Inconvenient Opinions

By Carl Wells

Inconvenient to whom?

Inconvenient Opinions is an attempt to do some fresh thinking on a lot of topics--historical, religious, and miscellaneous. But to whom will these ideas be inconvenient? Not to the author, who is always happy as a clam.
To the church? To his family? To authorities? Nope, nope, and nope.
Then to whom will these ideas be inconvenient?
Perhaps: to people who care about ideas, and who know that good ideas call forth an active response on the part of the hearer. So let's hope that the ideas in this book are good, and that the reader is inconvenienced in a useful way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781467043441

Carl Wells

Carl Wells enjoys living in Southern Indiana, in what might be described as Flyover Country, except that almost nobody flies over.

Book preview

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Chapter 1.

Real or Unreal?

For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.

2 Timothy 1:7

The real drives out the unreal. That’s why the liberal churches are steadily dying.

Liberal Christianity says unreal things about life. They say the Bible is not the inerrant word of God, and therefore the teachings of the Bible can be avoided.

But why are the liberal churches dying so slowly? One might think that something so unreal as liberal Christianity would curl up and die completely, within a generation or within even just ten years.

There are at least two reasons for that.

One, the conservative, Bible-believing church—contrary to its belief about itself—is not very real either. This is true across the board, in any category you can think of.

Yes, the conservative Bible-believing church has it right that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. But surprisingly little penetrating application is made of the truth that God has given. Pastors and people make an unspoken agreement that the same well-worn paths will be kept to, that challenging and practical applications will not be made to our daily life. Therefore Christians frequently vote as non-Christians, and frequently live as non-Christians.

A bare understanding that the Bible is the word of God, should be only a starting point. A first grader can understand that the Bible is the word of God, and that those who deny this truth are outside the faith. What, however, do we do with the truth God has given us? Very little.

Non-Christians sense that there is little that is real about our truth. There is so slight a difference between our truth and liberal ravings, that it is not surprising our truth is not real enough to draw attention to itself.

Think of any category at all. Whatever category you think of, the same tiny realness is found in the conservative, Bible-believing church.

Do we love each other very much?

Are we kind, welcoming, friendly, hospitable?

Do we have high principles?

Do we give to God’s church the tithe (10%) He requires, and look for ways to give generously beyond a tithe?

Are we involved in the lives of others, sharing burdens, admitting our emotional or spiritual struggles, challenging one another to honor Christ by our lives?

Do we hugely enjoy each other’s company? Do we even spend time together?

Do we like to think about ideas, to exercise our minds, to grow intellectually?

Are we sexually modest, self-controlled, uncompromising?

Do we honor marriage, or do we live and divorce in our families just about as the world lives and divorces?

To ask such questions is to answer them, very quickly. On all counts the conservative, Bible-believing church is not very real at all, but instead almost as weak as the liberal church.

The real has little chance to drive out the unreal, because there’s not very much real in our faith.

The conservative, Bible-believing church in the United States may perhaps improve in becoming real. When it does, people who are looking for something real will begin to notice, and begin to join us. Already, even what tiny realness we have does attract many people.

There is a second reason why the liberal churches, so unreal as they are, are dying so relatively slowly.

That is, for many, the attraction of the liberal church is precisely that the liberal church is unreal. Many don’t want the real. They profoundly desire unrealities. For them, it is glorious that Scripture is a rubber nose which one can bend any way one wants. Countless people yearn for the unreal as a thirsty man yearns for water in a dry and weary land (Ps. 63:1).

They want to be spiritual without being obedient.

They want flexible principles.

They want shallow relationships with other people.

They want to do what they want to do, and to fondly imagine that they are good Christians who are going to heaven when they die.

So, although it is true that the real drives out the unreal, it is also true that the unreal drives out the real.

There will always be a niche for liberal Christianity, because it provides a natural home for many people.

The job of conservative, Bible-believing Christianity is to become greatly more real. Those whom God has appointed to desire the real will be able to find us more quickly. Those who love unreality will understand their need to leave us and to go to their natural home in the liberal churches.

