What is Church: A Look at the Andy Stanley Brouhaha

There was a small blow up last week over some admittedly bizarre statements made by Andy Stanley during his Sunday sermon. I was going to link you to a clip so you could listen to it, but it was conveniently removed when Northpoint copyright claimed it. You could go listen to his full sermon from the 28th of February. OR you could read the transcript below.

"When I hear adults say, “Well I don’t like a big church, I like about 200, I want to be able to know everybody,” I say, “You are so stinking selfish. You care nothing about the next generation. All you care about is you and your five friends. You don’t care about your kids [or] anybody else’s kids” … If you don’t go to a church large enough where you can have enough middle schoolers and high schoolers to separate them so they can have small groups and grow up the local church, you are a selfish adult. Get over it. Find yourself a big old church where your kids can connect with a bunch of people and grow up and love the local church. Instead… you drag your kids to a church they hate, and then they grow up and hate the local church. They go to college, and you pray that there will be a church in the college town that they connect with. Guess what? All those churches are big."

Super weird. Totally indefensible. And to his credit, Stanley figured that out on Thursday the week after the sermon. Now why did he wait until Thursday if he knew what he said was wrong, I don't know. But he apologized on Twitter, albeit in a very casual "whoopsie daisy, aww shucks" kind of way. Apparently he and Northpoint's PR wing didn't think that was sufficient, so he gave Christianity Today an interview to talk about the quote which they posted earlier today. You can find it here.

I'm glad that he apologized, and I don't bear him any ill will over this incident, I'll assume that this interview is entirely sincere and he regrets his comments. However, I would still argue that his comments were definitely evidence of a less overt but still very deficient idea of the church that he's showed off elsewhere as well. Indeed, I'd argue that his apology interview, a specific, intentional PR piece to clear up the issue, shows the troubles with his view of the church.

He says that parents should never force their kids to go to a church they don't like just because their parents like it. This comment really shows off his view of church as a product, as a type of spiritual entertainment. If church is just about what you like, then sure, you should go to whatever all of you like instead of just some of you, the most happiness for the most people right? But church is about glorifying God and enjoying him, not about constantly enjoying yourself. You may need to glorify him in being willing to endure the hardship of bad music, or a derpy youth guy, or uncomfortable pews, etc. God forbid, they might actually expect you to keep your kids in service rather than shuttling them out for edutainment (a word which my spell checker does not correct, look at the lows to which we have sunk). His comment says "pick the church you and your kids enjoy the most", my rebuttal is that God disciplines his children to learn to do what is best for them, which is not always (and I'd say rarely) what they would enjoy the most in the moment. He tries to explain it through the lens of the parents being "selfish", but he just comes off as saying "if you're going to a church with kid's min that isn't exciting like ours, you're selfish".

He says earlier in the interview that his target was attendees not church staff at other churches, but that doesn't change what seems to be the message he's sending to parents, "engaging, entertaining kids ministry will get your kids saved, so if you're in a boring, traditional kids ministry because you love the church, you should come to Northpoint instead so your kids won't be bored." Boredom, not impiety or sin is seen as the great evil of kid's ministry for Stanley. (Also, I'd point out that in the interview he never walked back his comment that you can't do good youth ministry if you don't have enough kids to divide high school and middle school, in fact he said that you should only not do that if you're too small to do so.)

When talking about church planting, he strongly implies that the goal whenever possible should be to create a megachurch. When he talks about his relationship to other churches, he talks about all the things Northpoint does for them and teaches them, nothing about things small churches can teach larger ones. Stanley's ecclesiology says "the megachurch is the greatest development in the history of churches and everyone should be like us." Even when specifically asked about how small churches have informed Northpoint he struggles to point it out. He seems to say they learn from smaller churches who are just like them and took their baptismal practice from a small church. But then he immediately starts talking about all the things HE does for small churches (because apparently video sunday school curriculum counts as him teaching the class, I know a few teachers who will be glad to know they don't need to show up Sunday because Andy will be showing up to field questions for them).

I think Andy suffers from church CEO syndrome. He looks at everything as numbers and efficiency. You see it in his books and conference teaching all the time (I've read chunks of Visioneering and Enemies of the Heart and I attended a conference with him a couple years back). He's perfectly okay making authoritative statements on issues to which scripture doesn't speak and his answers pretty much uniformly conform to what corporate America (albeit, good, moral Murica) would say about the issue. I'll gladly accept his apology, and I'm far from disowning him as a Christian or anything silly like that, but I think he's got some major doctrinal issues, and I'd hazard a guess that he'd brush off my criticisms because I don't have experience in large churches, and I think that's part of the problem. Stanley sees himself as the top of the mountain, the CEO of a spiritual enterprise, and that's a place where there's no reason to listen to folks who tell you what you don't want to hear until you are forced to do so. And that's a scary place to be for the church leader.

Bill Nye the... Bio-Ethics Guy?

On Tuesday, Bill Nye released a YouTube video on the topic of abortion and specifically (supposedly) on the science of conception and abortion. I had a friend post it on YouTube and was curious because Bill Nye was a big part of my learning science as a kid in his role as the science guy. However, I think my generation has forgotten that it was a role. Nye's highest level of education is a BS in Mechanical Engineering and while he does teach as a visiting professor at his alma mater, it is only in freshman Astronomy and Human Ecology classes. But because of his role in our learning science, we give him a platform on many topics (such as his recent debate with Ken Ham onOrigins Science), the latest of which apparently is Bio-Ethics. The video is below.

The fundamental difference in the abortion debate, obviously, is going to be the idea of life and the definition thereof. Most supporters of abortion have dropped the "it's not a human" argument because it just doesn't hold scientific weight, but if someone holds that position I can't move them off of it, nor I think can anyone else short of the almighty. That's where the lack of dialogue on the issue comes from, a completely irreconcilable difference in language and definitions.

