Posts
WHY DEFEND THE FLOCK AGAINST LIES ABOUT GOD?
THE TOLERANT ATTITUDE OF OUR CULTURE INFLUENCES THE CHURCH
DOES THIS REALLY MATTER?
WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING ABOUT: CATEGORIES OF TRUTH
FOCUSING THE BATTLE
JESUS TEST OF A TRUE SHEPHERD
ISN’T IT UNLOVING TO FIGHT HERESY?
WHAT ABOUT FREE SPEECH?
THE BATTLE FOR TRUTH IN CHURCH HISTORY
FROM HISTORY TO TODAY
Should we tolerate Christians teaching whatever they want to or should churches set boundaries on what we will allow?
THE TOLERANT ATTITUDE OF OUR CULTURE INFLUENCES THE CHURCH
The attitude of our culture is to let people say just about whatever they want provided they don’t expect me to believe it. Christians influenced by postmodern culture will argue: Isn’t that’s free speech - our Constitutional right – a freedom people fought and died for. So are we in the church going to throw that away by dogmatically demanding that people can’t teach contrary to our church’s beliefs? Do we want to go back to the Middle ages where people were burned at the stake for what they believed? Do we want to be like the Taliban or some sect of narrow minded fundamentalist bigots? Or will we promote free thinking, enquiry, conversation and debate? If we try to silence teaching with which we disagree aren’t we being unloving? What harm do people do just by sharing their ideas – even if wrong? Surely we should give them space in the free market of ideas? Is it not okay to allow publication and preaching of incorrect teachings so long as the truth also gets a voice? That is what most of our culture says. But is that what we should practice - and what does the Bible say?
The biggest debate in the church today is not about what is true, but what teaching should be allowed. We believe a lot of different things. People in the same local church congregation often have different views on lots of things. There is even more diversity in the same denomination. People grow up in churches and adopt different beliefs to their parents. Should they be thrown out or silenced? Who should be allowed in the pulpit? Who should be allowed to publish in church magazines and newspapers? If we hear something with which we don’t agree in the pulpit should we keep quiet or object? And does this really all matter?
DOES THIS REALLY MATTER?
Yes it does matter. Why? Firstly because ideas have consequences. What people believe influences what they do – and people get ideas from teaching. In the most serious instances, false teaching can result in people going to hell. Secondly because false teaching spreads. It spreads especially fast when it tells people what they want to hear (1 Timothy 4:3). This is usually whatever is most popular with worldly culture at the time. Thirdly, because false teaching must be stopped first if we are to maintain moral discipline in the church. If people are allowed teach falsely on ethics, then we can’t later take disciplinary action against others who follow their teaching on those issues. Thus we have to control what is taught. But how much do we control it?
WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING ABOUT: CATEGORIES OF TRUTH
It is helpful to divide what we believe into three categories of truth. Firstly the essentials we need to believe and practice to be a Christian avoid risking our eternal salvation. Secondly, the distinctive beliefs of our church group, which make us who we are. Thirdly, other debatable matters. When someone comes with a teaching we don’t agree with, we must discern which category their teaching fits into before we decide how tolerant we will be. Sometimes an issue is not simple to place in one of these three categories. Then we must ask how that teaching affects other teachings and practices and what categories those fit into. The more significant issues a false teaching affects, the more significant it is.
When someone teaches something that undermines the essential truths of the gospel needed to be a Christian, then we have to be intolerant and fight them – otherwise people may go to hell as a consequence of the false teaching. When someone teaches against the distinctives of our church group, then they can’t be tolerated inside our church group, but we can still have Christian fellowship as a friend in another group. Local churches need statements of faith to define and make clear what teachings are non-negotiable for them. For example, for Baptists, believers baptism and congregational accountability of leadership are non-negotiable distinctives. People who don’t believe in these are brother Christians, but can’t join a Baptist church. It is not enough to just say ‘we believe the Bible’, because most erroneous cults also say that but interpret it differently. Other debatable issues, we have to tolerate differences of opinion even inside our local church.
But can’t things get really complicated in deciding where an issue fits? Yes, they do. That is why we have to think critically about the popular teachings of our day in the light of scripture. In New Testament times, there was a massive controversy over circumcision. At a superficial reading, the apostle seems inconsistent on this issue. In some instances he seems to be arguing that the issue doesn’t matter all that much, other times in favour and other times against. Was he just fickle? No. Paul wasn’t too concerned about the issue of circumcision itself, but rather how it affected the gospel. When, for example, people came to Galatia and taught that circumcision was necessary to be a Christian, then he came out strongly against them (Galatians 5:2 and Acts 15:1). In another situation, however Paul himself circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:3) to avoid offending people. Paul was not wanting to fight about circumcision itself, but to protect the gospel. Today, similarly we have Christians who peacefully disagree on the issue of whether one should baptise children as infants or only when they are old enough to decide what they believe. But when people teach that one must be baptised in order to be saved, then such people we have to fight with, because that affects the gospel.
FOCUSING THE BATTLE
Since there is so much we could fight about – and arguing causes division and pain in the church - we need to focus most of our attention on the first category: defending the essentials where false belief or practice can put a person’s eternal salvation at risk. The Bible has very harsh words about these kinds of teachers. It calls them ‘false prophets’ and ‘wolves in sheeps clothing’ (Matthew 7:15; Acts 20:29; 2 Peter 2:1). We should never use such harsh labels casually against brother believers with whom we disagree in the second category (of denominational distinctives) or the third category (of debatable issues). Such wolves must be silenced (Titus 1:10-11) and disciplined by excommunication (1 Timothy 1:19-20) until they repent. We do not give them equal space in the pulpit or our magazines or web sites or lecture halls. It does not matter how nice they are, how many good works they have done, how many theological degrees they have, how popular or senior they are or how many friends they have. If their teaching or behaviour is undermining the gospel, then we have to be intolerant. If they repent, they may be accepted back, but otherwise not. Usually such false teachers will have found the protection of some group of deceived followers that protects them from any such discipline. In these cases, we have to simply speak up against them to warn people and to disassociate with them.
JESUS TEST OF A TRUE SHEPHERD
Now always there will be some nice Christians who will say that this is unloving and will criticise the pastor who does this. How do we answer this? Firstly, the word ‘pastor’ means ‘shepherd’. Part of the job of a shepherd is to defend the flock from wild animals that might harm them. It isn’t the nicest part of his job, but Jesus defines it as the test between a true shepherd and one who is just in it for worldly reward “JN 10:11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.” The pastor who defends the flock will risk serious counter-attack. He might lose his job. He might lose his reputation. But he is a true genuine servant of God. We must not forget that Jesus crucifixion was triggered by his public attack earlier that week against the false Jewish religious leaders (Matthew 23). Sadly, today such people are a minority in church leadership which is the main reason the church is in such a mess.
Jesus introduces a third category who are neither wolves nor true shepherds. He calls them ‘hired hands’. They will not do anything scandalous or teach falsely themselves, but they will happily tolerate those who do. Such people often enter ministry full of zeal for the gospel, but somewhere along the line they lose focus and forget their mission for the gospel. Some just go into ministry with a vague desire to ‘spread the love of Jesus’ and help people. Maybe they never understood the requirement of a pastor/elder to defend the flock in the first place (Titus 1:9). Some maybe don’t understand the truth clearly enough to be able to defend it. Such people won’t risk their jobs or their denominational pensions or their reputations to defend the gospel. They want to be popular in the community and rationalize that being so helps them do their ministry work in contradiction to Jesus warning that we would be persecuted (Matthew 5:11-12). Sadly, they will often fight to defend the organisation and its power and hierarchy, but not to defend truth. Probably in the life of every Christian leader our loyalty to the truth of the gospel will be tested at least once – will we be true defenders of the gospel or will we be passive ‘hired hands’. The Lord in his sovereignty allows false teachers to test our loyalty to him (Deuteronomy 13:2-3). Will we pass the test?
The number of ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ within true biblical churches who teach things that undermine the essentials of salvation tends to be very small. This is because either the biblical denominations discipline and remove them or their teaching will spread and the biblical denomination will soon cease to be biblical. In the Western world in the last hundred years, such people have usually been called ‘liberals’. But the number of ‘hired hands’ who will tolerate such people is often very large. Such people often call themselves ‘moderates’. When challenged, they protest that they are doctrinally orthodox on every point – and they are. But they will happily leave the door open for the wolves to prey on the sheep. They are pacifists in the war of theology and our culture. This makes the fight complicated, because the true shepherd and those believers who support him – who are often called ‘conservatives’ are up against not only ‘liberal’ wolves – who cast doubt on the essentials of the gospel, but also often an army of ‘moderates’ who can’t discern wolves and think it is unloving to fight wolves. In church history, thus usually the main conflict has not been between wolves (liberals regarding the Bible) and shepherds (biblical conservatives), but between ‘hired hands’ (biblical moderates) and ‘shepherds’ (biblical conservatives).
Many such people are thankfully only temporarily led astray into siding with the wrong camp. Once challenged, they realise they need to side with truth. In the early church circumcision controversy, Peter and Barnabas caved in to pressure from the circumcision lobby and withdrew associating with Gentiles (Galatians 2:11-13), but when Paul challenged them, they sided properly with the gospel. They may have still believed the truth, but like so many compromising ‘moderates’, they failed to take a stand for truth when under pressure. Doctrinally they took the right side, but politically in their associations they took the wrong side. This shows that any of us can fall into this trap if we are not careful – and we may need others to point this out to us.
ISN’T IT UNLOVING TO FIGHT HERESY?
What of the argument that it is unloving to fight heresy? If we truly love someone, will we not fight to defend their reputation and stop someone else telling lies about them? So when someone teaches falsely about God – such as trying redefine the nature of God - then if we truly love God will we not fight for the truth about him. People who use this argument show they love men more than God. But do they even love men with the right type of love? When we allow false teachers to tell people the wrong way to get to heaven, is not the result people going to hell? Is that loving to the deceived people? If we really love homosexuals, will we stand by idly while false teachers tell them they can continue to sin and go to heaven? Many Post-modern heretical teaches portray a God so different from that of the Bible (for example that in the popular novel ‘The Shack’, that one has to ask whether they worship the same God or an idol of their own carving?
WHAT ABOUT FREE SPEECH?
