On being careful in our public statements:
All believers are commanded to love God with their minds – among other things. We are also told repeatedly in Scripture that God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Thus a really important thing we must do as Christians is seek to love God intelligently and not foolishly, yet to also remain humble in the process. Often it is hard to get this balanced.
I am still trying to get this right, as are many others. Examples of how not to proceed are many. Let me deal with one case in point. A while ago I posted something on the social media which ties in with all this:
Believe it or not, as I get older, I am less inclined to argue – that is, to have to correct others, or rebuke others, or straighten out sloppy thinking and false information and dumb ideas, and so on. Sure, I still do all this stuff when necessary, but not quite as often any more. Maybe I am learning to be a bit more forgiving and a bit more gracious – and perhaps a bit less Pharisaic as well. If so, it is not because I am such great shakes, but because God is still at work in me. He still has a long way to go however!
I am certainly still a stickler for theological and doctrinal truth. The trouble is, not all doctrines are to die over. The deity of Christ and the Trinity? Yes, those are non-negotiables of the faith. But in areas like various views on eschatology there can be room to move, and in that sense we can be less dogmatic – and arrogant!
Indeed, given the complexity of even trying to get our heads around just what the book of Revelation is all about, or the second half of Daniel, caution and humility should be the order of the day. For various reasons neither Calvin nor Luther penned a commentary on Revelation. That is telling.
Yet many believers want to go to war over their pet view of the end times. Moreover, their views can allow them to cancel out other vital biblical truths. I encounter this so often. Examples would be legion. Two comments on the social media by someone are representative of this. She will remain nameless.
The two comments she made both had to do with her take on the end times, and the outworking of those views. In the first instance, I had posted a humorous meme dealing with the WEF and the need to stand against it. As an aside, when I posted it, I thought that a few folks might come along asking what WEF is. Sure enough, it happened. So in a separate post I said this:
Self-education is always a very good thing. As but one example, I am often asked what a particular acronym means. I am sometimes surprised at this, given how often I speak of such matters in which it appears. I of course can simply answer (and usually do), but with things like google, it takes but a few seconds to find out what most of these acronyms stand for. It is the same with words you might not be familiar with. Yes, you can ask, but looking it up and learning for yourself is a good thing too. Just sayin’! Two morals of the story: we should always want to keep learning, and we should avoid being unnecessarily lazy!
But I digress! So this gal entered the discussion and left this comment: “Nice gesture, but I don’t think even the smartest of us can stop biblical prophecy to come. Its going to happen whether we like it or not eventually.”
Based on what I said above, I decided not to reply to her. I am learning to hold my tongue a bit. But as a general sort of discussion about these matters, if I had responded, I would have said something like this:
Thanks, but a remark such as that is of course based on a number of crucial assumptions, none of which are clearly evident nor entirely proven:
-Are we that certain that we have a full and sure understanding of biblical prophecy in all its depth and detail?
-Are things like the WEF and fighting against it a clear part of biblical prophecy?
-Are prophecies about the end times meant to render us inactive and apathetic about evil and injustice?
-Is the command of Jesus to be salt and light nullified and rendered void in the face of our viewpoint on current events?
-Is it in fact the case that the fulfilment of prophecy and the Christian obligation to stand against evil are mutually exclusive?
-Is this sort of fatalistic thinking really all that helpful?
Again, folks are certainly entitled to have their own fave eschatological views. But I appreciate it when these folks recognise that there are in fact other views that one can hold to, and none of us have ALL the truth on these matters. As always, a bit of humility goes a long way here.
A major concern I had is this: her particular slant on the end times seems to have pretty much ruled out any sort of place for Christian social involvement. It is the old “you don’t polish brass on a sinking ship” attitude. They seem to think the world is going to hell so it is a waste of time trying to do anything good in this world, whether it is resisting the evil agenda of the WEF (the World Economic Forum of Klaus Schwab and the Great Reset fame), or helping out in other ways.
I have discussed all this countless times. This sort of stance means we must conclude that Wilberforce was quite wrong to seek to abolish slavery. After all, everything is predicted and therefore gonna happen, so to try to fight evil means we are fighting God. Needless to say, I do not buy this. But see more on it here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/1999/04/08/end-times-and-christian-responsibility/
Also see this much newer piece which addresses similar issues: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2021/11/14/god-sovereignty-eschatology-and-resistance/
And the second example offers more of the same. I shared a post featuring a Jewish woman speaking about how peace will elude us while those like Hamas are clearly not at all interested in it. That is certainly true. Dr. Sheila Nazarian had said this:
“To everyone ‘just wanting peace’ you assume all people want peace and share your core values. Many in the world don’t want peace and value death over life. You must make the jump mentally. I know it’s hard. But thinking everyone wants peace is naive and, yes, dangerous.”
Yet this same gal came along once again, offering more of her view of things: “The world will never have ‘peace’ till the Antichrist comes on the scene and confirms the peace covenant with many nations for 7 years. Dan 9:27. Wanting peace is probably the most naive thing Christians could want IMHO.”
Once again, her particular version of end time events has her thinking rather unbiblically about other key areas of biblical truth. Firstly, this post was about politics and geo-politics. What is happening right now in the Middle East is very important, and all Christians should take a careful interest in it, including praying for the situation.
Indeed, we are even specifically told that we are to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6). Yet this gal seems to think it is a complete waste of time, and any Christian who does is just being naïve. This is where a pet theological peeve can cause so much mischief if one is not careful.
Now, if a person were to say something like the following, he would be entirely correct: ‘In a fallen sinful world we can work for peace and we can pray for peace, but we know that until the prince of peace returns to planet earth, there can be no complete and final peace.’
All biblical Christians can agree with that. But that is much different than what my friendly critic had said. In fact, we have countless passages that speak about how believers ARE to seek after peace and work for it. Passages such as these come to mind: “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9); and “Seek peace and pursue it” (Romans 15:13).
Sure, some of these texts deal with interpersonal relations, but there is nothing wrong with praying and working for an end to hostilities, be it in your own neighborhood or workplace, or on a more global scale. Sure, we are not foolish enough to think that full-blown world peace can be achieved in this life, but no biblical Christian that I know of is calling for that.
As I have said before, when I pen a piece like this, I am not picking on any one person. I am using some real-life comments which are all rather common, turning them into a bit of a teaching tool. And what I want to teach here are a few obvious things:
-None of us have all the truth.
-Staying humble, certainly with secondary doctrines, is crucial.
-We must be careful when we seek to affirm something we consider to be a biblical truth that it does not become a tool to cancel out other biblical truths.
-None of us know when Christ will return, and we are told to “occupy till he comes”.
-We are called to be salt and light, and we are called to stand against evil and injustice.
-Christians are not fatalists, and one’s particular view of eschatology should not turn us into fatalists.
-We all need to be careful and prayerful when we share any biblical truth in public, even in a brief and hastily posted social media comment.
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