April 12, 2011: How To Know The Truth

In George MacDonald's The Musician's Quest, young Robert Falconer comes to doubt the faith in which he was raised. At one point he asks himself whether he can even be sure that Jesus existed. But immediately his familiarity with Scripture brings to mind these words of Jesus: If any man chooses to do his will, he shall know whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak of myself. (John 7:17). MacDonald writes, "Here was a word from Jesus himself, giving the surest means of arriving at a conclusion of the truth or falsehood of all that he said, namely, by doing the will of God." For the remainder of the book, Robert does the will of God, and believes.

I can hardly tell you the joy I felt in finding in MacDonald an expression of a truth that first gripped me about 15-20 years ago and has helped shape the way I teach and preach and present the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is simply this: obedience opens the heart to faith, while disobedience (but for the grace of God!) closes it.

We Christians rightly try to persuade non-Christians of gospel truths: that God exists, that he is powerful and good, that Jesus of Nazareth is his unique son, that Jesus died for fallen sinners, that he rose again from the dead. I value sound apologetics as I value few other things, and have given as gifts countless copies of C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and Lee Strobel's The Case For Christ, The Case For Faith, The Case For Creator, and The Case For The Real Jesus. And I have often said things like "The only thing that really matters about Christianity is whether it is true. If it is false, we must discard it no matter how much it helps us; if it is true, we must embrace it no matter how much it costs us and no matter how much we despise its sterner doctrines."

But we are limited in what our proclamation of truth can accomplish simply because waves of reason tend to crash uselessly against granite cliffs of sin. People who choose to defy God will not embrace the truth of his gospel. Truth masquerades as foolishness to those who know the will of God but do not do it. Disobedient people deafen their ears. You cannot convert a man who is not good and does not want to be good.

But a man who is sincerely trying to do right is a likely candidate for conversion. C. S. Lewis wrote that it was no coincidence that he became a Christian at a time in his life when he was trying to be good: "[I]t is significant that this long-evaded encounter [with God] happened at a time when I was making a serious effort to obey my conscience. No doubt it was far less serious than I supposed, but it was the most serious I had made for a long time.” Likewise, the centurion Cornelius in Acts 10 was first a righteous, respected, God-fearing man who gave generously to the poor (vs. 2,22) before he heard the gospel and believed.

For that reason my ears ring with indignation every time I hear an evangelical preacher label submission to the will of God with pejorative and demeaning terms like "works' righteousness," "do's and don'ts", "mere moralism," "shoulds," "keeping the rules," "Phariseeism," "trying hard to be good," "trying to earn favor with God." If you're a preacher and you talk like that, could you please stop it? Obedience is a good thing. The Bible says, "Without holiness no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14). Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6). Unbelievers are most ripe for conversion when they are trying to be good and longing to be better. They should be encouraged in their efforts! Few things ease the work of the Holy Spirit more than a disciplined submission to the demands of conscience. By doing the will of God (and yes, this will require effort, it won't be easy, a man will indeed have to "try hard" to obey), a man will know soon enough whether Jesus spoke the truth about himself and the Father.

Of course there is an awful corollary. I am sorry to say that I have known quite a few apostates over the years - people who once professed faith in Jesus and then renounced it. In every case (I have yet to see an exception) the departure from faith was preceded by a willful rebellion against God's will. I have also noted a stunning contrast between clear-minded, thoughtful explanations of arrival to Christian faith with later vague, inarticulate, shoulder-shrugging rejections of it. (E.g., "I don't know. It's just, um - I don't want to talk about it. I just want to do what makes me happy.") Having chosen to be disobedient, they lose interest in Christ, and having lost interest, they assume him to be false without ever having bothered to engage their minds in a single rational argument about him.

When Robert Falconer (in all likelihood, a fictional projection of George MacDonald himself) came to the dark night of doubt, and could not resolve his difficulties intellectually, he had two choices. He could start sleeping with his girlfriend and become an alcoholic and train his tongue to tell lies, or he could say his nightly prayers, stay honest and chaste, and commit himself to serve his fellow man. The same kind of choice still faces all those who stand near the cliff that divides faith from unbelief.