As for the free speech argument, this is not an absolute. Speech is not totally free anywhere or society would degenerate into chaos. Those who publish lies about other people get sued for defamation. Those who advertise falsely get taken to the Advertising Standards Authority. In the case of God, liars have some freedom in civil society because the state is not competent to judge what is true about God. But a biblical church is competent to judge truth about God and must do so. Those who teach heresy need to be thrown out of the church or marginalised into false churches, but don’t go to jail.
THE BATTLE FOR TRUTH IN CHURCH HISTORY
In the fourth century AD, there was a debate on the issue of whether Jesus was in fact God. False teachers called Arians argued he was not God (similar to today’s Jehovah’s Witnesses). The Council of Nicaea declared that Jesus was God, drew up a nice statement of faith http://www.creeds.net/ancient/nicene.htm and all thought the battle was over. But it wasn’t. The battle raged on for another hundred years led by a man named Athanasius of Alexandria. He wasn’t satisfied just to win on paper. He wanted the Arians pushed out of the church. Most Christian leaders saw him as a troublemaker. So did the Roman emperors, who saw him as someone causing division and disturbing the peace. His opponents brought numerous slanderous allegations against Athanasius. Many attempts were made to arrest and kill him, he was brought trial on various occasions and he was forced into banishment or hiding five times for a total of seventeen years. The Roman emperors decreed that all Christian bishops must excommunicate Athanasius or face banishment themselves. Tragically almost all did so. Even the bishop of Rome, Liberius was banished for two years and then caved in to pressure to disassociate with Athanasius. So, excommunicated by almost every Christian leader in the known world, alone and in hiding, being hunted by the imperial army – moving from cave to cave in the Egyptian desert – with his friends and supporters being tortured to try to get them reveal his location - Athanasius wrote a book ‘On the incarnation’, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/athanasius/incarnation.html . It won the debate and Arians were pushed out of the church. It is a classic and still regarded by many as the best book ever written on the subject.
In the Nineteenth, century when theological liberalism first made its appearance in Britain, its most outspoken opponent was Charles Spurgeon – pastor, evangelist, the founder of the first mega-church and an ongoing favourite source of quotations for sermons. But most who quote him, don’t know Spurgeon’s passion to defend the gospel against liberalism – how he sacrificed his friends, his popularity and his membership of the Baptist Union in Britain to fight it. Faced with the problem of liberalism, the Baptist Union drew up a new Statement of faith to affirm its evangelical commitment. Although he agreed with the statement, he realised that it left too much ‘wriggle room’ for liberals to interpret it in such a way that they could also sign it – and wanted a statement that would exclude the liberals. Most didn’t see or understand his objections and he was defeated in a vote of 2000 to 7 at the Baptist Union General Assembly. Moderate Baptists said he had just become a grumpy old man and his actions were a result of his illness of gout. But Spurgeon was right, and the liberal wolves stayed in the Baptist Union and continued to spread their false teaching – sending it into spiritual decline. (The best book on this is ‘Forgotten Spurgeon by Iain H Murray).
In the 1920’s and 30’s when liberalism reached America, the man who stood most strongly against it was Gresham Machen, a professor of theology at Princeton Seminary. At the time, Bible believers in the Presbyterian church were in the majority against the liberals, but sadly most of them were ‘moderates’ who sided politically with the liberals. Together, moderates and liberals signed the Auburn Affirmation promoting tolerance of liberal views. Upset by Machen’s divisive preaching against liberalism, when they heard Machen was to be promoted, the denominational authorities stepped to take over Princeton Seminary. In response, Machen founded Westminster Seminary, which continues the godly orthodox Biblical tradition that Princeton previously had. Machen, upset that church mission funds were being used to spread liberalism instead of the gospel, founded an Independent mission board to fund only true gospel based missions. At this, Machen and his supporters were brought to trial and expelled from the mainline Presbyterian Church in the USA. Many of those who expelled them were moderate Bible believers who simply thought that liberals should be tolerated as equals. Machen then founded the breakaway Orthodox Presbyterian Church. (The best book on Gresham Machen and his battle with liberalism is by Ned Stonehouse). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gresham_Machen
Mainline Presbyterianism continued to backslide into greater and greater error, while Westminster Seminary continued to produce a good crop of orthodox and influential Christian leaders. Just about every influential Christian leader promoting a Christian worldview in America is either a product of that seminary or has been influenced greatly by someone who is a graduate of that seminary. Students include Francis Schaeffer (worldviews), Gary North (economics), Wayne Mack (counselling). Lecturers include Cornelius van Til and Tim Keller. Those influenced by Schaeffer include Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Chuck Colson, Randall Terry, C. Everett Koop, Cal Thomas, and Tim and Beverly LaHaye; and scholars Os Guinness, Thomas Morris, Clark Pinnock, and Ronald Wells. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1997/march3/7t322a.html
Both Spurgeon and Machen died in their 50s mostly attributed to the extreme stress of the battles they fought against liberalism. Most couldn’t see the point of their fight, but their influence is lasting.
By the time liberalism had reached the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970s, it had morphed into a different form called Neo-Orthodoxy. But again the same categories arose. ‘Liberals’ questioned the truth of scripture; ‘Moderates’ thought scripture was true, but we should allow people to teach otherwise and ‘Conservatives’ who thought the truth of scripture was worth fighting for. Two conservative leaders, Paige Patterson, a small Bible College professor and Paul Pressler, a lawyer fought first to appoint a conservative leader of the Southern Baptist Convention and then to appoint biblical conservatives to lead the seminaries that trained the ministers. While they faced much opposition and abuse from liberals and moderates who tried to stop them, the result was, with the Lord’s help, a return of the denomination to a belief in the reliability of the Bible. Unlike the most of the American mainline denominations which continued to decline, the Southern Baptist Convention has continued to grow and send missionaries around the world. (The best book on this battle is ‘A hill to die on’ by Paul Pressler.
A summary can be downloaded at: http://www.paigepatterson.info/documents/anatomy_of_a_reformation.pdf
FROM HISTORY TO TODAY
In all these four major controversies of church history, the main battle was not between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ but between ‘moderates’ and ‘conservatives’. It was between Bible believers who wished to tolerate wolves and those who did not. Such conflict between true believers is much more painful than conflict between those who are Bible believers and those who are false. But unfortunately, when those who truly believe the Bible decide to defend wolves and attack true shepherds who fight wolves, then they cause such division. The division can’t be blamed on the conservatives who fight to defend the truth of the gospel.
The apostle John says “2JN 1:10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him. 2JN 1:11 Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work”. Thus according to the Bible, helping ungodly teachers is sharing in their work, which is wicked. That includes allowing them pulpit time or magazine space or broadcast air time.
Jesus rebuked the church at Thyatira for allowing the false teacher Jezebel REV 2:20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.
Today, in the Western world, our main problem is false Postmodern teachers who promote acceptance of homosexuality and other sexual compromises, who question truths such as eternal punishment, the fact that Jesus died in our place, and the virgin birth of Christ. We cannot give them space. If we truly love God, we must speak up against lies about God and protect the flock from wolves. We must silence those who teach falsely on matters that put peoples eternal salvation at risk, even if as with Athanasius of Alexandria (4th Century), Charles Spurgeon (19th Century), Gresham Machen (early 20th Century Presbyterian battle), Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler (late 20th century Baptist battle) before us, we are slandered, threatened and suffer for our stand.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
What things are disputable, and what must we fight for?
What things are disputable, and what must we fight for?
Postmodernists posing as Evangelical Christians have tried to open a debate on whether a Christian can be a homosexual. Some postmodernists advocate that a Christian can practice homosexuality. Some postmodernists such as Brian McLaren argue the church should, at least for the present, be silent on the issue. Other postmodernists don't believe a Christian can practice homosexuality, but argue that those who believe a Christian can practice homosexuality should be allowed to teach this. In other words, postmodernists in the church would like to shift the issue from the status of a 'serious heresy' to to be fought and silenced to a 'disputable issue', where we should be tolerant of others opinions in church. How tolerant should we be of such teaching? Dr Kevin Roy, pastor of Muldersdrift Union Church and former Principal of the Cape Town Baptist Seminary helps answer the question in the following article:
Philip Rosenthal
--------------------------------------------------------------------
What things are disputable, and what must we fight for?
By Dr Kevin Roy (First published in Baptists Today, Issue 4 2008)
The apostle Paul was a very liberal man in the area of legitimate differences between Christians. Whether to eat meat or not, whether one day is more holy than others, or not, his counsel was not to judge one another on such ‘disputable matters’, but rather respect one another. His own policy was to be a Jew to the Jews, a Greek to the Greeks, indeed, all things to all men, in order to win as many as possible. And he bent over backwards in order to promote peace and unity in the church, allowing a generous difference of opinion on secondary issues between believers. And we can follow his example in many areas today. Most of us have definite views about baptism, church government, the rapture, the millennium, election, predestination, tongues, prophecy – and that’s a short list – but we would not assign to hell those who differ from us. At least, I hope not. We recognize that many eminent servants of Christ who have been greatly blessed by God have differed on all these issues.
But Paul was fiercely inflexible when it came to the purity of the gospel and matters that affect our salvation. These are life and death issues, and must be fought for strenuously. To those who were seducing the Galatians from the gospel of grace and drawing them back into works religion he pronounced, “Let him be accursed.” And to emphasize his seriousness, he repeated, “If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.” Knowing that without genuine repentance there can be no salvation; Paul took an equally strict and inflexible view of moral issues. “No immoral, impure or greedy person – such a man is an idolater – has any inheritance in the kingdom of God. Let no-one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes upon those who are disobedient.” To the Corinthians Paul spelled out explicitly those breaches of the moral law that would exclude a person from the kingdom of God: sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, homosexual practice, theft, greed, drunkenness, reviling, and swindling. Concerning these things there could be no toleration or debate. Those things that lead a person to eternal destruction are literally life and death issues. We must fight for people’s salvation and guard them against being deceived by plausible perversions of the truth.
Paul was not alone, of course, in this matter. All the apostles said the same thing. “No murderer has eternal life in him,” warned the apostle John. “The cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practise magic arts, the idolaters and all liars – their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulphur,” he declared. Peter spoke of the destruction awaiting false prophets and false teachers who secretly introduce destructive heresies, and those who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority. The pattern in all the apostolic teaching is the same. Those teachings that lead a person away from the gospel of truth and into moral transgressions that bring destruction and condemnation must be resisted with all our might. People’s lives and eternal destiny depend on it.