The tares and the wheat, by God’s design, will never be completely separated on the earth (Matt. 13:24-30). But as the centuries unfold, it will become more and more apparent as to which field is basically wheat, and which field is basically tares. This will be to the good.

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Chapter 2.

Believing in Wrongheaded Ideas

There is a way which seems right to a man,

But its end is the way of death.

Proverbs 16:25

There are always consequences for believing in wrongheaded ideas.

This is not always readily apparent when one first begins to believe in wrongheaded ideas. One seems to be getting away with it, very often. And indeed one does get away with it, at least in outward results—for a while. But consequences—meaning: something bad—always rear their ugly head in the long run.

Examples of wrongheaded ideas come to mind. When Adolf Hitler began to come to general notice in Germany, he had many wrongheaded ideas: blaming the Jews for Germany’s problems and being willing to treat those Jews in a rotten fashion; believing leadership of a nation should adhere in one man rather than in eternal principles of justice; believing that running roughshod over other nations militarily was often a good idea and that any semi-plausible excuse for doing so would and should suffice; believing that the German people were inherently superior to other people and therefore had a right to preeminence in the world (and to more space!) while the inferior people were to be treated in a manner appropriate to their inferiority; believing that Germany could safely dispense with Christ, with Christian principles, with Christian ethics. And so on, with doubtless other wrongheaded ideas we could discover pretty quickly if we spent more time on the topic.

These were all wrongheaded ideas. But it wasn’t readily apparent to countless German people—and to many onlookers outside Germany—that these ideas (some more openly expressed than others) were necessarily wrongheaded. For quite a while it seemed to many people that Hitler was on to something good. He came to power—legally came to power, remember—in 1933. He ruled Germany for six peaceful years. Good things were happening, most of the German people agreed. Mistreating the Jews, as per Kristallnacht (Nov. 9-10, 1938)? Well, the Jews are an annoying people, right? They need to know their place, even if Kristallnacht was a little more violent than one might prefer. And the Fuhrer can’t fine-tune the behavior of all his supporters.

Even when war eventually came, after six years, in 1939, there were some wonderful results. Yes, there were now German soldiers being killed and crippled, but look at all the military victories!

It was only gradually that the unpleasant consequences of having gone along with wrongheaded ideas, began to appear to the German people. But the unpleasant consequences gathered momentum, and within six years much of Germany was physically destroyed, and millions of ordinary Germans had been killed, had been crippled, had been raped, and/or had been impoverished.

It all began with believing wrongheaded ideas. It even began, for many, with simply acquiescing in or ignoring or shrugging off wrongheaded ideas, and not being willing to argue against those wrongheaded ideas with other people beginning to be committed to them. And all within the space of dozen years, one’s life was shattered or gone. There were consequences for believing in wrongheaded ideas.

In the U. S., we are showing a very strong desire to follow the path of Germany, in believing in wrongheaded ideas. We believe, for example: leadership of a nation should adhere in the decisions of the people rather than in eternal principles of justice; that preemptive war is justified at any time we feel threatened by another nation, or if we are offended by the form of government of any other nation; that running roughshod over other nations militarily is often a good idea and that any semi-plausible excuse for doing so will and should suffice; that the American people, due to their highly principled love of freedom and democracy, are inherently superior to other people and therefore have a right to preeminence in the world while the inferior people are to be treated in a manner appropriate to their inferiority; that killing 50,000,000 American babies is an appropriate exercise of our democratic freedom to choose; that the wise principles of multicultural pluralism should lead us to welcome Muslims to our nation; that the property of some can and should be voted away from the some and given to others as long as the process unfolds democratically; that the money supply should sometimes be increased dramatically by creating money out of thin air via central banking alchemy; that the end justifies the means which therefore permits us to torture people; that the United States can safely dispense with Christ, with Christian principles, with Christian ethics. And so on, with doubtless other numerous other wrongheaded ideas we could discover pretty quickly if we spent more time on the topic.

