Church & Culture

During the 1960s there came a shift in American thinking. While individualism that had always been a part of the American mindset, morals and ethics had previously been subject to a higher authority than the individual himself. Now, self became the authority and source of all values. Self realization became the ultimate purpose in life.

That a new cultural direction was in the making was becoming evident in many ways. By the 1980s, for example, a large majority had begun to think that what was worthwhile in life had nothing to do with its normal routines such as getting up each day and going to work. Nor with the tradition responsibilities of marriage and the raising of children. Rather, life is about its more exotic moments. It is not about what happens on Monday through Friday, but what happens on the weekends. Its real meaning, and its real rewards, are found when the self, unencumbered by routine and responsibility, can be found, nurtured, and satisfied. Two-thirds of Americans began to think a lot about their selves. A great majority, 80 percent, forsook the older traditional ways of looking at life, certainly the older ethical norms, and began to search for new rules by which to live. About half wanted new experiences. They also wanted new freedoms, even trivial ones, like being able to dress the way they wished, unrestrained by convention. They also were looking for more excitement and new sensations.
   Thus it was that the individualism in which you should think for yourself, decide for yourself, provide for yourself, and work to serve others in personal of civic ways had ended up as something rather different. This older individualism has turned inward. Now it is about finding the self for yourself, discovering you inner potential for you own benefit, esteeming your self, and developing now ethical rules that serve the discovery of the self.
   It is not unreasonable to think that this turn in our culture would have found resistance among the religious. And it did at the more liberal end of Protestantism, ironically enough, but evangelicals fell head long into this new way of seeing life.
   It could be heard, in the 1980s and 1990s, every time Robert Schuller’s cherubic countenance appeared on television. He was moving in a new direction, even though he also claimed to be traditionally Protestant. He announced that his new self-focused preoccupation was no less than a new Reformation. He went on to construct the whole of Christian faith around the self and its discovery.
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   And so it came into our pulpits. In sermon after sermon over the last two or three decades, preachers of an evangelical kind have latched onto this cultural way of thinking. Self-talk, it seemed, would be a natural springboard into salvation talk. Even if it never actually got to salvation, there was enormous benefit to be had along the way. So, why not venture along this path? Imagining themselves to be speaking the language of their congregations, and being quite au courant, these preachers actually ended up buying into a worldview that is deeply hostile to Christian faith. They seemed not to notice that feeling good about yourself is not the same thing as actually being good. In fact, people often feel good about themselves in moments when they should not. Some feel good about themselves in moments of great self indulgence, of revenge, and certainly in moments of inebriation. Is this not the warning that we should have heeded? Should we not have notices this?
   When evangelical churches entered this new universe of the self, they left the moral world behind. The evangelical church, which takes seriously its responsibility to steward the gospel, should have been the first to seen this because the gospel makes sense only in a morale world. Sin, after all, is not simply feeling bad about ourselves. It is violating what is right in God’s law and character. Those who inhabit this self-word look only for therapy, not for forgiveness and regeneration. Recovery, in fact, is their was of speaking about regeneration. It is all about human technique and not about miraculous intervention. All of this was apparently lost on evangelicals who stumbled after one another in their earnest pursuit to recast their faith in this new language from the culture.

—David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Eerdmans, 2008), 136–138.

We now live in a world in which self is the purpose and goal of all endeavors, and the arbiter of morals and ethics. The church at large has bought into this same mindset, albeit with spiritualized language. The great problem of mankind is not sin, but low self-esteem, or some other self-deficiency; so the “gospel” that is preached has no power to save anyone.

I’m feeling quite validated today. Earlier this year I posted a bit of a rant entitled Down with Values. Now I have discovered that David Wells has virtually plagiarized me in the following passage from The Courage to Be Protestant (mysteriously published in April, three months before my article). Wells writes of a shift that has taken place in Western thought that has replaced virtues with values.

Virtues, as I am thinking of them here, are aspects of the Good, or of Virtue. They are the moral norms that are enduringly right for all people, in all places, and in all times. It is true, of course, that there has been debate about what these virtues are.
   In the Middle Ages they were classified into two sets. The natural virtues were wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice while the supernatural virtues were faith, hope, and love. That makes seven virtues, which paralleled the seven deadly sins.
   The Protestant Reformation rejected this classification because it offered of basis of natural merit in four of the virtues that was simply upgraded by an infusion of grace. In fact, Scripture is more or less silent about virtue (cf. Phil. 4:8; 1 Pet. 2:9; 2 Pet. 1:3), but it clearly speaks of moral excellence and goodness in connection with the character of God. And not only in God’s character but also as reflected in the creation (Rom. 1:8-20) and in conscience (Rom. 2:14-15).
   However we understand this matter, it is inescapable that ours is a moral universe. It is one in which God sustains what is right, still abhors what is wrong, and still demands that we be accountable for knowing the difference.
   We can therefore say with confidence that there are moral excellencies that are always right because they make up who God is in his character. What Scripture speaks about in its narratives, psalms, and didactic sections is God’s holiness, justice, mercy, love, and truthfulness. And each of these has multiple variations in its application to human life. That these are the norms by which we should live is rather clear; how we might actually do so is a different matter.
   Across the ages people have tried to emulate these virtues. This has been true in Roman Catholicism, as it was in the liberal Protestantism of the nineteenth century. In their slightly different ways, they made the argument, one which has always appealed to the most morally earnest, that people should aim to be virtuous and that by practice they can become virtuous. Luther attacked this notion that, he said, came from Aristotle. It was the thought that just as a natural talent can be improved by practice, so can our own inherent virtue. This, needless to say, takes too little account of the way sin has intruded into all our virtue, perverting it. It is not practice that we need, but radical, supernatural transformation. That has always been the Protestant understanding of Scripture, and we will have occasion to return to it in due course.
   This brings us to the heart of a conundrum: Does “I ought” mean “I can”? does God still require of us obedience to what is morally normative even though in sin we cannot give that full obedience? Does he modify his demands to fit our abilities?
   The answer, of course, is that God cannot modify his demands because he cannot modify his character. His moral demands, therefore, were the same before the fall a they as they have been after it. What changed was our moral ability to obey what God demanded. Yet, being unable to live as God demands in no way changes how we should live. God does not tailor his moral demands to our ability to fulfill them, otherwise the most degrading and scurrilous miscreants would have the smallest expectation to reach! No, his moral norms are the same for all people, in all places, and in all times. It is these norms that I have in mind as virtues, and when we put them all together they make up Virtue. His grace that we encounter in Christ so takes us into itself that God is able to see us just as if we had never violated a single norm and have always given him his full due.
   To speak of Virtue, then, is to speak of the moral structure of the world of God made. Rebellious though we are, we have not broken down this structure, nor dislodged God from maintaining it. It stands there, over against us, whether we recognize it or not. We bump up against it in the course of life and we encounter its reflection in our own moral makeup. And from all sides a message is conveyed to our consciousness: “Beware! This is a moral world you inhabit!”
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Values, as we speak of them today, are a relatively new idea. In 1928 the multivolume Oxford English Dictionary, which had been under construction since 1882 and had accumulated the meanings of close to half a million words, had no entry for “values.” “Values” is a word in later twentieth-century talk in the West.
   Indeed, values represent the moral talk of a relative world and one that is clearly quite novel in some ways. It is true that in the past, free thinkers, novelists, artists, and other avant-gardists have dispensed with any kind of moral world. But never before have we seen an experiment on so large a scale as we are seeing in the West today. Everyone is now avant-garde, not just the cultural elite. Everyone is experimenting with how it feels to live in a world without moral form, one that is devoid of objective ethical norms.
   Once we left behind a moral world, we had no option but to treat values in a value-free way because what is right for one is not necessarily right for another. As the older moral world has faded, then, its virtues have faded with it. In the twilight of its dissolution, we are left with values.

—David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Eerdmans, 2008), 143–147.

We read previously of a shift in Western thinking from virtues to values. Today we’re going to observe a similar shift, this one from character to personality. We know that man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). However, there are still traces of the image of God that can be seen in man (I think the term “common grace” applies here), and so I think I am safe in saying that to some degree, man also has looked at the heart, although not exclusively or even primarily. Character, too some degree, has mattered. Integrity has been a marketable characteristic. This is no longer true as it once was, and it is becoming less true as time passes.

What we think of today as the self, a kind of internal center into which all our experiences flow and get sorted out, has been thought about as something separate from character only quite recently. Actually, the self came into prominence only in the twentieth century. Before that time people would have been quite baffled by all of this talk about finding the self, cultivating, esteeming it, realizing, and all the other things we think we are doing to it.
   For centuries we in the West have thought about our consciousness — the self, in contemporary parlance, — only in conjunction with nature and, indeed, with character. This center was thought about in terms of virtues to be learned and desires to denied. These virtues were all sustained by a belief in moral law, be it natural, or revealed in Scripture, of perhaps just generally assumed.

