Broken Censors

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America, Big Tech, Censorship, Christianity, Culture, Culture War, Freedom, Hope, LGBTQ+, Media, Morality, Secularism, Sexual Immorality, Social Media, Society

The fallout from the despicable Capitol storming continues, in the social sphere as well as the explicitly political.  Tech corporations have silenced not only certain social media accounts, but the platform Parler, an alternative to Twitter.

In principle, these communication giants are just trying to stop people from using their platforms to promote violence; but, accusations of selective enforcement of such policies call this into question.  More significantly, this is only a ramping up of a pattern of technocratic suppression of conservative and Christian speech.  What can we observe from what the tech giants censor, and what they permit?

Because, of course, there has always been censorship.  That is to say, societies have mores, and they tend to enforce those mores in some way and to some degree.  I was reading the other day Francis Schaeffer’s Escape from Reason.  Writing about the Marquis de Sade, Schaeffer observes that “Twenty or thirty years ago [from 1968], if anyone was found with one of his books in England he was liable to have difficulties with the law” (38).  Now, Schaeffer is talking about shifting moral standards, for he goes on to say, “Today, he has become a great name in drama, in philosophy, in literature.”  But I just wish to remind people that there was a time when sadistic ‘literature’ was censored—and such censorship is good for society, not only because sadism hurts people but because it appears that the (natural?) result of failing to censor immorality is that eighty years down the road you end up censoring morality.  In the early 20^th century in the west you could get into trouble for advocating pagan sexual morality; in the 21^st, for advocating Christian sexual morality.

The call for a society free of moral censorship was a transitional stage in imposing a new (im)morality, just as feminism was a transitional stage to the abolition of gender.  I am not saying there is a mastermind behind these things, but that when you kick out the foundation the house will continue to crumble.

And, to extend the metaphor, other people may come along and try to build something new out of the rubble, according to their own designs and with very unsound architectural principles.  A morally neutral society—secular, in that sense—is an illusion.  You can maintain that illusion for a while, living off the (appropriated?) social capital of residual Christendom even while denouncing it.  But man is a moral animal.  A new morality emerges, and it may yet prove as heavy-handed as it is immoral.

Consider this: Planned Parenthood has a Twitter account.  Yes, that unabashed destroyer of innocent life tweets freely.  Promoting violence is, apparently, quite acceptable to Twitter.  The recent social media purges, then, merely highlight the instability and double-mindedness of a society in rebellion against the Lord of Life.

But the Lord is King, and His Kingdom stands in the midst of this dark world, and His victory is unstoppable.  The Word of God cannot be silenced.  He is exalted, and “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Php. 2:10-11, ESV).

We do not need to fret or fear the turmoil around us.  We do need to focus on Christ and His kingdom.  The tremors in our society are an ominous but useful reminder to live as kingdom citizens in this world and in our nation: as men and women, to live lives of true discipleship; as families, to raise our children in the knowledge of the truth and the fear of the Lord; as churches, to operate as outposts of the kingdom of God, and cultivate a Christian counter-culture that has the kingship of Christ at the center.  If the church did that, we might get to be the ones rebuilding the crumbled house of western civilization.  Who knows?  With God all things are possible.

But, more importantly, our perspective must remain eternal.  Nations and civilizations come and go.  God is King forever, and His children persevere in this life because in the life to come they shall be with their Lord in the new heavens and new earth, where “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).

Another Warning

Tags

America, Culture, God, Hope, Repentance, Salvation

Albert Mohler offers some good reflections on the evil of the riot in our nation’s capitol yesterday. It was a grim and tragic moment in American history.

Freedom is good for humanity, and anarchy is just as much an enemy of freedom as is totalitarianism. The corruption of our democratic institutions is no excuse for desecrating them, and assaulting democracy does not lead to human flourishing.

The headlines are one more call to repentance and revival, if we will read them right. Jesus is Lord. The Prince of Peace offers hope, life, and healing. Without Him, we are lost.

