The Secular Influence

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     Although the readers of this little journal represent many schools of thought and are identified with many of the religious sects current in our day, they generally agree that God has communicated his will to mankind, and the revelation is contained in what we call the sacred scriptures. I use the modifying term "generally" because an occasional reader takes me to task for my reliance upon the scriptures as of divine origin. We have some brethren who sit in the left field bleachers, just as we have others who are still looking for the ball park. But such objectors are so few that I need not take time out to establish either the genuineness or authenticity of the scriptures. I can deal with them on a "coffee break," but I will proceed upon the basis that proper reverence and respect will be accorded to the scriptures when I refer to them, or quote from them.

     In spite of the fact that all those who love God seek to understand and do his will, even the most casual reader and observer will recognize that the Christian profession as we see it exemplified in our day is not at all as it was portrayed by the inspired penmen in the earliest days of the proclamation of the Joyful News. Two things have happened to create the condition we face. On one hand our profession has been secularized, and on the other it has been sectarianized. These did not move in from the same direction at all. The first represents the encroachment of a culture which has been developing under the impact of the Machine Age and the Scientific Era. The other stems from the selfishness and immaturity of those whom God has called. It would be nice if we could stick our heads in the ecclesiastical sand and act as if they did not exist. But if we are honest we will face up to both of them. Neither will go away of itself.

     In this little treatise, which will no doubt turn out to be too long, I am going to deal with the influence of secularization. At the very outset it is important that we distinguish between the secularization of the community of faith, and the propagation or promulgation of "secularism" as a way of life. The latter is actually a "system of belief" which is arrogantly offered as an "honest alternative" to faith in God. It is touted as the only approach to human existence and the universe open to men who are possessed of both intellectuality and integrity. In effect it denies the reality or significance of anything that cannot be ascertained or measured by the methods of modern science.

     Secularism begins without God, continues without God, and ends without God. It is the same yesterday, today and forever. It is an interpretation of life which does not find either a necessity or place for God. In its postulate God is not needed to explain the origin of things, the maintenance of the universe, or the

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culmination of it. It repudiates the concepts of creation, providence and final judgment. One need not be too astute to recognize that it makes man answerable to no higher being than Self, and thus abdicates moral responsibility and leaves man dangling in space by a rope which is not fastened to anything above. A crash is simply inevitable because life is more than an Oriental rope-trick.

     It is also apparent that if the nature of God is such that it is not subject to measurement by the methods of natural science, the fact that he is not discovered or turned up by the experimental or laboratory process reveals nothing about the reality of Deity. All it proves is the inadequacy of the scientific process to measure the Infinite. If God is, as I believe he is, the uncreated, eternal First Cause, he cannot be confined and judged by natural science which can only deal with that which is at hand, and can never go back and discover the Hand which being unformed itself, gave form to all else.

     Mind you, secularism when boiled down and simmered away, is not a substitute for faith. It is in itself a "system of faith." It is predicated upon faith and conducts its research in faith. Although it pretends to scoff at faith it has never taken a step without it, nor can it exist without faith. Newman Smyth, in Reality of Faith wrote, "How many things hard to credit must one believe, in order not to be a Christian." So secularism has Man as its god, hedonism as its philosophy, and scientism as its religion. We must never forget that doubts are creeds. "Every denial is one facet of a proposition of which the other facet is an affirmation."

     But it is not of this we speak when we say that the Christian profession has become secularized. Instead, we refer to the fact that God's people exist in the ongoing flow of history, and that its attitudes and approaches to life penetrate and affect the saints in the world. Secularization means the gradual withdrawal of more and more areas of life from the control of the religious community, but it also means the exclusion of more and more areas of thought from the control of the revealed will of God.