. . .
As the twentieth century dawned, Warren Susman observed in his work Culture as History, the great change was under way. The words that had peppered the advice manuals of an earlier generation, words that came out of a moral world, were disappearing. These were words like “duty,” “golden deeds,” “morals,” “manners,” “honor,” “citizenship,” and “reputation.” But as the new century began, a different set of interests came into view. These were signaled by the prominence in the advice manuals of words like “fascinating,” “stunning,” “attractive,” “glowing,” “masterful,” “creative,” “dominant,” “forceful.” The words most common earlier had been the words or character; these new words were those of personality. Character is not fascinating, glowing, of masterful. By the same token, personality is not dutiful, honorable, of full of golden deeds. Character is good or bad; personality is attractive, forceful, or magnetic.
   Here was a move out of the older moral world, where our internal moral intentions were important, to a different world. This is a psychological world. It is a shift from what is important in itself to how it appears to others. God may judge the heart, but our preoccupation is with the outward appearance that, after all, is what others see. In a society where affluence is important and ethical norms are disappearing, success is paramount and character in not. Our preoccupation, therefore, is how we “come off” before others.

—David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Eerdmans, 2008), 147–148.

So now we live in a day when attractiveness is more important than honesty, and charisma trumps integrity. The value of a person is only skin deep. Yet, while society changes, God does not. He still looks on the heart, and so must we.

We have been hearing from David Wells on some shifts in popular thinking that have taken place in the latter half of the twentieth century. Today we’ll consider the change in our perspective of guilt and shame.

It is true that we often use the words "guilt" and "shame" interchangeably. We tend to mean the same thing by them. However, in recent years, especially in psychiatric literature, a clear difference has emerged between them. I am going to be following this distinction.

Shame

Shame is the sense of awkwardness a person feels when seen doing something, or heard saying something, he or she does not want others to know about. Shame is not necessarily “moral” in nature. A person may be ashamed about parents who come off sounding ignorant, or do not speak English, or are poor. A person may be ashamed of where he or she lives because it is in the wrong part of town. These are not moral matters, but they are still capable of making a person feel ashamed.
   This same sense, though, carries through into more clearly moral matters. A person, for example, may feel quite awkward about being caught shoplifting by a video camera, or that news somehow got out that the IRS was pursuing him or her for evading payment of taxes. The dynamic in each case, however, is the same. A person feels awkward when others know something personal he or she wished to keep hidden.

Guilt

Guilt, by contrast, happens when an external standard has been violated. In our courts each day juries pronounce defendants either innocent of the charges brought against them or guilty. In the latter case, the defendants are judged to have broken the law even though virtually all defendants deny that and plead innocent. The person who hears this verdict may not feel guilty, though many do and hide their faces. The court, however, has no interest at all in how the defendant feels. It takes no account of how ashamed the defendant may or may not be before others. The sole point in dispute is whether that person did or did not break the law as charged.
   It is the same in Christian faith. The guilt the gospel addresses is also objective in nature. It is our guilt before God's law. It is the result of our violating the standards of his character. It is all about our blameworthiness before God, not about how we feel or do not feel or whether, in the contemporary sense, we feel shame. Indeed, in America so many people think of themselves as essentially good that, from that angle, there is very little to be ashamed about.
   Shame today is what lines up our actions horizontally. Guilt is what lines them up vertically. Shame is what we feel subjectively and guilty is what we are objectively. Shame is what we feel before others. Guilty is what we are before God. Shame belongs in a psychological world and guilt belongs in a moral world.
   If shame is simply about how we see ourselves and how we feel, it is not hard to see why many psychiatrists and psychologists think of shame as a crippling, unhealthy emotion that needs to be healed. This in undoubtedly true of false shame . . . but this new approach to shame forgets that lying in the midst of many of our feelings of awkwardness are real moral perceptions. This is not false shame. This is shame for real moral reasons. To feel embarrassed because we were caught embezzling, or deceiving, or (shamelessly) self-promoting is an entirely good and healthy emotion! To argue, then, that we need to be liberated from these uncomfortable feelings, that the ultimate liberation is to become entirely shameless, is to sever our connections to the moral world entirely.

—David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Eerdmans, 2008), 162–163.

But that is exactly what has happened. Rather than being guilty of sins, we are now afflicted with diseases, disorders, and syndromes. And disorders, of course, cannot be disciplined or punished; they must be treated. So we coddle naughty children because it‘s not their fault, who grow to be adults who have seldom or never been held responsible for their actions, and so are unlikely to begin now.

What is worse, as sin has become syndrome, the gospel has become obsolete. We do not need forgiveness, we think; no, what we need is healing and recovery. And we are taught that healing must come from within, through positive thinking, self-forgiveness, or some such psychological mumbo-jumbo, rather than from without, as scripture plainly teaches. Oprah and Dr Phil, and yes, Dr Dobson, have replaced the Great Physician himself.

David Wells discusses the fundamental difference between biblical Christianity and pagan spirituality, and shows that many who call themselves “Christian” and “evangelical” actually have more in common with pagan religion than with Christianity.

Christian and Pagan Paths

There are two families of spirituality in life. Within each are many differences, much as there are within human family members. But what distinguishes them most importantly is that one begins above and moves down whereas the other begins below and tries to move up (or perhaps in). One starts with God and reaches into sinful life whereas the other starts in human consciousness and tries to reach above to make connections in the divine. One is Christian and the other pagan. These are the two fundamental spiritualities in the West today.
   Throughout the Old Testament this earthy, pagan spirituality was constantly being engaged both outside and inside Israel. Readers today associate this paganism mostly with its more vivid, reprehensible episodes such as sacrificing children to Molech, or Jezebel’s flock of priests who tried to keep Baal content and whom Elijah faced off against. But beneath it all were assumptions of a spiritual kind that are often missed. These spiritual assumptions have persisted across the ages, coming down into our present moment, even though today the barbaric practices that went hand in glove with this ancient paganism in the Old Testament period have passed away.
   These spiritual assumptions were present in the New Testament period, too. The apostles confronted them. Yet the church did not really enter into a life-and-death struggle until the centuries that followed immediately on the patristic period. At stake was its very existence. Would it think of its faith as the grace of God coming from “above,” being incarnate in the Son, and conquering sin and death on the cross? And would it insist, against great cultural pressure, that there is absolutely nothing sinners can do to reach upward to God, to connect with him or to influence him, that he has had to reach down to us through his Son? Or would it allow for the possibility that sinners can reach down into themselves and find solace there in the sacred? Can they make this connection by their own religious effort? The apostles had made their argument that the real and saving spirituality was from above and not, in these ways, from below. The early church, for the most part, followed.
   This life-and-death struggle was therefore won, for the moment, by upholding the New Testament’s doctrines of incarnation, grace, atonement, and resurrection. However, this message was soon lost in the Middle Ages. Luther in the sixteenth century, followed by Calvin and the other Reformers, once again returned to Scripture and once again resounded the notes of God’s undeserved grace, coming from above, which alone enables sinners to know him. Christianity is not about sinners lifting themselves up to God but about God coming down in condescension and grace to them.
   Biblical spirituality and our contemporary spirituality are not two variations on the same theme. They are stark alternatives to each other. In the one, God reaches down in grace; in the other, the sinner reaches up (or in) in self-sufficiency. These spiritualities belong in different worlds, one moral in its fabric and the other psychological. One thinks in terms of salvation, the other of healing. One results in holiness, the other looks for wholeness. In the one, God’s sovereignty is seen in the establishment of what is spiritual; in the other, a human-seized sovereignty is at work to create its own spirituality. Between these two kinds of spirituality there can be no accord, no peace, no cooperation. The one excludes the other. This is the message we have heard from the apostles. This is the message that was recovered at the time of the Reformation. And this is the message that should be resounding in the church today.
   The church, however, is courted in every age by the alternative counterfeit spirituality, first in one form and then in another. Today the evangelical church is in a life-and-death struggle with this spiritual alternative, even as the apostles were in the New Testament period and the prophets were in the Old Testament. Today this pagan spirituality comes, not in barbaric forms of child sacrifice — assuming that abortion is more about convenience than spirituality — but in the innocent tones of popular culture. We meet it everywhere.
   Sometimes it is dressed up in sophisticated psychological language. More commonly we hear it in the everyday self-talk of our therapeutic culture. It is there in the television chatter, in the magzines near the checkout counter at the supermarket, and it is mentioned between neighbors. This understanding of being spiritual sounds plausible, compelling, innocent, and even commendable, but, let us make no mistake about it, it is lethal to biblical Christianity. That is why the biggest enigma we face today is the fact that its chief enablers are evangelical churches, especially those who are seeker-sensitive and emergent who, for different reasons, are selling spirituality disconnected from biblical truth.
   The seeker-sensitive are adapting their product to a spiritual market that believes it can have spiritual comfort with very little truth. The emergents are adapting their product to a spiritual market that is younger, postmodern, and leery about truth. But in both cases we see this strange anomaly. Here are those who think of themselves as being biblical, as being the children of the New Testament, the followers of Jesus and the apostles, embracing an alternative spirituality in order either to be successful or to be culturally cutting-edge.

