Dallas Willard once said that the real battle going on in
our time is over authority and authority is tied to knowledge. If this is true,
over the last two centuries the Church has been forced to the sidelines (and at
times voluntarily retreated). In the West knowledge was separated into two
spheres. The realm of the sense perceptible and the realm of the spiritual. Effectively
what has happened is that sciences were granted “real” knowledge and the Church
was granted sentiment, values, faith. Thus pastors and Christians and the Bible
don’t deal with realities except the realities of peoples’ emotional lives. And
so, Professor Willard concludes, pastors are no longer in the “knowledge”
business, they are in the “faith” business. Which basically means pastors aren’t
relevant to the real world or the marketplace and we have slowly been edged out
of significance in the public sphere.
I for one
am tired of being elbowed out of the public sphere. It is increasingly obvious
that our communities are adrift. Do we imagine that ruling “faith” out of order
in politicians or civil servants or volunteers is helpful? We’re requiring
people to ignore half of the universe’s knowledge! Can any society continue to
make progress down the road if the steering column has limits artificially
imposed on it – such that it can only turn left but never right? Is it any
wonder that we seem to be swerving from ditch to ditch?
It is time
for Christians to dig in their heels and refuse to be relegated to “sentiment”.
How? First by understanding that the West’s bifurcation of knowledge into two
spheres is not Biblical. We must see that the Bible is God’s divinely inspired
Word. A word from an Intelligent Being to intelligent creatures. And what does
this Word say about knowledge? “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
knowledge.” Proverbs 1:7. In other words, intelligence and understanding don’t
even start until we factor the existence and nature of our Creator and Redeemer
into the equation. The recognition of God must be the first move in any pursuit
of knowledge. According to the Apostle Paul, when people refused to acknowledge
God they became “futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were
darkened.”
We’re now
150 years down the road of futile thinking – a foolish separation of knowledge.
Modern advances in technology and the sciences would seem to suggest that the
splitting of knowledge into two groups was the right move. But was it?
Increasingly “scientific” knowledge is being used foolishly. And we see the
silliness of making decisions without factoring God into the equation.
So what are
we to do? Corporately, churches must no
longer cede the realm of knowledge to others. We are in the knowledge business.
Let us stop collaborating with those who slice apart the realm of knowledge and
would forbid the Church from relevance beyond peoples’ emotional lives. How are
we collaborating? By an over-emphasis in our services on sentiment and experience.
Pastors must not restrict our study to a narrow sliver of the realm of
knowledge. And each of us as Christians must accept that we are a people of
knowledge. The Apostle Paul’s prayer for the Church is relevant for us today:
“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more
and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to
discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled
with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory
and praise of God.” (Philippians 1:9-11)
