John Piper's Day Off at Barnes and Noble

Here's a 'must read' from John Piper's newsletter about Christians who respond hatefully to secularists and the interaction of church and state.

A trip to Barnes & Noble on my day off takes me beyond the Star Tribune and NPR in my daily culture dose of postmodern pronouncements. Consider Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf, 2006). It is ranked as the fourteenth best seller in the nation at Amazon as I write (just behind Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion). It begins like this:

"Thousands of people have written to tell me that I am wrong not to believe in God. The most hostile of these communications have come from Christians. This is ironic, as Christians generally imagine that no faith imparts the virtues of love and forgiveness more effectively than their own. The truth is that many who claim to be transformed by Christ’s love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism. While we may want to ascribe this to human nature, it is clear that such hatred draws considerable support from the Bible. How do I know this? The most disturbed of my correspondents always cite chapter and verse."

Later he says that not believing that man evolved from lower life forms is like not believing the sun is a star. Our nation is being overrun with anti-intellectual people who scoff at true science. The Intelligent Design movement is a scheme to replace science with religion by people who get PhDs to provide a cloak of respectability for their anti-science agenda. And so on.

What makes Harris’ book postmodern and not simply modern is that it treats Christian “fantasies” not merely as rational errors, but as dangerous cultural and political power plays. I have no desire to scoff at this book. There is too much right-wing, radio-show-type Christian scoffing. Besides, I am old enough to be Sam Harris’ father (I was twenty-one when he was born), and that makes me want to rescue a son, not skewer a peer.

Of course, he thinks I am the one who needs to be rescued. My concern for us evangelicals is not that we bash Harris but that we try not to give the impression that we fear science, and that we make clear that we want Sam Harris to have the freedom to say false things about us.

So my dip into Harris’ book was good for me. I may even read more. I don’t fear it. I wish he didn’t fear us. God, he should fear. But I will do all I can to keep my fellow Christians from playing God. As long as Christ’s kingdom comes not by the sword but by the Spirit and the Truth, I will resist the unholy union of conscientious church and coercive state. I stand with those who believe that Christ is the best foundation for a view of the state that refuses to enforce Christ. I also stand with those who believe that true science (not presuppositional secularism) will not contradict true biblical interpretation.

For more from John Piper visit his website Desiring God