Max Lucado’s Problematic Apology

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Christianity, Culture, Culture War, Emotivism, Epistemology, Language, LGBTQ+, Max Lucado, Postmodernity, Progressive Christianity, Religious Left, Rhetoric, Truth

            The furor over Max Lucado’s remote preaching for the Washington National Cathedral has caught a fair amount of attention lately.  That Lucado met disapproval from some in the Episcopal church for holding elements of a biblical sexual ethic is as expected; that he was allowed to speak at all is rather surprising, and that those responsible have come to regret it is unsurprising.  But probably the most troubling part of the whole episode is the apology letter Lucado issued afterward.

            His opening paragraph suggests already a misapprehension about the seriousness of defying God’s design for the human person and relationships.  An orthodox Christian preaching to the Washington National Cathedral is undertaking a prophetic task.  This is, indeed, a “high honor”, but not, I think, in the sense that Lucado intends.  Prophets aren’t supposed to hear with dismay that their presence has been “a cause of consternation” to people who reject God’s Word; they’re supposed to expect it.

            Lucado identifies the source of this consternation, a sermon from 2004, and proceeds to apologize.  It is a good apology in that it owns responsibility without making excuses.  But what is he apologizing for?  The hurtfulness of his sermon.

            Here I must allow for the possibility that Lucado has something to apologize for.  I don’t know; I haven’t seen the whole sermon.  He thinks he was disrespectful, and I respect a man regretting being disrespectful.

            On the other hand, it seems far more probable to me that the consternation towards Lucado resulted not from how he communicated the truth, but from the truth itself.  Looking at the snippets of the sermon available in the various articles about this kerfuffle, one finds that Lucado, if not entirely on point with his inferences, was at least significantly less severe in his remarks about homosexuality than the Scriptures are (see Lev. 18:22; Rom. 1:26-27).  Apologizing for oneself is one thing, but we must never apologize for what God has said.

            God has said that He created mankind male and female, distinct and complementary, intended for union in this complementary distinction in covenant sexuality (Gen. 1:27; 2:23-24).  Lucado perhaps apologizes for this, certainly obfuscates it.  He refers without qualification to “the LGBTQ community”, “LGBTQ individuals”, “LGBTQ families”, and “LGBTQ people”, accepting these significations that frame homosexuality et al as a legitimate and morally neutral identity category instead of a rejection for God’s design for humanity.

            “Faithful people may disagree about what the Bible says about homosexuality,” Lucado says.  Granted that true Christians can misinterpret the Bible in all kinds of ways, his words in this context surely imply more than that.  If I said, “Faithful people may disagree about what the Bible says about theft,” would I not be suggesting that the Bible’s teaching about theft is unclear?  So also the teaching of Scripture about human sexuality; the question is not whether it is possible for a true Christian to misunderstand, but whether God has spoken clearly.

God has spoken clearly.

            To his credit, Lucado does not himself reject the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality, and he is willing to say so here—here, where it will probably nullify his apology, because that biblical teaching is the very thing that so consternates those to whom he is apologizing.  But he includes that pesky adjective “traditional”; if he had only said ‘the biblical understanding of marriage’, and left it at that!  Christians must all come to realize that framing it as the ‘traditional’ understanding of marriage is a concession, a way of putting it positively while granting legitimacy to other understandings of marriage.  If you must put an adjective before marriage, ‘real’, ‘true’, or even ‘biblical’ are all acceptable qualifiers; ‘traditional’ gives too much away.

            All this obfuscation is wedded to the basic burden of the apology, addressing the ‘hurt’ his sermon of years ago has caused.  Here it is an exquisitely contemporary apology, of the kind we are used to seeing from a variety of public figures who have said something of real or perceived offense.  Whether what Lucado said was true or not, biblical or not, appears irrelevant; it was ‘hurtful’, and that is what matters.  For a telling comparison, just look at the similarity between Lucado’s apology and Dean Hollerith’s apology for inviting him to preach.  Both have feelings firmly behind the steering wheel, and truth in the back seat—politely observing the injunction against back-seat driving.  Both suggest a therapeutic model of truth—the kind of conceptual world in which the ubiquitous contemporary sentiment ‘my truth’ is, if not coherent, at least at home.  The locus of morality is not in the voice of God coming to us from without—‘what has God said?’—but in the inward response—‘how did it make me feel?’