These are all wrongheaded ideas. But it’s not readily apparent to countless American people—and to many onlookers outside the U. S.—that these ideas are necessarily wrongheaded. For quite a while it has seemed to many people that we Americans are on to something good. We’ve been powerful and wealthy for many decades! Good things, mostly, have been happening for quite a few generations, most American people are agreed. Torturing Islamic jihadists? Well, the Islamic jihadists are very annoying people who intend us harm, right? They need to have the information which they have (maybe), forced out of them, even if torture is something we don’t like to think about a lot. And the president can’t fine-tune the behavior of all his supporters.

The German people went on agreeing with or acquiescing in wrongheaded ideas, until bad consequences eventually overtook them. I suspect we Americans will prove no wiser. We too will insist upon the practical goodness of our wrongheaded ideas until bad consequences overtake us so visibly that even he who runs may read (Hab. 2:2).

That American Christians should be wiser, but that most American Christians are not wiser, is a very strong argument that Christianity is, after all, a bunch of self-righteous hooey with no basis in reality. Because we Christians too are committed to numerous wrongheaded ideas. First of all, go through the list I gave concerning the U. S. in general. Most of them are wrongheaded ideas which most conservative, Bible-believing Christians share. If you deny it, your nose will likely be at least an inch longer in the morning.

But we Christians also have wrongheaded ideas which are peculiarly our own. Non-Christians and Christians share many wrongheaded ideas. Wrongheaded ideas are convenient to all of us; we can go along with the crowd and suffer no ostracism. Still, Christians have their own wrongheaded ideas for which non-Christians share no blame.

Non-Christians make no pretense to believe in and respect the Bible. Bible-believing Christians by definition believe that the Bible is a supernatural communication from the creator God, and that therefore its teachings are true and must be respected. Nevertheless, despite their supposed respect for the Bible, most Christians manage to believe in many wrongheaded ideas which—in my opinion, that is—the Bible does not support. These wrongheaded ideas include, for example: a precise separation of the Christian religion and the secular state is possible and indeed desirable; the law of God as revealed in the Bible need not be the basic fundamental pattern which all nations should follow; Christians need not necessarily support the church with 10% of our increase; Christians may divorce for reasons other than the Bible permits; no long-term spread of Christian civilization is possible, and therefore there is no call to strive for and expect such a spread; the biblical laws of punishment for crime are impractical in a modern setting, and may be safely ignored by Christians and by any nation. And so on, with doubtless numerous other wrongheaded ideas we could discover pretty quickly if we spent more time on the topic.

These are all wrongheaded ideas. But it is not readily apparent to countless truly converted American Christians that these are wrongheaded ideas. For many years Bible-believing Christians have affirmed these wrongheaded ideas, and most of us (99.9%?) have agreed that these ideas are something good.

We seem to be getting away with it. At least we think we are getting away with it.

But a closer look shows that we are not getting away with anything. Bad consequences have already begun to come to us, although we don’t recognize them as such.

Believing that a precise separation of religion and state is possible and desirable, we give up the possibility of creating a nation which desires to honor God, and meanwhile we leave ourselves and our countrymen to the tender mercies of secular humanists who immediately set about to create a nation which follows the dictates of their own god: themselves.

Believing that nations need not use the revealed law of God as their basic fundamental pattern, we give up the potential use of something that is practical and wise—holy and righteous and good (Rom. 7:12)—and which furthers good and frustrates evil.

Believing that Christians need not necessarily support the church with 10% of our increase, we impoverish the church, make ourselves thieves, and powerfully hamper the evangelization of our nation and of the world.

Believing that Christians may divorce for reasons other than the Bible permits, we divorce largely as non-Christians divorce, we destroy Christian families, we discourage Christians from growing toward the biblical standard of married and family love, to the devastation of countless lives.

