Eyewitness

I Corinthians 15

1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the

gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye

have received, and wherein ye stand;

2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in

memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have

believed in vain.

3 For I delivered unto you first of all that

which I also received, how that Christ died for

our sins according to the scriptures;

4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again

the third day according to the scriptures:

5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the

twelve:

6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred

brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain

unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

7 After that, he was seen of James; then of all

the apostles.

8 And last of all he was seen of me also, as of

one born out of due time.


Hmmm. After rereading the post from Saturday, I

see a couple mistakes that need correction. But

the central message is as clear as a bell. In my

view, Schaeffer did an excellent job of sorting

through the confusion of modern ideas. And I'm

left with the observation that theology, an

accurate view of G-d, man and the world, is

absolutely required in order to make sense of any

activity that men are busy with. Without being

properly centered around the Creator, the

activity of man leads to confusion,

meaninglessness and vanity.(This is

characteristic of what Schaeffer calls

'despair'.) If you read the founding documents

of this country you'll see that the authors of

those documents held the same opinion, since

they were mostly if not all, theologically

literate men. They clearly understood the

difference between the kingdom of heaven and the

kingdom of man.


One of the glaring omissions in public and

private life in the modern age is the lack of

theological literacy. I'm completely baffled by

the effort that men make, in order to ignore the

record of scripture and the record of secular

history. They can't really believe that in the

present age that we will be successful in

efforts that always failed in the past? You'd

think that especially in a technically advanced

society that there would be recognition of the

fact that there is a rule of Law in every

dimension of the universe. The physical universe

is orderly, but the social universe, ruled by the

kingdom of man shows no respect for the Law. Can

anyone really believe that the result is going to

be good? Has it ever worked out in the past? To

some degree, it depends on what you mean by

'worked out'. What I mean by 'worked out' is the

never ending military activity and social

conflict that characterizes every chapter in the

history of the kingdom of man. In the absence of

theological literacy, the failures of the kingdom

of man are impossible to accurately understand --

nothing will ever be gained from the experience.


What I can see is that without theological

literacy, all of human activity is centered in

immediate gratification. The rule is, I have to

take whatever I can at any cost, and I have to do

it as quickly as possible without any concern for

the welfare of others. This rule is applied

across the board. The measure of success is only

the immediate gratification. Focus becomes very

short term in most cases. And any sense of

satisfaction is immediately lost on the next urge

that demands gratification. It's a junkie

mindset that results from the lack of theological

literacy.


What troubles me is that as time passes, modern

social activities are looking more and more like

they revolve around the junkie behavioral model.

It's not just me making this up. Over the past

couple years, I've been clued-in to the changes

taking place in social behavior by some of the

things that I read. I seldom watch TV, but it

offers further evidence of the prevalence of the

junkie mindset.


This is all written in generalizations, but I can

be specific. I can go on at the personal level,

about my marriage and the toll it's taken there.

And I've seen enough to know that it's not just

me. I can go on about the present condition of

the financial world, but Lowenstein already did a

book on Enron/Arthur Anderson that accurately

characterizes the condition there. I can go on

about the political situation, but that's water

under the bridge. I can go further down the path

with observations about the entertainment/media

conplex. Or I can relate my experience traveling

across the country from coast to coast. In every

area of social life, across the entire spectrum

of American experience there is a decline induced

by what I identify as the junkie mindset of

self-centered immediate gratification.


My conclusion is that it will all end badly, and

this country is no longer a safe and healthy

environment for raising children. Oh, we've

managed to build a massive house of cards, but

where do we go from here? The stage is set for

social decline. The only question in my mind is

whether the decline will be a sudden collapse or

a long drawn out series of social conflicts.

History shows that it can go either way, but I

don't have any insight into the factors that

determine the course of events or where a tipping

point might be or a possible catalyst for

accelerating the inevitable. Some of the

conspiracy theories offer different views as to

the source and motivation for change, but I'm

more inclined to believe that the flaws are found

in human nature, as it is accurately described in

theological terms. The kingdom of man wishes to

worship the god of this world -- satan. And

satan is eager to destroy the souls of men, with

the empty promise of worldly pleasure and power.

Always, in the end, that path leads to the junkie

mindset. And that mindset cannot provide a safe

and healthy environment.


In my travels, I saw that the safest and

healthiest environments were in those locales

that would be considered 'backwards' in the naive

perspective of the modern mind. I never saw gang

grafitti in an Amish community, for instance.

But in any region where there is an abundance of

'adult entertainment', you will also find

grafitti and bars on windows and doors, or other

types of security measures required. It doesn't

require any genius to figure it out. It's

obvious. Personally, I don't want to live in a

neighborhood or region that's littered with

grafitti or has criminal activity of any kind.

(In fact, I personally dislike any area that's

littered with billboards.) But that's the most

obvious signal of the general decline in social

standards from coast to coast. The 'adult

entertainment' that used to be confined in ghetto

areas across the country has come to be

acceptable in almost every urban setting. There

was a time when it was considered to be

undesireable to have an 'adult' establishment in

a community. The ghetto, along with the junkie

mindset is no longer contained within the

confines of undesireable neighborhoods. On the

other hand, it might be that there are just more

undesireable neighborhoods, and the extent of

that undesireability is reflected by the

ubiquitous presence of 'adult' establishments.

The entire country has been turned into a

'ghetto'. I prefer 'backwards' to 'ghetto' any

day of the week.


