Focus on the Family with Jim Daly

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: So to put it in clear terms, there are many Americans who don’t mind saying they believe in God, just as long as they are god.

John Fuller: What an incredible insight from Dr. Erwin Lutzer. He joins us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly to discuss the cultural darkness that we’re experiencing and how we, as Christians, can and should respond. Welcome to the program, I’m John Fuller.

Jim Daly: Hey, John, here’s a light bulb idea. Christianity is not as popular in the culture like it used to be and, uh, we, as Christians, have a responsibility to understand the culture we live in and, by doing so, making the greatest impact we can for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We want to equip you today to be able to do that, to be that representative of the Kingdom of God, so that we can impact a culture and do it in such a way that brings no shame to the Lord’s name, but-

John: Hm.

Jim: … only, uh, you know, the right things. And we’re gonna have a great discussion with our guest, who I am looking forward to talkin’ about this topic with.

John: Mm-hmm, yeah, Dr. Erwin Lutzer is pastor emeritus at Moody Bible Church in Chicago, where he served as senior pastor for over 36 years and he’s written a number of books. We’re talking about, uh, one of his latest, it’s really the heart of the conversation. The book is called, The Eclipse of God: Our Nation’s Disastrous Search for a More Inclusive Deity (and What We Must Do About It). Learn more about that book, we’ve got the details at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jim: Dr. Lutzer, welcome back to Focus on the Family.

Dr. Lutzer: So glad to be with you again.

Jim: It’s always a meal. I- I just, I get my spiritual-

Dr. Lutzer: (laughs)

Jim: … fork and knife ready to go. You’re just-

Dr. Lutzer: (laughs)

Jim: … throwin’ it on the plate-

Dr. Lutzer: Okay.

Jim: … and we just start consuming it. This, I think, uh, given the content of what you’re talking about, and that is Christians in a culture that don’t embrace Christianity, this is an exciting topic for me. And I think my evangelistic heart comes alive with this kind of-

John: Hm.

Jim: … content, because we so desperately want people to know the good news and we don’t want to be the impediment. Our bad personality (laughs) attributes, our anger, our, you know, yeah, being miffed at a culture that doesn’t embrace what, uh, God has told us can really stir our hearts in a negative way. Man, we should not be the reason that somebody, uh, turns away from God, right?

Dr. Lutzer: That’s right.

Jim: (laughs)

Dr. Lutzer: But at the same time, they need truth, which they might feel is offensive, but they need to hear it. So we’ll get into those kinds of issues-

Jim: Ah, we will.

Dr. Lutzer: … in this program.

Jim: Let’s start with the obvious, uh, The Eclipse of God. What, uh, were you tryin’ to convey with the very title?

Dr. Lutzer: Well, when you stop to think of it, if there’s an eclipse of the sun, and we all know that what happens is the moon comes between the earth and the sun, and the sun is unaffected. The sun is just as bright as ever, but the moon of secularism has brought darkness on the land.

Jim: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: You know, the Bible says in Isaiah chapter 59, verse 1, “Your sins have caused me to turn my face away from you.” So what I do in the book is, as I set this up, I talk about what darkness looks like, I talk about what light looks like, and I remind people that we are living at a time when the moon of secularism is constantly encroaching on the church, it is coming into places that we have not experienced in the past, and the question is, how do we relate to this in this present moment?

Jim: I love the metaphor. The- the only disappointing part is an eclipse of the moon, in reality, is pretty quick, it lasts about (laughs) 30 minutes.

Dr. Lutzer: Yes.

Jim: This seems to be lingering, this eclipse of the culture, this darkness that you’re talking about.

Dr. Lutzer: And I think the darkness is increasing.

Jim: Yeah.

Dr. Lutzer: I point out in the book that, you know, I think that as the dominoes begin to fall, that even the treatment of children-

Jim: Oh.

Dr. Lutzer: … and such things that we have in our schools today, all of that is going to accelerate-

Jim: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lutzer: … it doesn’t seem as if the darkness is retreating. So the question is, what do we do as believers?

And one of the points that I want to emphasize in the book is, first of all, how does the darkness come to us and we can talk about philosophers and the relevance of these philosophers to us here in America. And then I also want to emphasize, and maybe I’m getting ahead of the discussion, I want to talk about the sovereignty of God, the fact that we must see God in the midst of this. But we also have to ask this question, and we’re certainly going to try to answer it, what are the lessons that we can learn from the past that we can apply to the present situation that we are in, lessons that relate to the church, but also to us as individuals.