            Such a therapeutic model of truth is utterly opposed to the Christian faith.  Christianity has, at its center, the gospel: the wondrous message of the saving life, death, resurrection, ascension, reign, and return of Jesus Christ, and the offer of redemption to those who repent and believe.  This message comes with a conviction of the fiery holiness of God and the wickedness of our sin.  We dare not trade the clarion call of the gospel for a soothing affirmation of every man’s sense of self.

            Lucado allows for differing interpretations of the clear teaching of Scripture regarding human sexuality, adding, “but we agree that God’s holy Word must never be used as a weapon to wound others.”  We have met this before, this strange surprise that the sword of the Spirit might prove sharp and pointed.  Of course, we must not twist the Scriptures out of spite towards others.  But where the Word of God cuts truly, we must not attempt to blunt its edge.  The surgeon’s scalpel cuts to heal; the holy Scripture convicts to save. Some things ought not be apologized for.

An Easy Question

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America, Christianity, Culture, Culture War, LGBTQ+, Progressive Christianity, Religious Left, Secularism, Society, Tolerance

Jason Jimenez, writing in the Christian Post, asks a question both pointed and quite easy to answer, “Why does the media give a pass to Biden’s faith?” The question might be more broadly applied, as Jimenez does, to the better part of the cultural and political left. In an era where consistent Christian beliefs are frequently tarred by the left, and a particular season where a wide variety of orthodox Christians are being painted together with the pejorative label ‘Christian nationalism’, why is Biden’s professed Catholicism, not only personally but in his politics, so gushingly held forth?

The answer, again, is rather obvious, and Jimenez knows it: Biden is advancing the leftist agenda. While some on the cultural left object to Christian faith per se, the more usual objections are to the Christian worldview and its whole outlook on human flourishing–particularly, in recent times, to the Christian teaching that mankind is made up of men and women, who are neither changeable nor interchangeable. Opposing this worldview calls for championing secularism and labeling Christians as dangerous, nationalists, bigots, and so forth.

But when you find political champions who claim Christian allegiance but promote your secular pluralistic worldview, that’s a different story. Now you have an avenue for claiming that Christian faith is consistent with the sexual revolution and its anthropology–which is what the religious left consistently provides. Not everyone in the cultural left will like it; as Religion News Service recently observed, “Secular groups praise Biden’s agenda but express concerns about religious rhetoric“. But you’re advancing the secular policies. At the end of the day, as Rachel Laser of Americans United is quoted in the article, “actions are so much more important than words”. As long as its just ‘religious rhetoric’, not actually an applied Christian worldview, its fairly tolerable to the hard secularists, and useful to the religious left in general.

In the end, the common ground between leftist disdain for the Catholic identity of Justice Barrett and promotion of the Catholic identity of President Biden is the advance of secular ideology. Reaction to Christian identity is conditioned on whether the professed Christianity is challenging or bolstering the secular worldview.

Is there a hypocrisy and inconsistency at work? Of course. But is there anything surprising or hard to understand? Not at all.

The Liberal Chimera

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Christianity, Holy Spirit, Liberalism, Progressive Christianity, Scripture, Truth, United Methodists

According to an article that appeared Monday on RNS, liberal United Methodists have recently declared they are starting a new denomination (but not really a new denomination) within (and also outside of) their denomination: the Liberation Methodist Connexion. Those familiar with the history of theology in the past century may immediately detect Marxist vibes in the use of “Liberation” in the title; the choice of Anglicized spelling for connection is, apparently, a Methodist thing.

