Evanjellyfish
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

It would be spin to say that I have studied, or read through Gary North's book Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church. The truth is that I started it, but put it down temporarily, not because it wasn't great, but because a friend lent me Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. (I couldn't help myself, you see. It was the unbending math of psycho-history that made me put Dr. North down for a time.) Nevertheless, I know enough about the book to understand its basic premise. Dr. North presents the mainline church, going back at least a hundred years, as having been divided into three parts. There were those who were committed to the Reformed faith and the Westminster Confession, those who weren't so excited about the Reformed part, but were excited about the faith part, and then there were those who hated both. So what would we do in that circumstance? Wouldn't we draw up a coalition between the first two groups to drive out the third? We who are Reformed share with that second group a belief in the fundamentals of the faith. We agree that Jesus is God, that He was raised from the dead, that an atonement is necessary, and that faith is the means by which the work of Christ is applied to us.

It wasn't that easy. These things that we affirm together are part of the Confession everyone had
to swear to. And the mushy middle shared with the liberal left the conviction that adhering to a standard wasn't necessary. The middle folks got in in the first place while denying the Calvinism that is the warp and woof of the Confession. They couldn't very well turn and drive out the liberals for not believing the very Confession that they only believed in part. The mushy middle shared with the liberal left a conviction that truth ought to be sacrificed for the sake of peace. You know which alliance proved to be stronger.

And so the Holy Spirit left the mainline church, crying "Ichabod- the glory has departed.," and all that icky stuff is behind us. Now we are rid of those liberals, and His truth just marches on. Except that's not how it worked, is it? The mushy middle is still with us, and as before, their very presence just pushes everyone to the left.

It begins, perhaps, when we begin to spin by what we fail to say, rather than what we say. As pulpits proclaim the love of God, as they announce the good news, they leave out by their silence the bad news. We do not believe in the sinfulness of man and the wrath of Almighty God because so few ever preach these things. The next step is the arrival of those who actually not only don't preach wrath, but don't believe it. And because there is a shared belief in the love of God, they are accepted. Hell is banished.

Hell, however, is not the only manifestation of God's wrath. It is unseen, shrouded in the future, and so is easy to forget. But there is no escaping suffering on earth. If there is no wrath, why does it happen? The first baby step here is to argue that while God does know these things are going to happen, His zeal for human free will constrains Him from stopping tragedy. That kind of nonsense doesn't fly too well in the midst of the suffering, and we go from, "He knew about it and could have stopped it, but didn't because He's a gentleman" to "He didn't know about it, and couldn't stop it." Understand that all of this takes place within the rubric of "evangelicalism", if we mean by that word merely those who call themselves evangelical.

We begin by spinning God, and soon end up spinning the faith. We shield the "seeker" from what might offend, and soon find that we must shield ourselves, for we too are offended.

Our mushy middle now consists of those who are troubled by these trends, but fear the spin of those on their left. They believe if they speak out against this nonsense, that they will be labeled as unkind, judgmental, lacking in love. Our calling is to disbelieve that spin, so that we might encourage others not to believe the other spin. We must be willing to be thought of as monsters, in order to drive the monsters out of our churches. We must be willing to be called divisive by those who would spin God. We must be willing to shun spin, and to call heresy heresy. We must bring to bear Biblical shame against those who are ashamed of the Bible.

All that is necessary for spin to triumph is for good men to just watch it. When people deny the future return of Christ, and the resurrection of the body, we must wrench from them the name evangelical. When people call themselves "evangelical Roman Catholics", we must shout that
they are only half right. When people call themselves evangelicals and worship a God who knows not the future, we must hound and hoot them off the stage. And those who would call us names, we must also call spades spades, and girly-boys girly-boys. We must boldly proclaim the folly not only of those who would spin God, but those who would spin the spinners, those who would call heretics, "slightly misguided brethren from a differing tradition."

When we allow them to use our words for their deeds, we show ourselves to be both cowards and fools. We are fools because we do not know the power of words, and cowards because we fear the words of men.

In losing the mainline church we lost wealth, land, buildings, colleges and universities. We have even lost the power of the name "Presbyterian", as we always have to add, "No, we're not that kind of Presbyterian", when we meet new people. But none of that compares with losing the faith. When heretics define the gospel, then the Spirit departs.