It is clear from the above that all moral transgression is serious. But there is one sin that is warned against with almost monotonous regularity – sexual immorality. Perhaps because this is an area of special weakness for so many of us, and one in which we can be so easily deceived. Sexual sins condemned by God are clearly identified: fornication (sex outside the marriage bond), adultery (sex across the marriage line), homosexual acts (same gender sex), incest (sex with a close relation) and bestiality (sex with animals). In short, sex is the precious and sacred gift of God to be enjoyed within the marriage bond of a man and a woman. So sacred is this gift that the same word (know) is used for sex and the believer’s relationship with God.
For more than 3000 years there has been consensus in the above understanding of what constitutes sexual immorality. Today, that consensus is under serious attack, especially in the area of homosexual relations. It is argued that Scripture does not condemn homosexual relations if they are loving, monogamous (?) and lifelong. Only abusive homosexual relations, such as rape, pederasty and prostitution are condemned. Considerable ingenuity is used to reinterpret key biblical texts. Lev 18:22, “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable,” is discounted on the grounds there are other OT texts forbidding clothes made of different materials, certain foods, planting different crops in one field and so on. This ignores the most basic rule of Bible interpretation, namely, that Christian believers under the New Covenant distinguish between moral laws, which are eternal and reaffirmed in the NT, and ceremonial and civil laws which apply only to the Old Covenant. Furthermore, Lev 18 does not only forbid same sex relations. It also condemns incest, adultery, child sacrifice, bestiality and concludes with the words, “do not follow any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you came and do not defile yourselves with them. I am the Lord your God.” Those who claim that Lev 18:22 is no more applicable today must logically argue the same for the rest of that chapter. (Please read Lev 18 for yourself.)
I mentioned that the moral law is expressly reaffirmed in the NT. This is certainly the case with the prohibition of same sex relations. In his opening chapter to the Romans Paul shows the universal sinfulness of human beings. Though they know God through creation, they turn aside to idolatry and folly. In judgement, God gives them over to shameful lusts. “Even their women exchanged the natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men.” It is claimed that ‘loving homosexual relations’ are not in view here, but what Paul had in mind was pederasty (sex with young boys). But Paul does not mention boys. He writes of men committing indecent acts with men. Similar ingenuity is used to claim that 1 Cor 6:9 does not have ‘loving, committed’ same sex relations in mind. But the word arsenokoitai comes from two words, arsen (male) and koite (lie) meaning ‘one who lies with a male.’ The allusion to Lev 18:22 is unavoidable. It is same sex relations that are here condemned, without any exceptions.
There can be no doubt that when the NT writers referred to sexual immorality they had a number of practices in mind, including same sex relationships. There is not even a hint, anywhere in the Bible, of a certain kind of homosexual relationship acceptable to God. Generations of Christian scholars and leaders would have been astonished at the very idea – the early church fathers, the Reformers of the 16th century, the 18th century Evangelical leaders. In fact, there is something rather arrogant in the idea that the whole church has got this one completely wrong for 2000 years. Only now, thanks to certain modern liberal scholars, do we know the truth.
Does this mean we must be nasty and hateful to homosexual offenders? On the contrary, we must love them sincerely and passionately. We must love them enough to warn them in the spirit of Ezek 33 “Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel. So you will hear a message from my mouth and give them warning from me. When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you shall surely die,’ and you do not warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked man will die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require from your hand. But if you, on your part, warn a wicked man to turn from his way and he does not turn from his way, he will die in his iniquity, but you have delivered your life.” The apostle Paul could say, “I am free from the blood of all men,” because he had declared to them the whole counsel of God. Let us love our homosexual neighbours in the most sincere way possible and warn them not to be deceived into the way of death, but to turn into the way of life by genuine repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Postmodernists posing as Evangelical Christians have tried to open a debate on whether a Christian can be a homosexual. Some postmodernists advocate that a Christian can practice homosexuality. Some postmodernists such as Brian McLaren argue the church should, at least for the present, be silent on the issue. Other postmodernists don't believe a Christian can practice homosexuality, but argue that those who believe a Christian can practice homosexuality should be allowed to teach this. In other words, postmodernists in the church would like to shift the issue from the status of a 'serious heresy' to to be fought and silenced to a 'disputable issue', where we should be tolerant of others opinions in church. How tolerant should we be of such teaching? Dr Kevin Roy, pastor of Muldersdrift Union Church and former Principal of the Cape Town Baptist Seminary helps answer the question in the following article:
Philip Rosenthal
--------------------------------------------------------------------
What things are disputable, and what must we fight for?
By Dr Kevin Roy (First published in Baptists Today, Issue 4 2008)
The apostle Paul was a very liberal man in the area of legitimate differences between Christians. Whether to eat meat or not, whether one day is more holy than others, or not, his counsel was not to judge one another on such ‘disputable matters’, but rather respect one another. His own policy was to be a Jew to the Jews, a Greek to the Greeks, indeed, all things to all men, in order to win as many as possible. And he bent over backwards in order to promote peace and unity in the church, allowing a generous difference of opinion on secondary issues between believers. And we can follow his example in many areas today. Most of us have definite views about baptism, church government, the rapture, the millennium, election, predestination, tongues, prophecy – and that’s a short list – but we would not assign to hell those who differ from us. At least, I hope not. We recognize that many eminent servants of Christ who have been greatly blessed by God have differed on all these issues.
But Paul was fiercely inflexible when it came to the purity of the gospel and matters that affect our salvation. These are life and death issues, and must be fought for strenuously. To those who were seducing the Galatians from the gospel of grace and drawing them back into works religion he pronounced, “Let him be accursed.” And to emphasize his seriousness, he repeated, “If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.” Knowing that without genuine repentance there can be no salvation; Paul took an equally strict and inflexible view of moral issues. “No immoral, impure or greedy person – such a man is an idolater – has any inheritance in the kingdom of God. Let no-one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes upon those who are disobedient.” To the Corinthians Paul spelled out explicitly those breaches of the moral law that would exclude a person from the kingdom of God: sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, homosexual practice, theft, greed, drunkenness, reviling, and swindling. Concerning these things there could be no toleration or debate. Those things that lead a person to eternal destruction are literally life and death issues. We must fight for people’s salvation and guard them against being deceived by plausible perversions of the truth.
Paul was not alone, of course, in this matter. All the apostles said the same thing. “No murderer has eternal life in him,” warned the apostle John. “The cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practise magic arts, the idolaters and all liars – their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulphur,” he declared. Peter spoke of the destruction awaiting false prophets and false teachers who secretly introduce destructive heresies, and those who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority. The pattern in all the apostolic teaching is the same. Those teachings that lead a person away from the gospel of truth and into moral transgressions that bring destruction and condemnation must be resisted with all our might. People’s lives and eternal destiny depend on it.
It is clear from the above that all moral transgression is serious. But there is one sin that is warned against with almost monotonous regularity – sexual immorality. Perhaps because this is an area of special weakness for so many of us, and one in which we can be so easily deceived. Sexual sins condemned by God are clearly identified: fornication (sex outside the marriage bond), adultery (sex across the marriage line), homosexual acts (same gender sex), incest (sex with a close relation) and bestiality (sex with animals). In short, sex is the precious and sacred gift of God to be enjoyed within the marriage bond of a man and a woman. So sacred is this gift that the same word (know) is used for sex and the believer’s relationship with God.
For more than 3000 years there has been consensus in the above understanding of what constitutes sexual immorality. Today, that consensus is under serious attack, especially in the area of homosexual relations. It is argued that Scripture does not condemn homosexual relations if they are loving, monogamous (?) and lifelong. Only abusive homosexual relations, such as rape, pederasty and prostitution are condemned. Considerable ingenuity is used to reinterpret key biblical texts. Lev 18:22, “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable,” is discounted on the grounds there are other OT texts forbidding clothes made of different materials, certain foods, planting different crops in one field and so on. This ignores the most basic rule of Bible interpretation, namely, that Christian believers under the New Covenant distinguish between moral laws, which are eternal and reaffirmed in the NT, and ceremonial and civil laws which apply only to the Old Covenant. Furthermore, Lev 18 does not only forbid same sex relations. It also condemns incest, adultery, child sacrifice, bestiality and concludes with the words, “do not follow any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you came and do not defile yourselves with them. I am the Lord your God.” Those who claim that Lev 18:22 is no more applicable today must logically argue the same for the rest of that chapter. (Please read Lev 18 for yourself.)
I mentioned that the moral law is expressly reaffirmed in the NT. This is certainly the case with the prohibition of same sex relations. In his opening chapter to the Romans Paul shows the universal sinfulness of human beings. Though they know God through creation, they turn aside to idolatry and folly. In judgement, God gives them over to shameful lusts. “Even their women exchanged the natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men.” It is claimed that ‘loving homosexual relations’ are not in view here, but what Paul had in mind was pederasty (sex with young boys). But Paul does not mention boys. He writes of men committing indecent acts with men. Similar ingenuity is used to claim that 1 Cor 6:9 does not have ‘loving, committed’ same sex relations in mind. But the word arsenokoitai comes from two words, arsen (male) and koite (lie) meaning ‘one who lies with a male.’ The allusion to Lev 18:22 is unavoidable. It is same sex relations that are here condemned, without any exceptions.
There can be no doubt that when the NT writers referred to sexual immorality they had a number of practices in mind, including same sex relationships. There is not even a hint, anywhere in the Bible, of a certain kind of homosexual relationship acceptable to God. Generations of Christian scholars and leaders would have been astonished at the very idea – the early church fathers, the Reformers of the 16th century, the 18th century Evangelical leaders. In fact, there is something rather arrogant in the idea that the whole church has got this one completely wrong for 2000 years. Only now, thanks to certain modern liberal scholars, do we know the truth.
Does this mean we must be nasty and hateful to homosexual offenders? On the contrary, we must love them sincerely and passionately. We must love them enough to warn them in the spirit of Ezek 33 “Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel. So you will hear a message from my mouth and give them warning from me. When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you shall surely die,’ and you do not warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked man will die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require from your hand. But if you, on your part, warn a wicked man to turn from his way and he does not turn from his way, he will die in his iniquity, but you have delivered your life.” The apostle Paul could say, “I am free from the blood of all men,” because he had declared to them the whole counsel of God. Let us love our homosexual neighbours in the most sincere way possible and warn them not to be deceived into the way of death, but to turn into the way of life by genuine repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Friday, March 26, 2010
IS THE BIBLE ‘LOST IN TRANSLATION’?
26 March 2010
IS THE BIBLE ‘LOST IN TRANSLATION’?
