Are we building an enduring Christianity or not?

Communities of believers who do not do the hard work of answering the hard questions can expect their children and future generations to abandon their faith.

By Beth Snodderly

Editor’s Note: Last week, here on the RWI blog we published an introduction to Ralph Winter’s Four Seeds of Destruction. Today, Beth Snodderly begins a four-part series exploring these topics in more depth. Enjoy.

Ralph Winter often talked and wrote about why people turn away from faith. He wanted the mission world to be aware that newly reached peoples will eventually follow the pattern of post-Christian Europe if we don’t stop exporting a gospel that contains the seeds of its own destruction. He recognized that communities of believers who do not do the hard work of answering hard questions can expect their children and future generations to abandon their faith in God, as was the case in 19th and early 20th century England. Winter saw that intellectual insight into God’s Word, God’s world, and who God is, needs to accompany emotional and experiential awareness of God. Otherwise, as Winter observed, people turn away from faith once they start asking hard questions about the rampant evil in this world, thinking this is God’s will and not realizing there is a Satan behind it. And if they are unaware of what the Bible really says and means on key issues, if they perceive the Bible to have feet of clay, thinking people are unlikely to be interested in following the Jesus of the Bible.

Winter wanted mission and church practitioners to recognize that they need to lead the way in restoring God’s reputation and glory in the eyes of the on-looking world. Believers need to help potential followers of Jesus see that suffering, violence, and evil are not God’s will and are not from him. Rather, societies and all creation experience the consequences of human and angelic choices, both good and bad, and God does not overrule the free will he has granted his creatures. Winter pointed to the importance of seeing the historical big picture—that God is in an ongoing battle with a spiritual adversary, starting even before Genesis 1. Salvation is thus not just a “ticket to heaven.” Rather, God is asking humans to choose to join him in the battle to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8) and demonstrate God’s will for shalom for human societies and all creation.

In my next installment, I’ll explore Ralph Winter’s thoughts on why Christianity has succeeded among rural populations all over the world but is facing increasing opposition from the educated world.

Photo Credit: vonderauvisuals/Flickr

Beth Snodderly is the RWI's Theologian in Residence and Chair of the Board.

Ralph D. Winter’s Four Seeds of Destruction

Why the Gospel we’re exporting around the world is destined to blossom today, only to fade tomorrow.

By Brian Lowther

Ralph D. Winter established the Roberta Winter Institute to address one major problem. Because of his background as a mission leader and a mission historian, he saw that Evangelical missionaries were exporting a gospel around the world that contained seeds of its own destruction. [1] He recognized that if we do not eliminate these seeds, we could expect people from the hard-won mission fields of today to abandon their faith tomorrow.

Helpfully, he identified four of the most serious “seeds of destruction.”

Ralph D. Winter’s Four Seeds of Destruction

1. The Seed of the Problem of Evil

He predicted that as the people of the newly won mission fields of today become acquainted with the traditional answers to the problem of evil, they will increasingly become skeptical of those answers and their faith in God will gradually collapse. The traditional answer to the problem of evil blames sin on humans, blames temptation on Satan, and blames everything else on God’s mysterious, divine plan. Natural disasters are called “Acts of God.” Deadly diseases prompt questions like, “Why did God take my wife?” In his mind, faith that rests on these approaches to the problem of evil doesn’t stand much of a chance.

His solution was to develop A New Story, a re-framing of the Biblical narrative that answers the problem of evil in a new way, rescues God’s reputation and places the blame for evil at the feet of Satan.

2. The Seed of the Creation Narrative Being Irreconcilable with Modern Science

Secondly, he predicted that as the people of the newly won mission fields of today inevitably become acquainted with the scientific worldview, their faith in God will gradually collapse. Because of his background as an engineer, he knew that the traditional creation narrative does not resonate with a good percentage of scientists or people born in a Westernized, Post-Enlightenment society.

