Not being able to do it all
Kevin DeYoung just nails it in a post today. Titled “On Mission, Changing the World, and Not Being Able to Do It All”, DeYoung challenges and encourages those of us who have the inclination to try to do it all, and who end up finding themselves age 30, cynical, and burned out. A few highlights:
I understand there are lazy people out there (and believe me I can be lazy too sometimes). I understand there are lots of Christians in our churches sitting around doing nothing and they need to be challenged not to waste their life (seriously, I love that book and think Piper motivates for radical Christianity in the right way)…
…We need to be challenged, but in ways we can actually obey, not pummeled into law-induced submission until we finally feel completely rotten about most everything in life and admit we aren’t doing enough for the poor, the lost, the children, the elderly, the least of these, the…you fill in the blank. Is the goal of Christianity really to leave everyone feeling like terrible a parent, spouse, friend, or neighbor all the time?
I believe there will always be more indwelling sin in my life and I believe that I will never do a good deed perfectly. But I don’t believe God gives us impossible demands in which we should always feel like failures….
When the pastor preaches on generosity the goal should not be to make every last person feel like a miserable, miserly wretch. Because unless you live in some Godforsaken locale, there are probably people in your church who practice generosity…. Sometimes, by God grace, we do get it right. The problem with “do more” Christianity is that no one is ever allowed to get it right. And the problem, ironically enough, with never allowing anyone to get it right, is that fewer people feel like getting it right really matters.
No doubt some Christians need to be shaken out of their lethargy. I try to do that every Sunday morning and evening. But there are also a whole bunch of Christians who need to be set free from their performance-minded, law-keeping, world-changing, participate-with-God-in-recreating-the-cosmos shackles. I promise you, some of the best people in your churches are getting tired. They don’t need another rah-rah pep talk. They don’t need to hear more statistics and more stories Sunday after Sunday about how bad everything is in the world. They need to hear about Christ’s death and resurrection. They need to hear how we are justified by faith apart from works of the law. They need to hear the old, old story once more. Because the secret of the gospel is that we actually do more when we hear less about all we need to do for God and hear more about all that God has already done for us.
Go read the whole thing. It’s worth it. Really.
Becky observed last night that my post yesterday on gay marriage was rather wordy and not as simple as she would’ve liked. So, I’m taking that as a challenge, and today I’m going to try to condense my arguments a bit. Feel free to agree or disagree in the comments.
So, my list of assertions that lead my to my position on gay marriage:
1. While the Bible teaches that homosexual behavior is wrong, the Bible does not teach that the civil government should try to outlaw every sin.
Religious beliefs can disagree with government laws in one of three ways:
The law can require behavior that my religion tells me is a sin. For instance, pacifists who are drafted to serve in the military. Typically the US has allowed for conscientious objector status, allowing those people to take non-combat roles. Another example is the allowance in the Constitution to “affirm” rather than “swear” oaths of office, for those who believe they should not “swear”.
The law can outlaw a behavior that my religion tells me I must do. For instance, the law could instruct me not to share my faith with other people. In this case the Scriptures are quite clear – we must obey God rather than men. (Acts 5:29)
The law can allow a behavior that my religion says I must not do. And here the Scriptures are quieter. While certainly we know that God wants our rulers to be just and merciful, we don’t see anywhere that God says “your rulers should enact all of my laws as laws of the state.”
1 Tim 2:1-4 says this:
I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
Paul says that we pray for our rulers, with the goal or the hope being that we can live peaceful, quiet lives. And note that Paul doesn’t say to pray that our rulers would try to enforce God’s laws on everyone – Paul says to pray for peaceful, quiet lives, and that from that people might come to a knowledge of the truth.
2. If we’re not going to use Christian (or Muslim, or Jewish, etc) principles to dictate the details of our laws, instead we should base the laws on socially-agreed-upon principles of freedom, asking “what is good for society as a whole?”.
Because, really, what other platform are we going to use?
3. Socially-agreed-upon principles change over time.
Just one example out of many: when the USA was founded, the only people allowed to vote were white, land-owning males. This was the socially-accepted norm. Over the past two hundred years, society has come to agree that anyone 18 years of age or older, and who is not mentally incompetent, regardless of gender, race, or land, should be allowed the vote.