     This presents some tensions, and secularization is not all evil. There is no stopping of history, except by the fiat of God. We cannot halt the world and hop off. Sometimes men mature within the historical process and because of it, and this always means a change with growing independence. This is true in the physical family. As the infant develops it changes, and each change fits it for the making of decisions which will culminate in its independence from the imposition of the will of others for its personal wellbeing. The relationship to the family remains and the affectional bond may actually grow stronger when it is no longer the result of helpless dependence. There is a difference between the leash which a mother uses to restrain a child from running off in a supermarket and the heart strings which bind a grown man to his aging parent. One purpose of Christ in visiting this planet was to make men free by encouraging them to mature. Prior to his coming the people of God were regarded as adolescents or minors, and were placed under a guardian or trustee. They were no better off than slaves, and were "close prisoners in the custody of the law, pending the revelation of Faith," as Paul wrote to the Galatians. The coming of Jesus changed all of this. He came "to purchase freedom for the subjects of the law in order that we might attain the status of sons."

     A slave is not independent. He can make no decisions. They are all made for him. But we are no longer under a written code. We are under grace. We are sons of God, and heirs by God's own act. Oftentimes a family will not allow a child to really grow up. Stronger members of the circle try to dominate him. And this also happens in the family of God. Now, however, we are seeing grave changes take place with reference to authoritarian institutions. Some of these are wrought in the life of the community of saints and many are worried sick and frightened. They think that the purpose

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of God is being thwarted in a decadent age. They are concerned because what is called "the church" can no longer keep its adherents under control. No one is asking how such control originated in the first place.

     Certainly there are grave dangers in the secularization process, but if divine providence uses it to make God's children grow up and accept the responsibilities of freedom, it will not be the first time that what appeared to be evil has been turned into good. God has a way of using historical phenomena to accomplish his purpose. And there is a shaking of the foundations in our day. Such upheaval will be most observable in rigid and authoritarian structures. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, has always been somewhat loose in regard to some aspects of individual moral behavior, having hitched its wagon rather to the sacramental star. So it is in the area of dogma and ritual that it is now being shaken. Even some of its "infallible" dogmata are being called in question by prominent leaders.

     What is taking place in the Mother of Sects is taking place among her daughters, as well as among some parties which vehemently deny that they have ever been related. The fact is that every group which acknowledges that Jesus has come in the flesh is in trouble, and the woes are compounded when priests, prelates or preachers mistake all demands for and assertions of freedom as rebellion against God. The sectarianism is evident in that each party rejoices that all of the others are in difficulty. Those who demand an end to tyranny over thought in other sects are hailed as heroes, those who do so in our own are branded as traitors. In an earlier age we would have cheerfully burned them as heretics. Now we brand them as "liberals."

     Once the community by group pressure and by threats, innuendo and boycott, regulated every avenue of life and conduct. There was no real individual maturity required. Decisions were made by the power structure and imposed from an editorial sanctum. Recreational preferences, social relationships, and even personal habits were as much regulated as were the rituals, times of assembly and other areas of community endeavor. At various times imported front-men inveighed against such evils as playing checkers or golfing. Preachers who lambasted movies in the country sneaked out and went to them in the city. Each faction or sect had its own taboos and embargoes. In some it was a sin to play croquet or watch a ballgame on Sunday. In others, men who had never been drunk in their lives were driven out because they drank a glass of Mogen David wine as a beverage at the dinner table. Mind you, I am not here discussing the right or wrong of any of these for individuals with a troubled conscience. I am simply pointing out the legalism of the religious institutions which invaded the private lives of individuals and assumed jurisdiction over them. If any brother violated a proscription it was "Katy-bar-the-door!"

     Now secularization is removing these areas from organizational control and men are exercising their personal freedom to make decisions for themselves and their families. And a lot of them are making mistakes! The power structure is fighting to retain control. Hatchet-men are hacking away, seeking to hammer into subjection all who are trying to assert a right to stand or fall to their own Master Preachers are brought in who have a reputation for being "sound," and in some groups college lectureships are devoted to "tomahawking" liberals, in party parlance a term applied to anyone who thinks for himself out loud.

     The tragedy is not that we are all in trouble. That was inevitable. My real concern is that we would not allow men to be free in Christ until the secular age moved in and began penetrating our ghettoes and forcing upon us a condition which we had to meet or die. It is one thing for a man to free his slaves out of love for them as persons, and a wholly different thing to reluctantly allow them

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to go because an invading force has a gun pointed at his heart. In either case the former slaves will be free, but in the latter case the master will not be.

