First, read the article straight through without pausing at reference points; then go back, reread and look up the references.
The man on the street likes to claim, I “tell it like it is!” As an old cartoon character used to say, “Interesting, if true!” But is it true? (1) We as Christians are bound to deny that it is, if the man is to be set straight. For it’s false. The statement assumes that man’s mind is the measure of all things. (2) Ayn Rand, a contemporary atheist authoress, is bold to allot this limitless capacity to the human mind. (3) Dr. H. Bavinck discusses this fantasy of the ultimacy of man’s mind (4) under his third point on the doctrine of God’s Incomprehensibility. The assumption involved in this boast is that man, whether fallen or not, knows innately and autonomously. (5) In this way, that is, independently of God, he knows, whatever there is to know. Man can, by direct study of the world and of himself, understand all things, and see them as they are. (6) He then has the native ability to “tell it like it is.” Oh, it’s true that some men deliberately lie and misrepresent; but they are just as capable of telling it “like it is.” They can, if they want to, and occasionally they do, too. So the man on the street thinks.
But this is all wrong. It is wrong, not in harmony with reality, for a man to assume that he is his own standard, or that “man is the measure of all things.” For this is to assume that man is god. This is the devilish philosophy, “Ye shall be as God, knowing (as He does, with absolute comprehension in knowledge) good and evil.” The trouble is, you see, that man does not even know what it is, let alone how “it” is; now can he make even a stab at determining what it ought to be. For, as every Christian knows, by and since the Fall, man’s understanding was darkened, (7) so that the world, through its wisdom (a form of ignorance) knew not God. (8) So then, man ever since his fall has been inclined to tell it every which way but as it is, and, as a matter of fact, is incapable of telling it as it is. Nor has he “the foggiest” of what it ought to be.
How then can the unbeliever rationally speak of it-ness or is-ness? Really he cannot; for he is forever taking it for granted that, whatever “it” happens to be, it is, whether or not God is, whether or not He made all the world, and whether or not He has interpreted all He has made. (9) Whereas, if we as Christians take anything for granted, or lay anything down as our beginning principle, it is that God is, (10) that He created the universe and that he has interpreted all reality, including himself. (11) We need no “proof” or confirmation of these truths to establish our faith. We believe them. (12) They are always at the back of, or at the forefront of, our minds. God has spoken! Deep down in the ears of our hearts we have heard God speak from and in His own Word written. That’s it. His inscripturated Word is enough for us. (13)
The unbeliever, however, assumes that he knows the real world and that he interprets it rightly. He wants to be creatively constructive in his thinking. (14) He refuses, (15) as the Christian always aims, to be receptively reconstructive of God’s thoughts. He does not, as the Christian, think God’s thoughts after Him. This is then to think, “I shall be as God; I am as God!” He absolutely and independently knows what is and what ought to be by his own unaided mind and self-illumined reason. (16)
In all honesty (and is man willing to be that? is he capable of that?), man must say, I tell it like I think or imagine it is; like I hope it is; like I’d like it to be, but of course, I can’t be sure. I think possibly I’m OK and possibly you’re OK. But then possibly I’m not OK, and possibly you’re not OK. Perhaps if we reason together amicably, we can mutually say more: probably I’m OK and probably you’re OK. Of course, this also implies I’m probably not OK, and you’re probably not OK! But as reason infers the human mind’s facility to substantiate and confirm its own propositions, we ought next to be able to say, or to arrive at saying, I am actually OK and you are actually OK. But don’t forget that originative reason sees this as only a fifty-to-fifty chance of being so. There is also the fifty-to-fifty chance that it is not so, that you are actually not OK and that I am actually not OK. (17)
This is all an “out in the blue” line of reasoning (the only possible line of thought for an unbeliever). It has as much chance of proving that nothing is as of proving that something is. How may there then be any certainty that anything is? Impossible to say, if man “knows” in and of himself. Man’s automatic, self-wind mind is like a ball of mud floating on a shoreless, bottomless sea of irrationality.
But the Christian, and only the Christian, is able to “tell it like it is.” For he alone lays it down as the fundamental position of truth that he God revealed in scripture, the true and triune Jehovah, is the only living God. He alone, as a Christian, lays it down that this God created the heavens and the earth (18) and all creaturely reality, visible and invisible. He alone takes the position that the triune God has created all the facts of reality and has given meaning to all the facts by placing on them His own interpretation. This divine interpretation of the Creator, of His creation, of man the crown of His creation, is found only in the scriptures. (19) There in the Bible God has revealed the truth concerning himself, His world, the truth concerning man’s fall and man’s redemption.
As a Christian, the Bible is at the bottom of all my thinking, my affirming, declaring and asserting. That means I think, reason, state and conclude with the triune God and His creation as my frame of reference. (20) From there I make my going out and my coming in. I then see things, not hazily, in a vacuum, (21) but as God made them and interpreted them. I see them as they really are, as God has declared them to be in His infallible Word. I look not at the “real world” of the unbeliever, which spins in the void, but at the real world environed by the true and living God and underscored by His scripture revelation. (22)
On that basis, I, and all Christians with me, “tell it like it is.” For then we tell it like God has made it to be and says it is. (23) That is the only way possible to “tell it like it is.” (24) That is the only way to know “up” from “down”, right from wrong, God from devil, and heaven from hell. There stand, (25) and then tell it like it is! (26)
1 Rom. 3:4a
2 Job 11:9, 7-8
3 Job 12:2
4 Isa. 5:21
5 Job 15:8
6 Ct. Job 37:5
7 Eph. 4:8
8 I Cor. 1:21, ASV.
9 Psm. 10:4
10 Heb. 11:6
11 Cp., e.g., The Psalms.
12 Heb. 11:1-3
13 Lk. 1:38b
14 Isa. 14:13-14
15 Jer. 13:10
16 Isa. 10:13a.b.
17 Eccles. 6:12
18 Jer. 10:10,12
19 Gen. 1-2
20 Col. 1:16-19; 2:3
21 Col. 2:8
22 Isa. 8:20
23 Jer. 2:10,11,5
24 John 5:39
25 I Cor. 16:13
26 Mark 5:19-20