But that issue aside, Nye claims that his arguments are purely fact based and basically incontrovertible. So let's look at some of his individual points (summarized).

"Eggs get fertilized without coming to term, we can't prosecute people for miscarriages, thereby abortion is okay." No one is condemning anyone for having miscarriages. In the Christian worldview (which, let's be honest, is the only one Bill Nye cares about attacking, no one is hitting Muslims or Orthodox Jews for also opposing abortion), the world is a terrible place where horrible things happen because it is warped and perverted by sin. That doesn't mean that we should intentionally make them happen. The logic here is terrible because it's like saying that because people die of natural causes you thereby can't prosecute someone for murder.

"Leave women's rights to women." Except if they're pro-life, then shame them mercilessly (as does tend to happen on social media). This argument, yet again, only means anything if you don't believe the child is a person or has any rights. As soon as any vestige of humanity is acknowledged on the part of the unborn it crumbles.

"White guys passing extraordinary laws." Yet again, not a swipe at white guys, a swipe at white Christians. Which I'll cop to happily (the Christian part, I really could not care less what color skin my Christian brothers and sisters have, unless it's blue, in which case I might like you more cause that's pretty cool). Care for the unborn and children in general is a Judeo-Christian concept which while not unheard of in other societies, is certainly uncommon to secular society. The nations around Israel practiced childsacrifice, the Romans would leave handicapped babies to die in the wilderness. It was the Yahweh and his faithful Jews who decried child sacrifice and early Christians who saved the babies abandoned to the wild, they created the culture of care for the lives of children in society. I am not ashamed of that in the least. Also, how are these laws extraordinary? Western culture for more than 1500 years has accepted that the killing of infants, even in the womb, is a horrific act. The current culture of acceptance in regards to abortion is the extraordinary one when it comes to the history of the last two millennia. 

"A book written 5,000 years ago tells you anytime a man and woman have intercourse it makes a baby." Bill Nye doesn't know when the bible was written or what it teaches yet feels confident telling Christians what they shouldn't believe that it teaches. There is no implication in the bible that sex always = baby, just that sex CAN and often does end up = baby, which I think most everybody would agree with.

"Nobody likes abortion." And yet the official Democratic party platform is that there should be no limits on abortion anywhere, ever. You want to abort your 8 month baby? Cool. You want to abort your baby because you wanted a boy not a girl? Okay. You want to abort your potentially Downs Syndrome afflicted child (which now happens in something like 90% of cases where DS is diagnosed)? Go for it. No one "likes" abortion except the #shoutyourabortion movement and the ladies who videotape themselves having an abortion, smiling and giggling (since removed from youtube when it was alleged that the video was edited and sanitized in order to win a competition). I think the old "safe, legal, and rare" slogan is being shown to be a sham when Democratic politicians oppose making abortion clinics live up to thesame health standards as any other out-patient surgical clinic (safe) and oppose putting any limits on it, even ones that seem logical such as outlawingpain-causing abortion methods on babies old enough to experience pain (rare).

"Rape and Incest." The MOST intense estimates put about 2-3% of abortions as being the product of rape or incest (with the most likely being less than 1%). You don't make a rule based on 2% of the time typically, you make it based on the 98% of the time and then deal with exceptions or individual cases that may violate the norm. And as for when the mother's life is in danger (which is the third in that troika though Nye doesn't mention it), I don't think there's a thinking Christian that opposes abortion if it is the only way to save a mother's life. When you triage patients you save whoever you can, it's a fallen world and you have to make the best decisions you can and save who you can in terrible circumstances.

"We have more important things to be dealing with." If you were a German during WWII would you say you had bigger issues to deal with than the holocaust? Because for people who believe that life begins at conception, there have been ten holocausts in the last 45 years. Antietam was the single most deadly day in American war history, 23,000 Americans lost their lives in a single day, it was a staggering loss of life and potential. The number of abortions from 1973-2005 is equal to 2112 Antietam battles. One every 5-6 days for 32 years. If you believe unborn children are human beings then there is no greater issue today (possible exception being climate change if you also believe in that being human caused and potentially terminal).

"You wouldn't know how big an egg was without a microscope." Ahhh here's a good one. Unborn children don't matter because they're too small. This argument ticks me off, because supposedly liberals don't discriminate and yet here you're saying that a human being is less of a human being because it's small, dependent upon someone else, or less mentally developed. But it would be silly to apply these principles to those who have been born right (unless they were born alive while being aborted, in which case kill em)? Except that these arguments DO tend to start sliding this way as we see now in the Netherlands where 42 mentally ill individuals were euthanized in 2013.

"Not giving women access to birth control." Yet again, arguing for something no one is against. Even in the Hobby Lobby case the business was fine with providing contraceptives, they just objected to abortifacients (drugs that cause abortions post-impregnation, drugs that wouldn't be needed UNLESS the egg had taken hold, as opposed to Nye's silly line of argumentation). As far as I know, the Catholic church and Catholic institutions are the last ones holding out on non-abortifacient contraceptives. And even they aren't against women having access to contraceptives!!! They just don't want to have to pay for or provide them.

"Laws that are in no one's best interest." I'd argue that this isn't even true if you don't believe in the personhood of the unborn. Many mothers and fathers have intensely negative psychologicalreactions post-abortion and many who consider abortion end up being thrilled with the decision to not abort their children. So at least in THEIR cases it seems that not having an abortion was certainly in their best interests. And is the law forcing abortion clinics to abide by outpatient surgery center safety regulations not in the best interest of the woman who may have died or received a staphinfection during her procedure due to inadequate health procedures? And then if you consider the belief of the unborn being a human being, I'd go out on a limb as saying that if that is the case it is certainly in THEIR best interests to not be killed.