It seems my preference puts me firmly in the

minority position. The transformation of the

urban landscape into oversized ghettos doesn't

seem to bother most people very much, unless I'm

just not aware of a silent majority. I'd suspect

that there are other metrics that could be

applied in order to make a case for the expansion

of ghetto Amerika. You know, high school dropout

rates, teen pregnancy, unemployment, petty crime,

drug use, general incidence of police activity

and other social trends. Maybe someone's already

written a book. I don't know what sociologists

study these days. All I know is what I've seen

traveling from coast to coast, and if that is any

indication of the majority position, then I'm

clearly in the minority.


If the rise of ghetto culture in this country is

any indication of what's to come, then it's hard

to be solidly optimistic about the future of this

country. Of course, the kingdom of man has no

future, but that's another topic. To draw any

conclusion about the future rate of decline is to

speculate. But if my observations are accurate,

one thing that is characteristic of the ghetto

culture is that it is inherently unstable. It's

a world that revolves around 'me'. That

instability tends to be a destructive and

volatile force, if the past is any indication.

So if I were to speculate about the decline that

lies ahead, I'd have to expect that it will be an

accelerating trend. Unless events make a sudden

and unexpected turnaround, there is little reason

for optimism about the most likely outcome for

ghetto Amerika.


The question to answer is, Will ghetto Amerika be

contained? My guess is that it will be widely

contained, but probably absent in many of the

more rural (backward) areas of the U.S.


Here's another quote from Schaeffer:


"There is a real tension in being a modern man

because no one can live at ease in the area of

despair. A Christian knows that this is because

man has been made in the image of G-d and though

man is fallen, separated from G-d by his true

guilt, yet nevertheless he has not become a

machine. The falleness of man does not lead to

'machineness', but to 'fallen-manness'.

Therefore, when people feel this utter despair,

there is a titanic pressure, like being extruded

against all the long history of reasoned thinking

to accept a dichotomy, and then later to accept

some mysticism which gives an illusion of unity

to the whole."

"I remember sitting in a Lyons' Corner House near

Marble Arch in London some years ago, talking to

a brilliant young physicist. I asked him about

the latest work he was doing, and he told me

about a new idea that he thought might solve

Einstein's problem concerning electromagnetism

and gravity. He became very enthusiastic about

this, because I knew enough about the subject to

stimulate him, and he was far away in thought.

Then I brought him back by saying, 'This is fine

for the Christian, who really knows who he is, to

say that the material universe may finally be

reduced to energy particles moving in opposite

directions in a vortex, but what about your

naturalistic colleagues? What happens to them

when they go home to their wives and families at

night?' "

"He paused for a moment and then said, 'Oh, Dr.

Schaeffer, they just have to live in a

dichotomy.'"

"The very 'mannishness' of man refuses to live in

the logic of the position to which his humanism

and rationalism have brought him. To say that I

am only a machine is one thing; to live

consistently as if this were true is quite

another." pp 67-8


Another simplistic way to understand what

Schaeffer says here is to realize that even

though a person believes in evolution, except in

rare instances they live with the contradiction

between what they want to believe about evolution

and how they relate to others on a personal

level. You see, evolution says that we have no

purpose or meaning in this life except to eat,

sleep, reproduce and die. That's it. But at the

personal level, we know that others, especially

those whom we love, are more important than, for

instance, our car, our lawn mower or our

parakeet. 'Mannishness' includes the idea that

we are more than just machines with the ability to reproduce.

You might know of people who don't provide much

evidence of 'mannishness', in the sense that it

is a reflection of the image of their Creator,

but the very fact that you recognize that man is

meant for more than reproduction is evidence of

the Divine nature planted in man. So the

naturalist lives with that contradiction between

what he wants to believe and what he does; the

dichotomy that creates tension.


I mention evolution because it's the popular

mythology. Schaeffer mentions field theory in

this quote. But the unifying concept is the same

as far as how the personal nature of man fits

into the physical universe. Cosmology can't

explain the personal nature of man any better

than the theory of evolution. The dichotomy is

still there. It just gets brushed aside. A

clever cosmologist will carefully avoid the

question because he knows that he doesn't have an

answer. Jesus made some people uncomfortable

because he confronted them with their own nature.

(Jesus kept telling them, I am your answer.)

Christians still do the same today because they

don't live with the dichotomy that creates so

much tension within modern man and his popular

mythology.


"On the basis of biblical Christianity a rational

discussion and consideration can take place,

because it is fixed in the stuff of history.

When Paul was asked whether Jesus was raised from

the dead, he gave a completely nonreligious

answer, in the twentieth-century sense. He said,

'There are almost 500 living witnesses; go and

ask them!' This is the faith that involves the

whole man, including his reason; it does not ask

for a belief into the void. As the

twentieth-century mentality would understand the

concept of religion, the Bible is a nonreligious

book." pp 69-70


In other words, in the passage of scripture above

the Apostle says that what he experienced is

something that has also been the experience of

500 or more other people. It is not some kind of

mystical experience that can't be communicated or

was experienced in a different way by each of the

500 other people. It is a concrete fact of

historical record that Jesus arose from the tomb

and was seen by at least 500 eyewitnesses. Jesus

demonstrated his power over death, hell and the

grave. Given that level of demonstrated

authority, we ought to be listening to what Jesus

had to say about who G-d is, who man is and what

the world is.