Author: John Stonestreet and Dr. Thaddeus Williams
In recent months, several studies have suggested that cognitive dissonance—a psychological tension between one’s faith and insights from outside one’s faith—is a major breaking point for many who reject or “deconstruct” the Christianity of their youth. While some of these points of tension are legitimate, one thing clear from the emerging literature is that many Christians have no category for one of the most beautiful and refreshing doctrines of the historic Christian faith.
Often, the faith from which people are deconstructing is a hyper-fundamentalist version, which not only holds that Christianity tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth but that all non-Christians think non-truth and nothing but non-truth, about everything. Such all-or-nothing thinking creates unnecessary agony in young souls as if stretched apart on a torture rack, trying to hold on to their Christian faith with one arm while holding to whatever insights they’ve grabbed from “the world” with the other.
Today on Breakpoint, author and Professor Dr. Thaddeus Williams suggests one possible cause for those leaving the faith.
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Many spiritual crises could be avoided if Christians recovered the biblical and historic doctrine of “common grace.” That is, God not only saves believers, He has graced non-believers with talents to add to the net truth, goodness, and beauty in the world. In Bible terms, common grace is the label for the reality of James 1:16 that “every good and perfect gift comes from above.”
John Calvin argued that God can and does “irradiate” the minds of non-Christians with “sparks of light.” Abraham Kuyper also said,
Although being conducted almost exclusively by people who are strangers to the fear of the Lord. . . science has nevertheless produced a treasury of knowledge that we as Christians admire and gratefully use.
Herman Bavinck went farther,
From this common grace proceeds all that is good and true that we still see in fallen man. The light still shines in the darkness . . . . Philosophy is an admirable gift from God. Music is also a gift of God. Arts and sciences are good, profitable, and of high value.
Calvin, Kuyper, and Bavinck were hardly compromising a Christian worldview by appreciating the illumination we enjoy from non-Christians. They were simply carrying forward the legacy of Scripture. Shortly after God curses Cain for fratricide, God common graces him not only with the joys of marriage and children, but also with whatever civil engineering truths and architectural skill it took to build the first city recorded in the Bible (Genesis 4:17). Cain’s descendants are then common graced with skills in farming, music, and metalwork. “Moses,” Bavinck added,
was reared in all the wisdom of Egypt, the children of Israel decorated the house of the Lord with the gold and silver of Egypt, Solomon used the services of Hiram to build the temple, [and] Daniel was trained in the science of the Chaldeans . . .
In the New Testament, we join Paul atop the jagged rock formations of Mars Hill where pagan philosophers gathered to swap their musings on the meaning of life. Paul stands and quotes their own poets. “We are God’s offspring,” said Aratus. “In him we live and move and have our being,” said Epimenides. Paul does not cite these non-Christians to dunk on them as heretics and heathens. Rather, he cites them for having valid insights into the nature of God and the human condition.
It was Calvin who said, “All truth is from God.” Bavinck echoed,
. . . it would not do to deny the true, the good, and the beautiful that one can see in mankind outside of Christ… These gifts of the Spirit should not be rejected or despised, for that would be to despise God himself . . .
To be clear, common grace is not an excuse to ditch biblical discernment. The call to appreciate the true, the good, and the beautiful is not a call to celebrate the falsehoods, depravities, and ugliness of the non-Christian world. We must be discerning, no doubt, but we must, at the same time, resist the all-or-nothing tribal thinking that pushes young Christians down the road to deconstruct their faith because they were reared on faith that was too biblically shallow to appreciate and enjoy God’s many common graces in the world.
“If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole foundation of truth,” Calvin concluded, “we shall not despise it wherever it shall appear.”
Truth “wherever it shall appear.” Now there’s a refreshingly biblical alternative to hyper-fundamentalist faith and the unnecessary angst it causes.