A New Pope, and the New Fundamentalism

Well, the conclave is complete. The assembled cardinals of the Roman Catholic church have elected a new pope. As an Anglican with a Protestant background, this represents little more to me than a great historical moment that I have been fortunate enough to witness. Many in the world today complain about the news, about how it's biased, about how it's laden with ridiculous "human interest" nonsense primarily used to disguise the fact that there just isn't much big news any more. But this...this is big news. It's not every day that a new pope, a new leader of the millions of Roman Catholics around the world, is elected into the long line of men with their roots traceable directly back to the Apostle Peter. This new pope, Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), is in fact the 256th pope. (That's 8 bits for you computer geeks.)

It's interesting that Joseph Ratzinger was elected. He made a very interesting comment yesterday, one I thought was very insightful.

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires."

"Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching,' looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards."

In light of the many struggles and controversies faced by most of the Christian churches today, particularly in the more "civilized" areas of the world such as North America and Europe, this insight rang loud and clear to me. I am a fundamentalist.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

When I'm teaching my students in my classes, be it discussing network administration or security design, I always stress one thing above all: learn the fundamentals. How many of you sport fans have watched a football, baseball, or basketball game, seen your team lose, then had the coach come to the post-game interview and say something like, "We just didn't have a good grip on the fundamentals" or "We need to spend some time this week working on fundamentals." Even OU's coaches during the recently-completed spring football practices stressed how they were focusing on fundamentals this spring. The point is, you can't be successful in anything unless you know and apply the fundamentals. That holds for sports, security administration, network administration, auto mechanics, law, medicine, accounting, music...just about anything that humankind has conceived of. If you don't know the fundamentals of a chosen field and how to apply them, you cannot succeed in that chosen field.

Do you take a baby, straight from its mother's womb, hand it a spoon and a fork, and expect it to feed itself? Do you then expect it to get up and walk to the bathroom, potty in the toilet, wipe, and flush? Do you hire someone to perform a job with no training or experience? Of course not. They have no base concepts, no knowledge of the fundamentals of what they're trying to accomplish. So why has the idea of "fundamentalism", indeed, the very word itself, become an epithet?

I believe in the Holy Bible, the canon of books currently handed down, and that it is the Word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit. I believe in the words of 2 Timothy 3:16: "All Scripture is Godbreathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness". These are the fundamentals of my faith, and of all true Christian faith. You cannot forsake the words of the Bible and claim to be Christian. I do my best to live by what the Holy Scriptures say. Yes, I fail with astonishing regularly, sometimes miserably and sometimes spectacularly, but I do my best to follow those words.

It is also important to note that the Bible defines for us what is the "narrow gate" that Jesus himself speaks of.

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)

His words represent, again, the fundamentals of my faith. Let's look at 2 Timothy, Chapter 3, in its entirety:

¹But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. ²People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, ⁴treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God--– ⁵having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.

⁶They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, ⁷always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. ⁸Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth–men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. ⁹But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.

¹⁰You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, ¹¹persecutions, sufferings–what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. ¹²In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, ¹³while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. ¹⁴But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, ¹⁵and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

The truth of this is obvious to me, and it is to these very issues that the new pope referred in his remarks. This is what I believe, the fundamentals of my faith. If that makes me a fundamentalist, then so be it. Most people in the "civilized" world have left behind these things in the name of "progress," and no longer even recognize what they stand for or why. It is this emptiness that leads them to use the word "fundamentalist" in the pejorative sense. So, if someone calls me a "fundamentalist," because I believe these things, then I will stand up tall and proud and agree. At least, I know what I stand for, or rather, what Rock I'm standing on. Again, back to the fundamentals:

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11-12)

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Thanks for reading along.