"Stop fighting. Let's work together." I hate this. He acts like he's being rational and accepting in being willing to work with pro-life individuals. But he's only willing to do so after belittling them intellectually and telling them to stop holding their position or at least acting upon it! He's basically saying, "once you see how stupid you are and how incontrovertible my argument is, then we can work together!" So he's only offering to work together if he gets everything he wants in the debate and we give up our position in its entirety. How very magnanimous.

Grief and Hope

When I first heard of Erica's death I found myself experiencing a moment of loss and shock. While we weren't close friends, I really enjoyed my time knowing Erica in college, and the knowledge that our world no longer enjoys her presence was a blow to me. I found myself understanding why many people in such a situation can question, in an accident that seems so senseless and purposeless, where was God? What hope is there in a world where death can come so quickly and unexpectedly? Where, in this tragedy, is there room to hope?

Well today I would like to remind everyone that there is hope in this darkness. In fact, there is hope that has power to change the way we grieve.

In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians he wrote, "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.". Paul says that the church is not to grieve as those who have no hope. Maybe you've noticed this already in your time with those who mourn for Eric today, I truly hope so. You've seen grieving, oh most assuredly you have. We mourn today with those who mourn, and we grieve the loss of a true sister and friend. But we grieve in a way that we believe is peculiar to us as Christians. You see we grieve while also holding tight to hope.

How is this kind of grieving possible? Why are Christians capable of grieving in a way that is so different from those who have no hope? Paul answers that question in the very next verse, "For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep."

Christ’s death and resurrection give us hope because they change the way we look at the world. When we look at the world through the lens of the fact that our God is infinitely loving and infinitely powerful, we can have faith even in our sorrow that he cares for us. We can have faith in this because we do not have a God who is impassive and unemotional, but rather one who has known our pain and sorrow. Jesus felt the pain of sickness and sadness. Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph, likely died when Jesus was between the ages of 14 and 30, so he knows how it feels to lose a parent. Jesus knew physical pain and sorrow, he wept at death and the knowledge of the pain others would bear, he lost friends, and eventually he lost his own life.

But because of Jesus’ death we can now know that there is hope. Because he didn’t just die, he rose again! This is what we celebrate this and every Easter! Paul uses the term those who have “fallen asleep” to refer to those who have died after putting their faith in Christ. I think this is a magnificent way of reminding us that to the Christian, death is not the end, but rather the beginning of a marvelous eternity.

Because Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection, the promise of an experience in which we will someday share, because of this the Apostle Paul finds it possible to say, “O death, where is your victory, O death where is your sting? Thanks be to God, who gives us victory through Jesus Christ.” With this ultimate victory in sight, we can know that our sadness and sorrow will not last forever.

Ironically, we see the bible’s full assurance in this temporary nature of suffering in a book called Lamentations. Lamentations was written by the prophet Jeremiah as he looked out over the smoking ruins of Jerusalem after the city had been conquered by Babylon and her people carried off in chains. Much of the book feels the way we do this morning, as we are full of mourning and questions as to the ultimate plan of God which would allow for such sadness. But in that dejection and hurt, the prophet says, (Lamentations).  Even in his heartbreak, Jeremiah, because of the mercy and love of his God, could confidently assert that the grief would not last forever, that though God cause grief, he will have compassion… according to the abundance of his love. This means that not only can we know that our pain will be temporary, but that God’s love is permanent and ultimate. Jeremiah had hope because he knew the character of the God he worshiped.

And today we can have hope because we know the character of that same God we worship. A god in the Father who loved us so much that he sent his only son to die for us. A god in Jesus who gave up heaven, perfect peace and joy, to live a life of conflict and pain with us on earth. Who went to the cross willingly and humbly. Who died to make us new.

It is because of this, Christ’s character, that we are able to grieve in a way that is different from those who have no hope. If there is one thing that we walk away from here with today it should be this. Today, we feel surrounded by darkness as we mourn our loss. We feel the sting of pain, grieving, and sorrow.

But because of the love of God, who sent his son to die for us, and through whose power that son was raised again from the dead, there is hope in the darkness. There is hope in our pain. There is hope in our grieving. There is hope in our sorrow. There is hope because we hope in the resurrection, we hope to see one another again someday in a world made new by God. A world where we will no longer feel the pain of loss, of grieving, of sorrow. A world whose glory Paul, a man who knew suffering, said made him think of present suffering as not even worth comparing to that glory. I find this promise all the more comforting today, because if this present suffering is not even worth comparing with the glory God has in store for us, oh what glory that must be. 

So let us look forward as we leave here today to that place of peace and joy where we believe Erica is at this very moment experiencing the true joy of being in the presence of the God who loves us more than anything we can imagine. If you do not know that love today, it is there for you, in the loving arms of Jesus Christ, scarred by the nails he bore to restore your relationship with him and to give you hope.

Abraham: A call to sacrifice?

My wife and I were having a great conversation recently about Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, or more accurately about Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac and God's provision of a substitute. We were specifically discussing whether or not we as Christians today are called to be like Abraham and sacrifice the things that we love. It's a hard topic and definitely not one to be taken lightly, so we talked it through and I wanted to share some lessons we learned from the conversation. Before we look at the text itself I think there are two important things to keep in mind.

#1 - Be careful about coming into a study of any biblical text and looking primarily at what the people in it do. The Bible is, in the end, not the story of humanity, it is rather the story of God and of how he relates to humanity. So we should be careful with any biblical passage where our first instinct is to look at what so and so did, rather than to look at what God did.