—David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Eerdmans, 2008), 176–178.

Postmodern man is an independent sort. He does not want to be told what to do or be confronted with audacious claims of objective truth. He wants to choose his own truth and form his own religion, and be free to alter them as he goes, according to whatever suits him at the moment. He values spirituality, but hates religion.

[I]in America, 78 percent of people say they are spiritual. When solving life's dilemmas, 56 percent say they are more likely to rely on themselves than on an outside power like the God of the Bible. And 40 percent claim specifically to be spiritual but not religious. The same change has occurred in Britain. A study looking at the decade from 1990 to 2000 found that during this time weekly church attendance dropped from 28 percent to 8 percent but those who said they had spiritual experiences rose from 48 percent to 76 percent. There clearly has been a surge in spiritual appetite that is either hostile to religion or, at least, has lost confidence in institutionalized religion.
   Religion as we typically understand it is a publicly practiced matter. It is about attendance in a church, synagogue, or mosque; about public praying and teaching; about accepting the disciplines of the believing community; and about respecting the boundaries of its belief. This new spirituality is about the private search for meaning, a search for connection to something larger than the self. It is in fact a self-constructed spirituality.
   Why is that? The answer, quite simply, is that postmoderns trust direct experience but distrust what is mediated. What comes through others is subject to all the suspicions that are activated the moment they start to speak to us. What are their motives for speaking to me? What's in it for them? Are they using words to manipulate me? These are the thoughts that arise in the cloud of doubt and distrust when postmoderns engage religious matters. By contrast, spirituality that is inward, rising within the self, arising from the perceptions of our own selves, is not something coming to us secondhand from others. It is innocent, untouched, unscathed, unpolluted. It is real. We can trust ourselves but we cannot trust others! We are unsuspicious about ourselves but highly suspicious of others!
   In the United States, 80 percent believe that a person should arrive at his or her own beliefs independent of any external authority such as a church. Indeed, 60 percent say that since we all have God within us, churches are unnecessary. And in a generational slice that was made, 53 percent of boomers think it is more important to be alone and meditate than to worship with others.

—David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Eerdmans, 2008), 179–180.

How different this is from biblical, Christian faith! At the foundation of Christian faith is the knowledge that we cannot trust ourselves, that in us “dwelleth no good thing” (Romans 7:18). This is no self-discovered religion. We can only put our trust in a mediated relationship with a God who is outside and above us. God has revealed himself through the Scriptures, has given us a mediator in Christ, and ordained that we be shepherded within the fellowship of the Church. Until postmodern man sees his true nature and learns to distrust himself, he is without hope.

During the last few decades, it has been decided that we have been “doing church” all wrong. That is the reason for the cultural decline in religiosity, and the consequential rise in numbers of the “unchurched.” If we could only find the right way to “do church,” surely people would want to be a part of it. And so a number of “experts” have been “rethinking the church.” According to David Wells, this is energy misdirected. “It is not the church we need to rethink,” he writes. “Rather, it is our thoughts about the church that need to be rethought.”

   In my view, so much of this rethinking confuses rethinking the nature of the church with rethinking its performance. For the multitude of pragmatists who are leading churches in America today, these are one and the same thing. The church is nothing but its performance. There is nothing to be said about the church that cannot be reduced to how it is doing, and that is a matter for constant inventories, poll taking, daily calculations, and strategizing.
   I beg to differ. These are two entirely different matters. We intrude into what is not our business when, in our earnest pursuit of success in the church, which we think we can manufacture, we confuse its performance with its nature. Let me explain.
   The church is not our creation. It is not our business. We are not called upon to manage it. It is not there for us to advance our careers in it. It is not there for our own success. It is not a business. The church, in fact, was never our idea in the first place. No, it is not the church we need to rethink.
   Rather it is our thoughts about the church that need to be rethought. It is the church’s faithfulness that needs to be reexamined. It is its faithfulness to who it is in Christ, its faithfulness in living out its life in the world, that should be occupying us,. The church, after all, is not under our management but under God’s sovereign care, and what he sees as health is very often rather different from what we imagine its health to be.
   The church, let us remember, is called the “church of God” (Gal. 1:13; 1 Cor. 15:9). Churches are “the churches of Christ” (Rom. 16.16) because they are his, bought by his precious blood. Christ not only constituted the church (Math. 16:18), but God has given us the blueprint of its life in Scripture. What we need to do, then, first and foremost, is to replicates his thoughts about it. We need to ask ourselves how well, or how badly, we are realizing our life in Christ in the church, how far and how well churches stand out as the outposts of the kingdom of God in our particular culture.

—David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Eerdmans, 2008), 222–223.

The fads that exist in the church (using the term in its broadest possible sense) today — the seeker-sensitive and emergent movements — are largely motivated by fear. It is a fear of being unattractive to postmodern man, and so becoming irrelevant. The prevailing notion is that we must become postmodern if we are to gain an audience with the postmodern culture.

But this has never been the way God has worked. He has never called his people to blend in with the culture. On the contrary, we are a people called out of the culture to display the character of God to the culture. And we need not fear that our peculiarity will hinder God in his work of redemption.

[W]hen Paul says it is God who grows the church, he clearly is assuming that God is sovereign. God rules over all of life, bringing about his providential will, from the mighty events like the falling of empires to the most insignificant, like the falling of a sparrow. This means that within this world, kingdoms and cultures rise and fall according to his sovereign will. Paul says he has even established the nations’ boundaries (Acts 17:26).. Nothing, therefore, is more absurd than the panic that now grips the evangelical church. It is terrorized by the specter of postmodernity. Reading today’s “how-to” literature, one has to draw the conclusion that the church’s days are numbered unless we rush in to prop it up with our own know-how. God, you see, has more on his hands than he can possibly handle. Unless the church capitulates and kisses its (post)modern enemies, it is done for!
   The desperate measures being proposed for these desperate times are often little more than a case of weak knees and unbelief. We believe altogether too little in God’s sovereign control, otherwise we would not be in full retreat before the pressures and demands of the (post)modern world. We look like the soldiers of some sorry nation that are very brave when they are safe in their protected barracks but, at the first sight of an enemy, lay down their arms and run.
   The truth is that there is nothing in our postmodern world that is a serious threat, or an insurmountable obstacle, to the will of God, this is true of this saving will as well. He is as sovereign in the way he begets faith today as he is over the sparrow that flies or falls, he will grow the church. Today, we no longer seem to believe this, and want to aid his cause by our week and foolish capitulations.

—David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Eerdmans, 2008), 244.

Let God be God over the Church. It seems a rather silly thing to say. After all, who can prevent it? The point is that many Christians and churches live as practical deists, as though God is not really interested in how we operate, and as though he does not sovereignty direct all things that come to pass. Letting God be God means trusting him to work through the means he has ordained, without feeling the need for innovation, and simply doing as he has directed.

Letting God be God also means being who God wants us to be, recognizing that being is fundamental, and doing is only consequential. If we are who God wants us to be, we will inevitably do what God wants us to do.