The United Methodists have been going through the same struggles as other historic Mainline denominations over whether or not to surrender to theological liberalism, particularly in the area of sexual morality. The general Mainline consensus has been to surrender, and continue to enjoy a drastic decline; the American Baptists are, I think, still deciding; the United Methodists decided last year to buck the trend and not embrace the LGBTQ+ agenda, largely because of strong participation from their African churches. But the conservatives have been quick to compromise, and the general impression was that the denomination would split this year–a break prevented by COVID-19.

The new news is that some of the liberals are tired of waiting, and have organized a new movement ahead of the scheduled (and postponed) break.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the LMX is how up-front they are about truth taking a back seat to action. Of course, they claim to be responding to “The timeline of the Holy Spirit”–although they are going directly against what the Spirit has said in Scripture. But, “Correct doctrine is less important to the new denomination than correct action, collaborators said during Sunday’s presentation.”

This is not an oversight, but a conscious decision, emphasized from the beginning of the article. “Its theology ‘is not written in stone,’ the website said”, which contrasts quite decidedly with God’s ten commandments, which were written in stone. As one of the leaders puts it, “We seek not answers that lead us to correct doctrines as to why we suffer. We seek correct actions, correct praxis, where God sustains us during the unanswerable questions”; so, for her, correct doctrine is not just undesirable but impossible–the questions are “unanswerable”. One of the destinations you may reach by the road of doubt is the cul-de-sac of ignorance.

In fact, the liberal antagonism towards truth finds direct expression in the words of another leader: “There are no doctrinal litmus tests in the movement. We are moving beyond the supremacy of a single belief system”. This is to say that to hold that there is such a thing as truth is a sort of violence, an attempt to assert supremacy. Such a view is worlds away from the perspective of Christianity, where believing the truth God has revealed is an act of humble obedience to the Creator and Lord of the universe.

Of course, the LMX does have united doctrine, even if they want to pretend they don’t. How could they have united actions–“correct praxis”–without it? What would they act towards? Here is what they act towards: “That action includes reparations, caring for the earth, and finding new ways to live together outside of systems like colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, clericalism and heteronormativity, they said.” See, the difference is not that they don’t have doctrine, it’s that they eschew historic, orthodox Christian doctrine in favor of trendy worldly ideologies. And I do wonder if someone within the ranks tried to dissent and say, advocate ‘patriarchy’ or ‘heteronormativity’ (I do not say this is likely, just speculate with me for a moment), if they might not find themselves up against “the supremacy of a single belief system” after all.

The attempt to dispense with doctrine is a chimera. When you attempt it, what is most likely is that you will dispense with true doctrine, and end up captive to deceptive ideologies and worldly fads. As the self-contradictory, almost farcical nature of the LMX shows, the supposed rejection of doctrinal orthodoxy is both a Trojan horse for paganism and a bizarre antagonism towards truth itself. Christians must seek to know the truth and love the truth, remembering that our Lord is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6, ESV).

Disarmed Apologetics

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Apologetics, Bible, Faith, Scripture

Continuing ruminations about musician Jon Steingard’s departure from the faith, I want to draw attention to the methodology used by one apologist, Robin Schumacher, in trying to appeal to Steingard. In a piece in the Christian Post, Schumacher invited Steingard to consider the evidence for God and Christ, specifically without reference to Scripture.

This is a tricky matter, and I want to be clear that I’m not wholly out of sympathy with what Schumacher is saying. It’s true that the world is sufficient evidence for men to conclude that God exists; it’s true that the life of Jesus is historically attested; it’s true that the non-biblical evidence for the reality of the resurrection, via the witness of the disciples and the rapid growth of the church, should be taken seriously. These are real apologetic claims in defense of the reasonableness of Christianity, and have their value.

What I find problematic is the wisdom of appealing to someone with such pronounced exclusion of the Bible from the discussion. Again, I understand, we want to reach people where they’re at, and Steingard doesn’t seem like someone who’s going to see the Bible as very authoritative. But there is a sense–and I think Schumacher misses this–that the authority of Scripture abides even when someone is deliberately resistant to it.

