Secular Salvation Gets its Come-uppance

For those not familiar with the story, in 1993 mountain climber Greg Mortensen was stranded in a  remote village in the Himalayas and developed a passion for providing schools for this and similar villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Eventually, Mortensen founded the Central Asia Institute which has reportedly started over two hundred schools in remote villages.  Okay, I'm leaving out a lot of details, to get to several points....

The impact of Mortensen's first book, Three Cups of Tea, was a triumph for secular salvation through education.  Finally, secular government educators had their own "missionary" hero, and Mortensen's book was touted at very teacher convention for over a decade. He sold tens of thousands of copies, particularly among those empty secularists who had been jealous of Christian mission stories for over a century.

Not only did Mortensen tout secular education as salvific for these poor villagers, he emphasized the need to educate girls, an idea novel to these Muslim communities, and one so politically correct that it enhanced his appeal to the left even more.

A recent Sixty Minutes episode (you can read the transcript here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/15/60minutes/main20054397.shtml) "exposed" what they allege are untruths and exaggerations in Mortensen's story, as well as alleged improprieties in the running of his non-profit Central Asia Institute.  The CBS report was not completely convincing, but will probably do some harm to Mortensen's relentless fund-raising. 

One of the entertaining sideshows in this hullabaloo is watching the attempts by avowed secularists to drum up "moral indignation," both in opposition to Mortensen and in defense of him, as well. It fascinates me that those with no absolute basis for truth claims in their philosophy can borrow Christian ethics when it suits them, and pervert said ethics when it suits them. Circular arguments with no resolution dissolve into rhetorical volume contests, and battles over who can get in the last word.  A whole host of "end justifies the means" advocates are having a heyday saying that what Mortensen has accomplished should have no relation to whether or not his story is true.  Really.  These are Brian McLaren and Rob Bell's parishioners, for sure.

When the general public criticizes Christians for not living up to our own moral code, we deserve it.  We responded to Christ's call, and that means living to a higher standard, and it also means being falsely judged at times, as Passion Week reminded us last week.  Now that the cynical public is pulling down the left's heroes, we should not rejoice.  We should continue to repent daily, and continue to support Christian missions - missionary efforts which have, over the last two hundred years, founded and developed thousands more schools than the CAI, in scores of third world countries that Greg Mortensen has never heard of.