“In the Name of…”

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America, Christianity, Culture, God, Government, Idolatry, Pluralism, Progressive Christianity, Religious Left, Secularism, Society, Truth, United Methodists

            I mentioned a couple of days ago the silliness with which Rep. Cleaver ended his prayer for the opening of congress on Sunday, and I certainly wasn’t alone in observing the nonsense of it.  But that little detail has gotten more attention than the fact that the prayer was problematic in more significant ways.  How we end our prayers matters, but may not matter as much as the basic question of who we are praying to.

            I am no connoisseur of congressional prayers, and would be unsurprised if they were blasphemous as a matter of course; I make no claim that Cleaver’s prayer stands out from the pack (though it might, for all I know).  But the ending has claimed so much attention that we might as well draw people’s eyes up a few lines from “amen and awoman.”

            You can view the whole prayer on C-Span (there’s also a transcript, but it is both incomplete and unreliable).  And the prayer is not all bad, as concerns its content: there is humility, and an expressed desire for unity (if rendered somewhat incredible by the prayer’s conclusion).  But the question of great concern is, to whom is he praying?

            Towards the beginning, he invokes, “Eternal God,” which is an acceptable, if not explicit, Christian address.  He says, “The members of this august body acknowledge your sacred supremacy,” which seems to me unlikely, but we shall return to that.  Various phrases biblical and Christian phrases suggest that it is the one true God whom Cleaver addresses—without ever bringing in any of the key terms, such as “Jesus,” “Holy Spirit,” or “Trinity,” that might really seal the deal.  Nonetheless, one is left with the impression that he might actually be praying to the actual God—and making the audacious claim that the U.S. congress operates in submission to the Holy One.

            But, at the end, he concludes, “We ask it in the name of the monotheistic god, Brahma, and god known by many names, by many different faiths.”

            Beg pardon?

            It would appear that Cleaver has been praying to a hypothetical shared god of the world’s religions.  He conflates “the monotheistic god”—an inadequate catchall that could conceivably have reference to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, “Brahma”—the Hindu creator god, and a general reference to the gods of other religions.  In this secularized, pluralistic prayer, Cleaver seems to be trying to include everyone—thus effectively excluding most people.

            This notion, that all religions (or at least certain religions) really worship the same god under different names is not at all unique.  It is unsurprising to see it on the religious left, and perhaps the only safe course on the political left.  It is also blasphemous.

            When we read the Scriptures, we do not find God regarding worship of other gods as really being worship of Himself.  We find God profoundly distinguishing Himself from the gods of the pagans, “For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens” (Ps. 96:5, ESV).  God declares the idols worthless (Jer. 10:15), and the worship of such idols futile (Isa. 42:17).  We find not that God may be sought by any name, but that there is one name we must confess, “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

            To whom, then, was Representative Cleaver praying?  Whose “sacred supremacy” does he (and, he presumes, the rest of congress) acknowledge?  Not, apparently, the one true God.

            And that is the real problem behind all the other problems.  If our leaders submitted to the true God, our nation would not advance legislation that defies God and denigrates, devastates, and destroys people made in His image.  Idolatry is the problem, and as long as we worship idols we will harm image-bearers.  All hopes grounded in idolatry are vain.

            But there is a light in the darkness, and hope for any who will have it.  When we acknowledge the one true God, when we confess the name of our Savior, then we find the path of life.  “Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9).  He is the true hope, light, and life eternal.

Matrimony (II)

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America, Christianity, Church, Culture, Culture War, Marriage, Society, Theology, Truth

            I recently wrote a little essay on the meaning of matrimony, and want to follow that up with a few thoughts about its significance in terms of human culture.  If, as Scripture teaches and history bears out, marriage is the fundamental human society, the health and solidity of the institution of marriage will have a profound influence on society more broadly.  This gives us a lens to understand so many of our culture’s ills, and offers a prescription for addressing them.