His solution was to develop A New Story, a re-framing of the Biblical narrative that takes what science knows about the history of the universe into account. His story reconciles the Young Earth view with the Old Earth view in a way that he believed would be more plausible to the scientists of today and the believers of tomorrow.

3. The Seed of an Incomplete Mandate

Thirdly, he predicted that as the people of the newly won mission fields of today begin to evangelize and disciple others, they will eventually become disillusioned by the idea that the advance of God’s Kingdom consists primarily (or perhaps merely) of passing out tickets to heaven. He equated this truncated mandate with walking into a desolate, war-torn area and informing the survivors that democracy is all they need to fix their problems. [2] Beyond just saving souls, he saw through history—not just human history, but cosmic history—that God was also about reestablishing shalom in a corrupted creation and defeating the enemy who is responsible for that corruption. Without these larger aspects of God’s redemptive activity being communicated and demonstrated by the people of God, Dr. Winter foresaw a bleak future for the believers of tomorrow.

His solution was to develop A New Story, a re-framing of the Biblical narrative that explores the fuller mandate God has given his children to battle evil and restore shalom to creation.

4. The Seed of Violent Portraits of God

Lastly, on his deathbed he dictated a short essay [3] implying that as the people of the newly won mission fields of today begin to understand the Bible, they will become deeply troubled by the violent portraits of God in the Old Testament (e.g., narratives that depict God violently smiting his enemies, commanding merciless genocide, and causing familial cannibalism). These portraits seem categorically different from Jesus who tells his followers to love their enemies and bless those who curse them. We can extrapolate that some new believers—like so many other Christian communities throughout history—will use these harsh, nationalistic portraits of God to justify their own inclinations toward violence.

As a solution we can utilize resources like Greg Boyd’s forthcoming book, Crucifixion of the Warrior God to build into Dr. Winter’s re-framing of the Biblical narrative a new way to reconcile the violent-tending God of the Old Testament with the self-sacrificial enemy-loving God revealed in Jesus Christ.

A New Activity

In addition to addressing these seeds of destruction through his New Story, Dr. Winter knew that we couldn’t just go out and share a story. That story would have to be backed up and empowered by action. That fuller mandate would have to be obeyed. Therefore, he identified and championed a specific New Activity for the Body of Christ to focus upon: disease eradication.

Why Disease Eradication?

Perhaps the most strategic way to battle evil, restore shalom to creation, and rescue God’s reputation is to address the world problems that are causing the most human suffering. Many of the great human problems such as spiritual darkness, poverty, injustice, and illiteracy have already significantly caught the attention of the Body of Christ. Some of the resulting efforts are focused on addressing the roots of these problems, not just the symptoms. [4] And, while treating the symptoms of disease has always been a hallmark of Christianity, where are the Christian organizations devoted to addressing the social, microbiological, and genetic roots of disease with an eye toward eradicating those diseases, not just healing them?

Conclusion

In the end, we in the Roberta Winter Institute believe that the chief reason the burgeoning mission fields of today will collapse into gospel resistance tomorrow is because these seeds of destruction are unknowingly exported with the gospel like rats on a cargo ship. Where is the wisdom in zealously building a widespread movement to Christ on a foundation of sand? This will continue to be a problem until and unless we eliminate these destructive seeds and obey the fuller mandate God has given us as disciples of his son.

Join us as we explore and expand upon these ideas in the weeks and months ahead here at www.robertawinterinstitute.org.

