Its a long quote, but please stick with it.
Our generation is overwhelmingly naturalistic. There is an almost complete commitment to the concept of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system. This is its distinguising mark. If we are not careful, even though we say we are biblical Christians and supernaturalists, yet nevertheless the naturalism of our generation tends to come in upon us. It may infiltrate our thinking without our recognising its coming, like a fog creeping in through a window opened only half an inch. Immediately, Christians begin to loose the reality of their Christian life. As I travel about and speak in many countries, I am impressed with the number of times I am asked by Christains about the loss of the reality. Surely this is one of the greatest, and perhaps the greatest reason for a loss of reality: that while we say we believe one thing, we allow the spirit of the naturalism of the age to come in upon us, unrecognised. All too often the reality is lost becuase the 'ceiling' is down too close upon our heads. It is too low. And the 'ceiling' which closes us in is the naturalistic type of thinking.
Now the Christian's spirituality, as we wrote of it in the previous chapters, does not stand alone. It is related to the unity of the Bible's view of the universe. Theis means that we must understand--intellectually, with the windows open--that the universe is not what our genreation says it is, seeing only the naturalistic universe. This relates directly to what we have been dealing with in the earlier chapters. For example, in chapter one we have said that we are to love God enough to say 'thank you' even for the difficult things. Now surely, we must immediately understand, as we say this, that this has no meaning whatsoever unless we live in a personal universe in which there is a personal God who objectively exists. To claim that we are to say 'thank you' to God in the midst of the hard things of life, without this being framed in the reality of a personal universe, in which a personal God objectively exists, makes 'thank you' an absolutely meaningless phrase.
Similarly, in study two we touched upon the same thing, when we saw that in the normal perspective it is very difficult to say 'no' to things and to self, in the things mentality and the self-mentality of men, especially in the twentieth century. But we saw that on the Mount of Transfiguration we were brought face to face with a su pernatural universe. Here we find Moses and Elijah speaking to Christ as he is glorified. And we saw that this supernautural universe is not a far-off universe. Quite the contrary: there is a perfect continuity, as in normal life. So (Luke 9:37) the day after these things had occurred Jesus and the disciples went down the mountain and entered into the normal things of life. Indeed, the normal sequence was continuing while they were there on the mountain. There is a perfect example of the temporal and spatial relationship here. As they went up and climbed the mountain, there was no place where they passed into the philosophic other. As they went up the inclined plain of the mountain, there was no break. And if they had had watches upon their wrists, these watches would not have stopped at some point: they would have ticked away. and when they came down, it was the next day and the normal sequence had proceeded. Here we find the supernatural world in relationship to the normal sequence and spatial relationships of the presesnt world.
Also in chapter two we considered Christ's redemptive death, which has no meaning whatsoever outside the relationship of a supernatural world. The only reason the words 'redemptive death' have any meaning is because there is a personal God who exists and, more than that, has a characrer. He is not morally neutral. When man sins against the character, which is the law of the universe, he is guilty, and God will judge that man on the basis of true moral guilt. In such a setting, the words 'the redemptive death of Christ' have meaning, otherwise they cannot.
Now we must remember what we are talking about: the fact that the true Christiain life, as we have examined it, is not to be separated from the unity of the full biblical teaching: it is not to be abstracted from the unity of the Bible's emphasis on the supernatural world. This make sense of the biblical image of me as a Christian, face to face with the supernatural world, as the bride, linking himself to Christ, the Bridegroom, so that he, the crucified, risen and glorified Christ, may bring forth fruit through me...
This is the Bible's message, and when we see it so, and are in this framework, rather than the naturalistic one (which comes in so easily upon us) the teaching that Christ as the bridegroom will bring forth fruit through me ceases to be strange. The Bible insists that we live in reality in a supernatural universe. But if we remove the objective reality of the supernatural universe in any area, this great reality of Christ the Bridebgroom bringing forth fruit through us, immediately falls to the floor, and all that Christianty is at such a point is a psychological and sociological aid, a tool; and that is all. So as soon as we remove the s upernaturalness of the u nivesre, all we have left is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, in which religion is to be simply a sociological tool for the future. In Huxley's concept of romantic evolutionary humanism, religion has a place, not because there is any truth in it, but because in the strange evolutionary formation, man as he now is simply needs it...Remove the supernatural from the universe, in thinking and in action, and there is nothing left but Honest to God [a book by Robinson], which deals only with the fact of anthropology, and has nothing to say to questions of the reality of communicating with God...All the reality of Christianity rests upon the reality of the existence of a personal God, and the reality of the supernatural view of the total universe.