Letting God be God over the church, seeing him as its center and glory, its source and its life, is a truly liberating experience. It liberates us from thinking that we have to do, in ourselves, what we are entirely incapable of doing. That is, growing the church. We cannot do the work that only God can do. We can work in the church, preach and teach, spread the gospel, encourage and urge each other on, but we cannot impart new life. Nor can we ever sanctify the church. Indeed we cannot even feed the church. It is God who supplies the food; we are simply called upon to serve it (1 Cor. 3:5). This, however, is precisely why Paul says, a little later, that “we do not lose heart” (2 Cor. 4:1, 16) but are “confident” (3:4; cf. 5:6).
   While all of this is conventional enough, it is not common enough in evangelical churches. Lip service is paid to these ideas, but when we get really serious about “doing church” we turn to what we know best. We turn to structures and programs, appearances and management, advertising and marketing. Our preoccupation is with what we do and therefore with what we control. This is what animates the conversation among evangelical leaders, what fills the pages of magazines like Leadership, and what attracts pastors to the really big important conferences. This is what they are willing to pay serious money to hear.
   Alas! It is missing the point, if I may say so. What is of primary interest in a technological world is technique, for that, after all, it how we manage everything else. In the kingdom of God things are different. It is not that we do not do things, but that our doing is rooted in our being. Who we are is more fundamental than what we do. Character is more basic than action. Being mastered by God is infinitely more important than having the know-how to manage the church.
   Letting God be God over the church means that he becomes foundational to its being, thinking, and doing. In a highly pragmatic culture, such as we have in America, doing cuts itself off from thinking. The only thinking that gets done, at least with respect to the church, is about the how-to questions. The kind of critical thinking, the serious evaluation that should go along with all of this, is impatiently brushed aside as irrelevant. If something works, if it is successful, that means what was done has validated itself. What more needs to be thought about it?
   I believe that today there is a deep yearning for churches in which God is God. Those are the churches that most easily become the communities we have all lost, where relations are developed, even in this fallen world, in the sight of God. They are where people strive to be truthful in those relations, which really is the key to integrity, and the integrity ties together our public and private lives. Churches, in fact, need to be communities that love the truth God has revealed and, in so doing, become serous and joyous about the God of that truth and intent upon serving him in his world. The church is not a business, not an experiment, not a product to be sold. It is an outpost of the kingdom, a sign of things to come in Christ’s sovereign rule, which is now hidden but will be make open and public. Then all the world will bow before him in recognition of who he is.
   And this, I dare say, is the only answer we have for the church’s existence and service. It is the anticipation of that great day. It is pointing beyond itself to that great day. It lives in this world, but it lives because it has seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. This is the knowledge that changes everything. Business savvy, organizational wizardry, cultural relevance are simply no substitute for this. Unless the Lord rebuilds the evangelical church today, as we humble ourselves before him and hear afresh his word, it will not be rebuilt.

—David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Eerdmans, 2008), 247–248.

The trouble, as I see it, with Christian political activism — “religious right,” “Moral Majority,” “Christian Coalition,” etc. — is not that Christians should not be politically active. On the contrary, I believe that Christians have a duty to actively participate in their political systems. The problem is that the motivation (which influences the means, for better or worse, as well as the outcome) has been wrong. It has been very earthy-minded. It has been focused on how to create the world we want for ourselves and our children. Certainly, a better world in which to live would be a natural outcome of proper Christian involvement in the system; but it ought not be our motivation. Albert Mohler writes,

   An evangelical theology for political participation must be grounded in the larger context of cultural engagement. As the Christian worldview makes clear, our ultimate concern must be the glory of God. When Scripture instructs us to love God and then to love our neighbor as ourselves, it thereby gives us a clear mandate for the right kind of cultural engagement.
   We love our neighbor because we first love God. In His sovereignty, our Creator has put us within this cultural context in order that we may display His glory by preaching the gospel, confronting persons with God’s truth, and serving as agents of salt and light in the dark and fallen world. In other words, love of God leads us to love our neighbor, and love of neighbor requires our participation in the culture and in the political process.

—Albert Mohler, Culture Shift: Engaging Current Issues with Timeless Truth (Moltnomah, 2008), 2.

It seems that almost everyone is offended by something these days. Secularists are offended by public religious expressions. Muslims are offended and provoked to violence when their religion is besmirched. Christians are offended by secular manifestations of secular morality. (I’m reminded particularly of the foolish outcry several years ago over the movie The Last Temptation of Christ.) But these days it is most often secularists who jump to playing the offendedness card. Albert Mohler writes of how this “culture of offendedness” undermines free society:

   The very idea of civil society assumes the very real possibility that individuals may at any time be offended by another member of the community. Civilization thrives when individuals and groups seek to minimize unnecessary offendedness, while recognizing that some degree of real or perceived offendedness is the cost society must pay for the right to enjoy the free exchange of ideas and the freedom to speak one’s mind.
   Professor [Paul] Helm is surely right when he argues that the “social value” of offendedness is now increasing. All that is necessary for a claim to be taken seriously is for the claim to be offered. After all, if the essence of the offenedness is an emotional state or response, how can any individual deny that claimant has been genuinely offended? Professor Helm is right to worry that this will lead to the fracturing of society.

We all hear things we don’t like said about people and causes that we are fond of but in the changed social atmosphere we are being encouraged to give public notice if such language offends us. I am now being repeatedly told that I am entitled not to be offended. So—from now on—not offended is what I intend to be. Does this heightening of sensitivity make for social cohesion? Does not such cohesion depend rather on enduring what we don’t like, and doing so in an adult way? Does not the glue of civic peace rest on such intangibles as the ability to laugh at oneself, to take a joke about even the deepest things? And is not a measure of the strength of a person’s religion that they tolerate the unpleasant conversation of others? Isn’t playing the offendedness card going to result in an enfeebling of culture, the development of oversensitive and precious members of the “caring society”? Whatever happened to toleration? [Paul Helm, “Offendedness,” Salisbury Review, June 2006, 16–18.]

   Given our mandate to share the gospel and to speak openly and publicly about Jesus Christ and the Christian faith, Christians must understand a particular responsibility to protect free speech and to resist this culture of offendedness that threatens to shut down all public discourse. Of course, the right for Christians to speak publicly about Jesus Christ necessarily means that adherents of other belief systems will be equally free to present their truth claims in an equally public manner. This is simply the cost of religious liberty.

—Albert Mohler, Culture Shift: Engaging Current Issues with Timeless Truth (Moltnomah, 2008), 32–33.

In a chapter of his book Culture Shift entitled Neneveh, New Orleans, and the City of Man, Albert Mohler looks at the destruction of cities and civilizations and reminds us, the citizens of Augustine’s “City of God,” what our perspective ought to be:

   Poetry and literature are filled with references to ruins and the passing of civilization. Percy Bysshe Shelley told the story of King Ozymandius, whose abandoned statue mocked his claim to be “Ozymandius, king of kings.” As Shelley described the scene: “Nothing beside remains, round the decay / of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / die lone and level sands stretch far away” [Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandius (1818)]. Standing at the very apex of Queen Victoria’s empire, Rudyard Kipling warned of the judgment that was to come. “Far-call’d our navies melt away / on dune and headland sinks the fire. / Lo, all our pomp of yesterday / is one with Nineveh and Tyre!” he intoned [Rudyard Kipling, Recessional (1897)].
   Remember that Augustine described the two cities as created by two kinds of love. As he taught his fellow Christians, “The earthly city was created by self-love reaching the contempt of God, the heavenly city by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self. In fact, the earthly city glories in itself, the heavenly city glories in the Lord. The former looks for glory from men, the latter finds its highest glory in God, the witness of a good conscience” [Augustine, The City of God]. Alas, we are tempted by the wrong love, and we are easily seduced by the wrong city.
   Augustine was absolutely certain—and absolutely correct—in emphasizing the temporary nature of the earthly city and the passing power of its love. Only the heavenly city remains, and all earthly cities will follow Nineveh, Tyre, Babylon, and every other metropolis and village into oblivion. One day, unless that Day of Judgment comes sooner, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, and all the cities we now know and admire will be covered with dust, if not with water.
   In the midst of all this, the church—representing the city of God—must keep its wits about it. Jerome, one of the great leaders of the church as Rome fell, asked the wrong question: “What is to become of the church now that Rome has fallen?” The City of God is represented wherever the church is found, and the church is safe by the power of God. Christians must be humbled by a biblical view of history that understands the difference between the earthly and the heavenly cities, one that understands full well that every earthly city will fall and that only the City of God will remain. In the meantime, we should pray humble prayers and ask for God to preserve the earthly city until His kingdom comes. As Kipling called England to pray: “Lord God of Hosts be with us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget!” [Kipling, Recessional].

—Albert Mohler, Culture Shift: Engaging Current Issues with Timeless Truth (Moltnomah, 2008), 142–143.

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. —Romans 12:26–27

In their efforts to promote their agenda, advocates of homosexuality have gone to incredible lengths to convince us that homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality. It should surprise no one that most simply write off the Scriptural prohibitions as part of the larger fiction of the Bible. We should expect that. Harder to believe are the claims of those who attempt to manipulate Scripture to support their claims, and normalize homosexuality within the church. Addressing one of the more audacious examples of this Scripture-twisting, John MacArthur writes:

. . . homosexual advocates argue that Paul is speaking [in Romans 1:26–27] of an individual’s sexual orientation (rather than the created order) when he uses the term “nature.” Thus, for homosexuals, “their relationships cannot be described as ‘unnatural’, since they are perfectly natural to them” [it is alleged by some that Paul is not condemning homosexuality, but homosexual acts committed by heterosexuals]. However, such far-fetched interpretations are easily refuted (both from the context in Romans and from the way kata physin [natural] and para physin [unnatural] were used in ancient times). Moreover, the thought of “sexual orientation” would have been completely foreign to Paul, and represents an anachronistic attempt to read modern conventions into the biblical text.