For Schumacher says of belief in God, “you don’t need to reference the Bible to have confidence in this fact”, “You heard me right–you don’t need your Bible for this one”, and “you don’t need to open your Bible to reach a conclusion” on the evidences for a Creator. Three times he hammers the point in the space of a short article. This runs the danger, I think, of pursuing a disarmed apologetic.

In the first place, we may question how much understanding man is capable of apart from the illuminating work of the Spirit. While the world IS adequate testimony to the existence of God, sin has so corrupted mankind that we suppress the truth (Rom. 1). That the cosmos justifies belief in God, and that fallen humans will see that justification apart from the gift of faith, are two different things.

But, even more, Scripture is the greatest weapon in the apologetic arsenal, the sword of the Spirit, God’s testimony to Himself. How can we possibly set it aside and try to persuade men without it?

For the Bible is the Word of God written. God has spoken, by the Holy Spirit, through the inspired writers. And God’s Word is authoritative, powerful, transforming. “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

Going into battle without your sword is an obvious tactical mistake. Disarmed apologetics is not the approach we should take towards a lost and dying world.

Really Urgent

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America, Christianity, Culture, Episcopal Church, Faith, God, Gospel, Humanity, Jesus Christ, Liberalism, Life, Progressive Christianity, Redemption, Salvation, Theology, Truth

Writing a couple days ago about the call of the gospel involved expressing that the gospel call is urgent.  It matters whether or not people hear the message of Christ, and whether or not those who hear believe; it matters because there is judgment to come, and where you stand in the day of judgment depends entirely on whether or not you are in Christ.

This is the perennial scandal of the Christian faith.  True Christianity will always be scandalous to the world, though different aspects of the faith will be scandalous in different times and places and cultures.  But the exclusivity of the gospel message is a perennial scandal, because it stands against every worldly ideology and religion, and because it is at the irreducible core of the Christian message: eternal life is found in Jesus Christ, and in Jesus Christ alone.  You have to place your faith in Him if you are to be saved.

This claim is denied not only by avowed secularists, but by some who claim to be Christians.  I came upon the website of a liberal Episcopalian church in San Francisco, noteworthy (among other things) for how they use their sanctuary for a popular yoga program–the sentence “Colorful mats cover the labyrinth, the aisles and even the altar” has a certain resonance with 2 Kings 16.  I saw that they had sermons online, audio and transcripts; I wanted to see what their preaching was like, but didn’t want to give it a lot of time.  I needn’t have been concerned; my sampling suggests that, in keeping with typical liberal practice, their sermons range from fairly brief to very brief.  Given their beliefs, brief is probably for the best.

So here is a sermon from “The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clements Young.”  He’s the dean of the cathedral and has a Doctorate of Theology from Harvard, so no one can say I’ve chosen a straw man.  His text is John 3:16-17…and if you say, ‘Why just through verse 17? …aha, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

John 3:16 is quite understandable a beloved passage, a one-verse encapsulation of the gospel.  Dr. Young, in his short message, says a number of things, some of them good.  But things get particularly suspicious about halfway through–manuscript page 3, that is–when he turns to examine Jesus’ reference to the bronze serpent, a story detailed in Numbers 21.

The Israelites were complaining against God, and the text says, “Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them” (Num. 21:6, NIV), but Dr. Young says “God allows poisonous snakes to come among them”; perhaps the change from God’s direct action to divine permission is unintentional.  But stranger is Dr. Young’s assertion that “In both this exodus story and the Gospel of John sin is less a punishment from God than it is a self-destructive human choice.”  Well, yes, the sin of the Israelites is a self-destructive choice–and if that’s all he meant, that’s one thing, but we’re still going to have to grapple with Romans 1–but the punishment from God is clearly present: they chose to grumble against God, but God sent the venomous snakes.

Dr. Young brings this back to John 3, which is good, and Jesus’ statement that “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up” (Jn. 3:14).  But this is Dr. Young’s comment:

“In this world which is poisoned by envy, greed, fear, betrayal and death – Jesus promises that we can be healed by experiencing him near to us in our suffering, and the hope that we have for the resurrection”.

Is that all Jesus promised, His nearness in our suffering?  Why no mention of the atoning significance of His death upon the cross?