#2 - The context matters greatly. Abraham was living in a pre-Torah society. Human sacrifice would've been demanded by many of the deities worshiped in his land and he had no way of knowing that the act of sacrificing a human would be abhorrent to God. This was also a world pre-Mosaic covenant. Man did not have a set way of interacting with God yet. Abraham was doing the epitome of the saying, "flying by the seat of his pants".

So with those two points in mind, what does this passage tell us about God and about our relationship to him? To read the passage yourself (I always recommend reading more scripture) go to this link. To find it on your own, it's in Genesis chapter twenty-two, verses one through fourteen.

I think there are a number of great things to learn about God and about our relationship to him in this passage, but like most preachers, I have a subtle fascination with the number three, so I'll limit myself to that many points.

First - It is never too early to teach your children to have faith. This one is inspired by the devotional my wife and I are reading currently (J.C. Ryle's The Duties of Parents). In it, Ryle exhorts parents to train up their children into a habit of faith and points to Isaac as an example thereof. Isaac asks his father, "where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" and is given in response the spiritual version of, "we'll get there when we get there!" with Abraham only telling him that God will provide. Now most children these days (probably including myself at that age) would continue questioning, but Isaac puts his faith in his father and in his father's God, and I think there's definitely something great about that.

Second - If God is omniscient (all-knowing), why did he need to test Abraham? I think this passage is a great test of the old argument against divine omniscience that runs along the same line. I think the answer gives us a great mindset to turn to during suffering. Because suffering doesn't exist for no good reason, we believe in a God who uses even the worst life brings for his glory. In this case, Abraham's mental suffering is turned into faith, into a memorable example of God's faithfulness, he even names the place where this all happened with a Hebrew word meaning "The Lord will provide". Martin Luther in a lesson on this passage remarked "We say, 'in the midst of life we die.' God answers, 'Nay, in the midst of death you live.'" Luther points out beautifully the nature of this story as one of God's providence.

Third - It's not about us. This is the most important point in the story because this is a story that is more about God than it is about us. This story is blatantly and glaringly a parallel to the story of Christ. Abraham had been given the child of a covenant and was asked to give him back up. A father asked to give up his only son. But there is God, providing a sacrifice of his own so that the boy can live. I've heard people point to this story as being about us as humans being willing to sacrifice for God. But that's not really it, because Isaac's sacrifice wouldn't have changed anything. It is only through God providing the sacrifice in Christ that anything changes. This passage is often pointed to as an example of divine cruelty, in fact, Martin Luther's own wife said she did not believe the story when the family went over it for devotions! She said, "I do not believe it! God would not have treated his son like that." Katherine Luther would've meant Abraham's son, but Luther adroitly used the other possible subject of the pronoun and said simply, "But Katie, He did."

As we go forward this week, let us remember that we are followers of the God who did. The God who gave up his child for lost and broken sinners like me. In the end, I do not believe that God calls us as Christians to give up our children, spouses, or families in order to earn his love or be close to him. But I do believe he calls us to live lives characterized by sacrifice, not in trying to give up something in our lives in order to be worthy of his love, but in seeing the ultimate value of his sacrifice and living in a way that all our decisions, all our actions, and the entirety of our lives might be directed to the glory of the one who already gave a greater sacrifice than we could ever imagine.

Same Love? Time to talk about homosexuality.

I think it’s time that I weigh in on the debate currently raging in our country over homosexuality and more specifically over gay marriage. I’m going to focus primarily on the moral and theological sides of the debate regarding homosexuality and much less on the debate over gay marriage as I am a pastor, not a politician. I’m not writing this because I think I’m going to say something groundbreaking or that I am in some way uniquely qualified to speak to the subject, but rather because with the proliferation of opinions on either side of the debate I find responses that don’t seek to vilify one side or the other to be sparse and I feel a duty to help alleviate that lack which I perceive to exist.

I mentioned the title of a song in the title of this blog post, the song is "Same Love" by Macklemore. This song won an award recently for “best song with a social message” of the year. The best social message song, according to our culture, is about the moral heinousness of opposing gay marriage and homosexuality, that by itself is telling. I think this song is actually a really good summary of the general public opinion on the topic (or more so the media’s opinion thereof) so I think I can discuss it and through it the entire debate. So for the format of this article, I’m going to discuss the lyrics to “Same Love” by Macklemore in order to talk about homosexuality. This should be fun.

“When I was in the 3rd grade

I thought that I was gay

Cause I could draw, my uncle was

And I kept my room straight

A bunch of stereotypes all in my head

A pre-conceived idea of what it all meant”

One of the main themes of the song is the pre-conceptions connected to homosexuality and I’m absolutely on board with this one. Don’t call someone gay because they don’t like sports, or because they like chick flicks, or for whatever reason you think justifies it. A person’s hobbies and activities have no bearing on their sexuality and I have no doubt that our stereotyping on the issue has caused many a young man or woman with tendencies considered non-standard to their gender to question their sexuality unnecessarily.

“The right-wing conservatives think it's a decision

And you can be cured with some treatment and religion

Man-made, rewiring of a pre-disposition”

“And I can't change

Even if I tried

Even if I wanted to”

To any homosexual reading this, if this is the impression you have gotten from the church, I am so, so very sorry. We don’t expect you to “fix” yourself. That’s legalism, and it’s been a struggle of ours in the church since, well since well before we were even known as a church. So I’m sorry, I truly am, if you have been led to believe that I expect you to change and be fixed and whole before you come to my savior. Because he only accepts the broken, because if anyone thinks they're not broken, then they’re lying to themselves. He’s not here for people who think they have no problems. Neither treatment nor religion will “cure you” because what you have, what we all have is a disease far beyond medicine or ritual’s ability to heal.