Those changes didn’t come about because either people said “oh my, our voting rules are un-Christian, we need to make them more Christian” or because people said “oh my, our voting rules are too Christian, we need to make them more secular”. By and large, the changes came about because society’s views, both Christian and secular, changed.
4. If you’re with me this far, then we’ve gotten to this question: is “gay marriage” a reasonable freedom to allow? Something that will be beneficial for, or at least not harmful to, society as a whole?
And this is where the debate really engages. My position is this: yes, gay marriage is a reasonable freedom to allow, for the following reasons:
- We can embrace a civil-religious disconnection.
- State-sanctioned marriage is essentially a specific path through contract law. When you get married, you automatically get a LOT of legal advantages, things that would be difficult to attain otherwise. What good reason do we have to say that any two people shouldn’t be allowed to enter into a contract that way?
- Society’s views have changed, and we may as well acknowledge the change rather than pretend it didn’t happen.
From a strictly pragmatic Christian viewpoint, too, we need to pick which battles we want to fight. Yes, we want to see each person come to know Christ and become more like Christ. By fighting this semantic argument over civil “marriage”, we aren’t accomplishing anything other than alienating a large group of people who Christ calls us to love. We certainly aren’t helping ourselves gain an audience with them so we can share the Gospel. Real change comes from the inside out, as the heart changes.
5. The government must protect the rights of private groups to discriminate based on their beliefs.
Freedom of association (guaranteed in the First Amendment) implies freedom of disassociation. If a church doesn’t want to perform gay marriages, they shouldn’t be required to. If the Boy Scouts don’t want to allow gays as leaders, they shouldn’t be required to. If a religious organization doesn’t want to hire gays, they shouldn’t be required to.
OK, so I cut it down to 5 points, albeit with a lot of bullets and lists in between. Questions? Comments? Snide remarks? Let it rip in the comments.
I’ve been working through the whole ‘gay marriage’ issue in my head for a while now, driven in good part by the discussion over on rmfo.net (you’ve gotta be a member to read it, sorry) surrounding California’s Proposition 8. The evangelically-popular, Dobsonian position is familiar to me, but has always seemed (like most Dobsonian political positions) to be harmful to the Kingdom; focusing on divisive politics rather than loving everyone and focusing on the heart issues. Today, though, Andrew Sullivan’s piece on TheAtlantic.com really solidified things for me; in other words, he said what I’ve been thinking – only much more clearly and concisely.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Andrew Sullivan, here’s where he’s coming from: he’s a relatively conservative gay man. That in itself gives you some idea to which side of the debate he comes down on… but don’t let that bias you towards him without giving him a listen. He nails it.
[Many long for] a return to the days when civil marriage brought with it a whole bundle of collectively-shared, unchallenged, teleological, and largely Judeo-Christian, attributes. Civil marriage once reflected a great deal of cultural and religious assumptions: that women’s role was in the household, deferring to men; that marriage was about procreation, which could not be contracepted; that marriage was always and everywhere for life…
But that position, Sullivan says, is untenable.
If conservatism is to recover as a force in the modern world, the theocons and Christianists have to understand that their concept of a unified polis [(state)] with a telos [(purpose, goal)] guiding all of us to a theologically-understood social good is a non-starter. Modernity has smashed it into a million little pieces. Women will never return in their consciousness to the child-bearing subservience of the not-so-distant past. Gay people will never again internalize a sense of their own “objective disorder” to acquiesce to a civil regime where they are willingly second-class citizens. Straight men and women are never again going to avoid divorce to the degree our parents did. Nor are they going to have kids because contraception is illicit. The only way to force all these genies back into the bottle would require… [an] oppressive police state…
Exactly. My dad said much this same thing in a sermon he preached back before the election (which I still haven’t posted, sorry, Dad!) when he likened the Dobson-esque conservatives to the proverbial dog chasing a car. The problem for the dog is when it catches the car – what the heck do you do with it then?
