“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen.”
In a modern world full of creature comforts, there are many ways to worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator. Yet such a sin is as ancient as Adam’s, the taproot from which all wretched fruits grow and tempt men to stain their tongue with prideful lies and deny the truth of the Word written on their hearts.
All men stumble over this root. All men fall short of the glory of God.
Yet, each man, as abysmal as he may be, has a choice to make – keep the faith and accept the grace of the Creator written on his heart or develop a taste for dishonor and disgrace while playing the fool who, without excuse, stumbles to dust in the dark.
All sin stems from the disorder of placing creation over Creator. Man has discovered unnumbered ways to miss the mark, yet there is one particularly modern way to place creation over Creator that this mere creature fears.
I fear that, while I remember the prayers of my childhood faith, I may yet be tempting fate. I fear that I could paint my tongue with all there is to taste of Jesus’ moral teachings and ethical ways, yet still fall astray despite all the righteous things Jesus teaches me to do or say.
I don’t want to be like MLK, believing Jesus was a great example, a creaturely prototype of moral struggle – but not fully God, not the second person of the Holy Trinity, not the Word made flesh, not born of a virgin, not resurrected from the dead.
Indeed, as Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in 1949 as a student (and never recanted later in life despite developing further with “personalist” expressions of his faith):
So that the orthodox view of the divinity of Christ is in my mind quite readily denied. The true significance of the divinity of Christ lies in the fact that his achievement is prophetic and promissory for every other true son of man who is willing to submit his will to the will and spirit of God. Christ was to be only the prototype of one among many brothers.
Of course, MLK isn’t alone in making this all-too-human move. I suspect believing Jesus is a great moral teacher, but less than God, is a much more palatable “truth” to swallow for the modern tongue – the social gospel without the gospel, whereby the kingdom of Man is at hand by creaturely design as “The People’s Christianity” and rules without Christ the King.
It is not my place to judge MLK’s or any other heart for genuine belief, for I fear and tremble that I may one day be judged the same by God. But considering my recent reversion to the faith of my fathers, I can no longer hold my tongue.
To believe in Jesus’ moral teachings yet deny Jesus is truly God – to deny Jesus is the Word in the beginning through whom all things were made, the life that was the light of men who shines in the darkness that the darkness has not overcome – is to believe mere creatures can be saved by another mere creature’s delusions or lies.
C.S. Lewis said it better than I ever could:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
To reduce Jesus to a great moral teacher is a perfectly tragic example of exchanging the truth about God for a lie and worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator.
Joey Clark is a native Alabamian and is currently the host of the radio program News and Views on News Talk 93.1 FM WACV out of Montgomery, AL, M-F 12 p.m. - 3 p.m. His column appears every Tuesday in 1819 News. To contact Joey for media or speaking appearances, as well as any feedback, please email [email protected]. Follow him on X @TheJoeyClark or watch the radio show livestream.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to [email protected].
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