For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. Romans 8:5-7 (NKJV)
Let me try to pull several things together here. In our last article, "The World through Hebrew Eyes" we attempted to establish a difference between Western thinking, derived in part from the Greek pagan viewpoint, and Eastern thinking, and how a failure to discern the difference can lead to very strange theology. In "Locating Heaven, Part 1" there was a specific warning how (Western) literalist thinking could lead to missing the point entirely about the meaning of "Heaven" in Scripture.
In Jesus' day, the Jews had completely corrupted the Mosaic code, largely due to the pagan Greek influence from the wealthy and powerful Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt. Alexandria, named after it's founder Alexander the Great, was vested with a massive library and great academic learning. This learning, in accordance with Alexander's intent, was dominated by Greek philosophical foundations, the same viewpoint we normally describe as "Western." For example, in Luke 14:1-6, Jesus points out how the Rabbinical colleges, under Alexandrian influence, had so thoroughly objectified the Law of Moses that God's deep concern for human need was completely displaced. The good that the Creator intended to come from having a Sabbath was perverted into a prohibition against healing miracles -- His own handiwork -- on that day of the week. The Rabbinical teaching had been raised above the actual Word of God revealed through Moses.
This same Greek-Egyptian cultural capital later became an infamous center for perverting the Christian faith. The Old Testament texts had been well established some time before the rise of Alexandria as a center of learning, but the New Testament was sadly abused at their hands. The textual errors found in Alexandrian texts can hardly be called accidental, as they buttressed some horrendous heresies that grew there. It is these corrupt texts, and the infection of a Greek philosophical mind-set, that informed the Western Church. It was the Western Church that tamed the Germanic tribal hordes that swept through Europe within 400 years of Christ's Ascension. These same Germanic tribes became nearly the entire population of Europe during the Middle Ages, and gave us Western Civilization.
Do not assume from all this that I am discounting everything that Western Civilization has given the world. Much good was done, of course, because God is gracious, and will not allow human society to spin out of control completely away from His influence. There were some very fine men of God in the Western Church, along with the hideous agents of Satan, and the majority who were simply misguided. Western Civilization, and especially the Scientific Method that was born from it, has brought unrivaled prosperity and power to any who merely applied what was learned from it.
The problem comes in how we arrive at Ultimate Truth. It's all very well to gain our working knowledge of the world from the analytical methods, and from inductive thinking. It's a proven path to knowledge. That path cannot, however, arrive at Eternity. Eternal things can only be revealed. We arrive at Ultimate Truth by deductive means, and by sensing in a total different sphere of existence. The workings of the world are one thing; the meaning of the world is a wholly different issue. We gain insight into the meaning of things by seeing where it fits into revealed Truth. We do not come to Truth by way of analyzing all that we observe. We take Truth as revealed and discern how it addresses all that we observe.
All the debates and arguments, the mass of apologetic material, cannot change a man's soul. One anecdote I've heard describes how an incredibly sharp scholar of Christian Apologetics presented his arguments in a debate with scholarly atheists and agnostics. His presentation was so logically compelling they yielded him the victory over their own positions. They agreed he was almost certainly correct in all he asserted, but none were willing to pray with him to receive the Lordship of Christ. While having an answer to skeptics is commanded (1 Peter 3:15), it is but a tool of our whole witness. Unless the hand of God moves on a man's heart, nothing we do can bring them into the Kingdom.
It is incumbent on us to live with one foot in each world. We must maintain a witness to a dying, lost world by addressing folks in their own language, in their own terms. We are called to go to them. At the same time, we cannot truly live in that world. Our home is in Eternity, and we must continue to operate from an eternal viewpoint. That viewpoint is largely Eastern compared to our starting place. That's not to say all Eastern cultures are a reflection of God's holiness. Anything arising from human endeavor will be flawed, including Eastern cultures. What matters is that we recognize we are born alien to the Kingdom of God, and the burden of adapting to our new citizenship is upon us, though He certainly provides all we need to make that change. So much of God's promised blessings hinge on knowing how to lay hold of them.
Ed Hurst
03 June 2003
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: People of honor need no copyright laws; they are only too happy to give credit where credit is due. Others will ignore copyright laws whenever they please. If you are of the latter, please note what Moses said about dishonorable behavior -- "be sure your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23)