Back to Mr. Sullivan:
That way is to agree that our civil order will mean less; that it will be a weaker set of more procedural agreements that try to avoid as much as possible deep statements about human nature. And that has a clear import for our current moment. The reason the marriage debate is so intense is because neither side seems able to accept that the word “marriage” requires a certain looseness of meaning if it is to remain as a universal, civil institution.
And then he nails it with an example that hadn’t occurred to me.
This is not that new. Catholics, for example, accept the word marriage to describe civil marriages that are second marriages, even though their own faith teaches them that those marriages don’t actually exist as such. But most Catholics are able to set theological beliefs to one side and accept a theological untruth as a civil fact. After all, a core, undebatable Catholic doctrine is that marriage is for life. Divorce is not the end of that marriage in the eyes of God. And yet Catholics can tolerate fellow citizens who are not Catholic calling their non-marriages marriages – because Catholics have already accepted a civil-religious distinction. They can wear both hats in the public square.
[Emphasis mine.]
I am convinced that this is the right position. Certainly, Christians need to be free to teach per their convictions on homosexuality, and need to be free to discriminate as to who they will marry, hire, and so on. (Sullivan argues specifically for those protections in his column.) But we need to accept, nay, support a broader, freer civil arrangement; an arrangement that allows for freedom for as many as possible to live as their conscience dictates in a way that is consistent with the peaceful, common good.
Putting that civil arrangement in place will provide a basis for the lively exchange of ideas that should be present in a free society. While it won’t look quite like what the Founders set up in the United State more than 200 years ago, it’ll be more what they intended. Let’s face it – we don’t live in 1780 anymore. We will do better if we adapt the principles of 1780 for the world of 2008 and move forward. For this topic that means embracing the civil/religious disconnect and supporting state-sanctioned civil marriage for both hetero- and homosexuals.
Mars Hill Church in Seattle has a neat opportunity going on right now with the “Ask Anything” promotion. Visitors to askanything.marshillchurch.org were able to post questions that they’d like Pastor Mark Driscoll to answer. They held voting for a while and narrowed it down to the Top 50. Now they’re voting to select the Top 9 from that list. You’re allowed up to 10 votes per day, every day. Pastor Mark will take the top vote-getters and preach sermons on them in the spring of 2008. Pretty cool, huh?
Looking at the questions in the top 50, though, I’m torn. Most of the questions seem to be real, legitimate, “I want teaching on this” or “I’d like an explanation of this” kinds of questions – things like
“What can traditional churches learn from emerging churches?”
and
and this fun one:
And those are questions I really wish Pastor Mark would answer. His take would be helpful, fun, and potentially insightful.
However, I’d like to encourage Pastor Mark in this: ignore question number one. The current number one vote-getting question:
To me, this one really feels like Driscoll’s critics are looking for something else to give them ammunition against him. Really, outside of people for whom this is a really big deal and aren’t going to change their minds on the subject anyway, who even really knows about the regulative principle? Obviously Driscoll doesn’t believe in the regulative principle, folks – just visit Mars Hill for a Sunday and you’ll see they’re singing stuff that isn’t directly from the Psalter. Does Pastor Mark need to spend an hour on a Sunday morning explaining why he doesn’t believe in it just to add fuel to his critics’ fire? I think not.
Another one to ignore: this question on the end times.
Head over to askanything.marshillchurch.org, check out the questions, vote for the ones you’d like to hear Pastor Mark answer. And Pastor Mark, please, skip #1.
“Clergy fight same sex marriage”. This headline stared out at me from this morning’s copy of the Cedar Rapids Gazette. The sub-heading (which was used as the title of the online version of the story) gives more detail: “Iowa church leaders planning rally ‘defending marriage’”.
A coalition of church leaders today announced plans for an Oct. 28 prayer rally and other actions to defend traditional marriage in the face of a district judge’s ruling striking down a same-sex marriage ban — a development they warned could convert Iowa into the nation’s “Rainbow Vegas.”
“This is a call to arms,” said Dan Berry of Cornerstone Family Church. “The sleeping giant is being awakened.”
Later in the story, the Rev. Keith Ratliff of Maple Street Missionary Baptist Church in Des Moines said the “…campaign is not geared toward hate or fear of homosexuals, but rather seeks to preserve the longstanding, family-based and Bible-backed tradition of marriage as being a union between a man and a woman.”
