The Rev. Brian M. Abshire, Ph.D.

Recently, a friend highly recommended Josh McDowell’s book “Right from Wrong - What you need to know to help youth make right choices.” To be honest, I haven’t read anything from McDowell since the seventies when I first discovered his “Evidence that Demands a Verdict.” As a young Christian, I had been most encouraged and helped by having at my finger-tips all sorts of proof and evidence for the reliability of Christianity; though I never actually found it very useful in evangelism; the level of intellectual opposition to the gospel I encountered made using McDowell’s work about as sensible as dropping a hydrogen bomb on a house to remove the fleas!

However, to be honest, I never REALLY accepted what I thought was McDowell’s underlying assumption that evidence alone would almost REQUIRE a belief in Christ. Now I realize he never said this, and I really do not mean to put words in his mouth; chalk it up to my own limited understanding at the time. However, at least in my mind there was a connection between intellectual evidence and the necessity of accepting the truth claims of Christ; to have the one, you must have the other. In fact, it seemed to me while reading it (and memory may be misleading me here) that McDowell’s real problem was that the evidence was being suppressed on college campuses in order to discredit Christianity! If only more people knew the things he was writing in his book, why clearly, many more people would be coming to faith in Christ!

Interestingly enough, when I first came to faith in Christ, it was DESPITE the intellectual hurdles! None of the people who shared Christ with me had ever heard of Josh McDowell and therefore when I pestered them with questions about the authenticity and reliability of the Bible, or how they could KNOW whether Jesus had even lived; they could never give a well-reasoned answer. In fact to this day, whenever I hear a Christian say, “But you have got to accept that by faith!” I want to scream, pull my hair out, and give my sincere but misinformed brother a holy punch to the throat (in love, of course!).

This “answer” was and is an excuse for intellectual laziness; an unconscious acceptance of existentialism and neo-orthodoxy that is widespread in the Christian community. Right down at the core of their being, many broad evangelicals have accepted as true, that their faith is intellectually and philosophically indefensible. They therefore have withdrawn from the “real” world altogether in an attempt to shield their faith from criticism and logic. And as a consequence, they have ceded the entire world to the Devil, waiting for an imminent rapture to solve all their problems for them.

Thus when I came across McDowell’s “Evidence that Demands a Verdict” it was like a light being turned on in a dark basement. Here at last was intellectual ammunition that warriors needed for frontline battles against wickedness and paganism. However, as noted before, for me, it was the right ammunition for the wrong weapon. I remember vividly the ONE time I got to use every bit of McDowell’s work in an evangelistic encounter. I had met a young American student from an Ivy League school who was back-packing across Europe on his summer vacation (I of course, was in Europe on an all expense paid, four year “vacation” courtesy of the US Government). I had been visiting a ministry in Northern England that did “street theatre” and then evangelized the crowds that gathered to watch. I was a “shill” working the crowd trying to engage people in conversation. This particular young man was standing near me during the performance, and afterwards, I asked him what he thought.

He was Jewish, a physics student and probably saw all this “Christianity” as an interesting cultural ritual no different than Morris Dancing (a really, REALLY weird English custom that has to be seen to be believed). However, as I pressed the issue, we soon got into a really, serious discussion. For him, it was no doubt little different from the kind of intellectual “bull sessions” not uncommon on all college campuses. I think he had never met a Christian before who actually had answers for the common intellectual objections raised against the faith.

Since he needed a place to stay that night, he bunked with me and a friend and we continued the discussion until it started getting light in the east; all night long we went around and around, on issue after issue. It reminded me at the time of shooting skeet, he would hurl an objection to Christianity into the air, and I, armed with McDowell’s “Evidence” would shoot it down. By the end of the discussion, we were both exhausted and groggy, like two prize-fighters having gone fifty rounds.

But eventually, I wore him down. I had answered every objection; I had demonstrated the flaws in every one of his arguments. So I finally said, “NOW, will you accept Jesus as Lord?”

“No,” he replied.

“Why not” I insisted (almost crying in frustration!)

“Because if I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior then I would have to stop sleeping with my girlfriend!”

This encounter was a major turning point for me intellectually, though I did not fully realize it at the time. Clearly, there was some other dynamic at work in a person’s conversion other than intellectual or psychological. Here was a man willing to admit that the gospel was true, that Jesus Christ was real, had lived, died and rose from the dead, but REFUSED to acknowledge Him as Lord, because doing so would interfere with his own sexual pleasure.

