Carter’s Confusion?

Joe Carter in “How to Wait for Cultural Reckoning” highlights a truth that is vital for our ability to understand a Christian witness and how it relates to the Christian view of apologetics and evangelism. In particular, he demonstrates how the consequences of particular sinful behaviors have the effect, at least with some people, of convincing them of the truth of the Christian view of those behaviors. As he affirms, instead of such people’s minds and behaviors getting changed based on a rational argument, they are changed because of what they are able to empirically verify as the consequences that come when people act on thinking that Christian doctrine identifies as false and unrighteous or unjust. As an example, he cites the decreasing support for gender transitioning as a result of the “undeniable evidence of harm and from the testimony of detransitioners whose stories could no longer be dismissed.” While Carter rightly identifies this phenomenon of how some people change their thinking and behavior, I am afraid he simultaneously draws some erroneous conclusions from it that reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Christian apologetics and evangelism.

Before we zero in on where Carter goes wrong, let’s be clear about what he gets correct. He rightly stresses that there is a union between thinking and living. Moreover, he correctly highlights that in some cases people only become convinced of the intellectual or rational validity of the Christian position through their observing empirical evidence that supports it. But what conclusions ought we draw from these truths? Here things get a little confused.

According to him, following ostensibly in the path of Mark Dever, he concludes that the most effective method of convincing people of the truthfulness of Christianity is to recognize the pattern that a truth is most convincing when preceded by a life that embodies it. Thus, the Christian’s life gains a hearing that then leads the non-Christian to listen and this is more likely to lead to a change in the non-Christian. He cites Jesus’s statement in Matt. 5:16 about Jesus’ disciple letting their light to shine before other so that others might see their good works and then glorify God. None of this is to say that the Christian should not argue and warn the non-Christian, since in fact this is the biblical pattern, as can be seen from the ministries of both the prophets (he cites Ezekiel 33) and the apostles (citing Acts 20:26-27). But since the warnings of the prophets were often not heeded, the Christians duty is to seek to be “faithful whether or not the city listens.”

What does Carter conclude? Rather than asking the question: “How do we make them listen?” We should ask: “What should the church be doing in the long interval between the warning and the reckoning?” Carter’s answer is to identify Jeremiah 29 as a template for the Christian to recognize the need for “long faithful presence” and to seek change by adopting the strategy of “influence, instruction and imitation.” According to Carter, “[F]or the past several decades the American church has bet heavily on the first two. We built or attempted to capture institutions of influence to win the culture. And we invested in instruction, providing an endless supply of warnings about where the culture was headed.” Both approaches were rather ineffective, because they “shared the assumption that people change their minds before they change their lives” (italics his). What we have here, I am afraid, is some faithful biblical truths stirred into a muddled analysis of how they apply in the lives of Christians that live in the United States.

Let’s first clarify that there is no such thing as “the American church.” There are Christians in America. There are churches in America. But there is no such institution called “the American church.” The profound diversity and fragmentation that marks the relationships between the multitude of Protestant denominations, and even the diversity that marks the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches in the U. S. does not allow for the kind of broad sweeping statement that Carter makes by citing “the American church.” While that phrase seems to be commonly used, I am afraid, more times than not this simply reflects the rather weak ecclesiology that litters the minds of those who use it and those who never question its use. What we have here is the attempt to bring a broad sweeping diagnosis regarding how the majority of Christians and churches in America are trying to bring about cultural change, when in point of fact the topic and the actual situation on the ground is vastly more complicated than Carter’s analysis acknowledges. This is seen not only, in his reference to the supposed “American church,” but also in his assessment and criticism that all those represented by said reality actually believe that “people change their minds before they change their lives.”

Why, yes, people do change their minds before they change their lives. This is rather axiomatic. People take actions based on what they think. People may not always be aware of all their thoughts driving their actions, but Scripture is abundantly clear on this point. In fact, the presence of the entire Bible presupposes the point! This is not to say that the relationship between our thoughts and actions is fully summarized by saying that people change their behavior based on a change of mind. But the whole observation that Carter makes that some people have to observe particular empirically verifiable realities before they will change their minds, and then their behavior, does not then mean that they did not change their minds! In point of fact, what Carter does is confuse the incredibly diverse process through which non-Christians come to ask about and investigate the claims of Christianity, and finally arrive at changing their minds with the actual changing of their minds. How someone changes their mind about the truthfulness of Christianity and subsequently changes how they live is one thing. That a non-Christian must have a change of mind before changing their life is something else. They are not the same thing, and Carter’s confusing of the two leads him to significant mis-analysis of the application of Scripture and the nature and function of apologetics.   

I certainly do appreciate Carter’s emphasis on the truth that some faithful proclamations of the Scriptures are not going to result in people repenting of their sin, and yet we still need to proclaim biblical truth regardless. Amen! Many professing Christians need to quit thinking and acting as pragmatists in their apologetic and evangelistic endeavors. Bear faithful testimony to what Scripture affirms in the most Holy Spirit-filled way that you can, pray and leave the results in God’s hands. But this is all rooted, among other things, in recognizing what is true about the relationship between our thoughts, our words and our actions and those of the non-Christian. And the relationship between those is, I am afraid, a great deal more intricate than Carter’s analysis acknowledges.