            The family is the basic social unit.  Here the fundamental diversity of humanity as man and woman shows its complementarity in the unity of marriage; this unity is (normatively) fruitful.  Thus husband, wife, and children, the basic society, form the cells of a healthy social body on the larger scale.  In the mutual love and support of the family an environment is created that is naturally conducive to human flourishing—naturally, because this is the divine design.

            In saying this, I do not mean to deny the great value of extended families, close friendships, neighborhood communities, and all the rest.  I only point out that the core human society is the nuclear family, and therefore that marriage has a social significance frequently neglected in the contemporary west.  This is the fundamental building block of a healthy society, and our long denigration of the institution of marriage has, it stands to reason, a sizeable share in the blame for the extent of our besetting social ills: poverty, drug abuse, abortion, suicide, and so on.

The project of rebuilding western civilization, which we might fruitfully consider, would need the restoration of marriage as a core tenet.  Bear in mind that all of this assumes a true understanding of marriage, a Christian understanding of marriage.  Marriage with the gospel at the center is the kind of marriage we need.

So, in the first place, churches should invest heavily in nourishing strong Christian families.  Every marriage truly consecrated—Christward, God-centered marriage—is a fortress built in the kingdom of God’s invasion of this dark world.  Here a tree has been planted to bear fruit in the midst of the desert.  Here a sanctuary has been fenced to raise children who will be protected and loved and taught to stand straight in a culture enslaved, who will know the truth, and by God’s grace may believe the truth.  Here a banner has been raised to declare the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and the wonder of the Spirit’s transforming power.

Secondly, we should oppose any ideology, force, or movement that aims to displace or dismantle the family.  This is a typical tendency of contemporary secular social philosophy; the family is to be denounced as an artificial construction, and its functions outsourced to the community or the government.  We see this in educational agendas, political policy, and social advocacy, to name a few.  But any denigration of the family is fundamentally misanthropic, and must be resisted.

Thirdly, and most importantly, we must see the implications of this for the family of the church.  In our fallen world, human society will never be as it ought.  God is at work to repair what sin has broken, and this is primarily exercised through the community of the faithful.  The church, in fact, supersedes the biological family (without nullifying it); separated from the family of God, the family of man will be inevitably dysfunctional.  The church must be family for all the families of the church, and for all those who have no other family.

For in His love, God has made a way for us to come into His family.  In the church, we realize now a foretaste of the fellowship of the family of God.  For all those who are lonely and lost, for those whose families are broken or abusive, God reaches out with His gospel of love, forgiveness, acceptance, and healing.  This is the message that transforms lives, communities, even cultures; this is the message of Christian marriage and the proclamation of the church: God has made a way, in Jesus Christ, for us to be reconciled to Him and adopted into His family.

God has worked to draw us to Himself.  That is the testimony of matrimony.

Christus Victor

Tags

America, Christianity, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Culture, Death, Fear, God, Hope, Jesus Christ, Life, Media, Pandemic, Resurrection, Salvation, Society

A few days ago, among the items in an assorted internet news smorgasbord came several headlines to the effect that the president had garnered anger by saying that people shouldn’t fear the coronavirus.  “‘Don’t Be Afraid of COVID,’ Trump Says, Undermining Public Health Messages”, ran the headline from the New York Times.  Surely they don’t mean to say that the public health message is that we should be afraid?  Or do they?

            The president’s tweet didn’t just say not to be afraid of COVID.  He also talked about how great he was feeling, and touted the drugs for treating the coronavirus developed under his presidency.  I won’t dispute that his message suggested COVID-19 was not a serious concern, and that such a message is both frustrating for health workers and painful to those who have suffered and lost because of the pandemic.  Human suffering should not be treated lightly.  When one man has a mild case of the coronavirus, or makes a recovery, it is an occasion for gratitude, not a time to neglect the awful consequences this virus has had for so many.