Believing that no long-term spread of Christian civilization is possible and that therefore we need not strive for and expect such a spread, we do not strive for and expect such a spread. Status quo Christianity of a very low quality is the standard, and remains the accepted standard. We don’t expect God to expand His kingdom greatly, and feel no pressing need to try to expand something that won’t, after all, be expanded. This hurts us and also hurts our non-Christian neighbors.

Believing that the biblical laws of punishment for crime are impractical in a modern setting and may safely be ignored by Christians and by any nation, we desert our criminals to the wicked principles of humanists. We also, by rejecting biblical punishment, reject biblical protection to countless innocent people who would have been kept safe if biblical principles had been followed.

There are, as we see, consequences for believing wrongheaded ideas. We haven’t even noticed the consequences, or we blame the consequences on humanists, on others, on human nature, on reality as it is and must be, on anything other than our own acceptance of those wrongheaded ideas as being consistent with biblical Christianity.

Moreover, the consequences may continue to grow. We’ve had a serious taste of bad consequences, but definitely have not recognized them as such, and so we seem to be willing to keep on believing the same wrongheaded things.

God will not be trifled with. He will go on giving us bad consequences for believing wrongheaded things. The bad consequences may get worse and worse, and I for one certainly expect them to do so in the near future.

But God is very merciful, and He has provided a ready way of escape for us. If we repent of so readily acquiescing in wrongheaded ideas, if we ask God to forgive us and to give us a love for His truth, He will quickly help us. He always wants our hearts. When He has our hearts, we will want to think true thoughts that please Him, and His Holy Spirit will help us to do so.

We will begin to think true things, and will begin to act in a manner which reflects true beliefs. There will be, needless to say, consequences. For a pleasant change: good consequences. Because, just as believing in wrongheaded ideas brings bad consequences, believing in true ideas and acting in consonance with those true ideas, brings good consequences. God’s reality is logical.

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Chapter 3.

Objectivity

"If then I am a wrongdoer, and have committed anything worthy of death, I do not refuse to die;

Acts 25:11

It has long seemed to me that humility is the key virtue in life, as well as the rarest virtue.

Pride was the central flaw of our parents Adam and Eve, and we have inherited their inclination toward that sin.

Humility—in any beginning portion; as beggars we will take the smallest portion we can get and be grateful for a start—allows us to evaluate ourselves more realistically, to begin to see our sinfulness toward God and toward our neighbors. This drives us to cast about for a way of escape. By God’s grace, we are driven to the Savior Jesus Christ.

Humility is similarly useful through all of life, in allowing us to be more plugged into reality than is our natural inclination. Humility remains rare, however. Even if we have enough humility (by God’s grace) to be driven to see our need for Jesus Christ, we seldom cultivate humility in our relations with our neighbors, Christian or non-Christian. Our neighbors are, obviously and visibly, knuckleheads with whom it is painful to have to deal. We seldom have humility enough to begin to suspect that just possibly there are knuckleheadish elements to our own character.

Objectivity thus is also a useful virtue. Perhaps it is a subset of humility. In any case, objectivity is, like humility, relatively rare.

Objectivity allows us to begin to be honest about ourselves, our family, our basketball team, our nation. The relative rarity of objectivity can be seen when we consider how many children are spoiled, and are raised to be self-absorbed jerks. This is true in the world at large, but it is also very often true in the conservative, Bible-believing church.

We lack the objectivity to evaluate our children honestly. Our children could not be jerks who need to be disciplined. Why? Well, the only answer seems to be because they are ours.

When we are objective, we begin to evaluate our children—and the quality of job we are doing in raising them—in a clearer light. If we have the honesty that objectivity brings, we will begin to see that our children are not exempt from God’s eternal standards, and we as parents also are not exempt from those standards.