After this suspicious beating-about-the-bush about the wrath of God and atoning work of Christ, Dr. Young makes his last point quite clearly:

“My last point has to do with what my friend Matt Boulton calls the “anti-Gospel.” Gospel means good news and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is really good news for all people, not just Christians. It is the message that God does not condemn the world, but always reaches out to save us even when our choices have led us disastrously astray. But somehow many Christians warp Jesus’ words into an anti-gospel which is a message of contempt and exclusion.”

The Gospel, for Dr. Young, appears to be a message of universal salvation.  Faith in Christ is not necessary, and those who say that it is are guilty of promoting “an anti-gospel which is a message of contempt and exclusion.”  This is the rhetoric of the religious left, where ‘inclusion’ is good and ‘exclusion’ is bad, and where the other side is regarded as showing hatred or contempt.  But how does this message square with the very text of Scripture being expounded?  Dr. Young quotes John 3:16 in its entirety, so he has right there before him that the verse says “whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  It does not say that Christ gives life to everyone; it says He gives life to those who believe in Him.

How does Dr. Young deal with this?  He doesn’t, really.  He emphasizes that the text is saying this is a demonstration of the way God has shown His love:

“The Greek doesn’t mean to emphasize “how much” God loves us but instead shows us the character of God’s love, that God loves us in this way, through not even withholding his own son. The point is not that Jesus only saves the few who believe, but like the Israelites looking at the snake, everyone is healed by God through Jesus.”

Like the Israelites looking at the snake?  But it wasn’t all of the Israelites who were healed by the bronze serpent–it was only those who looked at it.  In the same way, it isn’t all people who are saved by Jesus, but only those who believe in Him.  The parallel seems to work rather against Dr. Young than for him.  Can he really justify such a shaky interpretation in the face of the clear teaching of the biblical text?

He can try.  Here’s the clincher:

John confirms this interpretation and writes, “God did not send his son to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (Jn. 3).

He’s quoting John 3:17, a wonderful verse about God’s love.  Jesus came to save.  God sent His Son to be our Savior.  And, if this verse was all we had to work with, we might conclude that it teaches a universal salvation, regardless of whether people know Jesus or not.

But this verse doesn’t stand alone, and a basic principle of biblical interpretation is that verses must be interpreted in context.  The verse before it, verse 16, says that it is those who believe who are saved.  What about the verse that follows?

And this is why it is so interesting that Dr. Young stopped with verse 17.  Now, I can’t read his mind.  Maybe he forgot what verse 18 said.  Maybe he just didn’t have time to bring it up.  But it is awfully interesting that he didn’t mention the verse that says, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (Jn. 3:18).

So we have an Old Testament parallel and two clear assertions that a response of faith is required in order to receive the life Christ offers, sandwiching the ambiguous verse that Dr. Young tries to use to nullify the clear message.  It is overwhelmingly obvious that Dr. Young has misinterpreted the Scripture, and has done so in a way that shows either a remarkably careless disregard for the context or a deliberate desire to twist the message of the gospel.

He wants to do away with the exclusivity of the gospel.  In the process, he has thrown out the urgency of the gospel, for a message of universal salvation is not a message that anyone needs to hear; and, if heard, it is a message that perfectly suits the individualistic self-determination of the (post)modern west, because it means that how you choose to live your life doesn’t really matter in the end.

Can Dr. Young’s own charge be reversed?  Is he guilty of teaching an anti-gospel?  I think so.  Maybe he teaches that people should repent of their sins and place their faith in Jesus, but he doesn’t preach that such is necessary in order to be forgiven and receive eternal life.

The true gospel is urgent, because it proclaims that God’s gracious offer of life is found exclusively in Jesus Christ, is received exclusively by faith in Jesus Christ.  You need this gospel, and you need it now.

And you may have it, no matter who you are, no matter what you have done.  Turn from your sins and place your trust in Jesus Christ, who died for your sins and rose from the dead to bring you life.  Accept His mighty hand reaching down to draw you to Himself.  Be cleansed, forgiven, made whole, adopted as a child of the Most High.

