Nancy and Why I'm Not Fighting For Christian Values
“Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a shortcut to the chemist’s shop.”
“You read so many books!” a friend of mine said to me once.
“No,” I sighed. “I just talk a lot about the ones I DO read.”
I don’t know enough about the enneagram to know if I can blame it on my enthusiasm for sharing everything I am learning. I don’t even know if one is supposed to blame things on their enneagram. Nonetheless, I tend to try the patience of friends and family with ideas and books I am pumped about.
Now we arrive at the book in question: Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey. I know, Grace, I promised not to bring it up again but this is the last time. I mean it. Well, I am pretty sure I mean it.
I have come to have a massive respect for Nancy Pearcey. A fierce intellect, she has studied at the highest levels of academia and even studied Christian worldview under Francis Shaeffer at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland in the early 1970s. Like Shaeffer, her passion is to remind Christians that our faith is always relevant and that biblical truth speaks to every facet of our existence and life experience. She is able to share this passion with humility as well as clarity.
Total Truth, for me, was a bit of a tome and it took several months to make my way through the book. As my friends and family are keenly aware, there were many “aha” moments but the overarching theme that kept bringing me back to a desire to cheer and do mini fist pumps was this: the beautiful, radical, unsettling, redemptive work and life of Jesus Christ is everything.
The cultural traditions that He upended left people reeling. His teachings left people bewildered and undone. His humility was stunning. He exposed the self-righteous religious but caused the brokenhearted to draw near. And the glorious thing is that He is still doing those things.
But sadly, what society at large generally hears from Christians is our desire for social or moral reform. There can often be a fearful tone among Christians that we have to preserve our “way of life”. I was listening to a podcast a few months ago that someone recommended to me. The podcaster was very good; thoughtful, intelligent, and far more educated than I will ever be. But right at the end of the episode, she stated that we have to “fight for our Christian values.” I must admit, for a few reasons, I cringed.
Firstly, values are subjective, ever-changing things. They are, at best, distilled from vague ideas of scripture. Or, at worst, shifting standards meant to preserve a more comfortable way of life. Either way, they affect no lasting change and do nothing to penetrate the human heart. As C.S. Lewis states here, “Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a shortcut to the chemist’s shop.” Essentially, working to build a better society with Christian values is a very temporary solution that will inevitably unravel.
Secondly, the idea of standing up or fighting for our values insinuates an Us versus Them way of thinking; that there is a collective evil that we must thwart. That collective evil usually takes the form of the opposite political party or mainstream, liberal, secular society. But as Alexander Solzhenitsyn has famously stated, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart.”
Ultimately, focusing on values takes something that was meant to shake us, and the world around us, to its core and makes it about something completely superficial and irrelevant in about ten minutes. When God was saying that He required holiness from us and a turning away from sin, He wasn’t saying “Don’t smoke.” “Don’t get a tattoo.” or “Don’t listen to hip hop .” He was wanting so, so much more from us. I love this quote: “The trouble with sin isn’t that God has a tight moral grid- and coloring within the lines is how we prove we’re on his side. It’s that sin inhibits us from doing what we were made to do- love. To minor on sin is to minor on love because sin constricts the capacity for love. Sin is a big issue to God because love is a big issue to God. If I pretend sin is a minor issue for me, I unintentionally make love a minor issue for me too.” (Tyler Staton)
As Christians, when we fear that the current political climate is impinging on our rights and freedoms, I believe that we need to ask ourselves what, exactly, we are fearing and what we want to be, primarily, known for. I am very blessed to know several people who, while passionate about a particular issue, this is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of them.
I know a woman who works for her local Member of Parliament. As in, that is her place of employment; working for an MP who happens to be a member of the Conservative Party of Canada. Over the last year, through turmoil and debate, and controversy on the social media platforms, she has been a breath of fresh air in her choice of content posting. The posts are informative without being teachy, compassionate without being judgy, and exposing without being inflammatory. Above all, when I think of this woman, I see someone who just flat out loves Jesus and the work He has done in her life.
One of my pastors recently attended a protest on an issue that he wanted to learn more about because it hurt his heart. He saw it as a matter in which a segment of the population was being harmed. He shared his intent and concerns on social media with grace, insight, and compassion.
These are two examples of ways in which God’s people can engage in the world on a political level without sounding panicky or frantic that the status of their Christian values or rights is being undermined. At this point, I will confess that I tend to get caught up in semantics. This podcaster that I previously, kind of, threw under the bus, likely shares my beliefs in most areas. When she used the word “values” she could have been referring to deeply held convictions that were borne out of biblical truth. But she could also be referring to a collection of traditions passed down through the western church.
Something that Nancy espouses frequently in Total Truth is the need for Christians to be involved in every field of study and engaged in every arena of public debate. We do not need to shrink back and be silent. However, it is still better if we can check ourselves and be reminded that it is the Gospel and The Great Commission that need to be our starting point. There is no room for fear that our comfortable existence in the west will be upset or that God’s will can be thwarted.
It makes me think of the last word of the book of Acts. Unhindered. The message of Jesus Christ was unhindered. Paul was under house arrest and the church was being persecuted. From an outsider, at the time, it would look like the church was in dire straits but the Holy Spirit declared that the work of God was unhindered. Even now, if you take the time to look you will find God’s people doing wildly beautiful things. Loving fearlessly, giving generously, and caring with effective compassion. God is on the move, people, and He is unhindered.
It would seem that I got off on a bit of a tangent here. Perhaps. But what I am doing in my rambly way is to convey that the gospel of Jesus Christ is grander, bigger, and more glorious than any human attempt to be morally good or outwardly pious.
“Christians do not promote values, because we hold that Christianity is objectively true, not merely our private preference.” (Nancy Pearcey) The objective truth of God’s word, in all its holiness and profound love, reaches into the depths of the human heart and condition in a way that pursuing values never could.