We recently celebrated the victory of the pro-moral lobby in stopping the proposed DSTV porn channel. Indeed we should praise God for this. But there is a much bigger threat to sexual morality in South Africa which is behind our backs – the loss of faith in the Word of God on morality (especially sexuality). And that attack is coming from professing Christian leaders.
In our grandparents and parent’s generation, the question was whether the Bible is true. In our generation, the big debate is whether its meaning is clear. Two groups seemed to have sadly allied themselves in this attack on the clarity of scripture: Elitists and Postmodernists. Many evangelicals have incorporated Statements of Faith on the Truth of Scripture, but these defences are like the Maginot line, the line of earthen forts France constructed after the First World War to defend against another attack. They were broken in a day by panzer tanks. Most evangelical organisations stand defenceless against this new attack. And even Statements of Faith will not be enough alone because, these two groups will then question their clarity of meaning.
ELITISTS argue that ordinary people cannot be sure what the Bible means when they read it, so they need senior church authorities to interpret its meaning for them. And because ordinary people cannot interpret it for themselves, then they cannot hold church authorities accountable because those authorities decide what is right and wrong. Thus the senior authorities can never be wrong unless they admit being so themselves.
POSTMODERNISTS argue that since our culture is so different to the culture when the Bible was written and all words have embedded cultural meaning, then we cannot be sure that the meaning we give to the words are the same as the meaning the writer gave to the words. It is ‘lost in translation’. At best we are guessing. And if we are not sure what the Bible means, then we have no right to enforce our guesses on everyone else.
So these two groups look very different, but are natural allies - and they are not limited to any particular denomination. Included in the ‘ELITISTS’, are many of the most senior and visible public figures in Christianity in South Africa – including many who speak up publicly for morality. They would be unlikely to express their elitist and authoritarian views in public, but if anyone tries to challenge double standards in their ministries, that how they respond. And so for example, if one pushes them to expose and publicly rebuke a church sex sandal on the basis of 1 Timothy 5:20 (“Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning.”), then such Elitists will ask who decides what this scripture means. To everyone else the meaning is obvious. Rebuke means Rebuke. Public means public. But to these Elitists, they are the only ones who can decide what it means. On this basis they can then avoid answering what it means and thus avoid obeying it. And they will then rather deal with the scandal quietly behind closed doors instead. Does this matter? Yes it does, and it matters even more than Porn on Television, because when sin is protected among senior leadership, their ungodly behaviour is contagious and spreads through the church. People copy what they do more than what they say. And the Holy Spirit, offended by such compromise, withdraws as he did in the days of Eli (1 Samuel 3). As another example, ELITISTS may give a public appearance of loyalty to scripture, but behind the scenes try to protect false teaching. And if any ordinary church member tries to challenge them, they get the same answer: None of your business – its confidential. Theological debates are for senior leaders only. Shut up and go away.
Most POSTMODERNISTS are younger and without senior positions in any organisational structure. Although few know it, their beliefs derive much from the linguistic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. For example, when asked on their views on homosexuality, many will look at the obvious prohibitions (e.g. Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26-27), then they will try and argue that there were cultural issues involved that are no longer relevant. For example, they will argue the real sin problem at Sodom and Gomorrah was not homosexuality, but lack of hospitality. Or they will argue that the Bible is not condemning all homosexuality but only homosexual abuse of minors. Now any ordinary Christian can just open their Bible, read the text and understand plainly what it means, but Postmodernists use intellectual cultural and linguistic gymnastics to try to distort this plain meaning. Others, less radical will still hold a view against homosexuality, but they anchor their belief in our modern Christian culture rather than the scripture. So then if the majority of Christian culture was to follow the radical postmodernists, these people would then follow behind them. They cannot defend truth from the Bible, because their minds are in a confused postmodern fog. Other more moderate postmodernists, will say that they believe the Bible says it is wrong but for the sake of ‘tolerance’ (a principal postmodern virtue), we should allow these people to preach and publish their false teaching alongside truth in Church and Christian publications. Thus they deny the duty Christ gives to good spiritual shepherds to protect the flock from wolves who lead people astray (John 10; Titus 1:9). Postmodernists will also tell us Christians cannot tell non-Christians to repent of their sexual sin, because that would be imposing our culture on them (contrary to Ezekiel 3:18).
Why are these two groups natural allies? Because if one takes the Post-modern assumption that the meaning of scripture is unclear on matters necessary for salvation and the Christian life, then how does one impose order in the Church? Will one not end up with chaos? Won’t it be like allowing people to choose whether to drive on the left hand side of the road or the right? Won’t we get lots of crashes and conflict? The only alternative is that order is imposed arbitrarily from an elite. And there is a church Elite which likes to do that job.
Further if we have an Elite which likes power and doesn’t want to be accountable to anyone below them, then how do they escape accountability to scripture quoted by ordinary members? Answer: By denying the obvious meaning of scripture. And how do they justify that? By borrowing the convenient postmodern argument that scripture is unclear.
Okay, so how do Orthodox Bible believing Christians defend our position on the Clarity of Scripture? Are there not many things that Bible believing theologians don’t agree on. Yes. That is true. The Bible doesn’t make all truths equally clear. Many truths in the Bible are for example veiled behind metaphors (Deuteronomy 29:29; Romans 11:33) and there are minor differences in meaning in individual texts between different Bible translations.
1. The things that are critically important to our moral life and salvation God has stated plainly and repeatedly in many different places in scripture. Furthermore, all of scripture fits together into an interlocking logical whole. Thus even if some translator was to misunderstand the meaning of the original language or culture in one verse, for the issues which are critically important, there are many other verses which will tell us the same thing.
2. Jesus has given the Holy Spirit to help ordinary believers who read the Bible with the intent to obey it, the supernatural help to understand it. He has not offered that to intellectuals who enjoy theological debates, but don’t want to obey it (Matthew 11:25; John 16:13).
3. The Law of Moses, the book of Deuteronomy follows the format of an ancient constitution imposed by a conquering King on a vassal king. In the ancient world, such treaties were always translated and the conquering King expected the vassal people to obey it even though they were reading a translation in a different language. Likewise, God knew the Bible would be translated into many languages and across many cultures. This is why for example the poetry of the Psalms sounds beautiful in every language. Postmodernists should not be allowed to hide behind the ‘lost in translation’ argument.
The Reformers put the Clarity of Scripture in this way in the Westminster Confession of Faith “VII. All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.”
http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/
I argue that the attack on the clear meaning of scripture by ELITISTS and POSTMODERNISTS in the church is a bigger threat to sexual morality than is the spread of pornography on the internet and television. Against these evils, we have the powerful Word of God to fight back, but if we the church accept the devil’s lie that the meaning of scripture is unclear on basic issues of the Christian life, like sexual behaviour, then the devil has disarmed us. He has taken away our sword. We have no weapon to fight back. He will tempt us to try fight with some other worldly weapon like trying to make the Christian faith popular and acceptable. But these worldly weapons are useless toys in spiritual warfare. This was the mistake made by liberal and moderate moralists in the 1920s and 30s. They went on various crusades to clean up society by organising church unity pronouncements on various issues – for example supporting the prohibition on alcohol. They may have done a bit of good, but they lost the battle on scripture – and once this battle was lost, the church itself became corrupt, backslid with the culture and ceased to be salt and light in society. But the Bible is not ‘Lost in translation’ across different cultures and languages.
The Word of God is true and it’s meaning on issues of salvation and morality is clear across cultures and languages. And it is on the basis of this true and clear Word of God that we must spiritually protect ourselves and fearlessly call all men to repentance from sin and holiness of life.
IS THE BIBLE ‘LOST IN TRANSLATION’?
We recently celebrated the victory of the pro-moral lobby in stopping the proposed DSTV porn channel. Indeed we should praise God for this. But there is a much bigger threat to sexual morality in South Africa which is behind our backs – the loss of faith in the Word of God on morality (especially sexuality). And that attack is coming from professing Christian leaders.
In our grandparents and parent’s generation, the question was whether the Bible is true. In our generation, the big debate is whether its meaning is clear. Two groups seemed to have sadly allied themselves in this attack on the clarity of scripture: Elitists and Postmodernists. Many evangelicals have incorporated Statements of Faith on the Truth of Scripture, but these defences are like the Maginot line, the line of earthen forts France constructed after the First World War to defend against another attack. They were broken in a day by panzer tanks. Most evangelical organisations stand defenceless against this new attack. And even Statements of Faith will not be enough alone because, these two groups will then question their clarity of meaning.
ELITISTS argue that ordinary people cannot be sure what the Bible means when they read it, so they need senior church authorities to interpret its meaning for them. And because ordinary people cannot interpret it for themselves, then they cannot hold church authorities accountable because those authorities decide what is right and wrong. Thus the senior authorities can never be wrong unless they admit being so themselves.
POSTMODERNISTS argue that since our culture is so different to the culture when the Bible was written and all words have embedded cultural meaning, then we cannot be sure that the meaning we give to the words are the same as the meaning the writer gave to the words. It is ‘lost in translation’. At best we are guessing. And if we are not sure what the Bible means, then we have no right to enforce our guesses on everyone else.
So these two groups look very different, but are natural allies - and they are not limited to any particular denomination. Included in the ‘ELITISTS’, are many of the most senior and visible public figures in Christianity in South Africa – including many who speak up publicly for morality. They would be unlikely to express their elitist and authoritarian views in public, but if anyone tries to challenge double standards in their ministries, that how they respond. And so for example, if one pushes them to expose and publicly rebuke a church sex sandal on the basis of 1 Timothy 5:20 (“Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning.”), then such Elitists will ask who decides what this scripture means. To everyone else the meaning is obvious. Rebuke means Rebuke. Public means public. But to these Elitists, they are the only ones who can decide what it means. On this basis they can then avoid answering what it means and thus avoid obeying it. And they will then rather deal with the scandal quietly behind closed doors instead. Does this matter? Yes it does, and it matters even more than Porn on Television, because when sin is protected among senior leadership, their ungodly behaviour is contagious and spreads through the church. People copy what they do more than what they say. And the Holy Spirit, offended by such compromise, withdraws as he did in the days of Eli (1 Samuel 3). As another example, ELITISTS may give a public appearance of loyalty to scripture, but behind the scenes try to protect false teaching. And if any ordinary church member tries to challenge them, they get the same answer: None of your business – its confidential. Theological debates are for senior leaders only. Shut up and go away.
