Learning from Our Enemies
One of the more impactful books I’ve ever read was Tony Campolo’s Partly Right: Learning from the Critics of Christianity. It came out in 1987 to a big thud. I’ve never heard anyone else reference it. I doubt it sold well, but it sure impacted me. I loaned my copy to an old college buddy after I read it and never saw it again. But I still remember Compolo’s admonition to learn from people we view as enemies. It is a truth we need to hear in church, mission, culture, and politics. This is particularly important in a culture where we sequester ourselves in online identity ghettos with algorithm-tailored newsfeeds to reinforce our fear-driven biases. It is an essential element for any civil dialogue.
Campolo’s basic point is that we need to listen to our opponents because they don’t get everything wrong. The critics of western Christianity of the 19th and 20th centuries were pointing to real problems the church needed to face. Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and others were not idiots who could just be discarded before being heard. Their solutions may have led in the wrong directions, at times with disastrous consequences, but their analysis of what was broken in the culturally compromised Christian cultures of the west exposed some real problems that required serious consideration. Responding to our critics without first hearing them is just an immature form of denial. It’s an insecure response of fear, not faith.
What Campolo was really doing was helping us recover the neglected doctrine of “Common Grace.” As followers of Jesus, we believe that everyone is created in the image of God and this divine stamp manifests itself even among those who don’t know or follow Jesus. Even people who have not experienced “Saving Grace” can benefit from “Common Grace.” Just as Moses, the prophet who spoke to God face to face, could benefit from the administrative wisdom of his pagan father-in-law Jethro (see Exodus 18), we can learn things from people who don’t know our God either. They have some insights because God created them in his image with the ability to see, understand, and think by common grace.
Paul tells us in Romans 1 that God’s invisible qualities are visible from what he has made even where his saving grace has yet to be made known. In Romans 2, he talks about people who have not been instructed by God’s law, but who by nature do things required of the law and seek glory and honor because the law is written on their hearts and consciences. These people, he says, can be more God-honoring than people who know God’s word but don’t obey it.
Acts 10 tells us the story of someone like this. Cornelius was following the light he had, and God accepted him and sent Peter to draw him into the fullness of Jesus and God’s kingdom. In Rev. 21:24, we see the kings of the earth bringing the treasures of their nations into the New Jerusalem. Every culture has captured some truth and wisdom just by the common grace of being made in God’s image. We all bear the stamp of our creator even if it is distorted and in need of refinement and reconnection to our Creator and Redeemer.
Missionaries make a mistake if they assume the people they are sent to disciple have nothing to teach them, and then presume to stand above them as the only source of insight. God got there first. We can see his fingerprints everywhere if we look. We can learn from people even as we help them come to understand where all the good they have known originates. Everyone can be your teacher if you are humble.
In Luke 10, Jesus sends 72 of his followers out ahead of him to various villages and instructs them to identify and abide with a “person of peace” in each location. This is someone who may not yet know or follow Jesus but has a noble heart that is seeking truth and is ready to welcome and serve as a gatekeeper to his or her social network. These are typically wise people who can bring something to the kingdom and bless disciple-makers as well as be blessed by them.
Universal human sinfulness is an important doctrine. It means no one gets everything right. No one is beyond critique. But common grace (being made in God’s image) means no one gets everything wrong. We can learn from Adam Smith and Karl Marx. We can learn from the United States Founding Fathers and Critical Race Theory. We don’t have to endorse all or even most of what a leader, organization, or theory espouses for it to be a source for our increased understanding.
For example, Thomas Jefferson made a huge contribution to the world. He wrote the following powerful words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . .” Jefferson saw and said things that made the world better. Thank God for his contributions.
However, Jefferson was also a deist who denied the divinity of Jesus, the bodily resurrection, and all the miracles of the Bible. He was a slave owner who fathered children he never fully acknowledged with Sally Hemings, a slave woman he exploited. We can learn things from Jefferson and be thankful for the good impact of his life, but we dare not hold him up as our role model. He was neither a two-dimensional hero nor a villain. He was a complex human being. He spoke better than he lived. His mind grasped and well-articulated important truths that were missed in his cultural background. But he was a sinner in need of redemption. So am I. So are you.
Jesus is our Lord and he is the lens through which we view all things, but when we see through his eyes, we see value in people others throw away. We can find value even in the critiques of our intellectual opponents. We can say to some who currently don’t confess Jesus, “You are right to say ________. You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
Pejorative labels, slander, and guilt by association are counterproductive. Cancel culture is not Christ-like. We need people who love Jesus working inside every people group, political party, segment of society, neighborhood, community, and academic discipline. They are not there merely to rebuke and correct, but to mine for the good and true things found among all people, to be refined in the light of Christ and brought as treasures into the Celestial City when Jesus finally reigns unopposed.