Though it would take many, many years to come to fruition, this was when I became a Calvinist at heart. Forcing men to acknowledge the truthfulness of a proposition does not necessarily mean that they will ACT correctly on that proposition. Theologians talk about the “noetic effect of sin” which is the influence that sin has on our thinking. Sin affects every area of man’s being (hence the Calvinist concept of total depravity; not that each man is as utterly depraved as he could be, but rather that he is depraved in the “totality” or entirety of his being, including his intellect). However, frequently, there is an assumption that the noetic effect distorts man’s reasoning and thus books like “Evidence” are intended to clear up the confusion caused by sin.

Therefore, the widespread assumption is held that if you can only get a man to THINK correctly, he will then act correctly. This in effect is one of the central premises in McDowell’s “Right from Wrong.” He demonstrates through good statistical studies of Christian high school-aged students that the vast majority have lost the concept of absolute truth. And, he argues, as a consequence, Christian teenagers are therefore susceptible to fornication (e.g., 20% of broad evangelical kids believe that premarital sex is morally acceptable). Most of his book is about how to “re-instill” the belief in absolute truth.

However, I must respectfully disagree with Mr. McDowell’s assessment. The problem is not in their thinking, but in their ethics. You see, all these kids going to middle class, broad evangelical churches are just being consistent with the worldview that is taught in almost every fellowship in the country. Their parents, their pastors and their peers have ALL accepted as “true” that the essence of true Christianity is a personal, subjective religious experience. They all assume that “we are under grace, not law” and therefore that there are no moral absolutes that bind all men. Granted, they may be willing to experiment in ways their parent’s find objectionable; but after all, they are simply being consistent with their parent’s own premises.

The “REAL” source of their ethics and values has no foundation other than what is acceptable to the broader community; it is not the lack of belief in absolute truth, but rather a lack of absolute ethics. If the law of God is irrelevant and immaterial, then how does one determine what is right from what is wrong? The “Christian” answer for the past hundred and fifty years is that the “Spirit” will tell you; you do not need the Law for Christ Himself will “speak to your heart.” Now, I do not have a ready source for this assessment; I do not know of any major book that details it; however I have heard it preached repeatedly from the pulpit and affirmed from the average Christian time and time again.

By replacing the absolute ethical standards of the Law, with a subjective, personal standard that has no referent outside of one’s self, the Christian church has allowed itself to fall prey to the values and ethics of the world. The Apostle Paul warned us about this in Romans 12:2, “And do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” There is an ongoing sociological and psychological dynamic called “conformity behavior” wherein people will tend to “conform” their beliefs and values to what they believe to be group social norms. The Apostle Paul also warned about this in 1 Corinthians 15:33 where he says, “Do not be deceived, bad company corrupts good morals.” He also makes a similar reference to the other side where he says “Imitate me as I imitate Christ” (! Cor 11:1).

Now, here we have an entire generation of Christians who have grown up assuming without question (and in fact being constantly taught) that there are no abiding moral absolutes other than what the Spirit speaks into your own heart. The vast majority of these kids will attend public schools where they will stick out like a sore thumb if they do not conform to social norms. In these schools, the girls routinely dress, talk and act like “sluts” (I know this is offensive language, but if the term is bad, how much worse the actual practices?). Teenage boys of course are all victims of their hormones and welcome and encourage every bit of sexual provocation they can.

Thus, Christian kids will tend to imitate their non-Christian peers; in fact they have no power to resist it (apart from the really, unique individual). They listen to the same music, watch the same movies and value the same ideas. Is it any wonder then that they want to pierce their bodies, dress provocatively, date without chaperonage and then decide to satisfy their sexual urges? After all Christian parents allow their children to associate with these kids, and form intimate relationships with them because implicitly they abdicated the raising of the children to the school, church, soccer league or little league team years ago. Why should it surprise anyone that when given the opportunity, their kids act out their sexual fantasies?

After all, every television show or movie glamorizes premarital sex and we are all constantly bombarded with images that would have been regarded as pornographic just a generation ago. Why SHOULD kids refrain from premarital sex if “they really love someone?” What moral absolute, let alone intellectual one, has EVER been given to them to tell them “NO!” Surely just because Mommy and Daddy, or the Preacher might find their actions “bad” is not too important an incentive; after all what they want, and what they see modeled in the culture are far more important in their value system then either church or family.

You see, these children DO have absolutes; just not the same absolutes as their parents. They adopt the absolute that “there are no absolutes,” because that is what the culture believes, and the brand of Christianity they practice is not able to challenge this assumption. Their Christian faith is real and meaningful, but personal and individual, because otherwise they would have to adopt some objective standard such as the Law of God; something the modern church will NOT do. Men do not want the Law just because it is an impediment on their “freedom” to do what they want to do, when they want to do it. So therefore, they must create a theology that justifies their rejection of the Law; but in the process it leaves them wide open to cultural infiltration from the pagan society around us.