The final, colorful quote in the story comes from Chuck Hurley of the Iowa Family Policy Center, who warns that if the same-sex marriage ban is permanently reversed, Iowa will be come “the Rainbow Vegas”.
We have gotten all too familiar with hearing pastors and Christian leaders like these over the past two decades. On a national level, radio hosts like Dr. Dobson, televangelists/presidential candidates such as Pat Robertson, and leaders of movements like the Moral Majority (the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, an OK guy in my book), and later on the Christian Coalition (Ralph Reed, who turned out to be a bit more crooked), urged their listeners or viewers to call their congressman, write their legislator, to stop this piece of legislation, encourage that one, or to decry a recent judicial ruling.
There is a place in the life of a Christian for speaking the truth to our community. In many cases that should and will include involvement in the political arena. At our church this past week we had a petition on the table in the foyer urging Iowa lawmakers to pass a state constitutional amendment in “defense of marriage”, and to urge them to support an amendment to the federal constitution as well. One of our elders, during announcement time in the service, asked folks to consider signing it. Many did. (I didn’t. I’m not so sure that we should change the constitution for something like this.) But I fear for the sake of the Gospel and our churches when what our pastors are known for are leading the “sleeping giant” into the political arena when those rascally judges finally go too far. (Why is the church “sleeping”, anyway? Maybe that’s problem numero uno.)
Particularly disgusting to me was the quote from Mr. Hurley of the Iowa Family Policy Center, pulling out the scare tactics to warn good little church people that their beloved, safe hometowns will become a “Rainbow Vegas”. “Ooh! Run away!!! Gay people!!! Be afraid!” I don’t know whether Hurley is a pastor or not, but the IFPC website is pretty plainly espousing Christianity, including on their site a Prayer Request page with a quote from John Bunyan. Mr. Hurley, I see plenty of prayer requests on that page for new donors, success in the courts and the legislature, and politically active people. But where’s the prayer request that these people who you fear so strongly would hear the good news of Jesus Christ and be freed from their bondage to sin? If we’re going to rouse the “sleeping giant” of the church, why are you only rousing them to join the political fight against your adversaries rather than rousing them to minister to and serve those same people?
Our primary command as believers in Jesus Christ is the Great Commission: to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel. We are not to huddle in a spirit of fear, desperately attempting to protect our little enclave against the evil world around us. Christ has already won the victory. It’s over. Instead, we need to go to “those people”, and love them. Serve them. Find out who they are. What makes them tick. Show them the love of Christ in action, so that when we find avenues to share it verbally, they will already understand. We are not to fear “them”, but rather to fear for them, knowing that we, too, were once hopelessly ensnared in sin. Our new righteousness is not our own; we dare not boast in it. Only in Christ.
Change comes from the inside. Pass all the laws you want, legislate your own specific understanding of perfect morality, but if you don’t change the hearts, laws aren’t gonna do any good. (See: The Prohibition.) However, if lives are changed by the power of God, pass or repeal all the laws you want; people living for Christ will make whatever country they live in the kind of country that you probably want it to be. I fear that the siren song of political power has been too attractive to the Church. Let’s stop being distracted by it, and focus instead on loving our neighbor.
Andy Naselli has an excellent list of links on his blog to many, many sermons available for download by D. A. Carson. I am a huge fan of Carson’s and greatly enjoy listening to any of his talks that I can get my hands on. If you are similarly inclined, head over to Andy’s site and start downloading. I just pulled down about 20 hours worth of audio. Good stuff.
Found this wonderful little article from Will Willimon entitled “Resisting the Clutches of Consumerism”. A good read, especially this time of year.
…the “user friendly” approach to church won’t work. There is no way to entice people off the streets with hymns that are based on advertising jingles and end up with the cross-bearing, self-sacrificial, burden-bearing Jesus. Evangelism cannot be based upon our basic selfishness (“Come to Jesus and get everything you want fixed.”) and end up with anything resembling historic Christianity.
Good stuff, for sure. Go read the whole thing.