            But, in terms of the news cycle, anger seemed directly tied to the president’s urge that people not fear the coronavirus.  That, to judge from the news, was an outrageous suggestion.  The implication is that you are only taking COVID-19 seriously if you fear it, and anything less is outrageous.

            I am a cautious man, myself.  I take precautions; in some cases, I am perhaps over-cautious.  Yet I think it is mistaken to put forth fear as a virtue, or to promote a message of fear.  Fear of death may cow people, but it does not make us resilient or noble.  It is good to be wise and prudent.  There is nothing commendable about foolhardiness; but nor is fear a virtue.  For those who see in some dimensions of the various state governments’ coronavirus response an obtrusive overreach, and in the media a political dimension to the coronavirus coverage, this appeal to fear is certainly corroborative.  Another possibility is that they simply present the story as they understand it: this is a fearful time, and it is reckless and foolish to not be afraid.

            Christians have a different perspective.  We recognize that this life is short, and prolonging it as long as possible is not the highest good.  More importantly, we have a theologically informed and redemptively transformed perspective on death.  Death is a consequence of sin, and of itself is indeed a terrible thing; but it has been de-clawed by the atoning death and victorious resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Death is the gateway to one’s eternal destiny.  For those who don’t know Jesus, death should be a terrible and stark reminder that NOW is the time to repent and be saved.  But, for those who do know Jesus, death is the passage to the presence of their Savior. 

For the Christian, death holds no terror; this enemy has been disarmed, and pressed into service to carry the people of God to their rest with their Lord until the day of resurrection.  Our Lord has conquered death.  As Jesus said to John, when the apostle was confronted with His awesome majesty, “Do not be afraid.  I am the First and the Last.  I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever!  And I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17-18, NIV).

Ultimate Authority

Tags

America, Authority, Christianity, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Freedom, God, Government, Pandemic, Progressive Christianity, Secularism, Truth

Back in August, RNS ran an article entitled, “John MacArthur believes the Bible trumps COVID-19 public health orders. Legal scholars say no.” Here, in a case study of church-state relations, we see the basic failure of a secular worldview.

RNS is, after all, a basically secular organization. “Wait a minute. RNS stands for Religion News Service. How can that be a secular organization?” Because it uses “religion” in the generic sense, various religions, without any conviction as to which religion is true; it is a secular platform for liberal religious views from various traditions, and thus represents a secular society’s approach to religion.

In a secular society’s approach to religion, there is an implicit relativism on spiritual truth, and an elevation of the authority of the state above the church. The separation of church and state becomes one-sided; it is invoked when there is an attempt to bring the church into the state, but ignored when the time comes to bring the state into the church.

A secular approach to religion is not the same thing as religious freedom. Religious freedom is a Christian idea, and happily coexists with the public acknowledgment of Christian truth–as was the case in America for most of its history. A secular society, we are beginning to see, actually impinges upon religious freedom, as atheistic ideologies become public orthodoxy.

We see this in the hypocrisy of certain government officials as they select which gatherings are essential and which are not during the pandemic. Thus we come back around to RNS and their assumption of secular authority: ‘Does the Bible trump COVID-19 public health orders? Let’s ask the experts on government orders.’ That is begging the question.

Of course, the opinions of legal scholars may vary. There is a legal tradition, evidenced in the founding of our nation, that rooted human rights in the authority of God. Then there’s the opinion of one scholar quoted in the RNS article:

“We have rights from the Constitution, not the Bible,” said Eric J. Segall, a law professor at Georgia State. “Biblical duties don’t trump our laws. Period. Full stop.”

When confronted with that kind of attitude, what can a Christian say but “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29, ESV)? God, not government, is the highest authority. Jesus Christ is Lord.