That said, I have to confirm part of this as well. We do think it’s a decision. On the other hand, we also believe that you may certainly be pre-disposed to it. But that’s not justification for it. I’m pre-disposed to lust after women who are not my wife, to envy those who have what I want, and to give into pride and believe myself to be always in the right. But that doesn’t make it okay for me to do those things. But I still do. I still fail, and I know you do too.

And that’s okay. Because we have a Savior who didn’t. Too often we focus on our sin, when we should be looking at the one who bore that sin to the cross. So yeah, we think it’s a decision. And we think that being pre-disposed to it isn’t justification for giving into it. But we also think messing up is okay. We believe that we all do. That there is only one person who didn’t. That his name is Jesus, and that he loves you just as much as he loves me. Just as much as he loves anyone. And that he desperately wants you to love him back and to find the healing that comes in his love.

“America the brave

Still fears what we don't know”

I have a short personal point to make here. I am sick and tired of being told that I’m afraid of homosexuals. I am not. I’ve had co-workers who are gay who were my closest friends at those places of work. I’ve known numerous gay individuals and have been good friends with a few and in those friendships I have done my very utmost to let them know that while I disagree with their decisions, I still love them and want the best for them. I DO believe that engaging in homosexual behavior is wrong, but that doesn’t mean I’m afraid of it. That would be like saying I’m afraid of thieves because I think stealing is wrong. It’s just an egregious logical fallacy to say that I’m “homophobic” because I am not accepting of homosexual behavior and I’m getting tired of it.

“But we paraphrase a book written

3,500 hundred years ago

I don't know”

Well, I’m glad he has the guts to say he doesn’t know, because that’s pretty obvious here. The whole issue here is that believers who don’t support homosexual behavior nearly unanimously do so out of a refusal to paraphrase the scripture. They do so out of a dogged devotion to Sola Scriptura. The whole problem here is that we hold tenaciously to the belief that we don’t have the right to rewrite scripture to be culturally expedient. So saying that the issue is those who OPPOSE homosexual behavior paraphrasing? I just don’t know what to say to that. And where do you get the 3500 figure? The New Testament would’ve been around 1900-1970 years ago depending on book and the Old Testament was likely over the course of an almost two thousand year period before it. So other than sounding right, I have no clue what date he’s going for here.

“If I was gay

I would think hip-hop hates me

Have you read the YouTube comments lately

"Man that's gay"

Call each other faggots

Behind the keys of a message board

A word rooted in hate

Gay is anonymous with the lesser”

I agree strongly with the sentiment here in two main ways. One is that the culture of internet tough guys and the expression of hateful speech in anonymous forums is disgusting. One of the worst things about the internet is that it gives people a way to voice their meanest and most spiteful thoughts in a manner that is separated from the natural byproduct of community backlash. I despise the outpouring of hate towards all groups in the anonymous forum of the internet and pray that Christians would not take part in it. The second way is in the use of gay or faggot in a derogatory fashion in the cultural lingo. I think it’s terrible and it needs to stop. In my view, even keeping full eye on the sinfulness of homosexual behavior, throwing that sin back into someone’s face in the form of a derogatory slur is not loving in the tiniest bit and we should shun the practice as believers.

“Kids are walkin' around the hallway

Plagued by pain in their heart

A world so hateful

Someone would rather die

Than be who they are”

My conclusion is this. I believe homosexual behavior is wrong because I believe in a God who doesn’t change because of a great marketing campaign. But you know what? I think we in the church have heard that enough already. So I want to focus on the other wide of the coin.

Acting like homosexuality somehow makes you unable to be loved by God, saying things that make those struggling with homosexual desires feel like they are unwelcome in his presence because of their temptations, speaking in a way that says “I am better than you because my sins aren’t as bad as yours” is wrong. It’s hypocritical, it’s unchristian, and it’s sinful. Because you know what? We have created a culture where teens struggling with homosexuality feel like the church hates them, and by extension that our God does as well, when the truth is so, so very far from that. We in the church know homosexual behavior is wrong, I think we’ve got that one down pat. I think it’s time we reinforce that God loves homosexuals just as much as anyone else. And it’s time we do to. Not accepting sin, but accepting them. Helping them to see that they can't fix themselves and that we don’t expect them to. But that we have a savior who is the great healer, and the one who lifts us up beyond what we are capable of on our own.

Responding to "15 Things Jesus Didn’t Say"

An article has been floating around facebook the last couple days called “15 Things Jesus Didn’t Say” and I wanted to make some comments on it. I have two general comments and then I wanted to address each of those 15 things specifically.

My first general point I want to discuss is the format of the article. It’s catchy, hip, and leaving itself wide open to misinterpretation and confusion. I’m sure it was easy to write and it’s the kind of thing that gets you a lot of casual glances and “likes” but I found it to be lazy, at times confusing, and a bit insulting to scripture. If you want to talk about Jesus, talk about Jesus and what did and said. Don’t make up a bunch of things he didn’t say, and then imply that he would agree with your diametrically opposed position because he didn’t say those stereotyped, straw man arguments when very likely the truth isn’t at either extreme end of the spectrum. In general it’s just so unclear that I had to make up my own conclusions about what he was trying to say.

My second general point is on the whole idea of “Red Letters” (Oh how I miss thee DC Talk). I believe the words of Jesus are incredibly important, some of the most important in human history, but I do not believe they should be exalted above the rest of scripture. The basis of the article seems to be that since Jesus didn’t say something it isn’t true or important, but what about the rest of scripture? Maybe the author didn’t mean to imply that Christ’s words are more important than the rest of scripture but I think it happened anyway. The Bible tells us that ALL Scripture is God-breathed, not just Jesus’ words. So while I might love reading his words and find fulfillment from them, they are no more authoritative for our lives today then the commands found elsewhere in scripture (obviously excluding the ceremonial law of the OT which is fulfilled in Christ, though I would point that that does not make the ceremonial law valueless, only no longer binding, we can still learn from it and be reminded of Christ’s life and death by it).