Jim: Uh, man, you have said so much in that statement. Uh, we are gonna take it chunk by chunk. Let’s start with this concept. Well, first, let me say this, I’m hopeful-

John: Hm.

Jim: … I am not a pessimist. I mean, if anything, I had a nonbeliever friend of mine say to me (laughs) once, “If you guys,” meaning Christians, “if you guys are worried, I should be really worried, ’cause you’re not supposed to be worried, right?” Isn’t that an insight? I mean that’s, uh, an amazing insight.

Dr. Lutzer: That really is. At the same time, that doesn’t mean that we’re going to win, it means that, ultimately, we are going to see God in the midst of our predicament, because remember this, God doesn’t wait to see the news through His providential hand, God makes the news.

John: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lutzer: So to your point, Jim, which you could have said to him is, “Yes, I’m not worried, because God has already lived my tomorrows.”

Jim: Yeah, that’s a great line-

John: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lutzer: Uh-

Jim: … which will probably stop them in their tracks-

Dr. Lutzer: … that’s right.

Jim: … and they’ll think about that.

John: Hm.

Jim: Uh, why is it so important, uh, for Christians to remember the culture war is a spiritual one, ’cause, I mean, I’ve been in those trenches. It’s very difficult to take the fruit of the spirit into the culture war-

John: Hm.

Jim: … love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, mercy. Uh, those, uh, don’t feel like effective tools to f- battle in the culture war, but they are.

Dr. Lutzer: Here’s the problem we face. The problem is, we’re living at a time of irrationality. We’re living at a time where superior ideas don’t necessarily win the argument.

Jim: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lutzer: So to your point, we have to understand that behind this there is a cosmic battle between the spiritual forces of darkness and the spiritual forces of light. And we have to understand that behind all this that is going on and, therefore, we do fight differently. Because to emphasize the point again, we’re living at a time when “two plus two is equal to five,” if I might say that, you know this was-

Jim: Yeah.

Dr. Lutzer: … taken from George Orwell. When “two plus two is equal to five” and when rational arguments no longer work. For example, if you say children from a two-parent home turn out better than one parent or no parent-

Jim: On average.

Dr. Lutzer: … on average, you won’t be met by statistics to show differently, you’ll be vilified.

John: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lutzer: So, it’s a different kind of culture and we’re gonna be talking about that. But in the midst of all of this, what we have to do in- indeed, is to see God and to know what our place is in a society that is clearly losing its way.

Jim: You know, and sometimes the consistency of being able to do that can be our difficulty. I remember I was, uh, debating, on a cable news channel, a woman who was pro-abortion, Jehmu Greene. I mean it’s out there in the record, so I’m not saying anything I shouldn’t say, and she came out of the gates accusing me of falsifying, uh, ultrasounds through our Option Ultrasound Program, which are just ultrasounds of babies, I mean I don’t know how you falsify that, (laughs) and that we set up fake clinics to help women, but we really don’t help women. She just came out of the gate with all these accusations. And, you know, I sat quietly, I smiled, I listened to what she had to say, and we had the debate. But at the very end, I just thank the Lord, ’cause I felt like the Lord gave me this to say to her, on live television, I said, “Jehmu, can I just say, I’m so glad your mom chose life for you.” (laughs)

Dr. Lutzer: (laughs)

Jim: And she had nowhere to go.

Dr. Lutzer: No.

Jim: I mean, what do you say, “I’m not,” that’s illogical, I’m here, right? And I just feel like that is one of the best ways to express God’s presence, His personality toward people, is don’t get rattled, don’t get angry at the anger, but remain calm, as calm as you can, and pray, and ask the Lord for a word-

Dr. Lutzer: Mm-hmm.

Jim: … that basically just lays it out there.

Dr. Lutzer: Not only that, but when you think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they actually served the wicked king, Nebuchadnezzar. I don’t think people stop and really think about that, but, you know, they did-

Jim: Yeah.

Dr. Lutzer: … they just did. So, it’s a reminder of the fact that there are some things in the culture that we can go along with. But when it came to bowing down before the image, that’s where they said, “No.” And that reminds us that every Christian has to think through where are these lines. I can maybe go along with this, but I can’t go along with that biblically, and that’s what we have to help people think through.

Jim: That- that is so true. Why do you think it’s important to examine ourselves as often, or more so, than we examine the culture?

Dr. Lutzer: Well, what we have to do is to understand our role in the world, and we have to understand who God is, and, therefore, it’s so important for us to not simply go along with the culture.