Legal experts cannot tell us whether the Bible has authority over legal pronouncements–though, if a legal expert is a Christian, he might know the answer. The most legal experts are equipped to tell us is whether or not the law acknowledges the authority of Scripture. If it does not–as is often the case–that tells us nothing about the authority of Scripture vis-à-vis human government. All that tells us is that human government claims to be the ultimate authority.

That is the case in a secular or secularizing society. But that doesn’t make it right.

In this pandemic, Christians have had to wrestle with how the church should respond to public health orders; in particular, we have had to wrestle with how the Bible’s command to submit to governing authorities does or does not apply in these situations. That is a valid and sometimes complex question to work through. But that is not the question RNS is asking; RNS is asking whether God or the government has ultimate authority in these matters–and that is an exceptionally easy question to answer.

The Bible is the Word of God. Of course God’s Word has authority over the word of the state. The state’s opinion on this matter makes no difference, except that it is a potent reminder that what our nation needs most is to return to an acknowledgment of the ultimate authority of God–an acknowledgment expressed at our nation’s beginning: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”

A Reckoning

Tags

America, Christianity, Church, Faithfulness, Gospel, Religious Left, Same-Sex Marriage, Truth

Religion News Service, a hub of journalistic advocacy for the religious left, has had several rather telling articles lately. First on the docket is this piece from Ryan Burge, who urges Christians to abandon unpopular teachings of Scripture in pursuit of numerical growth.

The headline reads, “On LGBT and women’s equality, stark statistical reality is coming for white evangelicals.” The title alone has several notable features. First is the framing of the issues in terms of equality, which itself suggests that white evangelicals are bigoted in their views on these matters. Next, the liberal triumphalism: the future belongs to them, “stark statistical reality” looms before evangelicalism. Third, of course, is the focus on “white evangelicals”, a favored target for the left in recent times. Are evangelicals of other ethnicities significantly more open to sexual immorality or women preachers? I suspect not; in any case, Burge makes no effort to demonstrate that they are.

Through the course of the article, Burge notes some facts about the American social and religious landscape that are, indeed, important–but not news to most. The rise of the “nones”, and shifting opinions related to LGBTQ issues and women preachers are discussed.

Then he takes the data, and applies it towards the usual ridiculous but unsurprising liberal conclusions. Visualizing churches as businesses, he says that evangelical churches aren’t selling what the younger generations are going to want to buy. Our beliefs are outdated, like a Blackberry in the iPhone age. Our options are 1) to maintain doctrinal orthodoxy regardless of numerical decline, or 2) “evangelicalism could begin to slowly shift its stance on issues like women pastors and same-sex relations.”

To his credit, Burge grants some validity to option 1, stating “There is integrity in this path.” What’s ridiculous is his implication that option 2 would lead to numerical growth. He’s basically suggesting that evangelical take the path of the liberal mainline denominations: change doctrines and practices to keep in step with the times. But his own research shows the correlation between the rise of the “nones” and the decline of liberal mainline Christianity, and he describes his own projection saying that “The results indicate that the ‘nones’ will unequivocally be the largest group in America by 2029, and that’s largely a result of more mainline decline.”

Even in purely pragmatic terms, liberalizing evangelical doctrine and practice so as to be more like the mainline denominations is a terrible idea, and not likely to bring numerical growth. Burge says our ‘product’ is unappealing to young American ‘consumers’; but what his own statistics express much more pronouncedly is that the ‘product’ being sold by liberal churches–a watered-down accommodation of Christianity to secular culture–is precisely what American ‘consumers’ are rejecting.

It is true that secularism is on the rise in America. But what the religious left cannot seem to grasp is that the quickest way to kill your denomination is to liberalize it to meet (post)modern mores.

But the more fundamental issue is that this whole way of looking at things is flawed, one might even say idolatrous. The metaphor of the church as a business selling a product to consumers is natural to Americans, but it is offensive to the church and to the church’s Lord. And this sort of thinking has been a poison within the evangelical world for quite some time.

