The proper evangelical attitude toward sinful behavior outside the church

Here’s one for ya this morning:

The proper evangelical attitude toward sinful behavior outside the church should be one of wise resignation and acceptance. There’s no gospel call to change the world into the church by law. In fact, it cannot be done.

Roger Olson, from How to be Evangelical Without Being Conservative.

I find this thought compelling. It seems so backwards to the evangelical ear, and definitely runs afoul of Dominion Theology, but I think Olson is right.

A Calvinist at the Pearly Gates

Trevin Wax today reviews Michael Bird’s new book Evangelical Theology. Outside of the book and review, this humorous aside from Bird’s book inspired a chortle, which is why I pass it along. Enjoy!

A Calvinist arrives at St. Peter’s gates and sees that there are two queues going in. One is marked “predestined,” and the other is marked “free will.” Being the card-carrying Calvinist that he is, he strolls on over to the predestined queue. After several moments an angel asks him, “Why are you in this line?” He replies, “Because I chose it.” The angel looks surprised, “Well, if you ‘chose’ it, then you should be in the free will line.” So our Calvinist, now slightly miffed, obediently wanders over to the free will line. Again, after a few minutes, another angel asks him, “Why are you in this line?” He sullenly replies, “Someone made me come here.”

A few thoughts on the "yuck factor" discussion

In case you’re not already caught up: the discussion started with Thabiti Anyabwile’s post on TGC, “The Importance of Your Gag Reflex When Discussing Homosexuality and “Gay Marriage””. One-line summary: “Return the [gay marriage] discussion to sexual behavior in all its yuckiest gag-inducing truth.”

Then yesterday Richard Beck posted a response: On Love and the Yuck Factor. Two-line summary: (1) “I don’t think it’s healthy to use disgust to regulate moral behavior.” (2) “When disgust is involved any purported distinction being made between persons and behavior is… a verbal obfuscation of the underlying psychology.”

There have been a bunch of other thoughtful responses (to both men), including a long comment on Beck’s piece from “dmr5090” (sheesh, people, can’t you use real names at least?). Key points in those rebuttals to Beck have often been along the lines of (1) Shouldn’t sin gross us out?, (2) “Aren’t you just trying to argue that ‘homosexuality isn’t a sin’ without admitting it?” and (3) “The words ‘gag reflex’ and ‘yuck factor’ aren’t Anyabwile’s - he’s just quoting a gay journalist.”

To be fair, I have grossly simplified, hopefully not unfairly, all the posts I’ve linked so far. If you want to dig into this argument, go read them all.

So here’s the thing: I know there’s a battle raging among various flavors of Protestants and even evangelicals over homosexuality. But I can believe on one hand that homosexual acts are sinful, and on the other hand still respond with revulsion to Anyabwile’s post. Here’s why:

1. Inconsistent application of the tactic. Why do we not hear preachers like Anyabwile use this “gag reflex” topic when addressing other, more “acceptable” sins? Let’s hear a few sermons on gluttony that try to gross me out with discussions of sweaty mounds of obese flesh before you try to claim that the “gross out” strategy is really one you think should be used across the board.

2. The encouragement to revulsion at the act quickly leads to revulsion of the person. Yes, sin is revolting. All sin should be revolting to us. But to encourage a “gag reflex” response to homosexuality will very quickly lead a person to have that “gag reflex” toward the homosexual person. And that’s the furthest thing from what Christ calls us to. I know that Anyabwile says in his post that we “should not be mean and bigoted”. But I don’t understand how you can encourage a gag reflex when you hear “homosexual” and not end up that way. (Beck made this point in his post far better than I’m saying it here.)

(Observation: while writing this I was about to say that Anyabwile said we should still love the sinners, but he never actually says that in his piece. All he says is that we should not be mean and bigoted, and that we should ‘speak the truth in love’. And the truth, he says, is that homosexual relationships cannot properly be called ’love’. Not sure it’s fair to draw a conclusion from that, but it’s bothersome.)

3. This is the old “culture warrior” position again. Have we not learned yet that sin is not going to be defeated by us making the right arguments to those in privileged positions in the halls of power? Anyabwile seems to think that if he’d just managed to gross out the right people in powerful positions, we wouldn’t have legalized gay marriage. I say that’s baloney. We’ve had the evangelical attempts at political power for at least 30 years. Buchanan, Falwell, Dobson… How’s that worked out for us?