So then, we have no liberty to interpret the noun “nature” as meaning “my” nature, or the adjective “natural” as meaning “what seems natural to me”. On the contrary, physis (“natural”) means God’s created order. To act “against nature” means to violate the order which God has established, whereas to act “according to nature” means to behave “in accordance with the intention of the Creator”. Moreover, the intention of the Creator means his original intention. What this was Genesis tells us and Jesus confirmed. . . . God created humankind male and female; God instituted marriage as a heterosexual union; and what God has thus united, we have no liberty to separate. [Stott, Romans 78. Internal citation from C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegelical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1975) 1:125.]

—John MacArthur, “God’s Word on Homosexuality,” The Master’s Seminary Journal (Fall 2008): 167–168.

Evolution. 3.5 million homeless. Global warming. Listen to the mainstream media, and you will believe these are facts. Yet there is no evidence to support any of them, and much to the contrary. How, and why, do unsupported assertions become “facts,” receiving nearly universal acceptance? The answer has nothing to do with truth, and everything to do with agenda. Some special interest group wants to achieve a certain end, and so the “facts” necessary to support their goals are simply manufactured. A sympathetic media plays along, and voilà, “truth” is born. For example, the “gay gene”:

   On July 15, 1993, National Public Radio (i.e., NPR) reported a new study that was due to be released the next day. The tenor of the report suggested that someone had finally discovered a gene that causes homosexuality. NPR added a few quiet caveats at the end of their report, ignored by most listeners. The next day, the Wall Street Journal headlined their report, “Research Points toward a Gay Gene.” the subtitle says “Normal Variation,” affirming the opinion of the article’s author that homosexuality was a normal variation of human behavior. At the bottom of the last paragraph on the last page, deep within the paper, a geneticist offered his opinions that this gene might only be associated with homosexuality and not the cause of it. Regardless, for most of the world the discovery had been made and now the political wheels began to turn (leading to the push for protection of civil rights, laws against discrimination, civil unions, gay marriage, etc.).

. . .

   All of the above research did not “discover” a gay gene, although many have suggested that. However, these studies that suggest some biological cause for homosexuality significantly influenced public perceptions. As Yarhouse [Mark A. Yarhouse, “Homosexuality, Ethics, and Identity Synthesis,” Christian Bioethics 10 (2004):241.] points out “The more people believe that homosexuality was a biological ‘given,’ the more likely they were to support a variety of issues deemed important to some in the gay community (e.g., ordination of practicing gay, lesbian, or bisexual clergy; gay rights legislation, etc.)”

—Michael A.Grisanti, “Cultural and Medical Myths about Homosexuality,” The Master’s Seminary Journal (Fall 2008): 176, 185.

Homosexual “marriage” is clearly against God’s design (nature) and God’s command (Scripture). No homosexual relationship can fulfill God’s intention for this human relationship. Irvin Busenitz (Professor of Bible and Old Testament, TMS), in the latest issue of The Master’s Seminary Journal, explains why this is, looking at Biblical marriage from the reproductive perspective, the one man/one woman perspective, the complementary perspective, the analogical perspective, and the role/relationship perspective. You can probably guess, without any clues, what each of those perspectives addresses, with the possible exception of one: the analogical perspective. If you have no idea what that is about, you’re not alone; I confess that I had never thought of this angle on homosexuality before, even though it is really quite obvious. Busenitz explains:

   Marriage is a picture of the relationship between Christ and His church. Ephesians 5 quotes the creation account , providing a direct link between the two passages. Paul unmistakably notes that marriage is meant to teach, through the one-flesh union, the relationship of Christ and His church (Eph. 5:29–32).
   Because of this incredible bond and the picture it depicts, it is no surprise that same-sex marriage is at the forefront of the attack against marriage. same-sex marriage simply cannot picture the biblical truths that Scripture so vividly paints for marriage. For a couple of reasons, homosexual partnerships are incapable of representing this truth. First, a partnership between two men or two women cannot replicate the essence of marriage in the Scriptures, which is always between a man and a woman. Secondly, homosexuality can never illustrate the spiritual union between Christ and His Bride, the church. Christ is not engaged to be married to Christ; the church is not awaiting marriage to itself. The analogy is absolutely devoid of any meaning if homosexuality is brought into the equation.

—Irvin A. Busenitz, “Marriage and Homosexuality: Toward a Biblical Understanding,” The Master’s Seminary Journal (Fall 2008): 212–213.

Regardless of the particular sins we may see manifested in our children, one fact applies to all: to sin is their nature, and the only cure is the gospel. Rick Holland offers this needed reminder:

Parenting is a multi-level maze of challenges to navigate and sins to mortify—both in parents and in children. The concerns of parenting are as numerous as the number of children. Dealing with the depraved infection natural to our children’s souls on the septic morality of our culture is far beyond the intuitive abilities of loving parents. Sin’s pulverizing destruction comes from both the outside—culture’s moral chaos—and from the inside—the soul’s pervasive sinfulness.
   Parenting can be wrongly interpreted as a process of keeping our children good and pure. The truth is that every child is born sinful. The goal is not to keep children from becoming messed up by sin; instead it is to see their inborn sin covered by the gospel. As a friend of mine puts it, “parents can’t mess up their children; they come that way as a result of Adam’s fall.”

—Richard L. Holland, “Christian Parenting and Homosexuality,” The Master’s Seminary Journal (Fall 2008): 218.

It is difficult to look at our culture today without being overwhelmed by the moral decay we see all around us. Conditions are worse, it seems, than they have ever been before. But the world in which Jesus and the apostles lived was every bit as bad, and the gospel they preached still has the same power to saved souls and transformed lives that it had two thousand years ago.

Imagine a world in which in which sexual immorality is promoted, available, and accessible, a world in which adultery in common, prostitution legal, drunkenness normal, and theft a constant threat, a world in which most children rebel against their parents and fornication and incest are rampant, God is openly hated, the justice system rarely works for the innocent, and Christianity is illegal. Imagine a world in which homosexuality is out of the closet, is publicly recognized, and enjoys promotion and protection from the government. This is not an imaginary world, nor is it a glimpse into the future. It is a description of the world of the NT. Jesus lived in this world and the gospel was cradled in this kind of society. It is at this point that Solomon should be heard: “there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl 1:9). Homosexuality has not taken God by surprise, but God’s nature is to take homosexuals by surprise with the saving truth of the gospel.

—Richard L. Holland, “Christian Parenting and Homosexuality,” The Master’s Seminary Journal (Fall 2008), 230–231.

Over the last few Fridays, I’ve been sharing excerpts from the Fall 2008 issue of The Master’s Seminary Journal. The theme has been a biblical view of homosexuality. Today and next week will finish that series with Alex Montoya’s “The Church’s Response to Homosexuality.” This is naturally an appropriate ending note. Too often we are zealous to know what is right, but fail to follow through to the application. A biblical understanding of what homosexuality is and what God thinks of it is good and necessary, but useless — and perhaps even harmful — without an equally biblical answer to the question of so what?

Montoya presents four ways in which the church must respond to homosexuality. I will be bringing you two of them (you’ll have to get your own copy to read the rest):

1. The Church Must Expose Homosexuality as a Sin against God (today)
2. The Church Must Extend the Grace of God to Homosexuals (next time)

The first may seem obvious; we’re already doing that, aren’t we? Well, many are, but I’m afraid many more are simply exposing it. Exposing it as sin, maybe — a sin against decency, a sin against morality, a sin against “family values” (whatever that is) — but not necessarily as sin against God. That it offends us is often the primary message that is sent to homosexuals. The message they need is not why it matters to us, but why it matters to God.

. . . Homosexuality is more than a mere sexual preference, a social choice, a genetic predisposition as some say; it is a sin against Almighty God. It is a willful assault on the person and work of God. Homosexuality is against God in these four ways. First, homosexuality is a sin against God’s creative order. . . .

And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate” (Matt 19:4–6). [also Gen 1:27–28; Gen 2:22–24; Heb 13:4]

   Hence, the Scriptures affirm that any violation of the creative purposes of God is a sin against Him. Furthermore, it proceeds to state categorically that homosexuality is not only sin but a perversion of the creative order:

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. . . . For this reason God gave them over in to degrading passions; for their woman exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error (Rom 1:24–27).

