More Than Useful, Is It Truthful?

It may be true, but is it useful? When evaluating something, Benjamin Franklin's unit of measurement was usefulness. Any belief he may have had in any god, including the one true God, was judged by God's usefulness. Thinking about Franklin's criterion was the point of last week's article. Though he posed that question over 200 years ago, it is a question that finds a place in today’s discussion as well and one that we must contend with in our evangelism (for further discussion on that, please look at last week’s article here at the Harvester’s blog). But in the early 20th century, J. Gresham Machen reversed the question and asked,

"It may be useful, but is it true?" (1).

Both questions are worth contending for, but the question last week about usefulness is meaningless if we don’t also contend with truthfulness. I have a lingering suspicion that the question of truthfulness is what keeps many people from engaging in the task of evangelism. It’s not that they don’t believe it’s true, but rather that they don’t know how to defend its truthfulness.

While I think the contention of truthfulness is a hindrance to sharing the gospel in our era, Machen contends that it was a hindrance for people receiving the gospel in his era. He writes,

"Men do not accept Christianity because they can no longer be convinced that Christianity is true. It may be useful, but is it true?" (2).

Machen writes in an era that is coming out of enlightenment thinking, and higher criticism is becoming more prominent. To that end, we have the influential works of people like Friedrich Schleiermacher, who set a foundation for modern liberalist theology that began to deny the truthfulness of God and His message. No wonder Machen's concern was more about truthfulness than usefulness.

So, where do we go to establish the truthfulness of the message? The obvious answer is to the Word of God since it is truth (John 17:17), being sure to elevate the Lord Jesus Christ, who is both truth and the Word (John 14:6; Revelation 19:13). Yet before we go there, I think we have to understand what makes people doubt the truthfulness of the message. Usually, there are four areas where people begin to diverge from legitimate Christianity:

• Who is God?
• Who is man?
• What is man’s problem?
• What is the solution?

In fact, if you want to evaluate any book you are reading, any movement, whether it presents itself as Christian or not, or any claim, asking and answering these questions will reveal its truthfulness.

So here is my thought: if we can answer these questions biblically, not only are you equipped to present the gospel, but you can defend both the usefulness and truthfulness of following Christ. I would tell you that our faith in Christ is truthful first because it comes from a truthful God but also because its testimony bears it out as truthful. Therefore, by a simple pursuit of that truth, we begin to realize that our faith is reasonable and rational.

Machen goes on to write that:

"The church is perishing today through the lack of thinking, not through an excess of it" (3).

Though he wrote in 1913, I think what he describes with those words for his generation is the fruit of what we find in our generation. So, if we are to realize that our faith is reasonable and rational and we are going to seek to persuade people that it is both useful and truthful, then we need to be thinking Christians; that is, we need to be men and women who meditate upon our Lord and His Word, able to answer those basic questions of who is God, who is man, what is man’s problem, and what is the solution.

(1) Henry first poses this question in a 1913 article for The Princeton Theological Review. You can find that article and another from 1920 published together in Christianity, Culture, and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen, published in 2018 by GLH Publishing.

(2) Christianity, Culture, and Liberalism, 9.

(3) Christianity, Culture, and Liberalism, 12.