Swinimer’s Bold Stand

On Sunday, May 13 I was privileged to be the morning speaker at Celebration Presbyterian Church in North York.  I spoke about the remarkable public confrontation of Baalism by Elijah on Mt. Carmel in 1 Kings 18.  Baalism had made its way into the fabric of Israelite society. The thinking and the practices of the people of God had become powerfully influenced by the false religion of the day. 

A little bit of a stretch – I know – but I likened the situation of Elijah’s day to the prevalence of pluralistic thought in today’s culture. The late John Stott saw pluralism as the main issue facing the church in this generation.  As quoted in Christianity Today in 2003, Stott stated “[Pluralism] affirms the independent validity of all faiths. It therefore rejects as arrogant and wholly unacceptable every attempt to convert anybody (let alone everybody) to our opinions.”

You and I know that this is exactly the mindset of western society. I thought of this as I listened to the public grilling of William Swinimer, the 17-year-old Nova Scotia student who was suspended from school for wearing a T-shirt stating “Life is wasted without Jesus.” National journalists became quite aggressive in making it known that Swinimer had no right to suggest that lives, other than his own, were wasted without Jesus. How dare he??

The sad truth is that repeated research has shown that the majority of “Christian” young people today are "buying in" to that same postmodern brand of thinking, as exhibited by the media – “Your belief system is fine and valid if that’s your preferred view of the world. However, you have no right to undermine my world view by advancing your own.”

I appealed to the congregation at CPC, as I appeal to you, the reader of this blog – Let’s pray that pastors and church leaders will have the courage to strongly affirm the exclusivity of Christ as the only Way to God!

Thank the Lord that at PCA we have the freedom (and the joy!) of proclaiming the message of “Christ alone,” the only true and valid system of belief for all people.