   A second way that homosexuality is against God is that homosexuality is a sin against God’s law (1 Tim 1:8–11). The Scriptures clearly identify homosexuality as a sin which violates the express law of God. In Paul’s discussion of God’s law, he states,

Realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers and mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted (1 Tim 1:9–11).

The apostle clearly makes homosexuality a sin which cannot be reconciled with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Scripturally, one cannot be a Christian and a homosexual.
   The third way that homosexuality is against God is that homosexuality is a sin against God’s Kingdom (1 Cor 6:9–10). The apostle Paul informs an ignorant mind and corrects a deceived heart by stating clearly that homosexuality excludes one from inheriting the kingdom of God. . . .

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9–10).

   Finally, the fourth way that homosexuality is against God is that homosexuality is a sin against God’s holiness (1 Thess4:3; 1 Pet 1:15–16). The Bible is clear on God’s expectation of His people:

But like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:15–16).

This holiness pertains specifically to the area of sexuality:

For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God. . . . For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification. So, he who rejects this is not rejecting man but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you (1 Thess 4:3–8).

   Homosexuality is called an unrighteous and ungodly act (Rom 1:18; 1 Coi 6:9; 2 Pet 2:9; Jude 4). . . .
   Hence, Christians are under obligation to know and to make known the sinfulness of homosexuality. They cannot be swept away by the tide of public opinion or public decrees; nor can they remain mute concerning the terrible consequences of those who practice homosexuality. . . . As the watchman of Israel was warned not to be silent about the judgment coming upon the nation, so too, Christians dare not be silent about the dangers that homosexuals are facing (cf. Ezek 3:17–19).

—Alex Montoya, “The Church’s Response to Homosexuality,” The Master’s Seminary Journal (Fall 2008), 235–237.

This post is a sequel to one posted two weeks ago, looking at Alex Montoya’s article in the Fall 2008 issue of The Master’s Seminary Journal, “The Church’s Response to Homosexuality.”

In the previous post in this series, I wrote that “Too often we are zealous to know what is right, but fail to follow through to the application. A biblical understanding of what homosexuality is and what God thinks of it is good and necessary, but useless — and perhaps even harmful — without an equally biblical answer to the question of so what?” Today we’ll consider the most important part of the answer to that question.

As I said last time, Montoya presents four ways in which the church must respond to homosexuality, two of which I am covering here:

1. The Church Must Expose Homosexuality as a Sin against God
2. The Church Must Extend the Grace of God to Homosexuals

That homosexuality is a sin against God must never be forgotten. But we must also remember that every New Testament condemnation is followed by the offer of redemption. If we are genuine disciples of Christ and ministers of the gospel, we can do no less.

   If the church is to be involved in bringing homosexuals into the fold of Christ it must be prepared to do the following. The church must first learn to show compassion to the homosexual. . . .
   The church can be guilty of the attitude of the Pharisees towards the sinners of their day. The Pharisees displayed an absolute lack of concern and compassion for those who were lost (cp. Luke 15:1–32). Christ taught compassion for the lost, and this includes the homosexual:

Then it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples. When the Pharisees saw this they said to His disciples, “Why is your Teacher eating with tax collectors and sinners?” But when Jesus heard this, He said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire compassion, and not sacrifice,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt 9:10–13).

R. Albert Mohler writes, “Homosexuals are waiting to see if the Christian church has anything more to say after we declare that homosexuality is a sin.” Homosexuals are hurting people and need more than condemnation; they also need compassion.
   In the second place, the church must be willing to associate with homosexuals. Here is where the church displays its ignorance and its arrogance when it comes to reaching out to homosexuals. The church can misunderstand what it means to be in the world but not of it. We may think that it means for Christians to have absolutely nothing to do with homosexuals. The Bible speaks of the opposite. It shows that it is unavoidable and in many ways necessary to associate with homosexuals if we are to present the gospel to them. Paul corrected the Corinthians when he said,

I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world (1 Cor 5:9–10).

Clearly we must dispel the label of being “homophobic” by not refusing to befriend and associate with homosexuals. We have nothing to fear and everything to gain for the gospel’s sake.
   Thirdly, the church must have the conviction of the power of the gospel to convert the homosexual. That homosexuals are such by nature and therefore cannot change nor should society try to change them into heterosexuals has been exposed as utterly false. The power of the gospel has been rendered ineffective by the deception placed upon the church that homosexuals cannot be changed. Prior to the “sexual revolution,” no question existed about homosexuals being able to change. . . .
   The Christian church has . . . always believed the gospel “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16). It is a truth in Scripture that wherever the sinfulness of sin is mentioned, the power of the gospel is also mentioned as that force which counteracts the power of sin to enslave and to condemn.
   After the condemnation of homosexuality in Romans 1, Paul wrote, “ all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:23–24).
   After the condemnation of homosexuality in 1 Cor 6:9, Paul adds, “Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11). The homosexual can experience regeneration through the Holy Spirit, the power to triumph over indwelling sin as described in Romans 6, and the assurance offered to all believers in the justifying work of Christ (cf. Romans 8) . . .
   After the condemnation of homosexuality in 1 Tim 1:10, Paul magnifies his own sin above all sins and says, “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all” (1 Tim 1:15). If God can save the worst, then He can obviously save a homosexual.
   Wherever man’s depravity and sinfulness are magnified, so also is the grace of God magnified so as to more than make up for man’s fallen nature. Consider the testimony of Eph 2:1–10 and Titus 3:3–7. These promises apply to homosexuals as well.
   The fourth way that the church can extend the grace of God to homosexuals is for the church to provide special discipleship for homosexuals. The New Testament testifies to the possibility and frequency of a believer’s relapse into their former way of life. The convert from a homosexual lifestyle is no exception. Christians should not be surprised by the difficulties encountered by some in overcoming their former lusts, nor should they give up in their efforts to disciple them into the new life in Christ.
   The rise of numerous support groups for homosexuals is testimony to the necessity of the church to focus on those who desire Christ and who desire to live a victorious life in Christ. . . . Andy Comiskey of Desert Stream Ministry writes, “We must renounce the unbelief prevalent in certain evangelical circles that resigns homosexual strugglers to little if any release from their tendencies. That perception of God is too small.”
   . . .
   Finally, if the church is to extend the grace of God to homosexuals, the church must effectively incorporate converted homosexuals into the Body of Christ. At times the church has allowed the stigma of homosexuality to follow the converted homosexual into his new life in Christ. . . . The Corinthian church serves as a model in the way it was composed of all sorts of sinners. Note how Paul addresses the church: “Such were some of you; but you were washed . . .” (1 Cor 6:11). The “some” refers to the fact that the church contained some ex-fornicators, some ex-idolaters, some ex-adulterers, ex-effeminates, ex-homosexuals, some ex-thieves, etc. The phrase “such were some” indicates the conversion from a life of sin to a new relationship with Christ, and acceptance into the fellowship of believers in Corinth. The church cannot adopt an arrogant attitude toward converted homosexuals, but instead deal biblically with their conversion, and in fact, rejoice that God saved has “some.”

—Alex Montoya, “The Church’s Response to Homosexuality,” The Master’s Seminary Journal (Fall 2008), 238–241.

We live in an age of overt hostility toward any theological, philosophical, ethical, or moral absolutes. All opinions must be held tentatively. They may be suggested, but never asserted. Anyone who has spent much time in internet forums has probably run into this attitude. A few years ago, one pusillanimous soul admonished me that I should always append “IMO” to every contention. Today’s tolerant mindset refuses to say one thing is absolutely right, while its opposite is absolutely wrong. Both can be right! Today’s tolerant mindset is absolutely intolerant of absolutes.

How are we to interact with those with whom we disagree? Flexibly, of course, even when dealing with people of other religions. We must never hold our convictions — if I may use such a coarse word — too firmly. Be eager to make concessions and compromises. As John MacArthur quotes Doug Pagitt, “It’s important to note that dialogue is not debate; for dialogue to be effective, we need to resist the urge to cut people off and fix what they say. Healthy dialogue involves entering into the reality of the other. . . . In dialogue you are not allowed to stay right where you are; you must move toward the perspective of the other person.”

MacArthur shows just how dissimilar that approach is to the manner in which Jesus interacted with heretics and hypocrites:

Jesus’ interaction with the religious experts of His time was rarely cordial. From the time Luke first introduces us to the Pharisees in Luke 5:17 until his final mention of the “chief priests and rulers” in Luke 24:20, every time the religious elite of Israel appear as a group of in Luke’s narrative, there is conflict. Often Jesus Himself deliberately provokes the hostilities. When He speaks to the religious leaders or about them—whether in public or private—it is usually to condemn them as fools and hypocrites (Luke 11:40; 12:1; 13:15; 18:10–14). When He knows they are watching to accuse Him of breaking their artificial Sabbath or their manmade systems of ceremonial washing, He deliberately defies their rules (Luke 6:l7–11; 11:37–44; 14:1–6). On one occasion, when He was expressly informed that His denunciations of the Pharisees were insulting to the lawyers (the leading Old Testament scholars and chief academics at the time), Jesus immediately turned to the lawyers and fired off a salvo at them, too (Luke 11:45–54).

