On
Liberalism
by Grant
Sandercock-Brown
I am not a fan of liberal theology. It’s nothing personal. I
know some very nice people who are liberals. It’s just that
for me, an evangelical, underneath our surface similarities
there is a radical divergence in our world view.
It’s why my liberal friends and I so often talk past each
other. I say, ‘Of course I believe X, that’s what the bible
says’, and my liberal friend replies ‘I know the bible says X
but I can’t accept it. (This conversation is usually repeated
in varying paraphrases). We then walk away, baffled by the
other’s refusal to accept the obvious truth. However, the
bafflement springs, not from insufficient communication
skills, but rather mutually exclusive worldviews that will
always talk past each other.
I’m not saying that liberal theology is all bad. The liberal
social gospel has been a reminder to evangelicals that the
gospel is also a call to help others; to make the kingdom a
reality in the present. Evangelicalism is too often
self-centred. At its worst it becomes, ‘I thank God because He
is there when I need him’. Sadly, in practice, that seems to
be not very often at all.
Nevertheless, Christianity is still about a personal
relationship with God. Remember,
Amazing Grace is
written in the first person. We shouldn’t just dismiss a
theology that embraces what we think, feel and experience.
It’s hard for me to see how all meaningful theology is
not, at some level, personal and experiential. So yes, it’s
true that modern spirituality is often centred on personal
experience. But in a piece of delightful irony, so is classic
liberal theology.
For my hypothetical liberal friend, ‘I can’t accept it’
actually means, ‘I can’t understand miracles or believe in the
resurrection or accept that God was involved in inspiring the
bible or understand how Peter wrote such good Greek’. What
underpins all of that is the word ‘I’. Here also is a ‘me’
centred worldview. Liberal theology is not born out of the
failure of the bible under scientific scrutiny or a disproved
God. It too is an experiential world view, where my reason
trumps the mystery of God. Therefore I must cut God down to
size. I may worship God the Father, but he is the father only
in the sense that Ingmar Bergman is the father of modern
cinema. That is to say, he retired a long time ago and has
been rather ineffectual for years, admired but no longer
potent. In fact he died a little while ago didn’t he?
Isaiah, in chapter 46, mocks the Babylonians for this very
thing. ‘How can you worship a God of your own invention? You
pour out gold, hire a goldsmith and make it into a god, you
set it in place and there it stands’. “Though one cries out to
it, it does not answer”. Of course. Ultimately, the problem
with liberalism is that you can’t worship a question mark.
British playwright David Hare, a self-confessed agnostic, was
asked to address the Lambeth Bishop’s conference some years
ago. Hare said that while he appreciated the compassion of
liberals in the church, as an observer he was rather surprised
by their reluctance to mention their founder. “If Jesus Christ
really did rise from the dead, then call me a fanatic but I
think you have to tell people about it”. He’s correct. The
centre of an evangelical faith is grounded in the truth of a
real and risen Lord.
And because of that truth, by the grace of God, I am a
believer. I believe that in Jesus I can know the living God;
believe that I may not have all the answers but I serve the
One who is the answer. Surely ‘me’ at the centre of faith is
never enough. There are truths beyond my ken.
C.S. Lewis once wrote “Christianity, if false, is of no
importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only
thing it cannot be is moderately important”. God is God or he
is not. For me? I believe.
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