Then Felix, who was well acquainted with the Way, adjourned the proceedings. "When Lysias the commander comes," he said, "I will decide your case." He ordered the centurion to keep Paul under guard, but to give him some freedom and permit his friends to take care of his needs.
Several days later Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was a Jewess. He sent for Paul and listened to him as he spoke about faith in Christ Jesus. As Paul discoursed on righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid and said, "That's enough for now! You may leave. When I find it convenient, I will send for you." At the same time he was hoping that Paul would offer him a bribe, so he sent for him frequently, and talked with him. (vv. 22-26)
Many of you may have read the following poem in one commentary or another, or seen it in some devotional book. Unfortunately there is uncertainty as to who authored these lines. That aside, it may be rightly inferred that they were penned either by someone in Christian ministry or by someone very close to someone in ministry:
When God wants to drill a man, and thrill a man, and skill a man;
When God wants to mold a man to play the noblest part;
When He yearns with all His heart to create so great and bold a man
That all the world might be amazed;
Watch His methods, watch His ways.
How He ruthlessly perfects whom He royally elects.
How He hammers and hurts him, and with mighty blows converts him,
Into trial shapes of clay which only God understands,
While his tortured heart is crying and he lifts beseeching hands.
How he bends but never breaks, when his good He undertakes.
How He uses whom He chooses and with every purpose fuses him,
With mighty acts induces him to try His splendor out.
God knows what He's about.
The longer I have been in ministry, the more I have reflected on the extraordinary ways in which God molds and shapes his chosen instruments. An old adage says: "He who shapes the back for the burden, also shapes the burden for the back." The Scriptures are filled with narratives of God's shaping process. He raised Joseph in a desert in order to use him in a palace. He raised Moses in a palace in order to use him in a desert. In that glorious passage in Luke's third chapter we read: "In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene-during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert." Did you hear that? There were seven larger-than-life characters punctuating the historical landscape, yet the word of the Lord came to a rather strange man wearing strange clothes and eating strange food, appointing him to stand before the Herods of his time.
Billy Graham was once asked by a press reporter, "How is it that there are so many more educated and more capable preachers in this world but God has chosen you to become the evangelist to the world?" Out of the overflow of his own humility, Billy Graham said, "When I get to heaven that is going to be my first question." Every one of us who has been called into the privileged role of vocational Christian ministry will have the same question for God. You know the glorious sensation every time God uses you. You walk away wondering how this is even possible-that he has taken such a weak, stumbling vessel and somehow brought something good through you. Paul, I believe, saw himself that way. He describes himself in his conversion as one abnormally born, almost prefiguring what C. S. Lewis said of his own conversion as one dragged into the kingdom kicking and screaming, "the most ... reluctant convert in all of England" (1955, 228-29). The apostle Paul, as one commentator paraphrases him, describes it in more visceral terms: "I was torn, wrenched away from my mother's womb, the most feisty convert in all of Palestine." And yet God raised him up.
Paul's biographical background helps put in perspective the shaping process begun long before this moment in front of Felix. He was born a Hebrew He was a citizen of Rome. He lived in a Greek city. At his commission, God said of him, "This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name" (Acts 9:15-16). One might well ask what was in him that was so unique. From his pen flowed a third of the New Testament. Through his dogged determination and answer to God's call, the Gentile world was to hear the grand news of the gospel. Better still, what is it that God poured into him? And how do we understand the methods that he used from which we can borrow in our time as well?
New Testament scholar William Barclay suggests that when Jesus ascended into heaven, Christians were possibly outnumbered by about one to thirty thousand. Some scholars challenge the exact number, but none suggests that the disparity was anything less than humanly insurmountable. Not only were the numbers staggeringly disproportionate, but the cultural animosities ran deep and passionate.