4. The Gospel is not “sin is icky”. The Gospel message is that we are all sinful, all equally in need of Christ’s grace and forgiveness. That God is in the process of making all things new, of drawing people to himself. That’s the message we need to be spending our time on.

Does your church have room for me?

What if I don’t have 100% agreement with your doctrinal statement, but still want to be a part of your church?

Does your church have room for me?

What if I’m perfectly willing to accept that you’re not going to change your church’s views just because I disagree?

Does your church have room for me?

What if I don’t know that I want to be at your church for the rest of my life, but that it’s just the right place for right now?

Does your church have room for me?

What if I want to blog about the things I’m wrestling with theologically, even if I’m using things I hear in the sermons as discussion points?

What if I’m not willing to accept the stock answer to the tough question?

What if I think disagreement doesn’t automatically mean disunity?

Does your church have room for me?

What if I’d like to publicly acknowledge that I don’t always (or even usually) vote Republican?

What if I’d like to publicly support things like single-payer healthcare?

What if I want to say publicly that we shouldn’t be demonizing the cause of illegal immigrants?

Does your church have room for me?

On the other hand,

What if I think that the Bible teaches that homosexual behavior is a sin?

What if I believe that God really knows the end from the beginning?

Does your church have room for me?

What if I believe that there is real faith to be found in churches that are very unlike yours? Among trendy Evangelicals, mainline Protestants, wild Pentecostals, and old-school Catholics?

Does your church have room for me?

What if, after all this, I’d like to use my leadership gifts? What if I’m willing to not push for my own position in the 5% where I disagree, but not willing to deny the disagreement?

What if I can teach for years on topics where we are all in blessed agreement, but occasionally will write a personal blog that none of the other leaders will agree with?

Does your church leadership have room for me?

What if all I want is to have a place where I can fellowship, love, and serve, while at the same time being honest about my views and how they are changing over time?

Does your church have room for me?

Is this Calvinism's Default Position?

I’m sitting in a hotel room tonight enjoying a family weekend and catching up on twitter while trying to get the kids to go to sleep, and in doing so I run across this from Pastor Steve McCoy this afternoon:

“I’m not clear on most things about God, but Calvinists anger me.”

- An Absurd Number of People

(@SteveKMcCoy, June 7, 2013, at 2:36 PM)

Steve (pastor of an SBC church in the Chicago area) and Bill Kinnon went back and forth a bit on Twitter after that tweet, Bill suggesting that it was a bit judgmental to suggest that people who aren’t Calvinists “aren’t clear on most things about God”, and Steve saying that he didn’t mean that everyone who hates Calvinism is unclear, but that “an absurd number” are. Their conversation trailed off before they came to any resolution.

Then there was this stunning quote from the Founders.org website, for which SBC pastor Tom Ascol is a primary leader:

In the first place, Calvinistic Christianity is nothing more and nothing less than biblical Christianity. It follows, then, that the future of Christianity itself is bound up in the fortunes of Calvinism….

…For whoever believes in God’s redemption through Christ and recognizes his own utter dependence on God, whoever recognizes that salvation is of the Lord, whoever seeks to glorify God in his worship and life, that person is already implicitly a Calvinist, no matter what he calls himself. In such circumstances, to make the person an explicit Calvinist, all we are required to do (humanly speaking) is to show the believer the natural implications of these already-held fundamental principles, which underlie all true Christianity, and trust God to do his work, that is, trust God to reveal these implications to the person.

Did you get that? Calvinism is “nothing more and nothing less than biblical Christianity”. And if anyone recognizes salvation from the Lord, and seeks to glorify God, then that person is implicitly a Calvinist! And all the Calvinists need to do is explain it in a way that the unknowing Calvinist might understand.

Now, I’m not suggesting that all proponents of Calvinism would make such presumptuous, arrogant claims, and I won’t claim for an instant that there aren’t some really God-ignorant Calvinism haters like Steve is talking about. I’m sure I don’t speak for the group of progressive bloggers who have been very vocal in recent weeks about their concerns with Calvinism and certain highly visible Calvinist groups. But I can speak for myself.

I’m not particularly progressive. I accept the Bible as God’s authoritative, inspired Word, but I don’t think that means I have to read the first bits of Genesis literally. I believe, based on what I read in the Bible, that homosexual behavior is wrong, but I’m in favor of the state sanctioning same-sex marriages and I believe Christians have done a pretty poor job of loving homosexuals over the last several decades. I voted for Bush twice and then Obama twice. I try to not post about politics on Facebook.

