During the 2008 Presidential elections, I was sure this nation would turn around for the better. I was rubbing shoulders with people from the Family Research Council and I was a passionate member of the Connecticut Family Policy Council, the Family Institute of Connecticut. In my mind and the minds of my chums, then Democrat nominee Barack Obama could not get elected because he was so bad for the country.
We were the youth. We were the new voice. Time and time again we were told that “they will listen to you; they listen to the young people.” So we spoke to fight against the red tide of culture. Dare I say it? We were young, and we thought we were invincible.
But history tells a different story. We failed. Or, that is how it felt like. The subsequent days and weeks after the election of President Obama, I rethought my view on Christians in culture. I was so sure we were going to take it all back for God’s glory, but now we dropped that much more. Each battle was so costly, getting to the point where we were just a few years ago would now require decades of work. I went from a Christian who believed we could and should take back government and reclaim it for God’s glory, to something almost of a complete opposite.
The world was sinful, so sinful that we would never regain a toehold in the culture and we were too few to stop the decent into Gomorrah. The duty of a Christian in culture was to speak the truth and to warn them what is going to happen. Write letters to the editor, attend the public hearings, but all the while, knowing that they would overrule us, laugh us off, or hostilely condemn us. In short, I believed we were to make a half hearted attempt at stopping them, and then say, “Well, we tried.”
I swung from one extreme to the next. But I have found the middle ground from Cornelius Plantinga’s book Engaging God’s World, a Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living. By looking at the core of Christianity, the gospel meta-narrative of creation, fall and finally redemption, Plantinga presents a vision of the principals a Christian should live.
In the first chapter, Plantinga introduces the idea of Shalom. Shalom, the Hebrew word for peace, he says, is a state of eternal peace, larger than what we can satisfy. Every individual longs for this peace and strives for it in some way. “In the Bible,” writes Plantinga, “shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight—a rich state of affairs in which natural need are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, all under the arch of God’s love. Shalom, in other words, is the way things are supposed to be.”
Christians have this longing and hope that things are better, that all we see in the here and now is not all of what we can find to satisfy us. Plantinga writes that “Biblical hope has a wide-angle lens. It takes in whole nations and peoples. It brings into focus the entire created order—wolves and lambs, mountains and plains, rivers and valleys. When it is widest and longest, biblical hope looks forward toward a whole “new heaven and new earth” in which death, and mounting, and pain will have passed away (Rev. 21:1, 4)…”
Plantinga shows that as our hope is wide, so is God’s creation. Plantinga quotes Daniel Migliore: “while the stars, the tree, and the animals do not speak or sing of the glory of God in the same way that humans do, in their own way the too lift up their praises to God, and for all we know, they do this with a spontaneity and consistency far greater than our own.” God doesn’t not only hear his glory lauded from the voices of humans, he hears it through all of creation.
However, God gave human kind, his own image bearers, and a special task of ruling over this creation. This is not a narrow mission of stewarding the environment. “According to a widespread interpretation of this mandate (or is it a blessing?),” says Plantinga, “God’s good creation includes not only earth and it’s creatures, but also an array of cultural gifts, such as marriage, family, art, language, commerce, and (even in an ideal world) government.”
But just as creation was wider and bigger than what some may think, sin is more pervasive. The human psyche didn’t develop a duelist nature, or a cancerous growth; the effects of sin infused every cell and action of Man—there is no escaping the gas of brokenness.
But as our sin was greater, so was God’s common grace. God still infuses his providence and his acts throughout the meta-narrative so that it will not fall into complete chaos. As Plantinga writes, “What is striking, once more, is the persistence of God’s grace. God refuses to let the shipwreck happen. So the prophets tell of God’s judgment, and they foretell the exile of his people. But they also see God’s salvation on the horizon, and they want it with the whole force of their hearts.”
Once we adopt God’s worldview, we must become initiated into Christ’s family. This initiation, as taught by many churches, is in the form of baptism into the Church family. Plantinga says, “Before the Red Sea, an Israelite was a slave to a foreign power. After the Red Sea, an Israelite was a liberated Child of God… … Christians get baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ…”
After we have been reformed, the mission turns wider. Our hearts have been reformed, but all of creation is still contaminated with evil. Plantinga spends the rest of the book discussing how the Christian should be the redemptive force in the world which brings a small part of Christ’s shalom to this earthly world.
The overall message of Engaging God’s World was inspiring. Having caught myself in a period of despair when I saw more of my own sin and failure than the savior, this book showed me a perspective I desperately needed—a big vision, something valuable in this life to eagerly strive for.
The book helped me so much; it is hard to see the imperfections of it. Every Christian should understand that every aspect of their life has worth and meaning to God. Although this book was aimed primarily to Christian college students, a thirty-something who comes to the decision to follow Christ should understand that the faith is not compartmentalized.
Plantinga could have gone into greater depth in two areas. First, he never addressed the first step of redemption. Where is the discussion on becoming saved? In a book which explores the meta-narrative and the broad strokes of Christianity, a discussion on how a person becomes saved should have been included. Instead, Plantinga addresses baptism and the community within the Church. Necessary and critical, but these steps are step two and step three.
Secondly, Plantinga should have explained the scriptural basis for his vision of heaven. He believes that the earth shall turn into heaven when Christ finally returns. He says “My reason for thinking so is that scripture appears to teach not only that there shall be a new heaven and earth, but also that it shall be this earth, renewed. In Revelation 21 the city of God descends to us. We do not go to heaven; heaven comes to us.” This is a very wonderful idea which I find very attractive, but I must approach it critically before I accept it. Plantinga mentions one biblical reference, yet never actually quotes it. Before I accept the idea that this earth shall be renewed and experience shalom at the coming of Christ, Plantinga should have provided stronger references back to the Bible.
Yet Plantinga has given a vision. By going back to the meta-narrative of Christianity, he shows a movement larger than us which will give us fulfillment in this life—something worth living for. Plantinga has given “a Christian vision of faith, learning and living.”
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