Trying to Fly with One Wing, Part 11: Appeal to Personal Circumstances

I stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon and marveled at the abyss before me. At this location, the canyon was a mile deep and several miles wide. Years later, in an attempt by my wife and me to join the staff of the evangelical ministry Campus Crusade for Christ, I was asked to memorize an evangelizing pitch written by Crusade's founder, Bill Bright. One of the lines was this: "Man can no more save himself than he can jump across the Grand Canyon flat-footed." I had always wondered about the use of the term "flat-footed." Would it make a difference if man had a running start? Hyperbole always seemed like a waste of time.

Personal Circumstances

This series of articles is about the role of reason in the discovery of truth. We arrive at truth through the application of faith and reason, which are like "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." (John Paul II, Fides et Ratio). Truth does not come to us by faith alone, nor does it come by reason alone. To rely on one to the exclusion of the other, is to fly with one wing, mostly in circles, as we misapply the ordered rules of one or the other and introduce fallacies into our thinking.

This chapter briefly examines one of those fallacies called Appeal to Personal Circumstances, which falls under the category of irrelevant objective appeals. Using the Appeal to Personal Circumstances occurs when the evidence presented comes from the experience, or pertains to the self-interest, of a particular individual — but the argument's outcome affects a larger group, such as the whole of society.

When my wife asks me to change the oil in the family van, but I refuse because "I" don't intend to use the van for the next few weeks, I'm using an appeal to personal circumstances. I'm ignoring the more significant evidence that "she and the grandkids" need to use the van tomorrow to travel to my sister's home across the state.

When a pro-life congressional representative is encouraged to vote for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) bill on grounds that the bill contains an amendment that will fund a construction project in his home district, an appeal to personal circumstances is being used. While the construction project may be beneficial to his district and to him personally in terms of votes, the larger issue, for this congressman, is that the SCHIP bill, in its current form, will negatively affect the lives of children across the nation — the bill had been revised to fund abortions. A sinister and demonic contradiction — SCHIP is supposed to care for the health of children, but the bill offers to murder them first, so later health care bills will never be submitted.

It is entirely appropriate to make decisions based on personal circumstances, or what is best for us or our family, as long as our self-interest does not infringe on the well-being and safety of others. The appeal to personal circumstances only dons its fallacious hat when our self-interest becomes more important to us than the interests of the greater good.

In my Protestant experience, I came to realize the danger of how personal circumstances affected individualistic versions of theology and practice. The Bible was definitely the inspired, inerrant Word of God. But personal interpretation wasn't so protected, even by Biblical standards (c.f. 2 Peter 1:20). I have read that Martin Luther, because of a personal history with overscrupulosity, never felt forgiven, even in the moments after leaving confession. This personal experience led him to develop a theology that focused on salvation by virtue of a person's faith alone, something you won't find in any Bible — even Luther's.

Many Christian denominations in Protestantism came about because of the appeal to the personal circumstances of the denomination's founder. I was raised in an Evangelical community known as Free Methodism that branched off the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1860 under its founder Benjamin Titus Roberts and his followers. The personal circumstances of these men desired a community of believers that allowed and encouraged the free work of the Holy Spirit in its worship (the Methodist Episcopal folk tended to be formal and staid, while Free Methodism was part of the 19th century Holiness Movement), free pews for its families (the Methodist Episcopal Church charged a pew tax, Free Methodists took a "free will" offering), the freedom of slaves, and the rejection of paid church musicians (i.e., free music).

Contemplating my jump across the Grand Canyon — or rather the insistence by Campus Crusade that I do it "flat-footed" instead of taking a "running start" — pointed to an unknown peculiarity in Bill Bright's life, a personal circumstance that by rote was being passed on to thousands of Campus Crusade evangelists around the world. Perhaps Mr. Bright couldn't run very well; I'm not sure. I'm fairly confident, however, that he's running today, to and fro before the throne of God's grace in heaven. For all the particular personality quirks and fame that surrounded Bright and Campus Crusade, Bright avoided personal scandal and well protected the integrity of his worldwide ministry that flourishes yet today, years after his death. In many ways Bright's techniques are an excellent model of how to evangelize society, and the Catholic Church has cooperated several times with this organization in such efforts. (More about this later.)