Endnotes

[1] “When the Church Staggers, Stalls and Sits Down (In the Middle of a War!),” by Ralph D. Winter, Mission Frontiers Magazine, May-June 2008 - http://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/when-the-church-staggers-stalls-and-sits-down-in-the-middle-of-a-war
[2] “Beyond Unreached Peoples,” By Ralph D. Winter, November 2004. Published in Frontiers in Mission, pg. 186
[3] “Let’s Be Fair to the Bible,” Unpublished essay by Ralph D. Winter, May 2009
[4] For more on this, see: http://www.robertawinterinstitute.org/blog/2014/7/4/who-is-addressing-root-causes-of-the-biggest-human-problems

Photo Credit: Richard Thomas/Flickr

Brian Lowther is the Director of
the Roberta Winter Institute

What Population Growth Reveals About False Ideas of Disease

By Ralph D. Winter

The human period of history is paper thin when compared to the vast expanse of the previous story of the development of life on earth. But even in the few thousands of years of the existence of homo sapiens, it would seem clear that the growth of human population is directly related to the degree of acquired human knowledge of, and intentional resistance to, microbiological pathogens. A whole flood of books have appeared in recent years commenting on the plagues of history and on the general conquest of disease through medicine. Both war and pestilence have long been noted to be an impediment to population growth. But pestilence appears to be the greater problem.

The Second World War, we understand, was the first war in history during which more people died from military action than from war-introduced disease. Progress has been slow and even today, as antibiotics seem to be running their course, it has been a story of reverses and plateaus, not just triumphs. But the calibration of our conquest simply and crassly by population growth (or non-growth) is roughly workable. The phenomenon of population growth, however, is not widely understood or easily measured.

Our current theological literature, to my knowledge, does not seriously consider disease pathogens from a theological point of view—that is, are they the work of God or Satan?

If the estimated 27 million world population in Abraham’s day 4,000 years ago had grown at the present rate of the world population, there would have been six billion people only 321 years later. Had it grown at the rate of Egypt’s current rate the six billion would have been reached in only 123 years. What actually happened was a growth so slow that 2,000 years later, at the time of Christ, world population was not six billion but only one thirtieth of that.

Again after three centuries of literacy during Roman occupation of southern England, the Roman legions were withdrawn to protect the city of Rome itself. Soon Britain lapsed back into illiteracy and into horrendous war and pestilence to the extent that its population did not increase in the slightest for the next 600 years (from 440 AD to 1066 AD).

At that point the tribal backwater that was Europe began gradually to crawl into conquest of both war and disease. The rest of the story of cascading increase in Western populations, as well as colonially affected global populations, is common knowledge. This increase, as already noted, is a rough and ready measure of the conquest of disease, a story which, as I say, is documented very clearly in a recent flood of books on plagues and the history of medicine.

Curiously, what is perhaps the most enduring characteristic in this conquest is the removal of false ideas about the nature of disease. The very discovery of unbelievably small pathogens was long in coming. Our major western theologians, whether Thomas Aquinas or John Calvin, knew absolutely nothing about the vast world of microbiology. They, in turn had been influenced by Augustine, who is credited with giving God the credit for much of what Satan does.

Thus, even our current theological literature, to my knowledge, does not seriously consider disease pathogens from a theological point of view—that is, are they the work of God or Satan? Much less does this literature ask the question, “Does God mandate us to eliminate pathogens?” 

This entry was excerpted from an essay Ralph Winter wrote in the Winter of 2003 entitled, "Where Darwin Scores Higher Than Intelligent Design." The full essay can be read here.

Photo Credit: James Cridland/Flickr

Where Intelligent Design Fails to See Intelligence

January 8, 1944- The HMCS Camrose which helped sink a German submarine in the North Atlantic during Second World War. VAC | ACC/Flickr

By Ralph D. Winter

In saying that some of our creationists are glossing over the surprisingly prominent reality of intelligent evil in nature, I don’t mean that any of these ID people really deep down are unwilling to confront the enigmatic reality of evil. I just mean that, from the current discussion as seen in their written materials, that would appear to be the case.