. . . Jesus never took the irenic approach with heretics or gross hypocrites. He never made the kind of gentle private appeals contemporary evangelicals typically insist are necessary before warning others about the dangers of a false teacher’s error. Even when he dealt with the most respected religious figures in the land, He took on their errors boldly and directly, sometimes even holding them up for ridicule. He was not “nice” to them by any postmodern standard. He extended no pretense of academic courtesy to them. He didn’t invite them to dialogue privately with Him about their different points of view. He didn’t carefully couch his criticisms in vague and totally impersonal terms so that no one’s feelings would be hurt. He did nothing to tone down the reproach of His censures or minimize the Pharisees’ public embarrassment. He made His disapproval of their religion as plain and prominent as possible every time He mentioned them. He seemed utterly unmoved by their frustration with His outspokenness. Knowing that they were looking for reasons to be offended by Him, He often did and said the very things that He knew would offend them the most.

—John MacArthur, The Jesus You Can’t Ignore (Thomas Nelson, 2009), xi, xiv–xv.

A fitting addendum to yesterday’s post:

Now, we need to keep this in proper perspective. I’m not suggesting that every disagreement is an occasion for open combat, or even harsh words. Far from it. Many disagreements are so petty that it would be utterly unprofitable to engender strife over them. Merely personal conflicts, debates over arcane or unclear things, and semantic disputes usually fall into that category (2 Timothy 2:14, 23; 1 Corinthians 1:10). Not every issue on which we might hold strong opinions and disagree is of primary importance.
   Furthermore, no one who is mentally and spiritually healthy enjoys conflict for conflict’s sake. No one who thinks biblically would ever relish strife or deliberately indulge in “disputes over doubtful things” (Romans 14:1). Most of us know people who are overly pugnacious or incurably argumentative about practically everything. That is not at all what Jesus was like. And Scripture gives us no warrant to be like that. Petty or insignificant personal disagreements usually ought to be either charitably set aside or settled by friendly dialogue. Anyone who is prepared to pick a fight over every minor difference of opinion is spiritually immature, sinfully belligerent—or worse. Scripture includes this clear command: “if it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18).

. . . dialogue does sound nicer than debate. Who but a fool wouldn’t prefer a calm conversation instead of conflict and confrontation?
   In fact, let’s state this plainly once more: Generally speaking, avoiding conflicts is a good ideal. Warmth and in geniality are normally preferable to cold harshness. Civility, compassion and good manners are in short supply these days, and we ought have more of them. Gentleness, a soft answer, and a kind word usually go farther than an argument or a rebuke,. That which edifies is more helpful and more fruitful in the long fun than criticism. Cultivating friends is more pleasant and more profitable than crusading against enemies. And it’s ordinarily better to be tender and mild rather than curt and combative—especially to the victims of false teaching
   But those qualifying words are vital: usually, ordinarily, generally. Avoiding conflict is not always the right thing. Sometimes it is downright sinful. Particularly in times like these, when almost no error is deemed too serious to be excluded form the evangelical conversation, and while the Lord’s flock is being infiltrated by wolves dressed like prophets, declaring visions of peace when there is no peace (cf. Ezekiel 13:16).
   Even the kindest, gentlest shepherd sometimes needs to throw rocks at the wolves who come in sheep’s clothing.

—John MacArthur, The Jesus You Can’t Ignore (Thomas Nelson, 2009), xi–xii, 19.

George Swinnock on the moral capabilities of man:

There are several things which may help the to make the life fair in the eyes of men, but nothing will make it amiable in the eyes of God, unless the heart be changed and renewed. Indeed, all the medicines that can be applied, without the sanctifying work of the Spirit, though they may cover, they can never cure the corruptions and diseases of the soul. . . . Such civil persons go to hell without much disturbance, being asleep in sin, yet not snoring to the disquieting of others; they are so far from being awaked that they are many times praised and commended. Example, custom, and education, may also help a man to make a fair show in the flesh, but not to walk in the Spirit. They may prune and lop sin, but never stub it up by the roots. All that these can so, is to make a man like a grave, green and flourishing on the surface and outside, when within there is nothing but noisomeness and corruption.

—George Swinnock, “Do You Worship God,” cited in John MacArthur, The Jesus You Can’t Ignore (Thomas Nelson, 2009), 47.

Spurgeon on the unhesitatingly confrontational character of Christ:

Brethren, the Savior’s character has all goodness and all perfection; he is full of grace and truth. Some men, nowaday, talk of him as if he were simply incarnate benevolence. It is not so. No lips ever spoke with such thundering indignation against sin as the lips of the Messiah. “He is like a refiner’s fire, and like a fuller’s soap. His fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor.” while in tenderness he prays for his tempted disciple, that his faith may not fail, yet with awful sternness he winnows the heap, and drives away the chaff into unquenchable fire. We speak of Christ as being meek and lowly in spirit, and so he was. A bruised reed he did not break, and the smoking flax he did not quench; but his meekness was balanced by his courage, and by the boldness with which he denounced hypocrisy. “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, ye fools and blind, ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” These are not words of the milksop some authors represent Christ to have been. He is a man—a thorough man throughout—a God-like man—gentle as a woman, but yet stern as a warrior in the midst of the day of battle. The character is balanced; as much of one virtue as another. As in Deity every attribute is full orbed; justice never eclipses mercy, nor mercy justice, nor justice faithfulness; so in the character of Christ you have all the excellent things.

—Charles Spurgeon, “Sweet Saviour,” cited in John MacArthur, The Jesus You Can’t Ignore (Thomas Nelson, 2009), 99.

One of the Pharisee’s biggest peeves with Jesus was his habit of associating with sinners; so they were particularly annoyed when he attended a party in his honor at the house of Levi the tax collector (i.e. Matthew, Luke 5:27ff). John MacArthur writes:

   That a rabbi would be willing to fraternize at a party with such people was utterly repugnant to the Pharisees. It was diametrically opposed to all their doctrines about separation and ceremonial uncleanness. Here was yet another pet issue of the Pharisees, and Jesus was openly violating their standards, knowing full well that they were watching him closely. From their perspective, it must have seemed as if He was deliberately flaunting His contempt for their system.
   Because He was. Remember an important fact we stressed in the previous chapter; all the friction that has taken place out in the open thus far between Jesus and Israel’s religious elite has been entirely at His instigation. As far as we know from Scripture, they had not yet voiced a single unprovoked criticism or public accusation against him.
   Even now, the Pharisees were not yet bold enough to complain to Jesus directly. They sought out His disciples and murmured their protest to them. Again, all three Synoptics stress that the Pharisees took their grievances to the disciples. It was a craven attempt to blindside Jesus by provoking a debate with His followers instead. I like the way Luke says it; “The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples” (Luke 5:30 NASB).
   But Jesus overheard (Matthew 9:12; Mark 2:17), and He answered the Pharisees directly, with a single statement that became the definitive motto for His interaction with the self-righteous Sanhedrin and their ilk: “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17 NASB). For sinners and tax collectors seeking relief fro the burden of their sin, Jesus had nothing but good news. To the self-righteous religious experts, He had nothing to say at all.
   Harsh? By postmodern standards, this was a terribly strident thing to say. And (as many people today would quickly point out) there was virtually no possibility that a comment like this would help sway the Pharisees to Jesus’ point of view. It was likelier to increase their hostility against Him.
   And yet it was the right thing say at this moment. It was the truth they needed to hear. The fact that they were not “open” to it did not alter Jesus’ commitment to speaking the truth—without toning it down, without bending it to fit His audience’s tastes and preferences, without setting the facts of the gospel aside to speak to their “felt needs” instead.

—John MacArthur, The Jesus You Can’t Ignore (Thomas Nelson, 2009), 105–106.