While we live in this postmodern era characterized by such strident uprooting of shared meanings from the past, let us remind ourselves that it was not any easier in Paul's time. He faced an immense challenge too, particularly in Corinth. The temple of Aphrodite spilled out its prostitutes by the hundreds every night; indeed, Corinth was a byword for sensuality and debauchery Rome's erratic and erotic self-indulgence speaks volumes even in the fallen stones of Pompeii visible to this day. The arrogance of Greek learning punctuates landmarks in philosophy. Into this discord came Paul, and now he stands before Felix. I present this man as a model because he had both theological integrity and methodological genius. He did not put asunder what God had joined together. Here is the setting as described in the words of one commentator:
What a contrast. On the throne sat Felix, the faded and withered pagan. A former slave. He became a favorite of Claudius, and by that emperor was exalted to high rank. Greed, cruelty and lust were stamped upon his countenance. His administration as procurator of Judea had been marked by injustice, extortion and violence. By his side sat the lovely Jewess Drusilla, a daughter of Herod Agrippa. She had first married a Gentile, who to please her, had become a Jew. Then Felix, with the aid of a sorcerer's incantations, had won her from her husband and was living with her in sin and shame. All that was dishonorable in mankind was represented by that combination of Felix and Drusilla as they sat on the throne awaiting the address by Saint Paul. Before them, with chains on his arms and his body scarred with the marks of his sufferings for Christ's sake, and his coarse garment, which his own hands had woven, contrasting with the velvet and purple of Felix and his paramour, stood the lonely ambassador for Christ. (Macartney 1974, 142)
I cannot help but think of a similar moment when Mother Teresa stood before the leaders of our time and addressed the attendees at the Presidential Prayer Breakfast in Washington. This diminutive woman, just four feet and a few inches tall, stood in front of an audience of luminaries from around the world and fearlessly pleaded for the protection of babies in their mothers' wombs. She called for leaders to take pity on the weakest and to show compassion on the little ones. "How," she asked, "can we speak out against violence when we are the most brutal with the most defenseless?" Numerous media elite reported on that awkward moment for the president, the vice president, and their wives, as this meek and selfless person spoke with conviction. The "weak" of this world confounded the "strong." Such was the scene centuries ago when Paul stood before Felix.
The first thing he did as he discoursed before Felix was to broach the theme of righteousness. In short, he found some common ground as a point of reference. Os Guinness contends that there are at least four stages that we have to bear in mind for effective communication: identification, translation, persuasion, and justification. First, the communicator identifies with the listener. Some point of resonance must be struck with the listener. Then, one must make sure that the content of communication is within the idiom of the one to whom the communication is made. This is the step of translation. Next, the ideas being transmitted must have a persuasive element to them. Finally, there must be justification, answering the question of why the ideas presented are worthy of being accepted over against any variation or contradiction of them.
In that first step of identification, it is critical that we find a point of reference and common ground. After being on campuses now for a few years trying to communicate the beauty and the cogency of the gospel, I have noticed some trends. There was a time when the cosmological argument-arguing from causality and the First Cause to this present universe-was an extremely powerful argument. There is no doubt that the argument is still valid and even needed, but the receptivity to such an argument has been dulled over the years and pompously blunted by naturalistic scientists. From the misuse of David Hume's arguments to a Big Bang mysticism, skeptical cosmologists mock even its legitimate use. They themselves assume causality in all matters of effect, but when it comes to the universe's existence, they ignore causality and do not ask questions of the Big Bang that they would ask of any other bang-What caused it? In many academic settings, therefore, one comes to a dead end, arguing against a prejudice that refuses to change.
We move then to the teleological argument, the argument from purpose and design to Designer and Creator. But talking about the specified complexity and the intelligibility in this universe only brings the inevitable challenge as naturalists constantly blur the distinction between aesthetic design and intelligent design. Arguing for a Creator is John Polkinghorne from Cambridge University, in his book The Quantum World, and Michael Behe, who in his book Darwin's Black Box, shows us the irreducible complexity of the human cell, which biological evolution cannot explain. Behe's expertise in biochemistry prompts him to state unequivocally that biochemically, macroevolution is impossible. To that assertion, atheistic thinkers like Richard Dawkins respond with the charge of "intellectual laziness." Convinced of a "Blind Watchmaker," they argue that somehow, sometime, they will find out how design is actually just random that anything would look like design if you pulled it out from a myriad of possibilities. Not only do they argue against their opponents, but in effect they argue against their own assumptions in life. Nevertheless, they have worked hard to neutralize the design argument just as they did the cosmological argument.
