We hear a lot these day about pluralism and multiculturalism. Both these terms are intended to convey the idea that whereas North American society was at one time fairly homogeneous, so that e.g., the population of the U.S.A and Canada was largely made up of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPS), today this is no longer the case. Due to heavy and continuous influxes of immigrants from all over the world, North America has become a veritable melting pot of most of the races and cultures the world has produced.

Our nations may still he predominantly white, but they can no longer be considered Protestant or even Christian nations. Actually, this was never the case, notwithstanding the claims made by some naive and ill-informed fundamentalists and evangelicals. True, there was a time when a majority of citizens both in the U.S.A and Canada lived by values and morals based more or less on the Bible and the Ten Commandments, but that our nations as a whole or even for the most part consisted of Bible-believing Christians is a myth.

Today even the outward forms of Christianity are rapidly disappearing from North American society. Not only have other world religions, such as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, made inroads into our culture, many sects and cults have also sprung up, attracting large followings, so that Christianity today is merely one of many religions and has long since lost its position of dominance. Hence the terms pluralistic and multicultural society.

This is not the only problem we face. The comment is often made that today we are in the same position as the early Christians in that we again constitute a minority in a sea of competing ideologies. This is true up to a point, but we should realize that there is one significant difference. While in New Testament times Christians practised their faith in a religious_. pluralistic society, today we are confronted by an increasingly secular pluralism. In addition to encountering people of other religions, we also meet many people who profess no religion at all. Many of our neighbours and fellow workers are, if not theoretical atheists, at least practical atheists. They may not deny the existence of God perse, but they live as if there is no God; they do not think of Him or reckon with His Word and law.

This fact, namely that we live in a largely secular pluralistic society, has implications for the way the Church of Christ must position itself and what its message should be to itself and to the world. What is the essential message of the Gospel? The answer can be very simple and straightforward: the New Testament record shows that the apostles preached that man is lost in sin and unable to save himself. Salvation is by grace alone and by faith alone in the God-given Saviour, Jesus Christ who was crucified for His people's sins and raised for their justification. He is the only Saviour and only those who repent of their sins and trust in His finished work receive forgiveness of sins in this life and eternal bliss in the life to come. At Christ's second coming God's chosen people, who believed in Him and served Him, will he taken into heaven's glory, while an unrepentant and unbelieving world will be cast into everlasting damnation.

This is what the early Church believed and preached, and I trust we do the same. There is no difference as far as the message is concerned, but when it comes to the audience to which this message is addressed there is a difference. Let me illustrate what I mean by taking the apostle Paul as an example. Wherever the apostle to the Gentiles went with the Gospel he met people willing to listen to him. Pagan though they were, they were religious and interested in things spiritual. Great is Diana of the Ephesians, we hear one crowd exclaim. Another mistakes Paul for Jupiter, and Silas for Mercurius. Others look to Caesar and the Roman state as divine order personified; still others set up a statue to an unknown God for fear of having missed a deity and thus offending him.

These few examples show that while New Testament Christians were confronted by many different religions, the people they sought to evangelize were still open to religious questions and concerns. The apostles could at least count on getting the ear of the masses. Religious issues and spiritual subjects were not considered off limits and ruled out of order. An altar dedicated to an unknown god strikes us as foolish and superstitious, which of course it was. Yet, what is better, a shrine set up in pagan Athens to honour a false god, or neo-pagan cities like London, New York and Toronto, which allow no shrines or religious symbols of any kind in public places?

When Paul meets the philosophers on Mars Hill to introduce them to Christ and His Gospel they are eager to find out what this new doctrine is all about. When he reminds them that they are very superstitious (literally, reli­gious), they do not dismiss him as some religious fanatic who should not be given the time of day. True, some of them scoff at the notion of the resurrection of the dead — not because they object to discussing religious subjects in a public place like the Areopagus — not because they do not think much of Paul's religion.

In other words, the Athenians did not believe as so many people do today, that religion is strictly a private matter which should be confined to one's church or home but must he kept out of the "real world." The debate in the ancient world was not about whether God existed or had revealed himself or could be discussed or related to everyday life and conduct, but about who God is and what He requires of man. It was taken for granted that the question as to God's identity and will has consequences for how people are to behave themselves, not just in their sacred shrines, but in the public square as well.

This is no longer so today. Our society is pluralistic but not in the same sense as the New Testament world was pluralistic. The difference is that while pluralism in the ancient world was essentially religious, today's pluralism has to do with ethnic, racial, class and gender distinctions rather than religious differences. Modern plural­ism does not concern itself with competing religious claims, but focuses on what it considers a much more basic distinction, namely the one between the secular and the sacred or religious dimensions of human existence.

When people today talk about separation of church and state, they do not mean by it what the framers of the American Constitution meant, namely that the state or government shall not favour any one religion or denomination and recognize it as an established or state church — a principle which in my opinion is both sound and practical. What it has come to mean for many today is complete separation between the state and all religion.

As mentioned already, this has led to the notion that religion is to be restricted to the private domain. If it is to serve any public function at all it must take the form of philanthropy. Religious people may perform their good deeds, if they like, caring for the homeless and doing relief work in disaster areas, etc. There is still room for the so-called moral or practical aspects of religion, but not at all for its doctrinally concerns or its truth claims.