The time is now.

 

Imagine that (again)

Tags

Atheism, Celebrities, Celebrity Culture, Cultural Engagement, Culture, Eschatology, God, Ideology, Naturalism, Secularism, Socialism, Society, Theism, Theology, Worldview

…a postscript to my ruminations a few days ago on the celebrities singing John Lennon’s “Imagine”, and the song’s message of despair.

In that earlier post, I noted in passing the hypocrisy of super-wealthy celebrities singing a song that contains the line “imagine no possessions”. Upon further reflection, I think that dissonance reflects one of the basic fallacies of the song and its misunderstanding of naturalistic, materialistic ideology.

For the song suggests that embracing a naturalistic and materialistic ideology—rejecting religion, with its metaphysical notions of heaven and hell, of transcendent morality and judgment and eternal hope—thus “living for today”, will help us break down the barriers and “live as one”. This is, ostensibly, the future that those promoting this ideology dream of.

Now, let us assume that the celebrities singing this song hold to such a naturalistic and materialistic ideology—they are atheists, who believe that this world is all we get, and intend to live for today. This may not be true; I’m not very knowledgeable about celebrity news, and for all I know Gal Gadot et al may claim to believe in God; but the public testimony of this song is that they don’t, so let us suppose that to be the case. Ostensibly, they are “living for today”, they dream this dream.

But they are not sharing their possessions. Oh, I don’t doubt they give to charitable causes; but they keep vast amounts of personal wealth for themselves. They make no effort to “live as one” with the people of the world. Apparently “a brotherhood of man” is not their dream, after all?

Why should it be? This is not a simple matter of hypocrisy—singing the song is, but living a lavish lifestyle isn’t. Naturalistic materialism provides no moral impetus. “Living for today” is perfectly consistent with living selfishly. Transcendent morality and eschatological hope, on the other hand provide a profound foundation for charity.

Of course, many Christians fail to live out the faith, sometimes infamously; because our sanctification is incomplete, we are all hypocrites to a greater or lesser extent. Still, we should see clearly, and here is the key difference: selfishness and greed are hypocrisy in Christians, but are perfectly consistent with an atheistic worldview.

Therefore, if in fact selfishness and greed are bad, then atheism is wrong. If there is good, there must be God.

What Did You Think a Sword was?

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America, AOC, Bible, Celebrities, Christianity, Church, Cultural Engagement, Culture, Culture War, Freedom, God, Gospel, Hope, Jesus Christ, Salvation, Scripture, Sin, Society, Tolerance, Truth

…or, “AOC, Theologian?”

From Christianheadlines.com, “AOC Says Religious Liberty Advocates Are ‘Weaponizing Scripture’ to ‘Justify Bigotry’ against LGBTQ Community“:

In a House Oversight Committee hearing to discuss LGBTQ rights, Ocasio-Cortez called out those who use Scripture to take away rights from gay people. She also compared religious freedom advocates to white supremacists.

“It’s very difficult to sit here and listen to arguments in the long history of this country of using Scripture and weaponizing and abusing Scripture to justify bigotry,” she said. “White supremacists have done it. Those who justified slavery did it. Those who fought against integration did it, and we’re seeing it today.

The most foundational problem in the congresswoman’s analysis is buying into the whole framework of the LGBTQ movement, in which matters of ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ are treated as fundamental identity characteristics on par with race and sex.  That is the great con in this whole business, which has taken in all too many people.  It is only through that ruse that activists are able to regard sensible people as bigots, to put advocating religious freedom in the same category as white supremacy, and to paint their sexual revolution as a civil rights movement.

But the most interesting problem in the congresswoman’s analysis is her understanding of religion, and particularly of the Bible.  For her, religion would seem to be interpreted through the lens of secular liberation ideology; good religion, true religion, is as tolerant and non-judgmental (of liberal agendas) as she is.  And the Scriptures are supposed to be a benign message of tolerance.  For AOC, maintaining the Bible’s view of LGBTQ+ ideology, and wanting to live consistently with it, is somehow an abuse of Scripture.

