We need to talk about the issues—the law, music, medicine, caring about the poor—a whole range of issues that as Christians we care deeply about. They are fair game in the pulpit and fair game in the church. But partisanship is not.
Preaching: You have a new book that’s just recently out called The Faith, which talks about what we believe and why it matters. Why does belief matter in a post-modern culture that asserts you can believe whatever you want as long as you’re really sincere?Advertisement
Colson: It’s so important that Christians learn what they believe, why they believe it and why it matters. It matters deeply because basically Christianity is God incarnate, God coming as man in the flesh. But it is also biblical revelation and the way in which that biblical story has been handed to us by the apostles. It is truth, and if we shortchange it—if we do not preach the whole gospel—if we do not ground people in their fundamental beliefs that make them Christian, then we’re going to see exactly what has happened today. That is, the church loses its potency. It no longer impacts society. It no longer can define itself.
It’s being defined by the world around us. Christianity is being defined today by the atheists and anti-theists, as they call themselves—Dawkins, Hitchens, Sam Harris … that whole crowd—who are selling books by the millions. It’s being defined by people who write books labeling us as theocrats, which is absolutely the opposite of what Christians believe. We do not believe in a church-state. Every time there has been a church-state, it has been grief. Luther famously said you cannot coerce conversion. So we don’t want political power in the church. But all of these stereotypes are being developed in the media and believed by people because we don’t know enough about our own belief system to be able to defend it or be able to live it.
That’s why I wrote the book called
The Faith—the subtitle is actually
Given Once for All, right from
Jude 3 in which Jude is saying, "Contend for the faith that was entrusted once for all to the saints." So it’s an appeal—if I dare use this word in today’s culture—for orthodox, biblical faith, for the real stuff, not for some of the failed substitutes that people are trying and conversations they want to have in meeting halls. No, this is for taking a hard look at what I’ve labeled 14 critical truths that make you a Christian, and I think Christians need to be well grounded in what they believe so they can defend it.
Preaching: As preachers, as the church, we make truth claims. Yet many in this culture argue there’s no basis for such claims—that "your truth is your truth, my truth is something else." How do we cut through that intellectual clutter to press truth claims within this kind of culture?
