AS A CHRISTIAN (BAPTIST) HE SHOULD KNOW BETTER!
This week the TV and radio programs are dominated by comments on Bill
Clinton’s book, My Life. Enemies and friends discussed his book and his life.
His admirers praise him and his opponents attack him from every possible angle.
Nevertheless, even an opponent such as Pat Robertson had to admit that Bill
Clinton is one of the most charming people that he has met and that as public
speaker he is very persuasive.
During the booksellers’ convention in Chicago, Clinton made the following
statement: “Politics is not religion, and we should govern on the basis of
evidence not theology.” A simple interpretation of this is that politics is
based on hard facts and religion is based on non-facts. Statements like these I
hear often, but I was surprised to hear it from Clinton because he should know
better.
According to his own biographical notes he was converted at a Billy Graham
crusade and for many years supported the Billy Graham Association evangelistic
outreach. He was baptized as a teenager and belonged to a Baptist church. From
those that have campaigned with him in African-American churches it is known
that he knows the Scriptures well and that he can preach a rousing sermon. For
all his adult life, he belonged to a Baptist church.
For Baptists, their religion is on solid evidence. They preach the death,
resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ as hard evidence. They agree with
Paul that if Christ has not risen from the dead - hard, factual evidence, there
is no need to preach the gospel because there is no gospel. If Christ has not
risen from the dead, why preach that there is everlasting life? For Baptists,
conversion is a hard fact with plenty of sequential evidence. A cowboy was
kidded about his conversion and he remarked that even his horse knew that he
was converted because of the change that Christ has produced in his life.
Baptists also believe that one of the greatest evidentiary days is the Judgment
Day when God will take an account of what we have done on this earth and reward
us according to the good and evil that we have done after we have been saved!
However for Bill Clinton and for his intellectual friends there was an event
called Enlightenment. Up to the time of Enlightenment there was one level of
truth. No matter what was the area of your expertise you were supposed to speak
the truth. Enlightenment had made a separation – there was scientific truth and
there was theological truth. Scientific truth was based on hard facts, on
evidence, while religious truth was based on imagination and presupposition.
Slowly terms such as demythologizing and double-talk came in. The scientific
man could not accept the resurrection, so Jesus did not rise from the dead.
Since the scientific man was not able to accept the resurrection, resurrection
was a story made up by his disciples who could not allow Jesus to be dead.
Slowly, in the scientific community, theology came to be known as the opposite
of truth found on evidence. As a result of this dichotomy, scientific truth is
the same throughout the world, while theological truth is considered vacuous,
left to individual interpretation.
Enlightenment has produced schizophrenia in many people who teach science in
public and Christian schools. Many of them on Sunday recite the Nicene Creed “I
believe in God the Father, Almighty, Creator of heaven and of earth,” and then
on Monday they go to their classrooms and teach that there is no creation and
there is no Creator. This is demythologizing. This is telling that theology is
not based on evidence or hard facts. This is telling that politics is not like
theology.
The Bible is consistent about truth. As matter of fact God tells us that
heavens and earth will pass away, but the words of God will abide forever. God
is the author of geological truth, mathematical truth, biological truth and
theological truth. God is the truth and in him there are no lies.