Most interestingly, the congresswoman derides the use of Scripture in promoting sexual morality as “weaponizing” Scripture.

What?  Weaponizing the sword of the Spirit?

“Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17, NIV).

“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.  Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:12-13).

One cannot weaponize a sword.  A sword is already a weapon.  The Scriptures cut us to the heart, exposing all of our wickedness and sin.  The Bible is not a feather that strokes our self-esteem.  It is not a tolerant cushion that accepts and affirms us just as we are.  It is a sword that cuts through all lies and convicts us of sin–greed, pride, hatred, sexual immorality, all of it.  The Bible speaks of God’s holiness and our wickedness, it speaks of the wrath of God upon the ungodly, it tells us what is good for human flourishing, and it points us to the only means of forgiveness, wholeness, and life–Jesus Christ, our crucified and risen Savior.

“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:14-16).

The problem in American Christianity is not that we are weaponizing the sword of the Spirit, but that we are neglecting it.  We take it out for our quiet time, and then put it back in its sheath, as though we could tackle our desperate social issues without it.  We blunt its edges, as though our soft words were wiser than God’s pointed conviction; it must be admitted that the Bible speaks more directly and severely of sin than many a Christian–and many a pastor–is willing to do.

Christianity calls for conviction.  God gave us a sword, and He expects us to wield it.  The stakes are higher than whether or not religious liberty will be preserved in this nation for awhile yet.  The eternal destinies of men and women are at stake.

Let’s Get Real

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Christianity, God, Gospel, Homosexuality, Jesus Christ, Journalism, LGBTQ+, Media, Politics, Religious Left, Righteousness, Salvation, Same-Sex Marriage, Sin, Society, Truth

As a postscript to “Pete Buttigieg, Theologian?“, I want to note something on the other side of the interview–because it really was more of a dialogue, not just questions and answers.  Jim Wallis is a theologian, though not a faithful or trustworthy one, as the interview exemplified.

After all, in the article in question Wallis is interviewing a man engaged in persistent and publicly acknowledged immorality of a kind that God declares detestable (Lev. 18:22).  That is a key piece of context for any Christian viewing this discussion.

Towards the beginning, Wallis says:

The lawyer, says to Jesus, “How do I inherit eternal life?” And he says, “Love God. Love your neighbor.” Simple as that.

The reference is to Luke 10:25ff.  Wallis follows that on the question of loving our neighbors, which is quite right because that’s where the text follows.  But something has been left out: what about this love for God business?  What does that look like?

According to Scripture, love for God involves obedience (Jn. 14:23).  Indeed, the most interesting parallel to note is that in Luke 18, Jesus is asked the very same question, but this time He points the inquirer to the commandments of the Old Testament law (Lk. 18:20).  This isn’t Jesus giving two different answers; He’s giving the same answer in two different ways; after all, as Jesus Himself says, the two commandments to love God and love neighbor are a summary of the law (Matt. 22:37-40).

The failure of the social gospel has always been that it taught love of neighbor but neglected love of God.  For loving God requires not only that we love our neighbor but, first and fundamentally, that we turn from our sins and receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.  There is no gospel without the call to repentance and faith.

To talk about eternal life with someone who is living in persistent sin, without calling them to repent and believe, is a mockery of the gospel.

But there is a real gospel, a good news of eternal life for all who will turn from sin and trust Jesus.  God sent His Son to save sinners from all their sins; Jesus Christ died upon the cross and rose again so that we can have life in Him.  And yes, this has inescapable implications for what we do with our lives in this world.  But the real gospel is good not only for human flourishing in this present world, but for human flourishing in the kingdom of God through all eternity.  And a real theologian must declare the real gospel to people who really need it.

Pete Buttigieg, Theologian?