As a matter of fact, I myself have all my life believed in what C. S. Lewis called “that hideous strength.” Yet only recently have I begun to reflect on the possibility that this hideous and intelligent evil must not reasonably be dealt with among us any longer merely by superficial references to the philosophical concept of sin and to a fall of man. Why? Because the mere idea of sin is not personifyable. Sin as an abstraction is defined by some as the departure from what is right. In that case the concept itself does not necessarily imply the potent and powerful existence of a diabolical personality any more than would a wrong score on a third-grade arithmetic test. The key question is, “Does it make any practical difference if we conceive of ourselves, on the one hand, as tempted by freedom to sin or, on the other hand, fighting against an evil one who tempts us intelligently?”

Note, for example, the huge difference, back in the days of the Second World War, between, on the one hand, the often nearly invisible icebergs that sent many ships to the bottom of the ocean and, on the other hand, the stealthy, intelligent submarines which caused far greater damage. What if the sinking of thousands of ships had been conceived of as merely the result of inanimate forces? What if scientists had not figured out a way to bounce underwater sound off steel-hulled submarines in such a way as to distinguish the difference between an iceberg and a submarine? This technique, to be called sonar, came late in the war, and implementing it took even longer. By that time not a thousand ships had been sunk, not two thousand, but six thousand ships crossing the Atlantic, loaded with food and war material, had gone to the bottom. It may be hard to believe but the outcome of that enormous war turned on the subsequent success in fighting these intelligent submarines.

It could be alleged that I am missing a main point. A conversation I had with Philip Johnson several years ago brought this forcibly to my attention. I began by congratulating him (and Michael Behe) on the potent logic of the ID movement, but I said, “When you look at your computer screen and if it says suddenly, ‘Ha, I just wiped out your hard disk,’ you have not the slightest difficulty in concluding that you have suffered the onslaught of a computer virus concocted by an intelligent, real person. Curiously, then, when we contemplate a real biological virus, which, though only a tiny assemblage, assails the health of an enormously larger human being, why do we have trouble concluding that we are dealing with an intelligent EVIL design?”

His answer, essentially, was, “Ralph, in my writings and public appearances I can’t even mention God much less Satan. I have a very specific battle to fight, namely, to take apart the logic of unaided evolution. That is all I am trying to do.” Okay, I have respected that response. I have not pestered him further. In fact, I am not even now endeavoring to fault the ID movement and its objectives.

Rather, I would ask a larger question. There are very many people, even Bible-believing Christians (not just non-Christians), who are to this day profoundly puzzled, perplexed, and certainly confused by the extensive presence in the created world of outrageous evil, created apparently by what we believe to be a God who is both all-powerful and benevolent. In coping with this, they may frequently attribute to God what is actually the work of an evil intelligence, and thus fatalistically give not the slightest thought to fighting back.

• When my wife died in 2001 more than one person tried to console me by observing that, and I quote, “God knows what He is doing.”
• When Chuck Colson’s daughter concluded that her brain-damaged son was, and I quote, “exactly the way God wanted him to be,” the impressively intelligent and influential Colson actually applauded her conclusion.
• When Jonathan Edwards fatally contracted smallpox in his effort to try out a vaccine that might protect the Indians in Western Massachusetts, the vast majority of the hyper-calvinistically trained pastors of Massachusetts concluded that God killed him because, to quote them, “he was interfering with Divine Providence.” These pastors went on to organize an anti- vaccination society.
• Going further back in time, a Mother Superior in Spain woke up one morning and detected a small lump in her forehead. She concluded that it must be God who was doing something to her presumably to deepen her devotion and nourish her character. When it finally turned out that a worm was burrowing there, and had broken the surface so you could see exactly what it was, she concluded that it was God’s worm. When she would stoop over to pick something up, and it would occasionally fall out, she would replace it so as not to obstruct the will of God.

These are, however, only a few examples compared to the thousands of times a day among even modern Evangelicals that some blatant evil goes unattacked because it is resignedly if not fatalistically assumed to be the initiative of God. I am not so much interested in the philosophical or theological aspects of this situation as I am in the resulting passivity before eradicable evil, the practical fatalism.