     In the Christian framework the problem was created by the fact that good men forgot that Jesus came to put an end to the distinction between the secular and sacred. This is one of the chief differences between God's dealings with his people before the cross and after it. The passing away of law as a restraining force and the introduction of love as the motivating principle for every action, changed the whole approach to God. Every word and deed was sanctified when proceeding from the inner man which was the dwelling-place of God. Worship ceased to be related to holy places, holy days and holy things, and became the daily life of the sanctified and reconciled ones.

     But human wisdom and lust for power moved in to alter this, and in order to do so the religious schemers created an institution which arrogated to itself the right to dispense grace or deny it, to control the lives of men here and determine their destiny hereafter. Lip-service was paid to the cross, but it was ignored as the watershed of history, and law was reinstated as the basis of securing the approval of God. Law demands a supreme court to interpret it and a power structure to enforce it, and the institutions--Catholic, Protestant, Independent--set up an infallible interpreter, or, what is even worse, an infallible interpretation, and those who dissented were harassed and heckled, harrowed and hated, and sometimes killed by cruel torture.

     Generally, men think of the Roman Church when they meditate upon things such as these. There is good reason to do so, for my good friends who have grown up in that background have been victimized by an arrogant institution which claims absolute control of their lives on earth and their fate after death. Modem Romanism is an unholy synthesis of Judaism, paganism and Christianity, devised by Thomas of Aquino, the "Prince of Scholastics" in the thirteenth century, and Thomism makes men slaves of the philosophic state as certainly as Marxism makes them slaves of the political state.

     Yet, Romanism differs only in degree from some of its vociferous critics. The same reasoning which takes an Italian farmer and elevates him to the papal throne where his words spoken ex cathedra, become dogma, binding upon the consciences of all the faithful, under threat of the fires of hell, is the same reasoning which promotes John Doe and Richard Roe to the eldership where, with benefit of the clergy, they can make decisions and issue official interpretations which all must accept without a murmur or be "cut off from among the people."

     The institutional religious establishments created to secure conformity and stifle dissent are alike in purpose, nature and intent. They differ in method and power as well as in points of emphasis. But all of them have been created to maintain the status quo by defence of opinions and traditions equated with the will of God and they operate to deprive men of freedom and the right to truly love all others. The Roman Catholic who trembles at the thought of crossing a Protestant threshold and later facing the parish priest for his action is no different than the patron of another establishment who would not dare go hear Billy Graham for fear of being verbally attacked from the "holy platform" the following Sunday by a preacher who watched the program on television.

     The spirit of this age is one of secularization, and it is affecting the religious establishment as it is every other. I hold

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no brief for it. I recognize clearly its potential for harm. But I am thoroughly convinced that it will not destroy or prevail against the community planted on the Rock. Our God can use alien forces to free his people. He has done so in the past and he can still do so. When Babylon ruthlessly enslaved God's people he raised up "the spirit of the kings of the Medes for his device was against Babylon." The Medes were pagans but God said, "You are my battle axe and weapons of war." By the same token he can use the tendencies of our neo-pagan culture as his instruments for achieving good.

     The principle of legalism with its written and unwritten creeds must be abrogated. The ideal of grace must be recaptured. This means a renunciation of the human establishment which has usurped the place of the temple of God which is not constructed of dogmas or codes, but of living stones bonded together by that which the Spirit supplies. It means the recapture of the apostolic proclamation, purpose and power, and the renewal that can only come from the indwelling Helper supplied by the Father during the absence of Jesus from the earth.

     A mere reformation of the ecclesiastical power structures will neither meet the divine appointment or merit the divine approval. History is full of such attempts at reformation. All have been abortive. Luther sought to reform the Roman Church and ended up with a Protestant hierarchy. Every exclusivistic party now in existence is a living testimony to the futility of reforming sects. Such endeavors only multiply the sects and make the task of future reformers more difficult and complex. Every reformation has ended up in deformation.