We are concerned about lost people finding salvation. But they are not consumers, Christianity is not a product, and the church is not a business. We are the body of Christ, the people of God in the midst of a world of darkness. The church has no right to cast aside God’s commandments in pursuit of popularity. It’s an understatement to say, as Burge does, that “there is integrity in this path.” It is the only path with integrity.

It is also the path with the most hope for Christianity in America. As the mainline denominations are strangled by their own compromise, evangelicalism may see another great awakening, if God so chooses. Burge says, “I’m sympathetic to the view that God can change hearts. But I see no evidence of divine intervention in the data.” That’s a remarkably short-sighted view of things. The history of the last two millennia has provides ample demonstration of God’s ability to change hearts. This is not guaranteed in any given time and place; it is possible anywhere, in any circumstances.

God can and does change hearts. The responsibility of the church is to be faithful to her Lord, to advance the kingdom of God in the dominion of darkness, and to pray Maranatha–our Lord, come. The “stark statistical reality” of shifting American opinions is not the reckoning people should be most concerned about.

Again–Chaos, Control, or Christ

Tags

America, Christ, Christianity, Cultural Engagement, Culture, Culture War, Jesus Christ, Politics, Race, Secularism, Security, Society

The many grim headlines that have met us in recent days point to a nation caught in the tug-of-war between chaos and control, and remind us that we are in this dilemma because we, as a culture, have rejected the Lordship of Christ. We encounter grievous injustice, and try to deal with it with all the resources of pagan or secular worldviews; the results are what we see unfolding.

There can be no doubt that self-consciously Christian societies have often failed to live up to their own principles. But what should be noticed is that these failures were a contradiction of their principles, not an accordance with them. That means that such a society would have within itself the resources to address its failures with repentance and reconciliation. There is a divine standard of justice, pure and glorious, to which all men stand accountable; there is an identifiable spiritual root to all injustice, sin in the human heart; there is a means of challenging wickedness with the gospel of Jesus Christ, of calling sinners to repentance and of seeing change, reconciliation, healing, and love that transcends boundaries.

But a secular or pagan society–and are these different things, or only different names?–does not contain within itself the resources to address injustice. That is why the efforts to address it turn towards chaos or control. The way of Christ has been excluded from the start, in pursuit of freedom from God. But freedom from the Righteous One will never mean righteousness, nor true freedom. A society that rejects the God who is the divine standard of justice cannot be expected to arrive at justice in its social dimensions.

The solution to our situation is neither revolution nor authoritarianism. It is conversion. The price of a just and peacefully society is repentance. Repentance of what? Many things. But, in the first place, of our secularism. If we will not have Christ, it is control or chaos. If we do not want chaos or control, we must turn to Christ.

Transitions

Tags

America, Coronavirus, COVID-19, God, Mercy, Pandemic, Prayer, Race, Reconciliation

Well, a lot has happened since my last blog post.

As a word of explanation, my family has undergone a major transition: new town, new home, new church. All of this has been wonderful, but it’s remarkable how much things have changed in the past couple of months.

Of course, this coincides with a major transition our whole nation and our whole world has been going through. The coronavirus pandemic has brought horrible death and suffering, and dealt an economic blow to people’s livelihoods that will perhaps not be fully realized until this is over.

On top of that, our nation has been grappling with the evil of our long legacy of racism, and the dark consequences of that, which show up in a number of ways. The horrible injustice done to George Floyd has led to unrest and destruction that will surely increase the suffering of the poor in these communities. If this, too, is a transition, we cannot see from here what the end result will be.

May God have mercy on us. May He, the great Healer, lift our world out of the grip of this disease. May He, the great Reconciler, grant us the mercy of repentance, reconciliation, justice, peace, and a brighter future to come. May He, the Lord of life, stir revival in our nation so that we will have His love for one another.

May He turn this dark transition to our transformation.

Really Urgent

Tags

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.