I also don’t think I’d fit into Steve McCoy’s category of being “not clear on most things about God”. I grew up in a very conservative Christian home, did 12 years of AWANA, attended a Christian university that required a bunch of Bible classes, have served as a deacon and an elder in a Conservative Baptist church and helped plant another CBA church that eventually became an Acts 29 church. I read widely in theology; my last couple years of reading includes Baptists, Anglicans, Catholics, Lutherans, Arminians and Calvinists alike.

And here’s the thing: (well, two things:) I’m not a Calvinist. And some of what I’m seeing out of some of these key Calvinists does anger me.

The big fuel on the fire lately has been the recent statements about CJ Mahaney and the sexual abuse lawsuits brewing against several folks from Sovereign Grace Ministries churches. Calvinist leaders like Albert Mohler, Mark Dever, Don Carson, and Justin Taylor have put out statements supporting Mahaney, and erroneously claiming that Mahaney was accused of no crime (he was accused of conspiring to keep the abuse claims quiet).

That men of such intellect and reputation would publish a statement with such obvious mistruths in it angers me. That after posting it on Facebook and getting dozens of disapproving comments, they deleted the statement and the comments frustrates me a lot. That then they, without comment, revised it to remove the claim that Mahaney was never accused, and posted it on their organization’s website while disallowing comments infuriates me.

That Justin Taylor would claim, on twitter, that continuing discussion with divisive folks is a sin (a not-so-subtle explanation, one would assume, for why he was keeping comments closed), only to delete the tweet a couple days later once people called him on it, makes me want to bang my head against the nearest immovable object.

I don’t hate these guys. I have, in the past, respected them a lot. Which is why it’s all the more infuriating and disappointing when I see them taking indefensible positions like these.

I don’t want to assume that this circling of the wagons and declaration of Calvinism as nothing more or less than true Christianity is the default Calvinist position. I want to believe that there are Calvinist brothers and sisters out there who are as horrified by the alleged abuse and cover-up, and by the ridiculous arrogance of the Founders.org statement as I am.

But where are they? Why are they quiet?

Where is the Calvinist brother who is willing to publicly suggest that it would be wiser to not have CJ Mahaney still regularly preaching and on the conference circuit while allegations about the cover-up remain unresolved?

Where is the Southern Seminary graduate who is willing to say that while he personally believes Calvinism to be the truest expression of Christianity, he would never dream of asserting that every Christian would claim Calvinism if only they understood it better?

Without those voices many of us are left with few options but to believe that these are the default Calvinist positions. I beg you, my brothers, speak out and give us more options. God’s church deserves better.

Facing the truth about ourselves

Andrew Peterson has a beautiful piece up at The Rabbit Room today. He reflects on his discomfort at answering personal questions on a doctor’s questionnaire, and the dichotomy between what he wants to think he is and what he actually is.

But you see, the story we tell ourselves is skewed. There comes a time when we need to sit and take account of how we’re spending our lives, like at the doctor’s office or with the budget, and be reminded that we are not who we think we are. We need Jesus more than we allow ourselves to admit. We are not really so much better than the people around us whose lives are so obviously messy. In fact, we’re not better at all. They may in fact be closer to the heart of Jesus because they are humble enough to admit to themselves that they need help, humble enough to answer the hard questions about their weakness boldly.

You should really read the whole thing.

Telling the Tales of the Scarring War with Sin

Songwriter and singer Jennifer Knapp answered questions over on Rachel Held Evans’ blog this week, and in the midst of it all she offered up a devastatingly spot-on critique of Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) and how it reflects the attitude of the evangelical church:

In this sense CCM reflects our Christian culture very well. It is our Christian culture to invite those to tell only the story of victory and spare the gruesome details of the scarring war. We can reside if we are made clean and presentable, those who are still writing their story must wait for absolute victory before they can share it with others.

I don’t know about you, but from my experience, she’s right on.

When we hear testimonies in church, or smaller gatherings like men’s groups or (I would assume) women’s groups, etc, the stories we are told are only, as Jennifer calls them, “stories of victory”. How someone battled their demons, their besetting sin, and hallelujah, with Jesus’ help they came out victorious.

And sure, it’s encouraging. Stories of victory provide hope that there is victory to be had.