Now, Jim, because of Focus on the Family, you know this, that even Christian parents oftentimes are not raising their children today, the culture raises them-

Jim: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: … the cell phone raises them. So we are so much a part of the culture that sometimes we can’t look at the culture objectively. And so we have to ask ourselves, how did we get here and what is our role in the midst of the culture?

John: Yeah, it … Along those lines, Dr., uh, Lutzer, the cultural concepts about truth, and about identity, and about so much of what we believe is truth, uh, flood and built on really bad foundations. Walk us through some of the influences that brought us to, as a culture, these understandings.

Dr. Lutzer: Right, let me begin this way. Recently, I was in the city of Berlin and when you walk up the stairs at Berlin University, there’s a statement there by Karl Marx, it’s in German, but I translated it into English for the people that were there. What it says is this. “Hitherto, philosophers have only described the world, but the point is how do you change it?” So, John, I need to respond to you by saying that philosophers have greatly influenced the world.

John: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lutzer: And that’s why I have a chapter, for example, that discusses very briefly Karl Marx. I do that because Nietzsche said, “God was dead,” and he said, “That there were gravediggers that dug the grave for God.” And I asked, “Who are these people.” Well there were many, but one was Karl Marx-

John: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lutzer: … who began the whole idea of oppressed versus oppressor. He was interested in the destruction of the family, because after all, the family is oppressive. Men oppress their wives, parents oppress their children, they take them to church, and God is the ultimate oppressor. So he objected to God as ruler. But this is critical, the next man is Darwin. Darwin says, in one of his quotes, “That the devil came to us in the form of a baboon, who is our grandfather.” Now let everyone stop and think about this.

John: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: If we came up through the animal world, and if the baboon is our grandfather, we have no argument against abortion, infanticide, no argument against euthanasia, we do that for animals and, according to the secular worldview, we are only more highly developed.

Here’s where the Bible speaks so directly. It says that we are created in the image of God and that’s why most people in the back of their minds know that we aren’t just animals, but they don’t realize that’s because of the creation account in the Book of Genesis. And then the third person I discuss is Freud, because Freud believed that sexual pleasure is the highest desire. And he attacked God, actually, as lawgiver, so this darkness comes to Europe. And in my book what I talk about is, what are the lessons that we have to learn that the church in Europe teaches us?

John: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: Because for the most part, the church in Europe was totally taken up by these ideas and these shadows, of course, have come to the United States. So, can I get into that for a moment, Jim?

Jim: Oh yeah, let’s do it.

Dr. Lutzer: Let’s do it.

Jim: (laughs)

Dr. Lutzer: A couple of things. First of all, and I say this with a heavy heart, we cannot take the continued existence of our churches for granted. I’ve been to Saint Petersburg, Russia and they took me into a church that was a museum during the communist era. And we can’t just think here, in America, that things are gonna go on the way they’re gonna go on. There are forces that are pounding against us, as you well know. The second lesson that is so critical, is sometimes these changes come incrementally, so you don’t even see them. It’s one small compromise after another and that, of course, has huge implications. The other is this, good people sometimes have compromised simply because of pressure. The pressure is so great, that even though they know better, they go against their consciences and they descend into darkness and become a part of it. Now, very quickly, what happened to the church in Europe, of course, is that these philosophers pounded against the church, but in addition, there were termites within the church that weakened it.

John: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: And, uh, many people, possibly, have not heard of Hitler’s program entitled Operation Grief. The German word is griffon. Brilliant idea, it didn’t work, but brilliant. What he said is this, “Let’s take the uniforms of dead allied soldiers, for example British soldiers, American soldiers, let’s put them on some of our troops, then they can go behind the lines, and be with the allies, and create problems. So that happened. They were giving false information, false rumors. They took road signs and changed them. Now it didn’t work well because what happened is, the fact is that the Germans, even though they spoke English, they still had a German accent, but that’s exactly what happens in the church.

John: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: You have false prophets who are wearing the uniform of Christianity, but are actually working against us-

Jim: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: … and that was happening in the church in Europe.

Jim: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: You have men like Friedrich Schleiermacher. Don’t you think, Jim, he must be German? (laughs)

Jim: Probably.

Dr. Lutzer: Probably. (laughs)

Jim: You say that very well.

Dr. Lutzer: Yeah. (laughs) And, uh, what did he teach? Religion was but the feeling of absolute dependence.