Where then does one go to find common ground? I refer to the moral argument, which argues for God from morality. This issue captures the interest of most minds, and even the postmodernist struggles with it and finds himself hard-pressed to escape from its clutches. Naturalists are trying valiantly even as I speak to show how even our moral sense has evolved. New articles are being written on the biogenesis of ethics. But the point I want to make is that no matter where you go across the globe, when you get into the throes of the moral argument, people are listening. Whether you're in Bombay or Nottingham, whether you're in Harvard or Princeton, students listen carefully when this subject is addressed. In last month's issue of Atlantic Monthly, an ethicist attempted a full hit at our moral sense and said we can now completely explain ethics on the basis of biology. A feeble attempt to be sure, but it is a desperate move to take away the last argument that throbs within the human frame. They try hard to formulate in their minds a response to the question of how objective ethics can somehow exist without a transcendent reality They struggle with it, and that struggle is evident.
A few years ago I was speaking at the Center for Geopolitical Strategy in Moscow. It was a very difficult three-hour session. I sat with seven generals around me. My wife was with me, along with one of my colleagues, and around us were atheists systematically and intensely throwing their questions at me. When one walked into the building, one felt dwarfed because of its size-eight stories above ground, four stories below ground. But more than its size was its story of a nation. This is where the mind of the former Soviet Union was forged. Anybody who was a great name in the country had graduated from there.
We sat with faculty members as grim in countenance as imagination had conjured up through pictures. Their pointed questioning seemed relentless and unwavering. But then a break came. In an effort to disarm them from their official self-exaltation, I asked them why their young people were in such a hopeless state if their ideology was as effective as it was pretending to be. Why is it, I asked, that they were unable to harness the heart with respect for life after decades of indoctrination in egalitarianism? Then, as I shared my own conversion story from a bed of suicide, it was as if the scales began to fall from their eyes.
That night my wife and I had dinner with the chief historian. We sat in a very meager-looking restaurant having a meal together. I leaned over and said, -General, I have a question for you, sir. Have you ever read the story of Joseph Stalin? As you know, he was once a seminary student, and then abandoned his faith in God and decided to knock God out of his people entirely"
I then told him the following story: "Stalin was having dinner with a woman who was a visitor from overseas. In the course of their conversation, she asked him how long he expected his people to follow him while he tortured them so relentlessly Stalin did not answer her. He asked the waiter to bring a live chicken; he clutched the live chicken under his arm as he proceeded to defeather the bird. He completely denuded it and placed that bird on the floor. Then he picked up a piece of bread and moved away The chicken hobbled over to him and nestled between his trouser legs. He bent down with the bread in his hand, and the chicken started to peck away at that bread. Stalin looked at the questioner and said, ‘Madame, have you seen this? I inflicted such pain on this chicken. It'll follow me for food the rest of its life. People are like that chicken. You inflict pain on them, and they will follow you for the rest of their lives.' What do you think of that story, General?"' I paused and endured the silence.
He could not fight back the tears that flooded his eyes, and his lips quivered as he nodded his head. He knew what he had seen in his country. In these seven decades, the bequest of a philosophy that masqueraded as one for the common man had reduced life to that of refuse. Is it not intriguing, though, that even in an atheistic nation, the moral law still stabbed like a hatpin in the heart, which bleeds in silence. Even while one may want to fight it, there seems a paucity of words.
When Mother Teresa finished her talk in Washington, the entire audience of hundreds rose to their feet in a standing ovation. The president, the vice president, and their wives did not stand because the issue was very clearly a challenge to their views. And so they stayed seated on the platform as the audience rose to its feet. Philip Yancey, who interviewed the president after it was over and he was in the presidential limousine, made this comment: "Just before we bade good-bye to the President, I said, `President Clinton, what did you think of what Mother Teresa had to say today?"' President Clinton paused, and said, "It is very difficult to argue against a life so beautifully lived."
