Many Christians have noted a dichotomy in modern thought. On the upper level is value; on the bottom level is fact. On the upper level is faith; on the bottom level is reason. On the upper level is religion; on the bottom level is science. On the upper level it is non-rational; on the bottom level is rational. In other words, the upper level is about personal feelings and beliefs and the lower level is made up of more solid and real things like reason, science, and facts. Francis Schaeffer discussed and critiqued this modern view in his excellent book, Escape from Reason. In this book he gives a good Christian and biblical answer to modernity’s false dichotomy.
One area where this false dichotomy shows up is in how people today think of Jesus. For most people, Jesus belongs to the upper level of religion and faith but he does not belong to the bottom level of fact and reason. For many Westerners, Jesus can mean anything to anyone – what Francis Schaeffer called a “contentless banner.” Here’s Schaeffer:
I have come to the point where, when I hear the word “Jesus”—which means so much to me because of the Person of the historic Jesus and his work—I listen carefully because I have with sorrow become more afraid of the word “Jesus” than almost any other word in the modern world. The word is used as a contentless banner, and our generation is invited to follow it. But there is no rational, scriptural content by which to test it, and thus the word is being used to teach the very opposite things from those which Jesus taught. …It is now Jesus-like to sleep with a girl or a man if she or he needs you. As long as you are trying to be human you are being Jesus-like to sleep with the other person, at the cost, be it noted, of breaking the specific morality which Jesus taught. But to these men this does not matter because that is downstairs in the area of rational scriptural content.
We have come then to this fearsome place where the word “Jesus” has become the enemy of the Person Jesus and the enemy of what Jesus taught. We must fear this contentless banner of the word “Jesus” not because we do not love Jesus but because we do love him. We must fight this contentless banner, with its deep motivations, rooted into the memories of the race, which is being used for the purpose of sociological form and control. We must teach our spiritual children to do the same.
This accelerating trend makes me wonder whether, when Jesus said that toward the end time there will be other Jesuses, he meant something like this. We must never forget that the great enemy who is coming is the anti-Christ. He is not anti-non-Christ. He is anti-Christ. Increasingly over the last few years the word “Jesus,” separated from the content of the Scriptures, has become the enemy of the Jesus of history, the Jesus who died and rose and who is coming again and who is the eternal Son of God. So let us take care. If evangelical Christians begin to slip into a dichotomy, to separate an encounter with Jesus from the content of the Scriptures (including the discussable and the verifiable), we shall, without intending to, be throwing ourselves and the next generation into the millstream of the modern system.
Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape from Reason (Westmont, IL: IVP Books, 2014).
Shane Lems
Hammond, WI, 54015