So now let’s look at these things Jesus didn’t say, I'll put his statements in red and my responses in black…

“For God was so disgusted with the world and you that he gave his one and only Son.”

God loves the world. I don’t know a church that doesn’t believe this deeply. God IS however disgusted by sin, as he is holy and by definition cannot be party to or part of it. Evil is repellent to God, and as fallen beings we therefore need to be made clean. Praise God for the atoning work of his son in this. If we are in no way shape or form abhorrent to God, then why do we need the Jesus whose words the author is implying are so important?

“I have come to bring you a new religion.”

I have yet to figure out the hatred a lot of people have for the term religion. Maybe in their minds it has come to mean hypocrisy, empty platitudes, or a way of making yourself feel better. But that’s not reality, and if we’re going to have the “religion” conversation we really should use the dictionary definition, in which a religion is an organized way of relating to God. In which case…. Ummm, yeah he actually did. He took us out of the law-covenant of the OT into his death/resurrection based covenant of the NT, which by definition seems to me to be a new way of relating to God.

“By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have correct theology.”

I get this one. Some folks put way too much emphasis on being right and nowhere near enough on being loving, kind, gentle, humble, and good. So I get it, but Jesus also said that we should know the truth and that it would set us free. Whether I believe that Jesus is the only way to God or just a prophet pointing to Allah matters. So maybe it doesn’t matter as much as some people like to think it does, and maybe some folks do need to focus more on the practical everyday ministry side of their faith rather than the intellectual side. But what you do practically, is determined by what you believe, so I gotta say that theology definitely DOES matter, even if not as much as some might think.

“If anyone would come after me, let him disparage all other religions and their followers.”

Some Christians do make it their business to look down on members of other religions, which is wrong, but I don’t think for the reason the author is implying. We shouldn’t look down on members of other religions because the grace we have received is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, and too many of us decide we’re allowed to boast of it. That said, if the author really does care about Jesus’ words, I feel like he seems to be intentionally forgetting “I am the way and the truth and the life NO ONE comes to the Father except through me”. While we shouldn’t look down on members of another faith in any circumstance, if we believe Christ is who he said he is, then we believe we are following the one true God, and we need to be able to say that in order to witness to those of other faiths.

“If you love me, you will regularly attend a church of your choice… within reason.”

I have trouble responding to this one because I don’t understand at what he’s trying to poke fun. If he’s saying going to church isn’t a necessary part of the Christian life, then he’d wrong, and should read the New Testament some more, because a ton of it is about making the Church work. This is where my “red letters” comments comes in, because I feel like he’s using something Jesus didn’t say to invalidate the rest of the New Testament.

“Blessed are the tithers for they shall be called the children of God.”

I’m not a tithe guy, that said, it’s pretty obvious throughout Jesus teaching that large portions of our income should be used to support others believers in times of distress and provide for the poor and hungry. It seems this is an implication that giving of our money isn’t important, which is not remotely true (as Jesus talked about money more than any other single topic). I mean for goodness sakes, between sacrifices to God and gifts to the poor the average Jewish farmer was supposed to give somewhere in the vicinity of 50% of his income away, and we’re complaining about ten?

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in Heaven after the earth goes up in flames and destroyed.”

I do agree that we should focus on being Christians while we’re here, but Paul said he LONGED for heaven, and multiple books of the Bible spend time talking about the new heavens and new earth. Now we shouldn’t focus on that so much that we become ineffective on earth, but I actually think the American church has FORGOTTEN in many cases that we are looking forward to a future reality and thus we end up holding too tightly to this world, therefore making us ineffective.

“You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor,’ which means the people with whom you attend church and relate to in your Christian sub-culture.”

I’m okay with this. The evangelistic nature of our faith isn’t doing so good in America today, we totally need a wakeup call on this.

“In my Father’s house there are a limited number of rooms. But no worries, there is plenty of room in Hell.”

I don’t know if this is trying to advocate universality of salvation or saying that Christians condemn too much or trying to make some other point I don’t get. I agree Christians focus too much in general today on what we’re against instead of what we are FOR. That said, Jesus talked about hell more than Paul did, and Jesus said that he’s the only way to heaven. I don’t see how you can claim to value his words and then make this statement. In addition, the Bible says that the road to heaven is narrow and the path to damnation is wide, implying that the statement more people will go to hell than heaven is factually correct. Just sayin’.

“The kingdom of God has come!… Well, not exactly. I mean, not completely. Let’s face it, the really-real kingdom comes after we die. Hang in there. It won’t be long.”

Once again, Jesus and the other NT writers talk about heaven and about the new heaven/earth often. I don’t see how you can continue to claim a value for scripture without seeing the now/not yet tension throughout the New Testament. It’s pretty clear that yes, Christ has defeated the power of sin and death, and yes, his kingdom has begun, but it’s also clear that his kingdom isn’t complete yet. Unless you think natural disasters, wars, famine, hate, and disease are part of the end game here. In which case I don’t really know how to respond.

“And you will know the truth and the truth will make you superior to all the other simpletons who never learned Greek or Hebrew.”

I’m fine with this one too. I’ve been guilty of feeling superior to other Christians because of my academic knowledge on Christianity. Thankfully God has really blessed me with elders at my church who with no formal theological training are very close to God, incredibly wise, and incredibly caring. They’ve really helped to keep me humble and remind me that my academic pursuits mean diddly squat to my holiness and commitment to God.

“You are the light of the world… well… in a sinful-filthy-scum kind of way.”