It is vitally important in the last moments of this century, when only vestiges remain of moral law, that somehow we reach into what remains to find common ground. Paul shows us how and why he held on to this as his first point of entry. Paul is obviously reasoning with an unrighteousness man about righteousness. He is talking to a Roman. He knows that some perspectives on morality were not the same. But think with me for a moment about how he probably presented the issue.
Paul was a Hebrew by birth, a citizen of Rome living in a Greek city. For the Hebrews, the ideal was symbolized by light: "The Lord is my light and my salvation." "This is the light that lights every man that comes into the world." "The people that sat in darkness have seen a great light." For the Hebrews, that was the epitome of every ideal. For the Greeks, the ideal was knowledge-episteme-from which we get epistemology, to know, to understand the truth. Their legacy is the academy. Philosophy, the love of wisdom, is rooted in Greek thought. For the Romans, the ideal was the pursuit of glory. Rome was the city of which it was said that it was not built in a day, that it was a city to which all roads converged-the glory of Rome. It was the city over which Augustine wept as the barbarians scaled its walls and ransacked it. From that destruction of what he had thought was an eternal city, he penned his immortal City of God. For the Hebrews-light; for the Greeks-knowledge; for the Romans-glory.
Here stands a man, a product of these three cultures. How does he engage all three? Writing to the church at Corinth, he says this: "For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,' made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6, italics added).
A face. A face bearing the focus of all that the best of human ideals could have pursued. The light of light, the source of all truth, and the supreme glory.
When I was growing up in India, we had a man working in our home. He came from a village, and city life with all of its offerings was quite foreign to him. One day my mother gave him some money to go and see a movie. He'd never seen a movie. She instructed him on how to purchase the ticket and that there would be an usher to help him find a seat. He got all dressed up, polished his shoes and off he went. He got there late, bought the ticket and entered through the front door. Everything was dark and all he could see were beams coming in through the back wall. He stood there for a few moments enthralled with the particles of light emerging through little openings in the wall. He thought this was wonderful, and indeed it kept him entertained for a few fleeting moments until he thought the sound was coming from the opposite side. So he decided to turn around, and suddenly he saw the screen filled with a face and a scene that matched the sound and told the story. He let out a shout of glee of Archimedean proportions. In fact, he caused such a disturbance that one of the ushers had to come and commandeer him to his seat.
That is, to me, a perfect illustration of human pursuits-thinking we have found it in our tiny little specks of information. But then all of our efforts, exploits, and yearnings are like beams of light, finding a consummate expression upon a face: the face of Jesus Christ. For Paul, righteousness was no longer an idea or an attainment, as much as it was an embodiment and an imputation that followed such a recognition. How much we need to learn from this message.
All around us we hear thundering forth the word morality. Yes, we must be a moral people. But morality is a fruit, not a tree. The tree is rooted in Christ's righteousness from whom the nourishment comes to produce the fruit of moral purity. I challenge you: when you are preaching righteousness, when you are calling a people to goodness, do not stop with morality alone, because a nation can be morally lost just as easily as immorally lost. What you have to point to ultimately is the centerpiece of righteousness, our Lord Jesus Christ. Righteousness or morality is still a point of reference, but the word is vacuous without Christ as the referent. Incidentally, that is why C. S. Lewis has been one of the most powerful apologists of this century. He well understood that the unshakable moral sense within every culture only made sense by invoking the "Lion of the Tribe of Judah."
Paul moves from a point of reference to a point relevance. He talks to Felix about self-control. Do you think Felix needed to hear about self-control? Living with a sixteen-year-old, whom he had procured through a sorcerer's incantations, he was hardly a man whose passions are well ordered. She was another man's wife when Felix orchestrated this steal. He himself had been married several times. With the power of a king, he still lived with the mind enslaved by sensuality and power. With honor and genius, Paul talked to him about self-control, a point of relevance for him.