But when was the last time you heard a testimony that said “I don’t want to do this sin, but I did it again this week. So I’m repenting again and I’m going to God for grace.”?

Let’s go even further. If, by some odd happenstance, someone does confess struggles with sin in a church meeting, what gets confessed is a “respectable” sin. Pride. A bad attitude. Shortness with a spouse. Failure to have a regular quiet time.

Have you ever heard a testimony where someone confessed an ongoing, painful struggle with alcohol, or pornography, or anger, or financial honesty? Not a story of victory, but a story of the pain of the “scarring war”? I never have.

Here’s what I think this means:

We don’t really believe in the gospel of grace and forgiveness.

Sure, we give it lip service. But what good is the message of grace and forgiveness when the only time we acknowledge it is for stories of victory, for people who have experienced absolute victory?

Yes, Jesus said “Go and sin no more”. We put fancy words on it and call it “progressive sanctification”. But sanctification will progress at different rates sometimes. One brother may experience a sudden change and never go back to drunkenness; another may fight the bottle his whole life. To only affirm and share the stories of the former is tacit acknowledgment that what we really value is not the grace but the works.

I can hear some objector ready to quote me Romans 6:1. “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? May it never be!”

Here’s the thing: we will all continue in sin for the rest of our lives. For some of us it’ll be the same sin. Others will retire old sins only to find and wrestle with new ones. We don’t want to, but we will. See Romans 7.

But when we silence the stories of the ongoing, painful, scarring battle, we are hampering the bountiful endowment of grace.

In God there is an abundance of grace. Powerful. Rich. Saving. Free. Not designed only for those who have already cleaned up their act.

Let’s not do anything to withhold it.

Celebration is a craft I need to learn

Sarah Clarkson has a beautiful post over on The Rabbit Room today about, as she says, “the grave importance” of celebrations, and how they remind us that God cares for our joy - not just the joy that we find from spiritual hope in the midst of trouble, but also in the fully-embodied, rollicking joy of song, food, and friendship.

Satan, I think, strikes a few of his best blows when he can persuade us that God is boring. That life with our Savior is a dull and dutiful upward climb toward a summit of righteousness always a little out of reach. We are close to defeat when we start to believe that God cares nothing for joy, that holy people are wage slaves to long days of righteousness. Work, pray, endure, and pay your bills, check off that list of upright deeds. And the image of God in our weary minds becomes that of a long-faced master whose only concern is our efficient goodness. We forget that we are called to a King who laughs and creates, sings and saves. That our end is a kingdom crammed with our heart’s desires. We forget that our God is the Lord of the dance and the one whose new world begins with a feast.

Worth reading the whole thing.

Richard Beck on Holiness and Hospitality

…the pursuit of moral purity often undermines the life of welcome as “sinners” and the morally “unclean” tend to be shunned and excluded. The church stories we all could share illustrating this dynamic would provide ample evidence of the dynamics Unclean [Beck’s recent book] was trying to describe.

So what’s the trick? How are we to pursue holiness in a way that makes us more hospitable rather than less?

I think a part of the trick is this: holiness is a first-person rather than a third-person enterprise. Holiness is a personal rather than public affair.

I think he’s on to something.

[Experimental Theology: Finely Tuned Instruments of Welcome]

Biblicism and the Reformed Evangelical magisterium

One of the long-term hallmarks of the American evangelical church has been a congregational independence free from strong denominational ties. Sure, the denominations exist as broad placeholders with certain doctrinal distinctives, but the range of actual beliefs and practices among churches even within a single denomination is often large. In practice, theological interpretations mainly happen at the individual congregation level. This seems reasonable given that the popularly accepted definition of evangelicalism includes “biblicism” as one of its four key characteristics. [ref]Per British historian David Bebbington as referenced in this Wheaton College post. The other three characteristics are conversionism, activism, and crucicentrism.[/ref]

Within less-evangelical denominations that have a well-defined hierarchy, doctrinal disputes and practice are better kept in-house; the Presbyterians are more than willing to govern their doctrine and practice, and the Catholics have their magisterium - the teaching authority of the church which speaks authoritatively on doctrine.

While Reformed Evangelicalism is still loosely grouped into tribes (Acts 29, The Gospel Coalition, Southern Seminary alumni, etc.), I think we are seeing the emergence of a Reformed Evangelical magisterium of sorts. Its hand has been evident the past several months in the reaction to, among other things, Rachel Held Evans’ new book. I don’t want to address the book in this post - I did that previously - but rather the reaction to it.