While anecdotes do not prove, only illustrate, this one I think aptly speaks to this whole issue. In the ministry I worked with in England some years ago, we had a secretary who was a recent convert to Christ. Middle aged and divorced, she was no longer living with her teenage daughter but they still remained close. We had small offices with my boss sitting at his desk directly across from me at my desk; and our secretary sitting at a right angle to us. We spent a lot of time “hashing” out various issues, both theological and practical. Our ministry had a lot of single young “GI’s” in it and clearly one important priority was how to keep them from “doing what comes naturally.”

My boss strongly objected to laying down rules; “rules are for people who cannot follow principles” he was fond of saying. Therefore when the inevitable questions arose from all these single young men and women about what was appropriate or inappropriate behavior between members of the opposite sex he refused to give a direct answer. He would talk about the dangers that premarital sex would cause future relationships, the hurt that such things inevitably brought about, the importance of communication “(“it’s hard to talk to someone when you have your tongue down her throat”), etc.

Now he was coming out of a fundamentalist Baptist background where legalism ruled the day. His approach therefore made sense, from a certain perspective. However, I strongly disagreed with his views here; I argued that the important point was that God said “NO!” and that everything else was just an implication.

We had this discussion on more than one occasion, usually amicably serving as an “iron sharpening iron” experience. However, out secretary would always listen carefully, sometimes taking notes, and occasionally offering a “woman’s” perspective.

When her daughter made a profession of faith in Christ the entire office rejoiced with her and often, during the day, would offer “Mom” advice about what to tell the new convert. One day, the daughter wrote her Mom a letter asking about pre-marital sex; what was right and appropriate for a Christian girl to do with a man before marriage?

Mom responded in a beautifully written, well reasoned letter citing our boss’s position; she was and is a very literate and intelligent lady; most elegant in written communication. When she showed me the letter and asked for my “critique” I could not fault her reasoning, other than saying, “Everything you say is true enough, BUT, the REAL reason why your daughter ought to refrain from sex is because God said so.” I could see she was not exactly excited about my “contribution” and after all, this was in the days before word-processing computers; the letter had been written on an electronic typewriter. So she simply typed in at the end of the last page a comment to the effect, “Oh, and God said not to, and who are you to argue with God.” To be honest, I think she only put the comment in, because she did not know how to graciously say “talk a long walk off a short pier.”

A week or so later she showed me the letter she had received from her daughter in reply. Basically, her daughter wrote that she could argue with everything her Mom had said about the reasons to refrain from premarital sex EXCEPT the last comment about God. If God said something, it must be right, and therefore if she disagreed with God, then SHE must be the one in the wrong!

Needless to say, I was unbearably smug around the office for a few days (not of course that anyone could notice!) but the point had been made; ultimately and finally it becomes a matter of allegiance and loyalty to Christ that determines ALL our ethical and moral choices. “He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me” Jesus said (Jn 14:21). But it is exactly this element that is missing in modern, broad evangelical Christianity. It is not the lack of a certain philosophical proposition (“resolved; the existence of absolute truth is fundamental to Christian ethics…”) but rather something more basic; “Does a Christian have to OBEY Christ to BE a Christian?”

Many of my friends, colleagues and teachers in the Reformed camp place a high priority on propositional truth; and that is good and necessary for our God is the one true God. Loving God requires knowing and loving the truth (Jn 17:17). But there is a difference between giving intellectual assent to a theoretical proposition and living that truth out in daily life. Different men have different mental capacities, different life experiences, and therefore do not always understand that truth in the same way. To rest our ethics in some arcane, esoteric or academic concept of intellectual performance does a great disservice to the average Christian.

“The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul, the testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple…” says David (Psa 19:7). God’s Law does not require a Ph.D. in theology to understand, or to apply; it simply requires a humble heart. However, both broad evangelical and Reformed churches have largely abandoned the Law of God as the foundation of their ethical systems. There are even those today in Reformed churches who insist that there are NO practical applications possible from Scripture and that it is legalism to teach that there are!

No, as much as I have appreciated Mr. McDowell’s work in the past, as well as the statistical studies in his book, “Right from Wrong” I must respectfully disagree with his central thesis. The problem is not the lack of “absolute truth” but that they have accepted the WRONG absolute. To keep them from sin and the corruption of this world requires something more than getting them to give intellectual assent to another proposition. Instead, it requires rooting them in the Law of God as the absolute moral foundation of every area of life.

“This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth; but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written it; for THEN will make your way prosperous, and THEN you will have success.” Joshua 1:8