a very deceptive sound. ‘Let us propagate Christianity,’ the adversary says, ‘but let us not always be engaged in arguing in defence of it; let us make our preaching positive, and not negative; let us avoid controversy; let us hold to a Person and not to a dogma; let us sink small doctrinal differences and seek the unity of the church of Christ; let us drop doctrinal accretions and interpret Christ for ourselves; let us look for our knowledge of Christ, not to ancient books, but to the living Christ in our hearts; let us not impose Western creeds on the Eastern mind; let us be tolerant of opposing views.’ Such are some of the shibboleths of that agnostic Modernism which is the deadliest enemy of the Christian religion to-day.
It is not the open attacks on Christianity that present the real trouble, but the subtle shifts of emphasis, language, and tone which begin to erode the foundations. Machen speaks of the “shibboleths of the adversary,” and in case that word is not familiar to you it refers to an account in the 12th chapter of the book of Judges. While fighting with the Ephraimites, the men of Gilead had taken control of the fords of the Jordan River, so that no one could pass without their approval. In order to tell when an Ephraimite was trying to pass himself off as someone else in order to cross the river, they told him to pronounce the Hebrew word “shibboleth.” However, the men of Ephraim could not pronounce it properly, but said instead “sibboleth,” and the Gileadites identified and killed all who tried to pass over the river.
In using that term, Machen was saying that the attack the church was facing in his day from agnostic Modernism used a series of slogans or phrases to identify those who believed the same. They would speak about the importance of spreading Christianity but only by means of positive presentations, never by mounting any sort of defense of the truth which might be perceived as harsh or intolerant. The Modernists spoke of avoiding controversy and seeking unity by minimizing doctrinal differences and focusing on our shared experiences as self-identifying Christians. They downplayed the importance of doctrinal creeds and confessions, seeking instead a tolerance of any and all opposing views. Anyone who spoke of defending Christianity, preaching repentance for sin, contending for the faith, defining what we believe in doctrinal confessions, or seeking to know Christ through his word to the exclusion of subjective experiences would be quickly labeled as intolerant, small-minded, and un-Christian.
Not much has changed in the past century. If Machen were alive today, I believe he could give the same address almost word for word. If anything, the god of tolerance has grown stronger and more pervasive in the decades since Machen’s death. Men and women can be forgiven for almost any transgression except the sin of intolerance, and this thinking is not just found in the unbelieving world but has become commonplace in the church. For a church (whether it is a local body or a larger fellowship or denomination does not matter) to define its beliefs clearly and then defend those beliefs against any and all who disagree is considered to be very much unlike the kind and gentle Jesus who occupies the mind of postmodern Christianity. And the same goes for the individual Christian who dares to stand up and contend earnestly for the faith, as we have been instructed in the book of Jude.
The problem doesn’t seem to be so much the act of believing, because our society is ready to accept almost any truth claim no matter how outrageous, ignorant, or contradictory. Instead it is the willingness to fight for the truth of one’s position, defending one’s statement of faith and declaring that all who disagree are in error that produces the strongest negative reaction. This is where we run afoul of the shibboleths of our own postmodern age, and where our neighbors and friends, upon hearing our dogmatic statement of faith shrink back as though we have been infected with some dreaded disease. Do you want to be accepted and loved uncritically? Then simply avoid conflict by pretending that your faith is merely an opinion, and certainly nothing you feel too strongly about. As Machen says, “A man may believe what he pleases, provided he does not believe anything strongly enough to risk his life on it and fight for it.”
But instead of bowing to the spirit of our age, let us follow the example of men like Machen who fought so bravely and fiercely for the truth in his own day. Let us pray with him, “God make us, whatever else we are, just faithful messengers, who present, without fear or favour, not our word, but the Word of God!”