Sympathy for the devil

Three more letters in the last few days-all from friends with solid evangelical roots and credentials-have warned me of what they see as lurking danger for WORLD magazine and its editorial direction. All my correspondents had slightly different bones to pick, but a common theme is that WORLD is too cranky-that we tend too much to polarize rather than to find common ground. One fellow summarized the criticism when he said: "Why can't WORLD admit that for the most part in America we're simply having debates over the issues-not a war?"

Well, that would be a pleasant thing to admit-if only it were true. But it isn't. In a way that far too few evangelicals are willing to admit, we are in a knock-down, drag-out war for the heart and soul of our culture and society. And we didn't start this war.

In one sense, of course, the war started in the Garden of Eden, when Satan first tried to foist the big lie on Adam and Eve. The lie from the beginning was that human wisdom is smarter than God's wisdom. The lie has always been that we could reject God's standards with impunity.

The war is between a God who says, "Defy me and die," on the one hand, and the Great Deceiver who argues back on the other hand, "You shall not surely die." To me, that sounds like a life-and-death battle.

To be sure, there have been extended periods in human history when Christians' message about this life-and-death choice could be propagated in a civil and evenhanded manner. That has been the case through most of the history of the United States. Typically, we have understood we were carriers of a minority gospel, and that to get a hearing from a secular and sometimes even pagan world, we needed to behave ourselves winsomely.

But the deceiver has never liked a level playing field. It is not as though he is sincerely committed to his view of truth, and that he earnestly believes it would be better for humankind. He knows he is a liar, and that the only way he can win his argument is to rig the game so perversely that God's truth-tellers find themselves at a serious disadvantage just to carry on a discussion. So he works overtime to force us into a defensive posture-into a battle where instead of reaching out lovingly to those who have never heard or understood Christ's gospel, we find ourselves fighting just to preserve the platform from which we used to do that reaching out.

That's why last week in Greensboro, N.C., public school teacher Marian P. MacDonald, who is 53 and has spent the last 32 years building a sterling record, was forced to resign her post in health and physical education at Mendenhall Middle School. Mrs. MacDonald's offense was that she had helped bring to the school a group of young people from Teen Challenge, a wonderfully effective anti-drug troupe who had the temerity to mention God a few times during their presentation to the public-school students.

The Teen Challenge group included four recovering drug-users. Although their leader started the presentation by saying explicitly that "We are not here to push our religion off on anybody," the young people did say they believed God had helped them overcome drugs. That was enough to prompt the school's principal, Terry Worrell, to send a letter home to all parents that afternoon apologizing for the "insensitive comments" of some of the speakers. An investigation followed, ending in a strong administrative recommendation to Mrs. MacDonald that her early retirement would be in everyone's best interest. Under duress, she took the suggestion-forfeiting significant retirement benefits in the process.

Level playing field? Civil discourse?

Just a few weeks earlier, Johanna Jenei, a highschooler from Brookline, Mass., got into trouble of her own by taking verbal issue with her lesbian teacher, Polly Atwood. In a course called "Ancient Traditions," Ms. Atwood argued that women don't need men to survive. She noted that cavewomen were self-sufficient and independent, and let cavemen near them only when they wanted babies. Johanna argued in class that it was natural for men and women to live together in a family context. But encouraged by Ms. Atwood, other students hooted derisively at such old-fashioned ideas.

The March 19 Boston Globe reported that the conflict escalated. At the next class, the Globe said, Ms. Atwood pointedly announced: "I know this will make someone here uncomfortable, but I am an out-of-the-closet lesbian and would like to talk to you about being a lesbian and about my feelings." She suggested that anyone who disagreed was a bigot and a fool.

When Johanna tried to transfer to a different class to escape what she believed was harassment, administrators defended Ms. Atwood and told Johanna that failure to continue in the class would result in an F for the course. Depressed and showing serious physical symptoms, Johanna transferred to a local Christian high school.

Level playing field? Civil discourse?

Between God and Satan, there has never been such a thing as an honest debate. But guess whose fault that has always been.