There's another interesting anecdote in the history of Bill Bright's Campus Crusade that points to the problem of relying on personal experiences to develop an argument, or in this case an aspect of theological practice. In the summer of 1973, when my wife, Pam, and I attended Crusade's staff training at Purdue University (a preliminary step to becoming part of Crusade's staff full time), we were informed that Crusade's personal experiences were such that Crusade staff members were not allowed to fellowship or have close friends who were charismatic Christians. Bill Bright and other Crusade leaders had evidently had run-ins with pushy charismatics and Pentecostals who were divisive on the issue of whether or not certain gifts of the Holy Spirit were active in today's society.

That became a problem for Pam and me. Although we did not consider ourselves charismatic, we had a good many friends who were. It is true that some Pentecostal charismatics did demand the demonstration of charismatic visible gifts such as speaking in tongues to confirm a person's salvation. (See Part 1 of this series, where I describe how I was refused confirmation in the faith for my "inability" to speak in tongues). But, just as the hard-lined Pentecostals demanded a "personal experience" with tongues, so Bill Bright and company demanded the opposite personal experience to confirm the same thing. It was a contradiction that St. Paul clearly denounced in 1 Corinthians 14:39: "do not forbid speaking in tongues, but everything must be done properly and in order."

I began to see that different personalities, life experiences, social classes, and ethnic cultures could seriously distort what had to be, at the core, an absolute and disciplined truth.

Needless to say, we refused to give up our charismatic Christian friends, and consequently we were "uninvited" from joining Crusade's full time staff. (I might add that they also wanted me to give up my Jerusalem Bible, which contained the Deuterocanonical books. "There's some pretty weird stuff in those books," I was told. To which I suggested that the Gospels contained the more outlandish stories). But, granted, I was somewhat stubborn and there was another reason we didn't join Crusade staff. In my attempt to memorize Bill Bright's sermonette, I wanted to change the words to suit my personal circumstances.

A short time later, Crusade's refusal to fellowship with charismatics took a humorous twist, which further demonstrated why truth cannot be based on personal circumstances. As the story goes, Bill Bright's son applied for and was accepted at the Melodyland Theological Seminary in Los Angeles. If you don't know, Melodyland is a Pentecostal-Charismatic seminary. Bill Bright was suddenly faced with the prospect of not being allowed to fellowship with his own son. Needless to say, shortly thereafter, the rule about not fellowshipping with charismatics was dropped from the Crusade rule book.

The Good Side of Personal Circumstances

Just as using personal circumstances to justify our own needs or wants in the face of a greater good is wrong and fallacious, so using personal circumstances as motivation for the greater good is right and virtuous. Let me end on a few short stories about how Bill Bright's Campus Crusade for Christ modeled the very best use of Personal Circumstances and have ended up working with the Polish Catholic Church to this day.

Crusade's ministry emphasis has been on assisting people to take seriously their personal spiritual circumstances and to make a "personal commitment to Jesus Christ". That's Evangelical jargon for "Christian Salvation," and the concept is perfectly in accord with Catholic teaching. When we are concerned about our state of grace with God, we are not likely to be committing a fallacy. As Catholics, we care for our personal circumstances by receiving Christ's grace and forgiveness in Baptism, and confessing our sins privately to God and to our priest during Confession. Such decisions about our personal circumstances benefit not just us, but everyone around us. As we get right with God, our lives become works of service and sacrificial love toward others. In that way, the concern for ourselves makes the world a better place.