What if the WWJD fad had caught on with preachers? What if preachers asked, “How would Jesus preach?” and then actually aspired to follow his example? Things might be different in a lot of pulpits; because Jesus’ preaching showed no sensitivity to fashion and trends, or to the preferences of his hearers. MacArthur writes:

. . . consider how Jesus’ preaching might come across if He spoke that way in a stadium filled with twenty-first-century evangelicals. Because let’s be candid: Jesus’ style of preaching was nothing at all like most of the popular preaching we hear today—and His style of preaching isn’t likely to generate the kind of enthusiastic arm waving and feel-good atmosphere today’s Christians typically like to see at their mass meetings and outdoor music festivals.
   Survey the current plethora of websites devoted to supplying preachers with prefabricated sermon material, and you’ll get a very clear picture of what constitutes “great preaching” in the minds of most twenty-first-century evangelicals: trendiness; funny anecdotes; slick packaging; clever audio-visual aids; and short, stylish, topical homilies on themes borrowed from pop culture. Favorite subjects include marriage and sex, human relationships, self improvement, personal success, the pursuit of happiness, and anything else that pleases the audience—especially if the topic or sermon title can easily be tied into the latest hit movie, must-watch TV series, or popular song. In the trendiest churches, you are more likely to hear the preacher quote lyrics from Bono and U2 than from David and the Psalms. One megachurch sponsored a four-part sermon series in which their pastor did a word-by-word exegesis of passages taken from Dr. Seuss books, starting with Horton Hatches the Egg. The pastor of one of America’s five largest churches put a king-size bed on the platform as a prop while he preached a five-week series on sex. A year or so later, the same church made national headlines by promoting yet another series with a “sex challenge” so blatantly inappropriate that even some in the secular media expressed shock and outrage.
   Such shenanigans come under the rubric of relevance in the catalog of contemporary church-growth strategies. Sermons featuring straight biblical exposition, precise doctrine, difficult truths, or negative-sounding doctrines are strongly discouraged by virtually all he leading gurus of cultural relevance. And the people filling the evangelical pews “love to have it so” (Jeremiah 5:31). “Speak to us smooth things” (Isaiah 30:10) is their constant demand. Teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, (cf. 2. Timothy 3:16) are out. Catering to itchy ears is in (cf. 4:23). No truly clued-in preacher nowadays would think to fill his message with reproof, rebuke, or exhortation. (cf. 4:3). Instead, he does his best to suit the felt needs, preoccupations, and passions of the audience. Many contemporary pastors study pop culture as diligently as the Puritans used to study Scripture. They let congregational opinion polls determine what they should preach, and they are prepared to shift directions quickly if the latest survey tells them their approval ratings are beginning to drop.
   That, of course, is precisely what Paul told Timothy not to do. “Preach the word! . . . in season and out of season” (v. 2).
   The contemporary craving for shallow sermons that please and entertain is at least partly rooted in the popular myth that Jesus Himself was always likable, agreeable, winsome, and at the cutting edge of His culture’s fashions. The domesticated, meek-and-mild Savior of today’s Sunday-school literature would never knowingly or deliberately offend someone in a sermon—would He?
   As we have seen, even in a cursory look at Jesus’ preaching ministry reveals a totally different picture. Jesus sermons usually featured hard truths, harsh words, and high-octane controversy. His own disciples complained that His preaching was too hard to hear!
   That’s why Jesus’ preaching heads the list of things that make Him impossible to ignore. No preacher has ever been more bold, prophetic, or provocative. No style of public ministry could possibly be more irksome to those who prefer a comfortable religion. Jesus made it impossible for any hearer to walk away indifferent. Some left angry; some were deeply troubled by what He had to say; many had their eyes opened; and many more hardened their hearts against hiss message. Some became His disciples, and others became His adversaries. But no one who listened to Him preach for very long could possibly remain unchanged or apathetic.

—John MacArthur, The Jesus You Can’t Ignore (Thomas Nelson, 2009), 161–162.

In the book of Revelation, Jesus (via the Apostle John) is very clear on the importance of opposing false doctrine. John MacArthur writes:

   In His final recorded messages to the church, given to the apostle John in a vision several decades after Christ’s ascension into heaven, we see that the silencing of false teachers was still one of our Lords primary concerns, even from his throne in heaven. He addressed several churches—Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. Only two of the churches, Smyrna and Philadelphia, were commended for their faithfulness without any qualification or hint of rebuke. Both of them had remained true to Christ despite the influence of “those who say they are Jews and are not, but a synagogue of Satan” (Revelation 2:9; 3:9). All five other churches received various measures of rebuke, based on how corrupt, unfaithful, or spiritually lethargic they were.
   A prominent theme in practically all Jesus’ messages to those seven churches is the issue of how they responded to false teachers and rank heretics in their midst. Ephesus, of course, was the church Jesus rebuked with the words: “I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (2:4). But Ephesus was nonetheless strongly commended twice because they refused to tolerate false teachers. Before he admonished them for leaving their first love, Jesus praised them for their steadfast resistance to false apostles: “I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. and you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars” (v. 2). Afterward, he told them, “But this you have, that you hate the deeds of Nicolaitans, which I also hate” (v. 6).
   The epistle to Pergamos was basically the flip side of that message to Ephesus. Christ commended the saints at Pergamos for holding fast to his name and not denying the faith, even though they dwelt where Satan’s throne was. In other words, they had successfully preserved in the faith despite external threats and persecution. Unlike Ephesus, they had not left their first love. Nevertheless, Christ had a list of rebukes for them, and these were all related to their tolerance of false doctrine in their own midst. It was if they were utterly insensible to internal dangers that came with a tolerant attitude toward deviant doctrines. He wrote, “I have a few things against you, because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam. . . . You also have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate” (vv. 14–15).
   Likewise to Thyatira he wrote: “I have a few things against you, because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants.” (v. 20).
   The church at Sardis was spiritually dead, and the church at Laodicea was lukewarm and smug. Those churches had clearly already lost their will to oppose false doctrine and purge sin from their midst. Their lack of energy, lack of zeal and (in the case of Sardis) lack of life was a direct result of their failure to keep themselves and their fellowship pure. They had not been sufficiently wary of false teaching, and therefore they had not remained devoted to Christ alone. The warnings of Christ gave them chilling reminders that churches do go bad. When that happens, it is almost it is almost never because they succumb to dangers from the outside. Rather it is almost always because they let down their guard and allow false doctrines to be disseminated freely inside the church. Apathy sets in, followed inevitably by spiritual disaster.
   It is clear from those letters to the churches in Revelation that battling heresy is a duty Christ expects every Christian to be devoted to. Whether we like it or not, our very existence in this world involves spiritual warfare—it is not a party or a picnic. If Christ himself devoted so much of his time and energy during His earthly ministry to the task of confronting and refuting false teachers, surely that must be high on our agenda as well. His style of ministry ought to be a model for ours, and his zeal against false religion ought to fill our hearts and minds as well.

—John MacArthur, The Jesus You Can’t Ignore (Thomas Nelson, 2009), 206–208.

It’s a claim you’ve probably heard many times: “Christians divorce at roughly the same rate as the world!” Tim Challies links to an article from Baptist Press by Glen T. Stanton debunking the Christian divorce rate myth. He demonstrates that serious practitioners of religion — Christians, real and nominal — have significantly lower divorce rates.

Professor Bradley Wright, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut, explains from his analysis of people who identify as Christians but rarely attend church, that 60 percent of these have been divorced. Of those who attend church regularly, 38 percent have been divorced. (Read full article)

In other words, one group of people who identify themselves as Christians — but aren’t — have a divorce rate of 60 percent, and another group of people who identify themselves as Christians — among whom many are, but many more are not — have a divorce rate of 38 percent. That is considerably better than “the same rate.” However, I don’t think even that represents the true numbers.

I expect that the number would be significantly lower if members of genuine Bible-believing churches were separated from the mass of apostate pseudo-churches dotting the landscape, and would drop even more if we singled out the minority of churches that practice biblical discipline. It must be admitted that the majority of the 38 percent are not believers at all, but products of apostasy and the plagues of cultural Christianity and undisciplined churches. So we’re left with 38-x percent — make that a big, bold X — of Christians divorcing.

There are still a couple of factors left to consider. First, the statistics quoted are of individuals who “have been divorced.” Many were likely divorced before conversion; they certainly can’t be counted as Christians divorcing. Second, how many of those remaining, who are genuine believers, were married before conversion and are being abandoned, against their will, by unbelieving spouses (1 Corinthians 7:12–15)?

The number left, of genuine believers divorcing believing or unbelieving spouses, is the number that concerns me. Whatever it is, it’s too high. However, I’m convinced that it’s a small percentage of the 38 percent.

The conclusion? Genuine believers, while still imperfect, do not live like unbelievers. The gospel is life-changing. A heart of flesh does not behave “roughly the same” as a heart of stone (Ezekiel 36:24–28). People who have been united with Christ through his death (Galatians 2:20) and are being conformed to his image (Romans 8:29) are not “roughly the same” as those who don’t know him. We who are in Christ are new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17); new is not “roughly the same” as old. The gospel of Jesus Christ changes everything.