Most POSTMODERNISTS are younger and without senior positions in any organisational structure. Although few know it, their beliefs derive much from the linguistic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. For example, when asked on their views on homosexuality, many will look at the obvious prohibitions (e.g. Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26-27), then they will try and argue that there were cultural issues involved that are no longer relevant. For example, they will argue the real sin problem at Sodom and Gomorrah was not homosexuality, but lack of hospitality. Or they will argue that the Bible is not condemning all homosexuality but only homosexual abuse of minors. Now any ordinary Christian can just open their Bible, read the text and understand plainly what it means, but Postmodernists use intellectual cultural and linguistic gymnastics to try to distort this plain meaning. Others, less radical will still hold a view against homosexuality, but they anchor their belief in our modern Christian culture rather than the scripture. So then if the majority of Christian culture was to follow the radical postmodernists, these people would then follow behind them. They cannot defend truth from the Bible, because their minds are in a confused postmodern fog. Other more moderate postmodernists, will say that they believe the Bible says it is wrong but for the sake of ‘tolerance’ (a principal postmodern virtue), we should allow these people to preach and publish their false teaching alongside truth in Church and Christian publications. Thus they deny the duty Christ gives to good spiritual shepherds to protect the flock from wolves who lead people astray (John 10; Titus 1:9). Postmodernists will also tell us Christians cannot tell non-Christians to repent of their sexual sin, because that would be imposing our culture on them (contrary to Ezekiel 3:18).
Why are these two groups natural allies? Because if one takes the Post-modern assumption that the meaning of scripture is unclear on matters necessary for salvation and the Christian life, then how does one impose order in the Church? Will one not end up with chaos? Won’t it be like allowing people to choose whether to drive on the left hand side of the road or the right? Won’t we get lots of crashes and conflict? The only alternative is that order is imposed arbitrarily from an elite. And there is a church Elite which likes to do that job.
Further if we have an Elite which likes power and doesn’t want to be accountable to anyone below them, then how do they escape accountability to scripture quoted by ordinary members? Answer: By denying the obvious meaning of scripture. And how do they justify that? By borrowing the convenient postmodern argument that scripture is unclear.
Okay, so how do Orthodox Bible believing Christians defend our position on the Clarity of Scripture? Are there not many things that Bible believing theologians don’t agree on. Yes. That is true. The Bible doesn’t make all truths equally clear. Many truths in the Bible are for example veiled behind metaphors (Deuteronomy 29:29; Romans 11:33) and there are minor differences in meaning in individual texts between different Bible translations.
1. The things that are critically important to our moral life and salvation God has stated plainly and repeatedly in many different places in scripture. Furthermore, all of scripture fits together into an interlocking logical whole. Thus even if some translator was to misunderstand the meaning of the original language or culture in one verse, for the issues which are critically important, there are many other verses which will tell us the same thing.
2. Jesus has given the Holy Spirit to help ordinary believers who read the Bible with the intent to obey it, the supernatural help to understand it. He has not offered that to intellectuals who enjoy theological debates, but don’t want to obey it (Matthew 11:25; John 16:13).
3. The Law of Moses, the book of Deuteronomy follows the format of an ancient constitution imposed by a conquering King on a vassal king. In the ancient world, such treaties were always translated and the conquering King expected the vassal people to obey it even though they were reading a translation in a different language. Likewise, God knew the Bible would be translated into many languages and across many cultures. This is why for example the poetry of the Psalms sounds beautiful in every language. Postmodernists should not be allowed to hide behind the ‘lost in translation’ argument.
The Reformers put the Clarity of Scripture in this way in the Westminster Confession of Faith “VII. All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.”
http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/
I argue that the attack on the clear meaning of scripture by ELITISTS and POSTMODERNISTS in the church is a bigger threat to sexual morality than is the spread of pornography on the internet and television. Against these evils, we have the powerful Word of God to fight back, but if we the church accept the devil’s lie that the meaning of scripture is unclear on basic issues of the Christian life, like sexual behaviour, then the devil has disarmed us. He has taken away our sword. We have no weapon to fight back. He will tempt us to try fight with some other worldly weapon like trying to make the Christian faith popular and acceptable. But these worldly weapons are useless toys in spiritual warfare. This was the mistake made by liberal and moderate moralists in the 1920s and 30s. They went on various crusades to clean up society by organising church unity pronouncements on various issues – for example supporting the prohibition on alcohol. They may have done a bit of good, but they lost the battle on scripture – and once this battle was lost, the church itself became corrupt, backslid with the culture and ceased to be salt and light in society. But the Bible is not ‘Lost in translation’ across different cultures and languages.
The Word of God is true and it’s meaning on issues of salvation and morality is clear across cultures and languages. And it is on the basis of this true and clear Word of God that we must spiritually protect ourselves and fearlessly call all men to repentance from sin and holiness of life.
Friday, February 19, 2010
ARE YOU DOING YOUR PART IN THE CULTURE WAR?
ARE YOU DOING YOUR PART IN THE CULTURE WAR?
Most Christians think of our responsibility primarily as our personal relationship with God, our close relatives and our involvement in the local church. While these things are important, we have to consider our responsibility to the rest of society. Why? Firstly because, God is sovereign over all of life including the arts, media, government, education, business and healthcare. Secondly, because our lives, families and church can’t be isolated from these – either we influence them with Biblical virtues and truth or they influence us with worldly values and false beliefs.
Whether your children and grandchildren will grow up Christian depends not just on what you say, but also on what they hear at school and what they see on television. Whether we like it or not, we are in the middle of an ideological culture war in every institution in our society. If we ignore the war, we will just be blown around by the winds of popular culture – and might end up even helping the enemy without realising it.
The dominant ideology in the Western world right now is ‘Postmodernism’ – a belief that there is no absolute truth, therefore feelings and relationships are important, while truth and righteousness is not. In black Africa, animism is a powerful influence. In North Africa and the Middle East, Islam is dominant – and while seeks to spread south into Africa and North into Europe. The news media tends to only cover conflict where there is open bloodshed, but the major war is happening in peoples minds and what become socially acceptable in our culture. Wherever we lose the war, those cultural norms become enshrined in civil law and Christians will either have to compromise or suffer persecution. Evangelism will be curtailed, the Bible will be marginalised out of schools and replaced with ‘sex sin education’, we won’t be able to go anywhere without seeing public pornography on billboards or magazine covers. Certain professions, such as nursing will become impossible for Christians to practice, because of the requirement to assist with abortions. Some may say this sounds alarmist, but it is already the case in some Postmodern countries and the pressure of such persecution and anti-Christian influence has already advanced a long way in South Africa. To resist persecution, we therefore have no choice but to fight to defend our freedoms and for godly Christian influence. This influence is not however just a benefit to us Christians, but to the whole of society.
The culture war would be simple, if it was just the church versus the world, but it is much more complex. On the positive side, opinion polls in South Africa show the vast majority of all citizens supporting Christian rather than postmodern values. (See for example: http://www.hsrc.ac.za/HSRC_Review_Article-83.phtml ). On the negative side, many more educated South African Christians have been tragically influenced by postmodernism and while they may have personal faith in Christ, their thinking and actions actually help the wrong side. They have been deceived and their minds taken captive by unbiblical ideas.
In every generation, there is pressure for the believing community to accommodate worldly culture. In Old Testament times, the pressure was to accommodate idolatry and child sacrifice. In the ancient world and renaissance, the pressure was to accommodate the ideas of popular Greek philosophers. In African culture, it is to accommodate ancestor worship and superstitions. In Europe, Liberal Modernism, the idea of making Christianity more ‘scientific’ and denying the miraculous began in Germany in the 1850s. In two generations, it gutted and emptied the churches in that country and left a vacuum that allowed the rise of Nazi ideology in its place. The Western allies, who were mostly of Christian worldview at the time, won the military battle, but they lost the theological and ideological battle. Liberal Modernism spread from Germany first across the rest of Europe, then to England and then to America. Wherever liberalism went, churches thought they were advancing because they got the approval of popular culture, but in the next generation the churches emptied. Most of the old Protestant denominations went liberal and Biblical Christians were forced to form new denominations. But as the culture kept changing, liberalism like a computer virus had to keep changing to keep up with the times. As belief in ‘science’ as a solution to all the worlds problems waned, popular culture went on to new ideas like ‘political correctness’ and postmodernism. So the liberal theologians kept changing their message to keep up with the culture. The latest version, accommodating postmodernism calls itself ‘the emerging church’. The result of it, will however be the same as the old liberalism: compromised, but popular Christianity, which ceases to be salt and light in the world or convert unbelievers to Christ.
Cultural and ideological movements tend to follow a geographic pattern of spreading from Europe, to Britain, to America and then to South Africa and then north up Africa. They also tend to follow an academic pathway within the English speaking world of starting with top intellectuals at places like Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Princeton and then spreading from there to the top universities in other countries (e.g. Cape Town and Witwatersrand in South Africa) and then to the rest of the universities. They then spread from top academic works to more popular books, then on to film and finally to television. It also sadly tends to flow from these pagan universities into Christian theological faculties at the same universities, from where it flows to lesser universities theology departments, then to other Bible Colleges and from there if we don’t stop it to the pulpit of your local church.
Is this just an academic bloodless war? No. The loss of Biblical Christian influence, resulting in a loss of value for human life in Europe, led to its most bloody century in history with the First and Second world wars plus the carnage of Communism. Almost a million innocent babies murdered already in South Africa as a result of postmodern ideology in our government and hospitals. We have successfully fought off attempts to move to legalise euthanasia of the sick – but if we don’t fight hard – for how long. The war for the mind comes first – then if we lose real bloodshed follows.
How is the South African church doing in this culture war? Sadly not well. Most of the older denominations ministering to the middle class population have already been over-run by postmodern liberalism. They are in death phase. Many even tolerate homosexuals in the pulpit. People stay because of family loyalty but they win few new converts because few ministers still preach the true Gospel of Christ – and so they are likely to continue to shrink to insignificance. Some publicly supported legal abortion. The South African Council of Churches, acting without a mandate, supported the legalisation of Same-Sex Marriage, but few protested against this. Another kind of cultural liberalism is undermining the newer Charismatic churches – not one of liberal theology, but of tolerating ungodly behaviour in leadership, which is not disciplined and then gets copied in the pews. Sadly, the vast majority of Christians and local churches operate as if there was no culture war underway – they simply don’t fight – and that is why we are losing.