Let me say up front that I have great respect for everyone I’m going to mention here, and that I have learned much from and appreciated the teaching of nearly all of them. My goal here is not to suggest that they have nefarious intents or are necessarily intentionally working to form this sort of authoritative cabal, but that its emergence may point to a lack of confidence in the sufficiency of the tenet of biblicism.

Seeing the organization of this Reformed Evangelical cabal isn’t difficult. There is a nicely defined structure that includes:

  • theological institutions (Southern Seminary being the chief example)
  • theologians - D. A. Carson, Albert Mohler, Wayne Grudem, John Piper, Mark Dever
  • charismatic teachers - Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, Voddie Baucham, Josh Harris, C. J. Mahaney
  • mouthpieces - The Gospel Coalition website, Desiring God’s website, and The Resurgence website, among others
  • inquisitors - Tim Challies and Kevin DeYoung being the prime examples
  • councils - we call ’em conferences, though. Desiring God holds a big one every year, T4G is every other year, and so on.

If a member gets too far out of line, this group is quietly self-regulating. See: Acts29 moving from Driscoll in Seattle to Chandler in Dallas. See also Mahaney leaving his Maryland church of nearly 30 years under a cloud, only to re-emerge as pastor of a new church in Louisville, KY, safely in Al Mohler’s backyard.

Among the larger group of individual pastors that follow these leaders, doctrinal alignment is maintained by conferences and publishers. As an aspiring author, your first book likely won’t get a look from one of the big names, but if Challies reviews it positively, your second one might. A cover blurb from Driscoll, Keller, or Chandler will help ensure that your book gets accepted at the book sales room at the next conference, and from there you’re all set on your track to successful blogging, authoring, and maybe even your own speaking gig at the next conference!

Get a vote of disapproval, though, and you’ll be on the outside looking in, anywhere from just being ignored (which I’d imagine is bad for an author’s prospects) to having the full court press turned against you (as Rachel Held Evans has had the past few months).

Now, from one perspective, this sort of unity seems like a positive thing, right? We have Baptists, Presbyterians, Free Church-ians, and independents of every stripe coming “Together for the Gospel”. And indeed, this tent is apparently big enough for diversity on sacramental issues like baptism and communion. But touch one of the “third rails” like women’s roles or origins and you’re gonna get dropped like a hot potato. (Recently a professor at Cedarville College got fired because he believed the “right things” about Adam and Eve but not for the right reasons.)

A few of the authors who go where angels fear to tread are given a grudging pass, typically because their academic credentials are too impressive to totally ignore. Think here of Scot McKnight, whose Junia Is Not Alone argues hard for the egalitarian position, but who also taught at TEDS alongside D. A. Carson. And also, oh, that N. T. Wright guy who says some amazingly liberal stuff on social gospel and the environment, but who wrote some stunning stuff on Jesus.

Academic credentials don’t ensure asbestos underwear, though. Pete Enns (a tenured professor) got run out of Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia, back in 2008 after publishing his book Inspiration and Incarnation, which argued for a re-evaluation of how we read and interpret the Bible - and especially the early parts of the Old Testament. And if you’re a woman without a theology degree, like the aforementioned Evans, well, sorry. You’re toast.

Ask any of these guys (or your local adherents to their creed) why they put the big focus on these specific doctrinal issues, and what you’ll probably hear is this: “the gospel is at stake”. I think it’s clear, though, that what it really means is “our version of the gospel is at stake”.

And this is where the idea of a magisterium comes in. In the Catholic tradition, the magisterium is the teaching authority of the church. The church leadership speaks an authoritative interpretation of Scripture, and the matter is settled.

In the evangelical tradition, however, we don’t have the strong denominational and hierarchical structures to pronounce and enforce Scriptural interpretation. And even though we love the Scripture (a pastor I know and love proudly says he has such a high view of Scripture that “it’s not bibliolatry… but *wink* it’s just almost bibliolatry.”), it’s apparent that while we also love our congregational independence, that independence is just insufficient to protect the evangelical doctrinal turf. And so evangelicalism falls back on its informal magisterium.

I don’t think one can conclude from all this that a magisterium is a bad thing, nor can one conclude that the solution is to move our evangelical churches into some hierarchical denomination. But what is clear is that no matter how loudly some leaders of evangelicalism may cry that we need to simply “believe what the Bible says”, it’s never quite that simple.