The Holy Scriptures are filled with such points of relevance whenever God speaks to a nation or to individuals. A few days ago, along with my wife and some friends, I was seated on the hillside of ancient Laodicea in Turkey We opened the Bible and read from Revelation 3. Laodicea was known for three or four things. The city was a wealthy one, and its inhabitants bragged of their riches. The textile and garment industry flourished. They were known for an eye ointment that they had manufactured and sold to many parts of the world. It was a popular spot for visitors because of the nearby hot springs at Hierapolis. Known for their wealth, their textiles, their eye ointment, and their hot springs-what does the Word of God say to the Laodiceans through John's Revelation? He says, "You think you are rich, but actually you are very poor. Come and buy gold off me so I can clothe you in white linen, and anoint your eyes that you may see, for you are neither hot nor cold." You think they understood what that meant? The relevance!
With the same kind of relevance, God spoke to Sardis, which had been conquered while its soldiers were asleep. God said to the church at Sardis, "Stay on your watch! Stay on your watch!"
Where is the point of relevance in our time? I believe it is the hunger for love. Even one as cerebrally intimidating as Bertrand Russell said that love was an unsatisfied hunger in his life. Bear in mind that as I say this, my ministry often takes me into the arena of argumentation. I am often forced to deal with arguments and counterarguments. But now, after two and a half decades in the ministry, there are some truths that emerge more clearly, more beautifully, more persuasively in my own mind. We as Christians make a staggering claim: we lay claim to truth that is exclusive. In a society that not only does not believe in a metanarrative or in exclusivity but also rejects the notion of objective truth, ours is a monumental claim. We proclaim one way to God Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. When we lay claim to truth in such radical terms, it is imperative that such truth be undergirded by love. If it is not undergirded by love, it makes the possessor of that truth obnoxious and the dogma repulsive. I believe it is vital that we understand this.
Two years ago when my wife and I went to Honolulu to be alone for a few days, I recalled the story of the famed missionary Joseph Damien, known as Damien of Molokai. That island is one of the most beautiful parts of the world. But Damien, who was Belgian by birth, left his homeland, not because he sought an Edenic setting, but because he wanted to minister to the inhabitants of that island who were expelled to that spot for having leprosy All of the Hawaiian islands spilled out their lepers into Molokai, for people feared contagion and knew nothing of a cure. Here in a land of great beauty those decimated by this dreaded disease were imprisoned by the world's tallest sea cliffs. To this very day, although the numbers now are few because of a cure, visitors may not just arrive on impulse. Special permission needs to be obtained, and we were able to receive it. What a memorable day that was!
In this setting Joseph Damien poured his life into those people. He embraced them. He loved them. He literally gave his life for them. One morning as he was pouring some boiling water into a cup, the water swirled out of the cup and fell onto his bare foot. He was rudely awakened to the fact that when the boiling water fell on his foot he did not feel it. He took some more boiling water, poured it onto the other foot, and there was no sensation at all. He was terrified of the ramifications. He got ready that morning, went behind the pulpit, and nobody there knew why he changed his opening line. He always began his sermon by saying, "My fellow believers." This morning, however, he began by saying, "My fellow lepers." He was now one of them.
Before we left, we walked into the bookstore and saw the picture of a beautiful young woman on the cover of a book. Her name was Olivia. The book was her story. I turned through the pages and saw how over the years the disease had marred and deformed her body. It was a terrible thing to see. My eyes were drawn to a letter she had written to the well-known actor Alan Alda. She wrote in words to this effect: "In my lonely, wretched life here I enjoy a few things. One of them is watching your program M*A*S*H. But, Mr. Alda, I was very troubled this evening watching today's episode. In one of those attempts at humor you looked at your colleagues, and commenting on the mess in the room, you said, `What do you think you are? A bunch of lepers living in a leper colony?' Mr. Alda, please don't ever say anything like that again. Those of us who have leprosy are not lepers. We are people who happen to have leprosy."
As we were leaving, I looked at the woman who was showing us around, and I said, "I see a marker here for Joseph Damien's grave. Is Damien buried here?"
"No, sir. Damien is buried back in his home country in Belgium," she said. "The government demanded that his body be flown back." But the people from here wrote and pleaded with them to please send the body to Molokai, for they were the people who found life because of him. Yet the Belgium government saw him as one of their great heroes and wanted to keep his body there. The people wrote back, saying, "Would you consider sending some part of his body, some memory of his physical presence, that we can bury him here?" The authorities cut off the right arm from his corpse, and it is buried in Molokai. That was the arm that reached out to these people who were discarded from life's mainstream.
