When we began this series of articles on our conception of truth, I did not expect there would be five of them, and it seems that there could be several more. But I sense the Spirit encouraging me to move on to the remainder of Blamires’ “Marks of the Christian Mind.” I expect we will come back to this topic at some point; our understanding of God and the way He would have us think depend significantly on our conception of the truth.

The questions of worldview, truth, and meaning seem to be shifting back in the direction of religion. The tide is turning, and we must press the advantage surprisingly thrust upon us by “The Meaning Crisis.” We must avoid the temptation of once again passively waiting on the masses to return to church. There are many religions besides Christianity, and humans are quite creative when it comes to inventing others. Man’s desire to be or create his own God has found encouragement in the advances of artificial intelligence, while Woke-ism presses hard to indoctrinate and inculcate our children.

As the news media has proven, the facts can be twisted in any number of ways. Do not believe everything you read has become a common warning. With advancements in image generation and the advent of artificial intelligence, we will soon be adopting the same warning for every picture and news clip we see.

Our Father in heaven, his Son, and the Holy Spirit have a desire, purpose, and plan for the storms and chaos of this decade. Christianity offers the meaning, purpose, hope, etc. for which the world so desperately hungers. We will close out this series of articles on our conception of the truth by examining a few key and related observations from Harry Blamires. We hope you find encouragement, conviction, and direction for your role in this challenging and opportunistic Kairos moment.

For the secular mind, religion is essentially a matter of theory: for the Christian mind, Christianity is a matter of acts and facts. The Christian mind is alert to the solid, God-given, authoritative factualness of the Christian Faith and the Christian Church.

To think christianly is to think in terms of Revelation. For the secularist, God and theology are the playthings of the mind. For the Christian, God is real, and Christian theology describes his truth revealed to us.

The secular mind will not have this. And, worse still, secularism has eaten away from the Christian mind that sense of Revelation’s rocklike quality without which the Christian mind is no longer Christian.

There is no subtler perversion of the Christian Faith than to treat it as a mere means to a worldly end, however admirable that end in itself may be. We must say no to this limited proposition. The Christian Faith is important because it is true. What it happens to achieve, in ourselves or in others, is another and, strictly speaking, secondary matter (Blamires, 1963).

In the humanist’s materialistic worldview, the Christian faith is perverted into the means to an end; namely, to create a person of good values and attitudes in conformity to his or her personal worldview. In other words, Christianity is nothing more than a set of value statements and behavioral norms conformed to the secular worldview; and who needs God for that?

Sadly, much of the church has been conformed to this paradigm. In doing so, we have made ourselves a servant subculture to the prevailing secular worldview. The compromise of the church to the Queer Theory idealogues is just the latest evidence of our submission.

We are seduced into defending this or that particular article of faith against the secularist mental background which presupposes it alterable. Thus sometimes we find ourselves misguidedly defending by deductive argument what ought to be presented by historical affirmation.

If the Christian comes before the secular mind claiming less for Christian truth than is its due, he not only betrays the Faith, he contributes to the erosion of the Christian mind. We have to insist that the Christian Faith is something solider, harder, and tougher than even Christians like to think (Blamires, 1963).

The worldview of the Christian mind is completely inverted from that of the secular. Truth is not constructed to fit the individual’s worldview, but revealed, believed, and illuminated as the rock-solid core – to create, inform, and sustain the Christian’s worldview, and this by the Holy Spirit.

Christian truth is something given, revealed, laid open to the eye of the patient, self-forgetful inquirer. You do not make the truth. You reside in the truth (Blamires, 1963).

Blamires points out that society now readily reaches conclusions about truth and goodness of products, people, and populations through surveys and questionnaires sent to random cross-sections of people who may or may not be experts in the subject under investigation. This is suitable for those who hold to the subjectivity of truth and the power of the human to make up whatever truth suits them. When these methods are applied to matters of Christian doctrine, the objective truth existing within the sphere of religion has also been lost. Those who desire to know the truth, even secular scientists, prefer less capricious means.

God is not so cruel as to have left us in the miserable plight that the most saving and necessary truths have to be laboriously assembled by everyone for himself. We are not a lot of amateur detectives on the hunt for clues in a cosmic whodunit. That is not the world as the Christian sees it.

God chose not to leave his world in darkness. He chose to lay open in it the revelation of Himself. That is what Christianity is all about.

All pseudo-Christian poses which deny, ignore, or diminish this truth are grounded in this-worldly prejudice in favour of human self-sufficiency. In short they express a fundamentally secularist outlook. Over against it, the Christian mind reiterates that the Christian Faith is not a human fabrication but a divine gift. When people encounter the Church and her message, they do not come up against the opinions of men; they come up against the word of God (Blamires, 1963).

Our responsibility to God and the world is to reside and grow within the truth, as we draw others to shelter with us in the midst of “The Meaning Crisis.” We are by no means to leave our post to join in their drowning. Compromise, even with the best of intentions, only ensures their perishing and our injury.

God bless you with encouragement, conviction, and direction for your role in this challenging and opportunistic Kairos moment.

Have a strong day in the Lord,

Rob

#iamjustthepen

Blamires, H. (1963). The Christian Mind. Regent College Publishing; Vancouver, BC.