I will go one step further. If we are dealing with an intelligent evil, even our thinking about that fact may likely be opposed and confused by that same evil force, that evil power, that evil personality. Is there any evidence of this additional complexity? In what form would it appear? How could we identify it? 

This entry was excerpted from an essay Ralph Winter wrote in the Winter of 2003 entitled, "Where Darwin Scores Higher Than Intelligent Design." The full essay can be read here.

Causes of Death in the USA

“The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil”—our mission too?

By Ralph D. Winter, originally published on April 25, 2004

View fullsize

Click to enlarge. Row 18 indicates the reported number of deaths in the USA, per year in Column 1, and per day in Column 5. Row 16 sums up the total number of deaths in the USA per year due to the 15 causes listed in rows 1-15. Each row gives the breakdown for each of the different causes of death, Column 1 = annual total, Column 5 = daily total. Column 1 data for 2001, from the National Center for Health Statistics, 2003. Other columns and calculations, RDW, 4/25/04

How few die a natural death!

1. Note that the deaths from the causes listed in rows 1-8, Column 4, account for 75% of all deaths in the USA.
2. Note that the number of deaths in the USA from just homicide (Row 14) is only 7/10 of 1% of all deaths.
3. Note that the number of deaths from heart disease plus cancer (Column 4, Row 2) constitutes more than half (51%) of all deaths.
4. Lines 5, 11 and 14 are non-disease causes. Together they represent 4%, 1/3% and 0.7% of the total. The remaining twelve disease-related causes are still 76.4% of the total deaths. (Should that be true?)
5. If Line 17, “Other Causes,” is mostly disease, then pathogenic or germ-based disease accounts for even more than 76.4% of deaths. Yet 99% of medical/pharmaceutical funds focus on treating disease, not eradicating the pathogenic sources.

Beneath these silent statistics...

Beneath these silent statistics is a raging war of pathogenic disease against human beings. This war prematurely drags down to death in pain and suffering about four out of five people who die in the United States. Subtracting lines 5, 11, and 14, eight out of ten dies an unnatural death. This is not a pretty picture, and not something to look forward to. As someone said, I am not afraid of death, just the process of dying.

But the absolute wonder is that less than one percent of medical funds go to disease sources instead of disease treatments. There are several reasons for this.

1. Until recently many of these diseases were not understood to be the result of infections (pathogens, that is, viruses, bacteria or parasites), but because of “conditions.” Duodenal ulcers also were because of stress and spicy food, etc., not a bacterium (heliobacter pylori). Tuberculosis was assumed to be caused by sleeping in damp places, not by a pathogen. Heart disease has long been described as being caused by conditions like salt or cholesterol in the diet and as a gradual build-up of plaque in the arteries. Now it is clear that half of all who die of heart attacks don’t possess any of the alleged symptoms. Now, heart deaths are attributed to sudden “eruption” of inflammation in arterial walls (due to an infection), which suddenly blocks arteries and thus strains and damages the heart, suddenly. Strong evidence has now been acknowledged to indicate that infections underlie heart disease, cancer, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and schizophrenia, for example.
2. A second major reason is that Western theology has a blind spot stemming from the Neo-Platonism of Augustine (in the fourth century AD). Thus, we tend to look for God’s after-the-fact purposes in a tragedy. We don’t often seek to eradicate the causes—unless we think they are conditions like lack of exercise, wrong nutrition, etc. Jonathan Edwards (1740s) was accused of “interfering with Divine Providence” when he sought to employ a vaccine to defend his Indians from smallpox.
3. The simplest factor to explain is that sick people seeking healing (not causal explanations) provide the truly enormous resources of the medical and pharmaceutical industries. Over 99% of all such funds, understandably, focus on treatments not origins of disease. Yet, most government money (NIH, NCI, etc.) is also manipulated or influenced by the medical/pharmaceutical industries, so also with the research grants on which university faculties live. In other words, relatively little concern ends up for disease origins.