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America, Anthropology, Christianity, Culture, Culture War, Humanity, LGBTQ+, Politics, Same-Sex Marriage, Society, Truth

I wrote a post the other day titled “Tom Steyer, Theologian?”, and now have encountered a liberal religiousinterview with a much more prominent Democratic candidate, Pete Buttigieg.  This transcript appeared in Sojourners Nov. 19, 2019, but I only came across it the other day.  No doubt there are similar articles out there, as Buttigieg has been quite vocal about his claim to Christianity.  While a thorough dissection of this interview could be instructive, I want to highlight two things I find especially noteworthy.

1. Human dignity/divinity(?).  At one point, Buttigieg says,

…so the radical message of the gospel includes this idea that every single person is of equal concern; it has the divine in them.

There is an initial difficulty in reading this remark because of the grammatical tangles that result from the sexual revolution.  I think Buttigieg is saying that every single person (“it”) has the divine in him or her (“them”).  That grammatical confusion is significant because you can see how depersonalizing–thus, ultimately, dehumanizing–the sexual revolution is.  People cease to be men and women, and they become objects and plurals–‘it’s and ‘them’s.  And this comes in the midst of a comment where Buttigieg is trying to promote the dignity of every person; but you can’t do that while promoting the sexual revolution.  You can only have one or the other.  Trying to have both is one of the impossible tensions of contemporary American society.

But when we move past the grammar and its implications, the statement is problematic for what Buttigieg is deliberately claiming.  Every person has the divine in them?  No doubt there are some religions that teach that, but Christianity isn’t one of them.  We are God’s creatures; we are made in the imago Dei, the image of God; but only those who belong to Christ and have come to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit may be said to have the divine in them–and, even then, it needs to be understood in the right sense.

2. The source of truth.  Concerning the elephant in the room with Buttigieg, part of what he says is:

…on an issue like LGBTQ equality, I really believe this is also a battle within people. I think it is sometimes a battle between what they have been told and how they have been brought up, and something very good inside them, which is compassion.

Notice what’s on each side of this debate in the way he wants to frame it: on the side of Christian sexual ethics is ‘what someone has been told’, and on the other side is the goodness inside them, in the form of ‘compassion’.  This is a twisting of the truth, which is why it’s so effective.  What’s true is that revelation stands on one side, and that feelings are used to pull people to the other side.

But the most important question is, for Christians who have been told that sexual immorality is sin: who told you that?  If the answer is that God tells us that, in His holy Word, then no emotional appeals should move us.  God is true, and His Word is truth.

And, of course, it is only by acknowledging the truth of the gospel that we can repent and believe and come into a saving relationship with the one true God; only by submitting to God’s truth do we come to have ‘something very good inside’ us, the Spirit of the living God.

Gone Bananas

Tags

Art, Beauty, Culture, Media, Postmodernity, Society, Truth

I know, I know, but I just couldn’t help myself.

You have perhaps already read that a banana duct-taped to the wall has been declared a sculpture and sold (in three versions) for $120,000 or more each.  This is only the latest demonstration of the farcical level to which the art world has sunk in the (post)modern era.

There is an absurd pretentiousness about it all.  Consider the words of the gallery’s founder, Emmanuel Perrotin:

Prior to the reported sale, Perrotin told CNN the bananas are “a symbol of global trade, a double entendre, as well as a classic device for humor,” adding that the artist turns mundane objects into “vehicles of both delight and critique.”

Such is the vacuous defense of the debasement of art in a culture that has lost sight of truth and goodness.  Those are the three characteristics classically referred to as the “transcendentals”: the true, the beautiful, and the good.  It makes sense that our cultural elites, who have so constantly twisted the truth and perverted goodness would develop a debased sense of beauty.

The ready reply is that, by seeing foolishness here instead of brilliant artistic satire, I only show myself to be a Philistine who doesn’t understand art.  Ignorance is why someone like me rejects modern art.  This is the paradox of our educational system; somehow, adequate education and enlightenment is supposed to produce people who think a duct-taped banana is art, and that eating that banana is “performance art.”

Yet there is a comfort in the observation of common grace.  I think that this story is so widely publicized because most people see this situation for what it is.  Only those initiated into the nonsense of (post)modern art are deceived by this; only the elitists are buying it–figuratively and literally.