Yet again, this seems to evidence a complete disdain for the New Testament now/not yet and the doctrine of the sinfulness of man. I don’t even know what to say, if you think you’re a perfect Christian, more power to you. I’m gonna stick with the “I’m messed up, I’m broken, I still make mistakes, but I’m also beautifully and wonderfully made and am being remade into the image of my savior” camp.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you a checklist of things to do and not do in order to remain in God’s favor.”

Agree that our salvation has NOTHING to do with our works. But a lot of folks in the author’s (I’m assuming, like I said I can’t get a real read because of all the snark) camp of thought seem to have a “I’m good enough as is and so I don’t need to change” mentality. I really don’t see how this one and the one above fit together at all. Paul specifically says that we are NOT to just keep doing evil. We aren’t perfect that’s for sure, but does that mean we should just give up on being as Christ-like as we can?

“For God so loved the world… you know like theoretically… as in, God loves the big ‘W’-world. But when it come to you specifically, that are quite a few things that would need to change for God to actually and specifically love… or even like… YOU.”

I have never in my life encountered a church that DOESN’T preach God’s great love for mankind and for individuals. It’s one of our popular doctrines. I feel like if you’re opposing something, it should be something that actually exists.

“He appeared to his disciples over a period of 40 days and spoke about how to incorporate his life and teaching as a 501(c)3, and go into all the earth to build mega-churches in his name.”

I’m not the biggest fan of mega-churches, anyone who knows me can tell you that, but I don’t think this is really about mega-churches, it feels like it’s more about the (for lack of a better word) business-itizing of the church. On one hand, I agree. I totally get that a lot of folks treat the church more like a country club or a for-profit venture. But at the same time, why not organize churches in a way that allows them to use as much of the funds they receive doing ministry as possible, rather than giving it to our bloated government to squander (not trying to make a RvD comment, I think we all agree our government as a whole needs help).

In the end, it seems like this was a post designed to get some likes from a group who has severe bitterness towards the church as it currently looks in America, and that is was often neither true to Jesus’ own words or the words of the entirety of Scripture.

The Sovereign Grace Issue

I don’t know how many of you have been following the recent troubles of the “Sovereign Grace Ministries” denomination, or even know what it is for that matter, but I’d like to say a few things on the subject, so I will provide a short background.

In 2011 one of Sovereign Grace’s founding elders, a member of their board of directors, left the denomination and released more than 300 pages of documents (including his personal notes, e-mails, and memos) alleging that the denomination’s leadership was guilty of hypocrisy, spiriabuse, and inordinate love of its own reputation. The denomination and church leaders who supported it immediately responded, primarily by denying the vast majority of the allegations. There is another issue that has popped up in about the same time frame, but this is the primary issue I would like to discuss, the allegations by this former ministry leader and others, and conversely the response of Sovereign Grace Ministries.

As a guy who has admired Sovereign Grace’s music and teaching from afar (but has no personal connection to it), but who also has a deep belief that we are sinful human beings who mess up and need to confess it, both to God and one another, I believe I am in a unique position to look at both arguments. In the end, I found that I could no longer trust either of their responses in regard to each other due to a number of factors on both sides.

The Detractors

The primary detractor of Sovereign Grace is the elder who left, Brent Detwiler. The most popular internet detractor would be an anonymous blog called “Sovereign Grace Survivors”. I’ve read through about 20 Detwiler posts as well as 40-50 pages of the documents he released upon his resignation from SGM, as well as 30-40 posts on the SGS website. My conclusion from reading all of these is that they essentially disqualified themselves from argument legitimacy to anyone outside the denomination because of three factors: bitterness, tinted glasses, and a strong martyr complex.

Bitterness – After reading post after post on both Brent’s website and the SGS site I found that many were similar in composition. Insert accusation X against a SGM leader or church, tell a story illustrating accusation X, exposit on how terrible the leaders of SGM are for allowing said accusation to happen. My issue with this isn’t so much the format but rather the way that it is executed. Over and over I found myself depressed by the extreme twist of bitterness coming from those expressing their hurt and disappointment. Bitterness, as opposed to those other feelings, is by definition characterized by intense anger and hostility. I found repeatedly (not in all posts, but in most) an extreme sense of loathing and hatred towards SGM and a complete lack of forgiveness for them. Often this presents itself when it seems a post is not attacking sin, or evil, but a person/organization, it truly seems to me like many of SGM’s detractors have forgotten who the enemy is (Satan, sin, evil) and replaced it with a more personal one (C.J. Mahaney, SGM, etc.).

I want to say to any detractors who might read this that I understand this, I really do. When I was young a church fired my parents for trying to tell the truth to the congregation (the board had been acting illegally in their business practices and my Father found out). They proceeded to black ball us when other churches would call for references, lying and saying that we were asked to resign for negligence or inappropriate behavior rather than for ratting on the board, causing us to live on food stamps for two years. I was bitter about that for more than 7 years, and I only realized in college that (since it was an affluent church) it had created in me a personal distrust of anyone wealthy. So I understand, I really do, and I don’t want this to sounds like I am condemning you. But at the same time, I can’t take anything you say without a grain of sand when it’s so clearly colored by bitterness and a lack of forgiveness. I wouldn’t have been the person to ask about that church because I was clearly biased, and the same goes for most of you and SGM. This leads to point #2.