Many Christians say that they won’t do evil themselves, but neither will they speak up against the evil in the society around them. This strategy is a losing one. We are social beings. We don’t live in isolation. We are influenced and we influence. In the Old Testament the Israelites were commanded to drive out the pagan Canaanites (Joshua 23:12-13). When they failed to do so, they were corrupted by them and fell into idolatry. In the New Covenant, we don’t fight people, but we do fight ideas (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). The same will be true of us if we make peace with the pagan culture around us - we either fight it or are corrupted by it. We are in a war whether we like it or not and we must fight or lose the war.
Another question is whether we can actually win? Or are we just doomed to fail and accept defeat? We can draw hope from history, where many times Christians have repented of their backsliding and moved onto the offensive of social reform, such as the Evangelical Awakening in Britain led by men like John Wesley and William Wilberforce outlawed slavery. We can see how tiny Christian minorities with faith in God, like the new born Salvation Army led the fight to outlaw prostitution in Britain in the 1890s and then spread their campaign to win even as an even tinier minority in Japan! We can be encouraged by the victory of conservative evangelicals against liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention in American. Yes we can win!
A common question is why do we keep worrying about homosexuals, when they are such a minority? Surely there are more common and equally evil sins to worry about? The answer is because in the culture war, our most militant and well organised opponents of Christian virtues are the homosexual activist lobby. Such people are a tiny minority and even among homosexuals, the activists are an even tinier minority, but these people make up for their lack of numbers through good organisation, leadership and networking with other non-homosexuals and virulent hostility in the culture war against Christian values, for example in HIV-AIDS education, the law courts, political parties and attempts to infiltrate the church. Adulterers by comparison do not organise themselves and actively attack Christianity and family values or initiate lawsuits against Christians in this way. Homosexual lobby groups actions tend to influence the rest of heterosexual society, for example in the promotion of condoms rather than purity as a solution to HIV AIDS and in countries where marriage has been redefined to include same-sex marriage, heterosexual marriage has dropped as well. It is the area where there is the greatest cultural pressure to accept sin.
What can you do to help win this culture war? Firstly, think about how to protect yourself and your family and your church from evil in the surrounding culture. Think about how the worldly ideologies on television or at school may be influencing you and your family. Secondly, learn about the ideologies which are competing so that you can give a good defence. Thirdly, think about how your actions at work, church or in everyday interaction with people impact on the rest of society. Fourthly, pray for God to show you opportunities where you can make a difference.
Most Christians think of our responsibility primarily as our personal relationship with God, our close relatives and our involvement in the local church. While these things are important, we have to consider our responsibility to the rest of society. Why? Firstly because, God is sovereign over all of life including the arts, media, government, education, business and healthcare. Secondly, because our lives, families and church can’t be isolated from these – either we influence them with Biblical virtues and truth or they influence us with worldly values and false beliefs.
Whether your children and grandchildren will grow up Christian depends not just on what you say, but also on what they hear at school and what they see on television. Whether we like it or not, we are in the middle of an ideological culture war in every institution in our society. If we ignore the war, we will just be blown around by the winds of popular culture – and might end up even helping the enemy without realising it.
The dominant ideology in the Western world right now is ‘Postmodernism’ – a belief that there is no absolute truth, therefore feelings and relationships are important, while truth and righteousness is not. In black Africa, animism is a powerful influence. In North Africa and the Middle East, Islam is dominant – and while seeks to spread south into Africa and North into Europe. The news media tends to only cover conflict where there is open bloodshed, but the major war is happening in peoples minds and what become socially acceptable in our culture. Wherever we lose the war, those cultural norms become enshrined in civil law and Christians will either have to compromise or suffer persecution. Evangelism will be curtailed, the Bible will be marginalised out of schools and replaced with ‘sex sin education’, we won’t be able to go anywhere without seeing public pornography on billboards or magazine covers. Certain professions, such as nursing will become impossible for Christians to practice, because of the requirement to assist with abortions. Some may say this sounds alarmist, but it is already the case in some Postmodern countries and the pressure of such persecution and anti-Christian influence has already advanced a long way in South Africa. To resist persecution, we therefore have no choice but to fight to defend our freedoms and for godly Christian influence. This influence is not however just a benefit to us Christians, but to the whole of society.
The culture war would be simple, if it was just the church versus the world, but it is much more complex. On the positive side, opinion polls in South Africa show the vast majority of all citizens supporting Christian rather than postmodern values. (See for example: http://www.hsrc.ac.za/HSRC_Review_Article-83.phtml ). On the negative side, many more educated South African Christians have been tragically influenced by postmodernism and while they may have personal faith in Christ, their thinking and actions actually help the wrong side. They have been deceived and their minds taken captive by unbiblical ideas.
In every generation, there is pressure for the believing community to accommodate worldly culture. In Old Testament times, the pressure was to accommodate idolatry and child sacrifice. In the ancient world and renaissance, the pressure was to accommodate the ideas of popular Greek philosophers. In African culture, it is to accommodate ancestor worship and superstitions. In Europe, Liberal Modernism, the idea of making Christianity more ‘scientific’ and denying the miraculous began in Germany in the 1850s. In two generations, it gutted and emptied the churches in that country and left a vacuum that allowed the rise of Nazi ideology in its place. The Western allies, who were mostly of Christian worldview at the time, won the military battle, but they lost the theological and ideological battle. Liberal Modernism spread from Germany first across the rest of Europe, then to England and then to America. Wherever liberalism went, churches thought they were advancing because they got the approval of popular culture, but in the next generation the churches emptied. Most of the old Protestant denominations went liberal and Biblical Christians were forced to form new denominations. But as the culture kept changing, liberalism like a computer virus had to keep changing to keep up with the times. As belief in ‘science’ as a solution to all the worlds problems waned, popular culture went on to new ideas like ‘political correctness’ and postmodernism. So the liberal theologians kept changing their message to keep up with the culture. The latest version, accommodating postmodernism calls itself ‘the emerging church’. The result of it, will however be the same as the old liberalism: compromised, but popular Christianity, which ceases to be salt and light in the world or convert unbelievers to Christ.
Cultural and ideological movements tend to follow a geographic pattern of spreading from Europe, to Britain, to America and then to South Africa and then north up Africa. They also tend to follow an academic pathway within the English speaking world of starting with top intellectuals at places like Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Princeton and then spreading from there to the top universities in other countries (e.g. Cape Town and Witwatersrand in South Africa) and then to the rest of the universities. They then spread from top academic works to more popular books, then on to film and finally to television. It also sadly tends to flow from these pagan universities into Christian theological faculties at the same universities, from where it flows to lesser universities theology departments, then to other Bible Colleges and from there if we don’t stop it to the pulpit of your local church.
Is this just an academic bloodless war? No. The loss of Biblical Christian influence, resulting in a loss of value for human life in Europe, led to its most bloody century in history with the First and Second world wars plus the carnage of Communism. Almost a million innocent babies murdered already in South Africa as a result of postmodern ideology in our government and hospitals. We have successfully fought off attempts to move to legalise euthanasia of the sick – but if we don’t fight hard – for how long. The war for the mind comes first – then if we lose real bloodshed follows.
How is the South African church doing in this culture war? Sadly not well. Most of the older denominations ministering to the middle class population have already been over-run by postmodern liberalism. They are in death phase. Many even tolerate homosexuals in the pulpit. People stay because of family loyalty but they win few new converts because few ministers still preach the true Gospel of Christ – and so they are likely to continue to shrink to insignificance. Some publicly supported legal abortion. The South African Council of Churches, acting without a mandate, supported the legalisation of Same-Sex Marriage, but few protested against this. Another kind of cultural liberalism is undermining the newer Charismatic churches – not one of liberal theology, but of tolerating ungodly behaviour in leadership, which is not disciplined and then gets copied in the pews. Sadly, the vast majority of Christians and local churches operate as if there was no culture war underway – they simply don’t fight – and that is why we are losing.
Many Christians say that they won’t do evil themselves, but neither will they speak up against the evil in the society around them. This strategy is a losing one. We are social beings. We don’t live in isolation. We are influenced and we influence. In the Old Testament the Israelites were commanded to drive out the pagan Canaanites (Joshua 23:12-13). When they failed to do so, they were corrupted by them and fell into idolatry. In the New Covenant, we don’t fight people, but we do fight ideas (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). The same will be true of us if we make peace with the pagan culture around us - we either fight it or are corrupted by it. We are in a war whether we like it or not and we must fight or lose the war.
Another question is whether we can actually win? Or are we just doomed to fail and accept defeat? We can draw hope from history, where many times Christians have repented of their backsliding and moved onto the offensive of social reform, such as the Evangelical Awakening in Britain led by men like John Wesley and William Wilberforce outlawed slavery. We can see how tiny Christian minorities with faith in God, like the new born Salvation Army led the fight to outlaw prostitution in Britain in the 1890s and then spread their campaign to win even as an even tinier minority in Japan! We can be encouraged by the victory of conservative evangelicals against liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention in American. Yes we can win!
A common question is why do we keep worrying about homosexuals, when they are such a minority? Surely there are more common and equally evil sins to worry about? The answer is because in the culture war, our most militant and well organised opponents of Christian virtues are the homosexual activist lobby. Such people are a tiny minority and even among homosexuals, the activists are an even tinier minority, but these people make up for their lack of numbers through good organisation, leadership and networking with other non-homosexuals and virulent hostility in the culture war against Christian values, for example in HIV-AIDS education, the law courts, political parties and attempts to infiltrate the church. Adulterers by comparison do not organise themselves and actively attack Christianity and family values or initiate lawsuits against Christians in this way. Homosexual lobby groups actions tend to influence the rest of heterosexual society, for example in the promotion of condoms rather than purity as a solution to HIV AIDS and in countries where marriage has been redefined to include same-sex marriage, heterosexual marriage has dropped as well. It is the area where there is the greatest cultural pressure to accept sin.
What can you do to help win this culture war? Firstly, think about how to protect yourself and your family and your church from evil in the surrounding culture. Think about how the worldly ideologies on television or at school may be influencing you and your family. Secondly, learn about the ideologies which are competing so that you can give a good defence. Thirdly, think about how your actions at work, church or in everyday interaction with people impact on the rest of society. Fourthly, pray for God to show you opportunities where you can make a difference.
Friday, October 2, 2009
DOES POSTMODERNISM DELIVER BETTER RELATIONSHIPS?
DOES POSTMODERNISM DELIVER BETTER RELATIONSHIPS?
