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Wenatchee the Hatchet pointed me this morning to a devotional post written by Jeff Bettger, who up until recently was Arts Pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle.

It begins with a good meditation on Ephesians 5, where Paul says that works of darkness should be brought to light.

Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. 13 But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, 14 for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

Ephesians 5:8 - 14 (ESV)

Bettger then goes on to hint at practices going on at Mars Hill that he believes should be brought to light. More of a personal confessional than an accusation and calling to account, it still raises some serious issues. Some bits and pieces:

Having a mega church background for the last 16 years I have witnessed first hand the tyranny of injustice done in the name of God. Layoffs during Christmas, weeks after new children are born and first homes purchased. The use of tithe money to purchase books at retail cost in order to build a mans platform and make the NY times best seller lists. All with the name of God stamped on it, and self justified because the rest of the business world has those kinds of practices.

What I see Paul telling us here in this passage is to expose injustice, worldly thinking, business pragmatism, immorality… These shady mega church practices are all impure and covetous, and are hidden in the darkness by people calling themselves “Christian professionals” or pastors. They say that it would be unhelpful for the body to know such information. They say it would be gossip and if you haven’t experienced it directly but only heard second hand than it is hearsay and gossip to bring into the light. That is a lie from the pits of hell that gives justification to keep the truth hidden and the ones committing the injustice from true repentance.

We get so amped up on fighting sexual immorality we forget all that Paul is actually saying in this section of scripture. Any part of our life that needs to be hidden for whatever reason is not in the light, and should be exposed. Human politics and cunning are not an out-flowing of the Gospel but rather a system built by human hands for human ends.

Ouch.

So why am I posting this here? Partly because I have friends and family who are involved in Acts 29 churches and who I hope could at least become aware of some of the tactics that get used with the excuse that everybody’s doing it and that the ends justify the means.

But also because we all need to be keenly aware in our own hearts, in our own lives, in our own churches, how these attitudes can sneak in. We are called to be peaceable and humble, not defensive and self-justifying. To be faithful, not famous. To make disciples, not empires.

True Gospel success is demonstrated in the tender, repentant heart, not in the size of our Sunday congregation or the success of our latest book.

If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us, and His grace abounds to us. If we try to hide them and justify them in the name of building the church and spreading the Gospel, we are only deceiving ourselves and setting ourselves up for a bigger fall, whether that’s in a megachurch in Seattle or a little church in Iowa.

Pastor Jeff showed humility and leadership with yesterday’s post, and we should commend his humility and repentance as an example to be followed.

Earlier this week I posted a link on my Facebook feed: “What Dave Ramsey Gets Wrong about Poverty” - an opinion column by Rachel Held Evans. Little did I know the intensity of response it would receive.

Rachel is a polarizing figure among the evangelical blogging public these days. A progressive woman who isn’t afraid to speak her piece, she’s gained a significant audience in the past year or two. (This is not the first time she’s had a guest piece on CNN.com.) At the risk of over-simplifying her piece (which I recommend reading in its entirety), her main points were these:

1. “Much of what Ramsey teaches is sound, helpful advice, particularly for middle-class Americans struggling with mounting credit card bills.”
2. Ramsey’s “views on poverty are neither informed nor biblical”.
3. A recent piece on Ramsey’s website “confused correlation with causation here by suggesting that [certain] habits make people rich or poor”
4. “Ramsey’s perceived “direct correlation” between faith and wealth should be more troubling than his other confused correlations, for it flirts with what Christians refer to as the prosperity gospel, the teaching that God rewards faithfulness with wealth.”
5. Ramsey “glosses over the reality that economic injustice is not, in fact, limited to the developing world but plagues our own country as well.”
6. “People are poor for a lot of reasons, and choice is certainly a factor, but categorically blaming poverty on lack of faith or lack of initiative is not only uninformed, it’s unbiblical.”

Now maybe it’s just me, but these points seem fairly obvious and valid. So I was more than a little surprised at the vehemence of negative responses to my link and on the subsequent re-sharings of a few of my friends. It would appear that, among American evangelical circles these days, criticizing Dave Ramsey on anything is nearly as dangerous as commending President Obama for anything.

What is more striking, though, is the common thread I saw in the negative responses. The assertions were all along the lines of “I think she misquoted Dave” (though no one provided any specifics), and “Dave’s system worked for me, so people shouldn’t criticize him.”

And here we see a scary bit of illogic that is far too common these days - the immediate defense of the person under critique without seemingly no consideration of the points that were actually made. No one tried to argue that Ramsey’s views of poverty were biblical, or that his correlations of faith and wealth were incorrect, or that systemic economic injustice is not an issue. All they said was “it worked for me!”, which, incidentally, was the first thing Ms. Evans acknowledged in her column.

Now, I’ve been guilty of this tendency myself often enough. A critique of something or someone I generally support feels like an attack on that person, which in turn I take as an attack on me, and my first response isn’t a thoughtful, reasoned response, but instead a knee-jerk reaction.

This has got to stop.

We as American evangelicals have no hope of actually solving some of the systemic problems in our church and our country if we’re unwilling to examine, critique, and correct even our most popular sacred cows.

We must have wise awareness of the motivations of those who are teaching and selling to us, even when that message is clothed in the “safe” garb of evangelical Christian vocabulary.

We must understand that, outside of Jesus, no teacher is always right, and almost no teacher is always wrong. This will free us to wrestle with uncomfortable truths. When we do we will find surprising agreement with those whom we previously considered adversaries. We will also have the (very healthy) realization that even our most revered evangelical heroes are fallible humans just like us.

We must embrace God’s truth through whatever channels it comes to us. (Yes, that means I’m likely to write another post with quotes from the Pope’s latest exhortation.) We similarly need to be willing to discard error wherever we find it, even when we find it in those who we like and have found helpful.

Learn. Think. Act. Grow. Learn more. Think more. Humbly turn. Grow more.

This is our calling as followers of Jesus Christ.