Tinted Glasses – Maybe this one is just an outsider looking in and not getting the full view because I don’t know the culture, but I often would read a Detwiler or SGS post and walk away going “huh?”. Specifically, there were a number of “reactions” or “reviews” of how a SGM sermon, book, statement, or interview testified to SGM’s overall attitude or abuses. I found every single one to be confusing and unhelpful because in every single post it seemed the writer was responding not to the content of the sermon/article/etc. that he was reviewing, but rather to the piece that he/she had wished had been written for them to critique. Often I would look at the quote they put forth, then their response to the quote, and wonder if they had even read the same thing I was reading, because their response to it made no sense and often critiqued what they thought the writer/speaker was implying, rather than what he was saying. If you want me to take your reviews seriously, I need them to be reviews, not rants disguised with a quotation or two and a title that resembles that of a recent sermon/interview/article.

Martyr Complex – This one is more subtle, and it’s the one that I feel the least confident in, so if you are a detractor and think I’m wrong about you on this one, I very much could be, but check for it anyway, it never hurts to self-examine.

Often in reading detractor posts, along with the sense of hurt and bitterness, there seems to be another sense that often comes with those, and that’s a kind of “woe is me” feeling. Often in SGS posts and occasionally in Brent’s (I apologize for not referencing specific posts, I can go back and find them for you if you want, just let me know), I feel like the writers believe that they are heroes tragically suffering for the Cross. This often confuses me when it ends up in the same article as the bitterness and misrepresentation discussed above. 

I definitely understand that you feel hurt, but there are people all over this world who are literally dying in order to proclaim Jesus’ name, and you seem to think that you’re greatly suffering by standing up against hypocrisy, or more often, against a church model you believe to be flawed. Suffering for the gospel, and specifically dying for the gospel, is martyrdom. Having a few people say bad things about you because you disagree with their church isn’t. It just seems to me like the threshold for “persecution” in the SGS/Detwiler camp is extremely low, and while any level of persecution is wrong, there just seems to be quite a bit of inflating said persecution to make SGS/Detwiler look more “wronged” in the argument. Obviously I am not including in this those who claim to have gone through legitimate suffering in these situations.

On SGM

If you’ve been reading this and are an SGM apologist or member, you probably feel pretty good right now, but I’m afraid this is where I address SGM’s sin issues in this conflict, and I do believe there are some.

Relegating the Laity to Non-Involvement – This is an issue I have with SGM’s entire governing system that ends up filtering into this debate. SGM has a system of church government (originally unofficially, recently made official in their new church government policies) which gives little to no official role to non-ordained members of the congregation. In fact, it really seems that it separates the congregation into the members and the pastorate, the members who are there to learn and the pastorate to govern. This leads to a number of issues such as a sense of pride and untouchability amongst the clergy, a lack of accountability from anyone but the other pastors, and a general sense I could see growing in a congregation that they have no voice in policy and decision making. That said, this is primarily a review of the debate, and in terms of the SGM/Detractors debate, this system of polity makes it hard for me to trust then SGM statements because the only people who really know what happened are on SGM’s payroll. When the only people who know the truth all have their livelihood dependent on that truth not being TOO destructive, it makes it hard for me to not take everything said with a grain of salt.

Refusal to Address Specific Failings – Those of us who are in the ministry (should) know that mistakes happen. We are fallen humans who, until God completes the work he has begun in us, are going to continue making mistakes and sinning against God. I’ve recently been reading “Dangerous Calling” by Paul Tripp, and I think it does a magnificent job of laying out the dangers inherent in ministry and one of those dangers is locking up the things we’ve done wrong for fear of not looking good enough for our job position, or really even thinking that we need to NOT make mistakes in order to be ministers.

It has truly seemed to me throughout my reading of this whole debate that SGM and its leaders are terrified of admitting to specific failings. Truthfully, it doesn’t even seem like they want to respond in the negative to specific accusations! All of their confessions have been to “minor leadership failures” or “sins” or “difficulties”. There has yet to be an “I admit I messed up in this specific situation” type admission out of anyone in SGM. I know it’s hard to admit failure, please know that I do, I personally hate admitting my mistakes, but God is helping me to learn that it is a CRUCIAL part of any healing process and of our own healing after sin. I am sad that so few of the seemingly spiritually mature leaders of SGM appear to have learned this lesson.

General Closed-Door Nature of the Process – I’d like to share a story to illustrate my point here, the church I am part of recently went through the process of leaving the PCUSA and joining the EPC. Throughout the process I think the elder board of the church did a fantastic job of being as transparent as they possibly could with the congregation. I believe that this helped the congregation to have faith in the elder board’s decision and led to a nearly unanimous decision by the congregation to follow the elder board’s recommendation and vote to leave the PCUSA and join the EPC.

The SGM process of dealing with these accusations seems to me to be murky and unsure at best. What was the process of adjudicating the accusations by Detwiler? What is the process for dealing with the types of accusations brought by SGS? Why was it decided that Mahaney should step down temporarily, but then came back, but then went away again? I just don’t know because it seems like the “process” of dealing with this either didn’t exist (the deny everything and pretend it didn’t happen hypothesis) or was extremely internal and unregulated by the denomination at large. This is probably a symptom of a leadership that has the two previous issues I listed. If the leadership doesn’t have accountability from lay members and is unwilling to address specific issues, then I guess it would be pretty hard for them (or in their minds simply unnecessary) to be open about the process through which these issues were resolved.

Conclusion

My conclusion is that I honestly don’t know who to trust, who’s right and who’s wrong, or even what either side truly is angry about or defending themselves against. Detractors, I understand that you’ve been hurt by this whole issue, but if you want me to believe your side of this story it can’t be characterized by bitterness, bias, and a sense of being injured by the other side of the issue. SGM, I understand that you’re afraid of looking bad, but you HAVE to let your laity into your leadership structure, you HAVE to address the concerns brought forth by your detractors, and you HAVE to be honest and open about the processes through which you’ve reached decisions in these issues. Until both sides manage to improve on these issues, I don't know if it's possible for me, or anyone else from the outside, to know the entire truth of these issues.