The main selling point of Postmodernism is the promise of better relationships through ‘tolerance’ and sensitivity to feelings together with the argument that worldviews based on absolute truth lead to conflict. Biblical Christianity is put in the same box as the Taliban. Postmodern or Emergent Christianity, which downplays doctrine and focuses on feelings and relationships is cool in this new culture. You are welcome to believe whatever you like so long as you don’t insist it is absolutely true and expect others to follow the same belief or practice. This new spirit of ‘tolerance’ it is hoped will stop religious wars internationally and conflict within the church. The promise appeals to a growing generation of broken, angry and hurting youth, whose parents no longer share the same house. Western individualism and mobility between cities and continents has created a crisis of loneliness. The pain enters our churches. While Christianity is maligned in the media for being ‘intolerant’, we can be accepted if we just adapt to the new culture and downplay those parts of the Bible which offend it. Is this the answer? To realise their dream, however, Postmodernists in and outside the church need to silence those nuisance Christians who think truth and righteousness also matter. “We will not tolerate intolerance” they say.
Firstly, is Postmodern teaching on relationships Biblical? Well open the Bible randomly on any page and you will likely find something on relationships. So this must be biblical then? But is what the Bible teaches about relationships the same as what Postmodernism is teaching about relationships? No. While the Bible does teach a lot on relationships, what it says has only a small area of overlap with Postmodernism – mostly the two ideologies contradict each other. The Bible does not hope to resolve relational problems by downplaying truth and righteousness, while emphasising relationship and feelings, but rather by keeping these two sides integrated and in balance.
Secondly, is it working practically? In the past two decades, Postmodernism has become the dominant ideology of the Western world. Are relationships getting better as a result? No. Statistics show increasing family breakdown. Are relationships getting better in those countries which were the first and most radical in adopting Postmodern ideology e.g. the Netherlands and Scandinavia? No. These cutting edge Postmodern countries show the number of people getting married dropping by about 2% per year. They are becoming nations of fragmented individuals in disposable relationships. Homosexuality is increasing. Children born out of wedlock are becoming the norm. Has Postmodern influence in the church helped heal relationships? Sadly, sociological statistical studies by the Barna group show divorce rates in the church higher than those in the world. The statistics are partly skewed because more Christians are getting married. This alone should warn us the ideology is not working. Did the older traditional Biblical Christianity held to for most of the last two thousand years have this problem of mass marriage failure inside the church? No. But Postmodernism’s lie of the promise of better relationships through ‘tolerance’ and blaming of Biblical Christianity as ‘harsh narrow minded insensitive intolerant bigotry’ repeated often enough - eventually gets believed.
THE BIBLICAL ALTERNATIVE
How then does Biblical teaching differ from Postmodernism and what is it’s alternative solution? The Bible has so much to say on relationship that one can only touch on a few key points of difference here. We all live in a matrix of multiple issues and multiple relationships – with conflicts between them and we have to make choices on what to do and say. Where there are conflicts for our loyalty and effort, how do we decide what issues and relationships to prioritise? How do we decide what to fight about and what to just tolerate?
Firstly, the Bible, unlike Postmodernism gives a hierarchy of importance for our loyalty and responsibility in relationships. First comes God, then other men (Matthew 22:37-40; Luke 14:24). Out of relationships with other men, first comes our spouse (with whom we are ‘one flesh’) (Ephesians 5:22-33), then our children, then our extended family (1 Timothy 5:4-8), then our church community (1 Timothy 5:16) and then the rest of the world. Postmodernism ignores this hierarchy. Mostly treats God as if he is there for our convenience and prioritises getting along smoothly with everyone rather than this hierarchy of important relationships. Thus if you try to persuade someone not to divorce, Postmodernists would see that as interference and harming relationship. A Postmodernist may rationalise that a married couple may be happier apart. Rather shut up and be tolerant they would say. Our first priority is our relationship with God, even if this might offend some other people. Thus Postmodernism really ends up in more fragmented families and a neglected relationship with God - its promise is false and does not deliver.
Secondly, in Biblical Christianity, unlike ‘Postmodern emergent Christianity’, our relationship with God is based on believing truth about God, rather than by inventing a mental image of God the way we would like him to be. God’s glory is revealed in the truth about him in the Bible. We worship him for his glorious attributes. The bestselling Postmodern book, ‘The Shack’ by William Young describes an imaginary encounter by the lead character with the three persons of the Trinity. Problem is that the God portrayed is not the God of scripture and many other misguided Christians seem to be claiming relationship with God, while their personal lives don’t match up to the holiness God requires (Hebrews 12:14) and their ideas about God don’t match scripture. If someone was to start telling lies about your wife or your best friend, would you not immediately want to correct them? How then can a person claim to love God, who will happily tolerate false teaching about God? Truth and love are not separable, but our love for God drives us to learn truth and to defend the truth about him. Postmodernist Christians however would argue that out of love for people, we should tolerate heresy. Speaking strongly against heresy is unloving they would say. But the Bible teaches we should prioritise love for God first. Thus this more relational Christianity tends to result in false relationship with God. It doesn’t deliver.
Thirdly, the Bible gives an absolute and clear standard of right and wrong by which we can judge truth. Thus when there are disagreements, and we both accept the authority of Bible we can try to study it together to try to settle our disagreements. The new Postmodern emergent Christianity argues that the meaning of the Bible is subjective and based on our personal biases and thus it is impossible to settle disputes this way. The result is that we must then just all live independently and ‘tolerate’ eachother (as Postmodernists prefer) or alternatively through organisational process. The problem however is that organisational processes are also impacted by Postmodernist belief. If truth doesn’t really matter, then why should any organisation follow their own constitution or Statement of Faith? And if everything is subjective, then how do we interpret the meaning of these? Every organisation has to have order or it falls apart. But what will that order be based on? Without an objective standard of right and wrong or of agreed procedure, the only way to impose order is through an elite. And that is what happens when the scripture and objective truth is sidelined. Nations and churches become governed by unaccountable elites. It is impossible in a conflict to keep good relations with everyone and so where there is no objective standard for truth and righteousness, elites will dominate and squash opposition. The Bible interpreted as clear and objective truth on the other hand give a basis on which any individual can argue, without leading to social chaos. National policy decisions are increasingly being made by unaccountable Postmodern judicial elites and less by democratic process. Likewise as ‘relational governance’ displaces objective standards in churches, elites take over regardless of the denomination. Such arbitrary elitist governance tends to benefit a few and hurt people. Thus the Postmodern promise of better relationships doesn’t deliver.
God’s moral boundaries are given for our good (Deuteronomy 10:13) and respecting them results in better relationships. His laws are not just there to help us to score religious points – they make practical common sense. Jesus encourages us to set further personal boundaries against things that cause us to sin (Matthew 5:29). Nevertheless, Postmodernists would tend to treat such boundaries as unimportant, with resulting damage to relationships. For example, the young man who exposes himself to sexual images in movies will likely struggle more with temptation to go too far in his dating relationships with the opposite sex. Compromising, however will damage a good relationship and undermine his future marriage relationship.
Fourthly, based on this truth, Biblical Christianity sees some relationships such as sexual relationships outside married as just plain evil. But muddled Postmodern Christians may for example argue that a homosexual couple are just so happy together – so how can we say that it is wrong? Superficially, they may seem happy – but probably over they longer term the result will be pain. And even if they did happen to be more happy, for us the authority is the Bible and not just social peace and happiness.
Fifthly, the Bible gives categories of standards of righteousness, some of which are absolute for all people and all time (.e.g. You shall not murder’); others which have some value but are not absolute (.e.g. observing of special days (Romans 14)). It also, however allows for an intermediate standard where church authorities may agree to make certain temporary rules applicable to that time and situation. For example, in Acts 15:29 the church prohibited eating food sacrificed to idols, while 1 Corinthians 8:1-7, categorises it as a debatable issue. Absolute issues we fight about, (e.g. sexual purity; the sanctity of human life) while debatable issues we need to make decisions depending on the context. Postmodernism would argue nothing is completely absolute and put everything in the category of either individual choice or a group cultural norm. Thus they would frown on Christians trying to stop non-Christians aborting babies or close down escort agencies. Such action is ‘insensitive to their feelings and creates a bad image for Christianity’ they would say. This view may lead to smoother relations between the Christian community and the secular media and institutionalised evil, but it hurts the relationships of parents with the babies they kill and families torn apart by the infidelity of prostitution. Thus the Postmodern promise of better relationships is a lie. It doesn’t deliver.
Sixthly, the Bible gives a description of due process to deal with and settle disputes for example in Matthew 18; Matthew 5 and 1 Timothy 5. Organisations also have their own procedures to settle disputes. But when ‘relationships and feelings’ are prioritised out of balance with truth, then procedure is only applied when it is convenient for those in power. Insisting on doing so is seen as legalistic. The result is that disputes are settled in an ad-hoc manner which usually gets very messy and painful. Not obeying scriptural procedure thus results in more relational pain. The Postmodern promise doesn’t deliver.
Seventh, the Bible gives us the expectation that if we are godly, we will suffer persecution including social ostracism and abuse (1 Peter 4:4; 2 Timothy 3:12). Nevertheless, Postmodern Christians want to be accepted by the world and the result is to avoid doing whatever the world disapproves of. So for example they avoid confronting people with the need to repent of their sins and receive Christ and speaking up against social sin in society – rather simply trying to ‘build relationships’ in the hope that someone somehow will decide that Christians are nice and they want to join them. Maybe this will lead to some superficial peace between the church and the world, but such an approach leads to very few if any conversions – and thus the masses live in unreconciled relationship with God – not knowing what to do to reconcile with God. Furthermore, sin in society, when not confronted grows and spreads, wreaking relational damage in the individuals and families it affects.
Eighth, we as Christians have a corporate as well as an individual relationship with God. In other words, God deals with us not just as individuals, but also judges and blesses us as nations (Romans 11) and churches (Revelation 2-3). As individuals we are affected by God’s corporate judgments and sin in our church and society will indirectly affect how God treats us. Thus we need to use our influence to persuade the group of which we are a part to obey God and live according to his standards. We have a corporate responsibility to ensure correct church discipline especially where there is scandalous leadership behaviour. We must speak up for righteousness lest we be judged ourselves as part of the group. Postmodernists, however baulk at the whole idea of God judging groups for their sins. How politically incorrect can you get? But it is Biblical. Where a group rebels against God, one of the common judgements is that God causes conflict within that group (Zechariah 8:10). Thus while Postmodernism may deliver temporary smooth relationships, God’s judgment on the sin of the group will ultimately do more harm to relationships.
