Dr. Douglas Groothuis, professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary, recently provided a list of statements or imperatives for his class, Christian Ethics and Modern Culture. I thought I’d post some of my favorite statements in his list (caveat: I don’t agree with everything on the list, such as his views on egalitarianism). These are good words for all of us.
1. Get serious—about God, your soul, your neighbor, your culture, and the world (missions) Avoid trivia. Time is short. See Matthew 6:33.
2. Exegete your soul; exegete the Word; exegete the world. Never stop. Never slacken.
3. Beware of worldliness in all is forms. See Luke 16:15; 1 John 2:15-17; Romans 12:1-2. Worldliness makes godliness seem strange and vice seem normal and appropriate (David Wells). Worldliness may produce great gains for merely human religion, but not for biblical ministry.
4. Don’t let the measure of your ministry extend past the measure of your character. That is, never sacrifice godliness for “effectiveness” or “relevance.”
6. Learn to lament—over oneself, over others, over one’s culture, and over the church. Do so with emotional honesty and with biblical hope, based on objective truth revealed in Scripture. See Psalm 88; Ecclesiastes 7:1-5; Romans 8:18-26.
7. In your lamentation, be open to repentance (Matthew 4:17). Do not fear teaching and preaching about repentance. All the prophets preached it, including Jesus. Repentance is “the first word of the gospel.” Without repentance, there is no gospel and no Christian existence. Without it, there is no hope for the church or the culture.
8. Remember that you are always a solider in a spiritual war (Acts 13:1-12; Ephesians 6:10-18; 1 Peter 5:8-9). Demons are real; they don’t like you; you must resist them and their leader and submit to God alone (James 4).
11. Anti-intellectualism is a cruel pox on the face of evangelicalism. It must be removed through teaching, preaching, praying, writing, and living in a way that the truth is rationally and passionately presented.
12. Apologetics is vital to the life of the church and the work of the Kingdom. Never lose your concern for this area of Christian learning. See Isaiah 1:18; Jude 3; Acts 17:16-34; 1 Peter 3:15-17; 2 Corinthians 10:3-5.
13. Postmodernism as a philosophy has nothing good to offer the church. Anything true it may affirm can be found in other more intellectually respectable philosophical systems. See Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay (IVP, 2000).
14. Postmodernity, as a set of cultural conditions, needs to be taken very seriously with respect to Christian living and mission. Understand its defining features. Do not be bewitched by its allure. Critically use it to advance objective truth for a lost world. For example, consider writing a blog that advances Christian truth in a thoughtful and shrewd manner. See Matthew 10:16.
16. Develop a deeply biblical worldview and teach this to others. See Matthew 22:37-40; Romans 12:1-2. The categories of creation, fall, and redemption are felicitous in this regard. See Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth (Crossway, 2004).
18. Understand and reflect upon the inherent weaknesses of American evangelicalism: its populism, its celebrity orientation, its fear of tradition, creeds, and confessions, its anti-intellectualism, its too often mindless embrace of technology and popular culture.
19. Understand and reflect upon the inherent strengths of American evangelicalism: its emphasis on conversion, its desire to win as many to Christ as possible, its entrepreneurialism, and its respect for the Bible.
20. Learn from the historic creeds, confessions, and catechisms of the Protestant Tradition.
21. Learn how God is using people from other cultures (both within your nation and beyond it) to advance his Kingdom. This helps one evaluate one’s own life, culture, and ministry. I have received invaluable insights from my African friends in this regard. See Phillip Jenkins, The Next Christendom, revised ed. (Oxford, 2007 ); The New Face of Christianity (Oxford, 2006)
22. The Ten Commandments summarize God’s law for believer and unbeliever. They are pertinent for all of life. Study them, teach them, and preach them in connection with “the whole counsel of God,” particularly the Sermon on the Mount.
23. Guard your heart carefully with respect to all sin, particularly sins related to money, sex, and power—the three that bring down the Christian leaders most often.
24. Make room for sabbatarian (Sunday) rest in your life. Otherwise, you will run on fumes and eventually burn out, taking yourself and likely many others down with you.
27. God evaluates us and our culture by how we have treated the last, the least, and the lost. See Matthew 25:31-46. This especially concerns the unborn, the infirm, the poor, the homeless, and the aged. They must be supported and protected through law, politics, the church, and culture at large.
34. Dethrone the television from its centrality in the home. Put it in a less conspicuous place or banish it entirely.
36. Periodically fast from food and entertainment in order to sharpen your spiritual discernment and to engage in constructive spiritual warfare.
41. If you preach, get serious about it. “Study until you are full. Think until you are clear. Pray until you are hot.”—Unknown African American preacher.
44. When you preach, emphasis the truth of Scripture for the glory of God. Don’t waste words. Keep your ego out of it. Use humor carefully and sparingly.
I caught the “Curmudgeon’s” list last week as well. He could have put #34 in bold for me. Having witnessed this summer my nephew slowly go from spending his time reading to becoming a moth to a light with the TV, it makes me want to banish the TV to the basement and out of the living room.
I recently began listening to Dr. Groothius’s apologetic lectures (http://www.relyonchrist.com/lecture.htm) and have been enjoying them. However, just as you pointed out in your caveat, I was dissappointed in his egalitarianism views. It seems so odd that in that area he seems to allow worldly logic/reasoning to trump the scriptures when he is so faithful to scripture elsewhere. I know this is “hot water” territory, but I mused with a friend recently whether the nature of having an extremely intelligent wife impacted his reasoning. This was a second example for that musing with the first being a couple that I had seen scheduled to teach at Ravi Zacharias’s summer institute. That couple wrote a long multi-page defense that the wife should be allowed to preach to men as well. She was as well a very intelligent individual as in the case of the Groothius family. Something to ponder.