With that emphasis, Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ got it right, and to that end have worked with the Catholic Church on several efforts. As Bishop Karol Wojtyla (the future Pope John Paul II) and the Polish Catholic Church worked relentlessly (and secretly) to strengthen Christians spiritually and politically, they were being assisted by Campus Crusade who was working among the grassroots. Crusade, never explicitly anti-Catholic, focused on getting people to make "personal commitments to Christ" and provided intellectual capital to get the job done. For decades before the collapse, my friend, Crusade forerunner John Crone, traveled frequently behind the Iron Curtain to legally publish tens of thousands of copies of several evangelistic books written by Crusade's popular evangelist Josh McDowell. McDowell's most popular book, More Than a Carpenter was published in dozens of Western and Eastern European languages. This infusion of truth about Christianity and the importance of knowing Christ personally in the circumstances that were of Communism, was slowly, surely, and widely disseminated throughout Eastern block countries. Pam and I helped to financially support John during those years, and when the Iron Curtain came down in 1989, John sent us a chunk of painted concrete in thanks for our part. It was a great moment for the world, and John used his personal circumstances to good effect.

In the years before (1970ff), Bishop Karol Wojtyla and Fr. Franciszek Blachnicki (a Nazi war prisoner), established a spiritual renewal movement, Oasis ("Light and Life"), among Polish youth as a defense against Communism. Oasis featured outdoor youth retreats in the Polish mountains structured around the mysteries of the Rosary. In 1975, one Oasis attendee was American foreign exchange student Joe Losiak, who approached Fr. Blachnicki and told him there was a similar movement in the United States being led by Campus Crusade for Christ, through which Joe had made a personal commitment to Christ. When Joe returned to the States he likewise told Crusade about Oasis. The next year, 1976, Fr. Blachnicki arranged for a delegation of 10 Campus Crusade Americans to attend an Oasis retreat. In the evenings, the Americans put on skits for the Poles, and gave their personal testimonies about their faith in Christ. They left behind copies of Crusade's systematic discipleship materials, authored in part by Bill Bright, titled Ten Basic Steps Toward Christian Maturity, materials that Pam and I used for years in our youth work here in Michigan.

So impressed was the Oasis staff with the Crusade curriculum, that Blachnicki invited a Crusade team back to Poland to help revise the materials for use in the Catholic Oasis program. Wojtyla reviewed the materials and approved them. Then, the Polish Catholic hierarchy printed 25,000 copies — "a mix of Polish Catholicism — Marian devotions included — and American evangelical revivalism." Today, I am producing a Polish vocation recruiting film that features four Polish seminarians who benefited from these materials — a cooperation of Campus Crusade, the Catholic Church in Poland, and Pope John Paul II.  You can read the entire story by David Scott in a Christianity Today article "The Pope We Never Knew" (Christianity Today, May 2005, www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/may/13.34.html). Thus, the personal circumstances of Wojtyla, Bright, Blachnicki, and Losiak helped change the world.

During this same period, in 1970, Bright organized an effort to make a movie about Jesus. The result was The Jesus Film, released in 1979 by Warner Brothers and co-directed by veteran filmmakers John Krish and Peter Sykes. An Evangelical missionary to Rome, Rev. Martin Lombardo (Jesus Cares Ministry), who every day kneels in front of St. Peter's and prays for the pope and the Catholic Church, handed a video copy of The Jesus Film to a Vatican prelate he had befriended. Within a year, the Vatican had ordered thousands of copies for worldwide distribution and helped translate the film into hundreds of languages. Thanks to the Catholic Church, Bill Bright's Jesus film is the most watched film of all time, and has been reportedly translated into over 1,000 languages. Today, this Campus Crusade-produced film that came out of Bill Bright's personal vision over 50 years ago, is distributed by the Vatican, and strongly supported by the American Catholic bishops (my bishop, Adam Cardinal Maida, Archbishop of Detroit is the Ecclesiastical Advisor).

Finally, in December 2006, at the invitation of the Polish Catholic Church, Campus Crusade's evangelist Josh McDowell went to Katowice, Poland and spoke to 2,500 parents at one event, 6,500 youth at an evangelistic outreach, and in other settings spoke to over 200 Catholic priests and nuns. The response has been so good that four parishes plan to have Josh back in the Spring of 2009.

Conclusion

Personal Circumstances can lead us to fallacies that, when focused on ourselves and not others, can greatly hinder the work of God. But when our personal commitment to Christ leads us to work in cooperation with others, truly wonderful things can happen for the good of the Kingdom.