Here is where the Church faces a real temptation. It is the temptation to tacitly accept the world's distinction between religion and morality and to think that as long as we show kindness to others and help those in need we have done our Christian duty.

There can be no doubt that many Christians have already succumbed to this temptation. They are actively involved in society, helping the poor and destitute, setting up food-banks. supporting pro-life causes, counselling girls at pregnancy centres, etc., etc. These are all good things, obviously, in which churches and individual Christians should be involved. The danger here is, however, to think that these kind of activities constitute the real mission of the church and that doctrinal issues and concerns are not important, or at least less so.

The world does not mind seeing Christians engaged in charitable work, in fact, it will applaud them for it, because there is nothing specifically Christian about such activity. Humanists and even atheists perform their kind deeds too. But the moment Christians press the claims of Christ, insisting that He is the only Way to God and that the Bible is the final authority for our faith and life, admiration will make way for contempt.

The apostle Paul was also concerned that Christians do good to all men (Ga1. 6:10), and he stressed that faith is only true faith if it works through love (Ga1. 5:6), but his main concern was to preach the Gospel. For him that meant stressing specific beliefs and convictions, such as the death of Christ as the only propitiatory sacrifice for our sins, and His resurrection as the only means of our justification. Paul glories in the cross, being fully aware that it was a stumbling block for Jews and foolishness to Greeks (1 Cor. 1:1, 24). For that cause he was prepared to be considered the filth of the world and the offscourings of all things (1 Cor. 4:13).

Today we are in danger of avoiding the shame that a consistent profession of Biblical Christianity brings with it. We don't want to be fools for Christ's sake. We want to be seen as respectable people who are "with it" and in step with the times.

Admittedly, there is a great need for Christians to speak out against abortion, porno­graphy and other social evils, but also and even more so, we must issue clear warnings against the sin of apostasy. Our nation and people have forsaken God and His Word! The mistake we often make is to concentrate on the symptoms and not enough on the disease that produces them. Or, to put it yet another way, we tend to focus on the transgressions of the second table of the law which has a horizontal dimension, and we forget that the problems of society are all due to man's failure to observe the commandments of the first table which has a vertical dimension.

Our message to the world, therefore, should not be anthropological (man-centred) but rather theological (God-centred). Our society will not be saved by a return to traditional morality and family values, welcome as this would be, but only by a return to God and His Word in the way of true repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. This involves a clear presentation of Biblical doctrine as set forth by the Reformers and Puritans. Before this can take place some­thing else needs to be done first.

There is much talk of evangelism among us and rightly so. We need to take Christ's missionary mandate seriously and do whatever we can to make the Gospel known at home and abroad. But there is a prior responsibility which the Church has and which she should never lose sight of. It is to teach that Gospel in all its fullness and ramifications, first to ourselves and to our children. I do not only mean that we should be thoroughly trained in the way of salvation — that first of all — but we need to know the whole range of Biblical truth. Especially today, when we can no longer take for granted that those we rub elbows with at work, in the market place and at school have at least some acquaintance with the basics of our Christian faith, we need to be able to explain and defend God's truth. As the apostle exhorts us, be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear (1 Pet. 3:15).

Surrounded as we are by atheists, agnos­tics as well as adherents of false religions, sects and cults, there is a real need for apologetic preaching and teaching, that is preaching and teaching geared to defending and articulating the great truths of the Word of God so that we may be the better equipped to contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints (Jude :3). Someone has rightly said,

Christian ministry begins with the capacity to make a robust, intelligent accounting of the faith we hold ... Before we move to commend the faith to others in this pluralistic society — however we might do that — can we first state with comprehensiveness and conviction what it is that we our-selves believe, as this has been handed down to us from Israel to the apostles and from one genera­tion of faith to the next? Christian ministry in a pluralistic society begins with the capacity to speak the faith intelligently and persua­sively to ourselves and to one another within the household of faith. We should not be ashamed or concerned to have this as our primary goal. For the pluralism the Gospel seeks to address is as omnipresent as the air we breathe, and exists within our midst as much as outside of it. (Christopher R. Seitz, "Pluralism and the Lost Art of Christian Apology," First Things, June/July 1994, p.16).

As the summer season has come to an end and the various church activities such as Sunday school, Catechism classes, and various Bible study societies will resume, let us bear these things in mind. Head knowledge, admittedly is not enough, but without it there can be no salvation. It was an oft repeated statement among the Puritans that "the mind must be instructed and enlightened before faith and obedience become possible." One of Richard Baxter's favourite maxims about preaching was "first light — then heat" and it was his considered opinion that unwillingness on the part of church attenders to learn the faith and accept instruction from sermons was a sure sign of insincerity. (J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness, p.69).

Let us prove our sincerity then by searching the Scriptures diligently, in prayerful dependence on the Holy Spirit to enlighten the eyes of our understanding, so that we may know what is the hope of His calling and the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, holding forth the word of life in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation that does not know God and therefore is in danger of perishing everlastingly. (Eph. 1:18; Phil. 2:15, 16)