As we boarded the small plane to leave, I said to my wife, "Isn't it a telling illustration? Leprosy desensitizes you to the sensation of touch. But it did not desensitize them to the reach of love."
It is of enormous interest to ask recent converts to Christ-converts from one of the world's major religions, why, humanly speaking, they were drawn to Christ. The answer is commonly one of two predictable replies. Either there was a supernatural intervention within their lives, or a Christian cared enough to reach out to them by life and example. The miraculous, interestingly enough, "works" within their philosophical worldview of angelic messengers. The reach of love works within their frame of existential need. To many of them, strangely enough, apologetics works after their conversion as they are challenged by those who wish to accuse them of surrendering to a "false system of belief."
With all of the proclamation, let us not stop loving the people to whom we minister. One of the things I've learned is that the antagonist will thank you for being patient and kind, not for being hostile or attacking. The audiences listen to you in courtesy because they long for a point of relevance in a world where many hunger to belong and to experience love. Postmodernism has been categorized by some as "a structure of feeling," and this characterization provides the church with both a predicament and a solution. God himself speaks in emotionally laden terms.
The felt need cannot be ignored, but it is important that having met on common ground, we rise to the higher ground of truth, not just emotion. To that end, there is a narrative behind the love. Love does not come without either a story behind it or a story ahead of it. The story is a gripping point of contact. But it is a story grounded in truth. I am not at all surprised that in numerous encounters, Paul pauses to tell his own story because it pointed to the gospel story. The true story, the narrative, the illustration may unlock more suppressed emotions and bring translation to a person better than any argument could.
Paul guides us from a point of reference through a point of relevance to a point of disturbance. His final challenge to Felix comes when he reminds this petty potentate that there is a judge of all the earth. Os Guinness, in the book No God but God, which he coauthored with John Seel, says: "It is truth that gives relevance to ‘relevance', just as ‘relevance' becomes irrelevant if it is not related to truth" (1992, 169). That is an important caution to remember, the more so in this postmodernist mind-set when truth is displaced by "relevance." There was no compulsion in Paul to avoid the hard part of his message. He could have stayed with the more palatable aspects of the gospel. But for this chosen instrument, the gospel had the uninviting dimension of judgment as well.
Properly understood, the prospect of judgment forms an important part of rescuing us from our own self-destructiveness. Recently I received a letter from a new Christian studying at a sophisticated university overseas. She stated that whenever she read of the cross, it brought her to her knees, and she would weep thinking about the love of Christ. But whenever she read of hell, it made her angry with God. How fascinating, I thought. Reading about the cross without seeing the hell of it is not understanding the cross at all.
So we are reminded again that all of Paul's genius in method did not rob him of the responsibility of theological integrity But then, we might well ask, why this approach? Why this track on which to come to Felix? Why righteousness, self-control, and judgment? Was it because they are the tenses of the Christian faith? The past of every person's sin countered with the righteousness of Christ? The present of temptation responded to by the strength of self-control within the believer? The future of judgment secured by God? Or was it because of the three persons of the Holy Trinity? The Son brings us into righteousness; the Holy Spirit gives us self-control; and the Father, in judgment, offers mercy? Or perhaps Paul was thinking much more of the promise of the Holy Spirit offered in John 16:8-11 where Jesus says: "When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment."
I lean to the last of these explanations. Paul knew what it was that the Holy Spirit had promised to bless. Conviction is the prerogative of the Holy Spirit. The communicator of the gospel finds concepts that the listener will find persuasive, but the transformation from unbelief to belief is only legitimate when God brings about that change, not our eloquence or genius. The apologist clears the bushes so the listener can take a good look at the cross, and it is the Holy Spirit who brings about the change in the heart of the individual.
What happened next in this encounter is fascinating! Felix kept Paul around for some time to see if Paul would offer him a bribe. Do you see what is going on here? What would Felix have inferred if Paul had tried to bribe him? He would have dismissed Paul's message of righteousness as all theory!