My mother-in-law asked the other day what I thought about this recent news story. In brief: Newly elected to the House of Representatives, Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison has declared that when he is sworn in on January 4th, he will take the oath of office with his hand on a Koran instead of a Bible. Ellison is the first Muslim ever elected to Congress.
There have been varying reactions to Ellison’s decision. The loudest has been Dennis Prager on townhall.com, who declares that Ellison “…should not be allowed to do so — not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.” A little more:
Forgive me, but America should not give a hoot what Keith Ellison’s favorite book is. Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress. In your personal life, we will fight for your right to prefer any other book. We will even fight for your right to publish cartoons mocking our Bible. But, Mr. Ellison, America, not you, decides on what book its public servants take their oath.
Yesterday I was forwarded an email from the American Family Association that quoted the Prager column and then asked all the readers to
1. Send an email asking your U.S. Representative and Senators to pass a law making the Bible the book used in the swearing-in ceremony of Representatives and Senators.
2. Forward this email to your friends and family today!
So what is my reaction to all this?
Let’s deal with the easy one first. The AFA’s suggestion is clearly ridiculous. Any law passed by Congress requiring the oath to be taken on a Bible would be summarily rejected by the Supreme Court as an unconstitutional establishment of religion, and rightly so. Let’s just reverse the situation for a moment. Suppose a congressional majority of Muslims arose. Would I think it were then OK for them to mandate that all oaths be taken with a hand on the Koran? Of course not. Hence our protection of religious freedoms in the Constitution.
So then to the next question: what opinion do I have about Mr. Ellison’s intention? Let’s back up and look at the history of oath-taking in the USA. I’m sure I could go back further, but it’s easy to note that George Washington took the presidential oath of office on a Bible. Each President since then has taken the oath in similar fashion. The Bible is today used for oaths in a multitude of other circumstances, local and state offices, courtrooms.
In the initial case, President Washington used the Bible because he viewed it as a sacred book, and placing his hand on the Bible further solemnized the oath. Given the United States’ Christian heritage, this understandably became a tradition that continues to this day. My fear, though, is that somewhere through the years the solemnity imbued by the sacred text has faded into a tradition that carries little of its original weight. Let’s be certain of this: I’m all for politicians keeping their word. Too many these days seem to lose their care for ethics and the truth once they reach Washington; if any action can reinforce to them the need to keep their oath, so much the better. But it seems to me that if the Bible is being used simply as a traditional prop by those who don’t reverence it, it is more dishonoring than honoring to the Book. As one who believes the Bible to be the Word of God, that bothers me.
So where does that leave us? I have come to the conclusion that I don’t really care. I want Rep. Ellison and each of his fellow congressmen to honor the oaths that they take. If Rep. Ellison believes that the Koran will further solemnize his oath, I don’t have a problem with it. If a Christian congressman wants to use the Bible to solemnize his oath, he should use it. Personally, I’d prefer that if a person doesn’t respect or revere the Bible, they not use it at all. Let’s not turn the Holy Book into a prop.
I’ve heard just about enough about The DaVinci Code by now.
First, the hoopla over the best-selling novel.
Then, the adulation from the press and all of the discussion regarding the “historicity” of the fiction.
Next, the Christian reaction to the movie, covering the entire spectrum from “Cool” to “Yawn” to “EVIL, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES AND BURN THE HERETICS WHILE YOU’RE RUNNING!!!”.
So it was with some hesitation that I read a piece on Opinion Journal today entitled “Debunking the Debunkers”. The topic: how would C.S. Lewis have responded to DaVinci Code fans? I was glad I read the article.
“I have been reading poems, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life,” Lewis wrote. “I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this [the Bible].”
So said Lewis, and he was right.
The wrap-up:
Here is the real harm of these modern conspiracy theories: They may appeal to our emotions, but they violate our common sense. They reject reason, just as surely as they reject revelation. “I do not wish to reduce the skeptical element in your minds,” Lewis explained. “I am only suggesting that it need not be reserved exclusively for the New Testament and the Creeds. Try doubting something else.”
Good stuff.
That’s the question that the InternetMonk asks in a column over the weekend. His summary:
The Gospel is relevant. Our methods can’t be irrelevant, but they have to allow the relevance of Christ to come to the forefront.
Amen, brother.