Jim: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: Okay, doctrine no longer matters much, what matters is feeling.

John: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lutzer: So think of how that has seeped into our culture-

Jim: And the church.

Dr. Lutzer: … s- and the church. And so the people of Europe, unfortunately, were in a position where they were given a brand of Christianity that was not worth living for, much less dying for-

Jim: Hm, yeah.

Dr. Lutzer: … and that’s why the church was overrun largely, there were many exceptions, but largely by the Nazi agenda and other darkness that came to Europe.

Jim: You know, in that context, uh, what do we do, uh, to respond to that kind of false gospel in the church in the West?

John: Hm.

Jim: I mean, what do Christians who are trying to live with spiritual truth, how do we combat that within the body?

Dr. Lutzer: There are different ways that we can approach it. If you’re speaking to the individual who’s listening to this broadcast that is in a church, that is no longer gospel preaching, they have to think seriously about leaving that church and by God’s grace finding a church that is still faithful to the gospel. On the other hand it has to serve as a warning to the pastors and the leaders of churches who are leading people astray because of cultural currents that are really unbiblical. And so in order to negotiate all that, in order to nuance it, that, of course, if a longer story. But everyone has to ask themselves the question, is my church being faithful, am I being faithful, or are we trimming the gospel in order to make it culturally relevant? For example, in my book I tell a story about a man who wrote a book on how liberalism came to Britain and notice this quote. He says, “There was a period of time when the cross was still preached, but it was so bedecked with flowers that nobody could see it.”

Jim: Huh.

Dr. Lutzer: In other words, the gospel was still there, but it was so flowery, and so undemanding, and so inclusive that the gospel of repentance and faith in Christ was lost and there was not a clear proclamation of the gospel, the death and the resurrection of Jesus. Sin and all of its horror and grace and all of its beauty was lost.

Jim: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: The reason that I wrote the book is because there is this idea out there that we can remake God according to our own image.

Jim: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: And God is more tolerant than He used to be. In fact, one of the longest chapters in my book is entitled, Is God More Tolerant Than He Used to Be? Because in the Old Testament you have stonings, you have the killing of the Canaanites and so forth. That doesn’t happen today. So the question really comes down to this, how do we relate to God and how do we understand Him. And we have created God in our own image and we have domesticated God-

Jim: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: … we have trivialized sin, we have brought God down to our level. So to put it in clear terms, there are many Americans who don’t mind saying they believe in God, just as long as they are god. And-

Jim: (laughs) Wow.

Dr. Lutzer: … what we’ve done is, we have, therefore, created an image of God, we have trimmed Him down. And that’s why the subtitle of the book is, you know, it is really the disastrous search for a more inclusive deity. You know, when you study the doctrine of God, Jim, I want to just push back a little bit about what you have said, “God can be very demanding.” Now we emphasize that, along with grace, of course, but at the same time, standing for truth is never really popular. And, um, one of the things that we can learn is what happened in Europe, and what happened there, and the darkness that came. And one of the things I do in the book is help people to understand the lessons for today’s church.

Jim: We’re gonna come back for part two, but in that context, what can Christians do to influence these cultural ideas that are damaging to humanity, not helping us.

Dr. Lutzer: Well, first of all, it begins with the family. How about this quote, “We have to focus on the family.” (laughs)

John: (laughs)

Jim: (laughs) That’s a good idea.

Dr. Lutzer: That’s a good idea.

John: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: Because I think it begins in the home, where Christians have the responsibility of the education of their children. Now we’re living at a time when we cannot trust the public schools. We could go into that, and I could illustrate that, and I do, but the point is simply this, that God is gonna hold parents responsible. I’m not saying that every parent is able to send their child to a faith-based school, or to have a classical education, as your children did, but rather to ask themselves the question, what am I doing as a responsible parent to guide my children in truth, to help them, to separate Christ from culture, knowing we can accept some of the culture, but we can’t accept all of the culture. Let me give you an illustration. Years ago Rebecca and I were in the Czech Republic and we met with a pastor who said this, “Under the communist regime, we hung together as a church. If somebody lost his job because of faithfulness, we all chimed in and we helped them financially, we brought food and so forth. But then freedom came and with freedom eventually came the cell phone.” And he says, “We’re losing the next generation to the culture.”

Jim: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: And I’m not blaming it all on the cell phone, but that has a great deal of impact in today’s society.