He would have uncovered Paul's offer of self-control as duplicitous. He would have mocked Paul's caution of judgment as hypocritical. In short, the cardinal claims that the messenger had laid before the skeptic were now being tested within the messenger himself.
Marie Chapian in her book Of Whom the World Was Not Worthy tells of an evangelist named Yakov who was witnessing to an older man by the name of Cimmerman who knew a great deal about the church and politics, and despised the hypocrisy he had seen in the church. When Yakov talked to him about the love of Christ, Cimmerman said, "Don't talk to me about Christ! You see those priests there, with all their vestments, all of their cloaks, all of the big crosses on their chests? I know what they're like. They're violent people. They have abused their power. Don't tell me about Christ! I know what it is like to watch them kill our people, even some of my own relatives."
Yakov paused for a moment and then said, "Cimmerman, can I ask you a question? What if I stole your coat and your boots, put them on, broke into a bank and took the money? I was chased by the police but I outran them. What would you say if the police came knocking on your door and charged you with breaking into a bank?"
Cimmerman said, "I would deny it because I did not."
"Ah! But what if they say that they recognized your coat and your boots from a distance? You had to have broken into the bank!"
Cimmerman said, "Yakov, just leave me alone. I know what you're driving at. I do not want to get into this discussion."
Yakov went away, but he kept coming back only to live the love of Christ before him. Finally one day Cimmerman said, "Yakov, tell me about this Christ that you so love and live for. How can I know him?" Yakov told him how to commit his life to Christ. Cimmerman knelt down on the dust outside his home with Yakov and received Christ into his life. He stood up and embraced Yakov and said, "Thank you for being in my life. You wear his coat very well."
The morning after I finished my open forum at the University of Iowa, one of the organizers told us of a conversation he had with a medical doctor he had brought with him the previous night, who was a very outspoken skeptic. As his wife drove this doctor back home, she looked at her and said, "What did you think of this evening?"
She answered, "Very, very persuasive. I wonder what he is like in his private life?"
What our culture needs is an apologetic that is not merely argued, but also felt. There has to be a passion in the communication. There must be a felt reality beyond the cognitive, engaging the feeling of the listener. Second, it must be an apologetic that is not merely heard, but also seen. We live within a context that listens with its eyes. So much has happened over the last few years to discredit the carriers of the gospel that seeing is indeed going to be a precursor to believing.
Finally, we need an apologetic that will rescue not only the ends but also the means. I bemoan the loss of linguistic strength in our time. Jacques Ellul rightly describes this culture as one that has humiliated the word; we have lost the beauty in language. Alexander Pope described the conversion of water into wine: "The conscious water saw its master and blushed." A thousand pictures could not do better than that word picture for us.
Our postmodern mind-set has not only relegated words to a lesser value but has lost the splendor of possibilities in verbal communication. The apostle Peter in his letter has a worthy reminder to all who tend to get preoccupied with the experiential and lose the propositional. He himself experienced one of the grandest spectacles ever vouchsafed to the human eye. He was witness to the transfiguration of our Lord and had seen Moses and Elijah descend in that momentous event. He was so overcome by this glimpse of the eternal that he wanted to make his home on that mountain and not return to the drabness of ordinary existence any more. Yet it is this very Peter who in his epistle warns us to stay firm in our commitment because "we now have the most sure word of prophecy" The written had a more eternal reality than the momentary exhilaration of a single experience.
In the beginning was not video. In the beginning was the Word. To a generation to whom life and feeling have become inseparable, how wonderful to bring the answer in which life and word become inseparable, even as the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.
References
Behe, Michael. 1996. Darwin's Black Box. New York: Free Press.
Chapian, Marie. 1978. Of Whom the World Was Not Worthy. Minneapolis: Bethany
Guinness, Os, and John Seel. 1992. No God but God. Chicago: Moody Press.
Lewis, C. S. 1955. Surprised by Joy. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
Macartney, Clarence E. 1974. Bible Epitaphs. Grand Rapids: Baker.
Polkinghorne, John. 1989. The Quantum World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Extracted from D.A.'s Carson (General Editor)'s Tell the Truth
wonderful sermon... weldone sir. May God increase you.
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