Our lack of objectivity shows up in something so homely as a high school basketball game. If a call goes against our team we berate the officials. Since the officials have an incredibly difficult job, the teaching of charity and courtesy would encourage us to be patient even with the officials’ errors. But far too often we berate the officials even when they have made an excellent call, just because the call went against us. This shows a shocking lack of objectivity, and bodes ill for our being able to show objectivity when faced with much more serious moral issues. ‘He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much’ (Lk. 16:10). It is truly astonishing and reprehensible, that so many Christians permit ourselves conduct at a basketball game or other sporting events which demonstrates our lack of courtesy and objectivity.

This lack of objectivity then rears its ugly head in every aspect of our lives. We judge our children to be wonderful—when they are not. Objectivity would teach us that we have no right to our neighbor’s property, but we lack objectivity and we vote to expropriate our neighbor’s property. Objectivity would tell us that our nation is not exempt from conducting itself in a civilized manner, but we lack objectivity; hence when we find out, for example, that our nation is torturing, we shrug and excuse it.

Objectivity would encourage us to examine the American conservative, Bible-believing church honestly, using God’s standards as our measure. But we lack objectivity, and therefore judge ourselves to be doing a pretty good job of being Christians. If we were objective, we would see our great flaws, and would begin to understand that the source of all the miseries of modern America is the Bible-believing church. Our lack of objectivity renders us blind, and gives us no realistic opportunity of changing a losing game. We don’t even know it’s losing. We think we are doing just fine.

Our lack of objectivity has rendered us unable to change, and so we keep on behaving foolishly. Moreover, because our example is so bad, we make things much harder for our non-Christian neighbors. On their own, our non-Christian neighbors have no wise eternal standard, whereas we Christians are supposed to be plugged into God’s wise instructions. When the behavior of Christians is so wretched, our non-Christian neighbors are given no practical example and help in plugging into God’s reality. If our nation goes down the toilet of history, it will be the fault of Christians who couldn’t work up enough objectivity to evaluate anything honestly.

The problem of our lack of objectivity is so pervasive that it seems beyond correction. It may well be beyond correction for the American Christian church as a whole. As individuals, we can pray for God to give us more honesty, more objectivity. If we pray sincerely, for a long time, I suspect He will answer us by allowing us to see ourselves more clearly. This will be painful. None of us like to see our sins. But it will bring good fruit in our lives in the long run. Maybe if we remove the log from our own eye, we may be able eventually to help our neighbor remove the speck from his (Matt. 7:3-5).

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Chapter 4.

Why Do We Waste Time?

We must work the works of Him who sent Me, as long as it is day; night is coming, when no man can work.

John 9:4

Why do we waste so much time?

Of course wasting time is the default position of the human race. Even if we are Christians, we are still human beings, and wasting time comes naturally to us. As men and women inhabited by the Holy Spirit, we have the potential to waste much less time, but it often remains potential.

Some non-Christians waste little time. They know they don’t have an eternity, so they are extremely diligent in using their time to pursue their goals.

Perhaps we waste time because we know we have so much of it. Christians are going to live for 10 billion years times 10 billion years—and that is just the length of the first second of the first minute of the first day of eternity—so we have lots of time to do stuff. Wasting a little bit of our time here on earth doesn’t seem so serious a problem, given the length of eternity.

Granting that we Christians have eternity to put time to good use, still it seems to me remarkable that we put much of our time to such inconsequential use.

Maybe we don’t waste as much time as I theorize. Between earning a living, doing necessary tasks around the house, and raising their families, many people probably feel they have barely enough spare time to catch their breath.

Still, why are so many bad television shows so popular? Is it just non-Christians watching them? Are Christians just innocently taking a rest from their labors? We all need rest and recreation, and perhaps watching a mindless television show or mindless movie, is occasionally a good use of time. We all feel the need of vegging out.

Granted. But I admit I still think most people are extremely careless in their use of time. There is a vast difference from occasional vegging out, and the constant, unremitting waste of valuable hours.

While Christians have billions of years of time ahead of us, we all know that we have relatively little time on earth. And we know that our time on earth before death, is a special time, qualitatively different from the time we will spend after death. Our time on earth is a time of testing and opportunity. We know we will only have 50 to 70 or, at the outside, 80 to