So, what’s happening is, we have these cultural streams around us that we don’t even recognize. You remember the story, you’ve probably heard it, about the fish that were swimming along and an older fish came and said, “How’s the water today boys?” And the two younger fish, after the older one was gone, said, uh, “What did he mean by water?”

Jim: Yeah, right. (laughs)

Dr. Lutzer: We are so inundated with a culture that we don’t even see it.

Jim: Right.

Dr. Lutzer: So it begins with the home, it begins with the church, it begins with prayer-

Jim: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: … seeking God, because oftentimes the answers are very difficult and very unclear.

Jim: And there is this battle that’s going on and I think, oftentimes, we don’t want to use those terms. But, um … And I think sometimes we’re shamed into not using those ter- … Uh, there, there’s no battle, what are you talkin’ about? Uh, but we need to be aware of what spiritually is happening. You know, um, in the area of teachers, we have two teachers sitting in the gallery listening to this taping right now. And this is true, there are really wonderful teachers in public schools, and there are real wonderful Christian teachers in public schools, and we want to recognize that. But it’s as if the system, those that are controlling curriculum, those that are dictating what needs to be done in public education, are putting social re-engineering far out in front of basic skills, of reading, writing, arithmetic, and it’s destroying the trust in the public school system. So I just, I just want to make that distinction, but-

Dr. Lutzer: Yes, and the sexualization of children today-

Jim: Oh.

Dr. Lutzer: … in our schools is terrible. It’s destroying the next generation. You know, I’ve written a book about Hitler and I can’t help but going back to him. When he said, in effect, to the German people, “You take care of the child. You clothe them, you feed them, but their hearts will belong to the Reich,” the Reich, namely the German Empire. And that’s the way culture is today. Parents feed their child, they take their child to school, but oftentimes the heart of the child belongs to the world.

John: Hm.

Jim: Yeah, and that’s so discouraging. I don’t want to end on that note. Uh, what is the positivity, spiritually speaking, about the moment we’re in. Let’s end there and come back-

John: Hm.

Jim: … next time with more discussion. But we as Christians, what do we hope in when we look at the landscape of culture and go, “Wow, this is really dark.”

Dr. Lutzer: You know, Jim, I’ve given quite a bit of thought to the question that you’ve asked. How do we develop within the next generation and, for that matter, within ourselves, the ability to stand against the culture? And I think it can only happen when we begin to live life not for this life, but for the life to come.

Jim: Amen.

Dr. Lutzer: When I look at people who have died as martyrs, for example, their hope was not in this life. I spoke to a man who was a pastor in East Germany and he said, “During the communist era,” he said, “only about 15% of the people continued to go to church and to identify with Christianity. Why? Because the pressure was so great. You might lose your job if you go to church, your children won’t have an education.” Now, who are these 15%? They were people who said, “This life is not as important as the life to come. Therefore, what I’m going to do is to invest in eternity and believe that I will be rewarded for faithfulness. And I don’t need to see that reward in this life, I believe that it will be mine in the life to come.” As a matter of fact, when, uh, Niemoller stood up against Hitler, there were those who said, “Now, you know, you shouldn’t have confronted him directly. How does this make the church look?” And I believe that I’m quoting him correctly when he said, “The issue is not how we look on earth, the issue is how do we look in Heaven?”

John: Hm.

Dr. Lutzer: So as we introduce children and others to heroes, we always have to come down to this question, how much are we willing to suffer for the cause of Christ and how much do we believe in the world to come that makes the suffering of this world totally worth it?

Jim: Well that’s a good place to end today, Dr. Lutzer. Thank you for being with us, we’ll pick it up next time.

John: Mm-hmm, hm.

Jim: What a great resource, The Eclipse of God: Our Nation’s Disastrous Search for a More Inclusive Deity. I think those of us that are Christians, truly Christians committed to Christ, convictional Christian, we smell it all around us-

John: Hm.

Jim: … that idea of creating a deity, that the culture’s helping to create, that takes our attention away from the true God and we’ll come back and talk more about that next time. If you feel like, wow, I need to be, I need to be equipped with this information, get a copy of this great book directly from Focus. If you can make a gift of any amount, if you can do it monthly or a one-time gift, we’ll send you a copy of the book as our way of saying, “Thank you for being part of the ministry.”

John: Hm. Yeah, we’re committed to helping you live out your faith as effectively as you can for Christ. Get a copy of this book when you donate. Our number is 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. 800-232-6459 or find details at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller, inviting you back next time as we continue the conversation with Dr. Lutzer and, once again, help you and your family thrive in Christ.