Defending the Indefensible: The Problem of "Progressive" Christianity, Part 3

Of Binary Mindsets

Spectrums seems to be ideologocial flavor-of-the-month in language today as binaries are on the outs. And it’s clear that Randal doesn’t like binaries, complaining that such thinking, “is characteristic of conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism. According to that mindset, the world is divided into stark categories of good and evil, right and wrong, light and darkness, truth and error.”[1]



This statement should be kept in mind since Rauser is himself engaged in binary thinking: his position is what is right, Childers is that which is wrong. If this was not the case, why the need to write the book?


For Part 1, Part 2


That’s not to say that I entirely agree with Childers, nor is it to say that I entirely disagree with Rauser. However it does assume that there are certain clear “rights and wrongs” and that both can be participating in them.


However, I would like to suggest that rather than asking, what is the historically orthodox position, one that has lots of variation while maintaining a common core of belief and asking whether or not a position fits within that network or colors too far outside the lines, obscuring the picture beneath, Randal appears to assume that whatever Christianity is, its not a defined outline that one is free to color within, but its a blank page that one is allowed to put whatever they want on…which is a binary position.


Faulty Binary Assumptions


Randal gives his readers a personal story of his own struggles with false binary assumptions by  recounting his own experiences of being raised in a “conservative evangelical Christian church” and how he “became convinced that [he] had to destroy [his] secular music if [he] was seriously going to follow Jesus.”[2]


Now, I have to admit that does seem a little extreme, but I have made similar commitments in my own life that, upon later consideration, were foolish and didn’t really serve the purpose that I thought that they did.


However, these were not brought up out of any binary assumptions but rather choices on my part, other than making the decision to follow Jesus, which is a binary assumption.


Now, Randal appears to put this off on a belief in the “imminent end of the world and that the devil is a liar…[who] operates actively to deceive people and trick them in whatever manner possible.”[3]


First, I would like to ask Randal, do you not believe that the end of the world is always imminent, in that its Lord could return at any minute to judge the living and the dead?


Second, do you not believe that there is a force out there that is determined to corrupt mankind  and steal them away from God?


I mean this is appears to be the fairly consistent message of Scripture.


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