     A group of reformed sects will still be sects, and although they may shift their areas of emphasis under the influence of reformatory moves, they will still separate and segregate those who should be one in Christ. There must come, not only a renunciation of sects, but of sectism, the spirit which spawns them. Otherwise, if we rid ourselves of existing sects it would not be long until we would again plague the world with a bevy of new ones, which might conceivably be worse than the first Cutting down sectarian sprouts will avail little unless we also dig up the roots. The sectarian spirit is a work of the flesh. We must repent of it, crucify it, and eradicate it from our hearts.

     It is at this point where secularization may play an important, and even a decisive role. It makes for de-emphasis upon partisan forms, and the power structures and machinery created to keep them operating. Religious rivalry and competition are seen in their true light, as struggles to maintain the pride of the party, and not as attempts to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered for all. And we need to recapture the sense of brotherhood created by the blood of the Lamb. We are blood-brothers in the Lord. Ours is a shared relationship and a sharing relationship, made possible by reconciliation unto God.

     The disregard for arrogant dogmatism which makes serfs out of saints, and the assertion of the freedom and dignity of all God's children to be priests and ministers is good. It will help to place the Way in proper perspective. But the other influence of secularization is destructive. The removal of more and more areas of thought from the control and discipline of the revealed word of God is frightening because of the consequences which will result.

     It is not necessary, in order to relieve ourselves of the despotism of men, that we also renounce the Lordship of Jesus. Obviously, modern man concludes that "the institutional church" uses Jesus as a means of enforcing its wishes upon weak men, or vice versa. But man tends to corrupt all that he touches and the fact that the lust for power has created abuses, in no wise argues that there is no room or need for authority over life by its Creator. The community of saints is not intended to be a tool of oppression but a means of spiritual edification for all who are concerned.

     If Jesus is Lord, and if his will has been communicated in word, we are not

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free to disregard it. "Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken." We cannot choose those areas in which we will be obedient and neglect those in which we do not propose to be. The will of God is not subject to the whims of men. We are free in Christ, not free from Christ. And this is a good place for me to summarize my own convictions and approach in this article which has already outgrown my original intentions.

     I propose to exercise the freedom to study God's revelation for myself and to be guided by my own understanding of its demands upon my life. I will not abdicate the right to think for myself to any institution, or to any man or group of men. Since I insist upon this freedom for myself I will accord it to all others. I will not impose my deductions, opinions or interpretations of doctrine upon any other person whose conscience will not allow him to accept them.

     I will regard the methods and means which sincere men devise to enable themselves, in their views, to better implement the will of God, as human expedients. I am not bound to support them or to work in or through them. They are not a part of God's arrangement by revelation, and I will not confuse them with it. At the same time, I will not confound the means which men use with the men who use them, and I will exercise care that in rejecting the means I do not reject the men. Jesus died for men, not means! I will receive all whom God has received and allow God to determine the validity of those things which earnest men have used in their attempt to carry out the divine will. If they can explain them to the satisfaction of God it is not necessary for them to satisfy me!

     Although I am in the world and cannot avoid or evade living out my earthly existence in a special time-space sequence, I am resolved that I will not allow the secularization process to separate me from Jesus. Insofar as the process cuts the institutional apron strings and forces me to stand upon my own feet and make my own decisions in Christ, as I had to make the decision for Christ, I shall accept the independency as a gift of God's grace. But I will be sure that my independency is expressed within the framework of God's precious revelation and not in rebellion against it.

     Just as the physical sun is the center of the solar system, and all that is upon earth revolves around it, receiving light and power from it, whether conscious of the fact or not, so Jesus is the center of the moral universe. He is the source of spiritual light and power whether men recognize it or not. I am not a satellite of any institution or organization, but as a member of the one body and motivated by the one Spirit, my life revolves around the Sun of righteousness who has risen with healing in his wings. He is the center of my universe, the bright and morning star, my help in ages past, my hope for years to come, my shelter from the stormy blast, and my eternal home! Praise His name!