CONCLUSION
Thus the Postmodern promise of better relationships is false and a lie. Hopefully, eventually society will wake up and realise this, just as after the Cold War they woke up to realise that the Communist promise of helping the poor was a lie. But until they do that, we as Christians need to confront and change this muddled thinking in the church and recover Biblical Christian thinking on relationships. We need to prioritise our relationships according to the Bible; base or relationship with God on the truth of the scriptures; use the absolute standards of right and wrong in the scriptures to settle disputes; reject evil unbiblical relationships; distinguish between categories of standards of right and wrong so we don’t fight about the wrong things; follow biblical due process to settle disputes; be prepared to suffer persecution for righteousness to help reconcile others with God and do our part to encourage holiness and corporate relationship with God. All of this is contrary to Postmodernist ethics. But it is the Biblical way of better relationships – and unlike Postmodernism it does deliver better relationships.
Yes, postmodern ‘tolerance’ and ‘sensitivity to feelings’ may result in temporary superficial smooth relationships, but overall it does more harm than good.
Since the promise better relationships is the main argument being used to push Postmodernism in the church and attack Biblical Christianity – we need to not just respond to the need for truth, but also warn other Christians how Postmodern thinking actually hurts rather than helps relationships.
The main selling point of Postmodernism is the promise of better relationships through ‘tolerance’ and sensitivity to feelings together with the argument that worldviews based on absolute truth lead to conflict. Biblical Christianity is put in the same box as the Taliban. Postmodern or Emergent Christianity, which downplays doctrine and focuses on feelings and relationships is cool in this new culture. You are welcome to believe whatever you like so long as you don’t insist it is absolutely true and expect others to follow the same belief or practice. This new spirit of ‘tolerance’ it is hoped will stop religious wars internationally and conflict within the church. The promise appeals to a growing generation of broken, angry and hurting youth, whose parents no longer share the same house. Western individualism and mobility between cities and continents has created a crisis of loneliness. The pain enters our churches. While Christianity is maligned in the media for being ‘intolerant’, we can be accepted if we just adapt to the new culture and downplay those parts of the Bible which offend it. Is this the answer? To realise their dream, however, Postmodernists in and outside the church need to silence those nuisance Christians who think truth and righteousness also matter. “We will not tolerate intolerance” they say.
Firstly, is Postmodern teaching on relationships Biblical? Well open the Bible randomly on any page and you will likely find something on relationships. So this must be biblical then? But is what the Bible teaches about relationships the same as what Postmodernism is teaching about relationships? No. While the Bible does teach a lot on relationships, what it says has only a small area of overlap with Postmodernism – mostly the two ideologies contradict each other. The Bible does not hope to resolve relational problems by downplaying truth and righteousness, while emphasising relationship and feelings, but rather by keeping these two sides integrated and in balance.
Secondly, is it working practically? In the past two decades, Postmodernism has become the dominant ideology of the Western world. Are relationships getting better as a result? No. Statistics show increasing family breakdown. Are relationships getting better in those countries which were the first and most radical in adopting Postmodern ideology e.g. the Netherlands and Scandinavia? No. These cutting edge Postmodern countries show the number of people getting married dropping by about 2% per year. They are becoming nations of fragmented individuals in disposable relationships. Homosexuality is increasing. Children born out of wedlock are becoming the norm. Has Postmodern influence in the church helped heal relationships? Sadly, sociological statistical studies by the Barna group show divorce rates in the church higher than those in the world. The statistics are partly skewed because more Christians are getting married. This alone should warn us the ideology is not working. Did the older traditional Biblical Christianity held to for most of the last two thousand years have this problem of mass marriage failure inside the church? No. But Postmodernism’s lie of the promise of better relationships through ‘tolerance’ and blaming of Biblical Christianity as ‘harsh narrow minded insensitive intolerant bigotry’ repeated often enough - eventually gets believed.
THE BIBLICAL ALTERNATIVE
How then does Biblical teaching differ from Postmodernism and what is it’s alternative solution? The Bible has so much to say on relationship that one can only touch on a few key points of difference here. We all live in a matrix of multiple issues and multiple relationships – with conflicts between them and we have to make choices on what to do and say. Where there are conflicts for our loyalty and effort, how do we decide what issues and relationships to prioritise? How do we decide what to fight about and what to just tolerate?
Firstly, the Bible, unlike Postmodernism gives a hierarchy of importance for our loyalty and responsibility in relationships. First comes God, then other men (Matthew 22:37-40; Luke 14:24). Out of relationships with other men, first comes our spouse (with whom we are ‘one flesh’) (Ephesians 5:22-33), then our children, then our extended family (1 Timothy 5:4-8), then our church community (1 Timothy 5:16) and then the rest of the world. Postmodernism ignores this hierarchy. Mostly treats God as if he is there for our convenience and prioritises getting along smoothly with everyone rather than this hierarchy of important relationships. Thus if you try to persuade someone not to divorce, Postmodernists would see that as interference and harming relationship. A Postmodernist may rationalise that a married couple may be happier apart. Rather shut up and be tolerant they would say. Our first priority is our relationship with God, even if this might offend some other people. Thus Postmodernism really ends up in more fragmented families and a neglected relationship with God - its promise is false and does not deliver.
Secondly, in Biblical Christianity, unlike ‘Postmodern emergent Christianity’, our relationship with God is based on believing truth about God, rather than by inventing a mental image of God the way we would like him to be. God’s glory is revealed in the truth about him in the Bible. We worship him for his glorious attributes. The bestselling Postmodern book, ‘The Shack’ by William Young describes an imaginary encounter by the lead character with the three persons of the Trinity. Problem is that the God portrayed is not the God of scripture and many other misguided Christians seem to be claiming relationship with God, while their personal lives don’t match up to the holiness God requires (Hebrews 12:14) and their ideas about God don’t match scripture. If someone was to start telling lies about your wife or your best friend, would you not immediately want to correct them? How then can a person claim to love God, who will happily tolerate false teaching about God? Truth and love are not separable, but our love for God drives us to learn truth and to defend the truth about him. Postmodernist Christians however would argue that out of love for people, we should tolerate heresy. Speaking strongly against heresy is unloving they would say. But the Bible teaches we should prioritise love for God first. Thus this more relational Christianity tends to result in false relationship with God. It doesn’t deliver.
Thirdly, the Bible gives an absolute and clear standard of right and wrong by which we can judge truth. Thus when there are disagreements, and we both accept the authority of Bible we can try to study it together to try to settle our disagreements. The new Postmodern emergent Christianity argues that the meaning of the Bible is subjective and based on our personal biases and thus it is impossible to settle disputes this way. The result is that we must then just all live independently and ‘tolerate’ eachother (as Postmodernists prefer) or alternatively through organisational process. The problem however is that organisational processes are also impacted by Postmodernist belief. If truth doesn’t really matter, then why should any organisation follow their own constitution or Statement of Faith? And if everything is subjective, then how do we interpret the meaning of these? Every organisation has to have order or it falls apart. But what will that order be based on? Without an objective standard of right and wrong or of agreed procedure, the only way to impose order is through an elite. And that is what happens when the scripture and objective truth is sidelined. Nations and churches become governed by unaccountable elites. It is impossible in a conflict to keep good relations with everyone and so where there is no objective standard for truth and righteousness, elites will dominate and squash opposition. The Bible interpreted as clear and objective truth on the other hand give a basis on which any individual can argue, without leading to social chaos. National policy decisions are increasingly being made by unaccountable Postmodern judicial elites and less by democratic process. Likewise as ‘relational governance’ displaces objective standards in churches, elites take over regardless of the denomination. Such arbitrary elitist governance tends to benefit a few and hurt people. Thus the Postmodern promise of better relationships doesn’t deliver.
God’s moral boundaries are given for our good (Deuteronomy 10:13) and respecting them results in better relationships. His laws are not just there to help us to score religious points – they make practical common sense. Jesus encourages us to set further personal boundaries against things that cause us to sin (Matthew 5:29). Nevertheless, Postmodernists would tend to treat such boundaries as unimportant, with resulting damage to relationships. For example, the young man who exposes himself to sexual images in movies will likely struggle more with temptation to go too far in his dating relationships with the opposite sex. Compromising, however will damage a good relationship and undermine his future marriage relationship.
Fourthly, based on this truth, Biblical Christianity sees some relationships such as sexual relationships outside married as just plain evil. But muddled Postmodern Christians may for example argue that a homosexual couple are just so happy together – so how can we say that it is wrong? Superficially, they may seem happy – but probably over they longer term the result will be pain. And even if they did happen to be more happy, for us the authority is the Bible and not just social peace and happiness.
Fifthly, the Bible gives categories of standards of righteousness, some of which are absolute for all people and all time (.e.g. You shall not murder’); others which have some value but are not absolute (.e.g. observing of special days (Romans 14)). It also, however allows for an intermediate standard where church authorities may agree to make certain temporary rules applicable to that time and situation. For example, in Acts 15:29 the church prohibited eating food sacrificed to idols, while 1 Corinthians 8:1-7, categorises it as a debatable issue. Absolute issues we fight about, (e.g. sexual purity; the sanctity of human life) while debatable issues we need to make decisions depending on the context. Postmodernism would argue nothing is completely absolute and put everything in the category of either individual choice or a group cultural norm. Thus they would frown on Christians trying to stop non-Christians aborting babies or close down escort agencies. Such action is ‘insensitive to their feelings and creates a bad image for Christianity’ they would say. This view may lead to smoother relations between the Christian community and the secular media and institutionalised evil, but it hurts the relationships of parents with the babies they kill and families torn apart by the infidelity of prostitution. Thus the Postmodern promise of better relationships is a lie. It doesn’t deliver.
Sixthly, the Bible gives a description of due process to deal with and settle disputes for example in Matthew 18; Matthew 5 and 1 Timothy 5. Organisations also have their own procedures to settle disputes. But when ‘relationships and feelings’ are prioritised out of balance with truth, then procedure is only applied when it is convenient for those in power. Insisting on doing so is seen as legalistic. The result is that disputes are settled in an ad-hoc manner which usually gets very messy and painful. Not obeying scriptural procedure thus results in more relational pain. The Postmodern promise doesn’t deliver.
Seventh, the Bible gives us the expectation that if we are godly, we will suffer persecution including social ostracism and abuse (1 Peter 4:4; 2 Timothy 3:12). Nevertheless, Postmodern Christians want to be accepted by the world and the result is to avoid doing whatever the world disapproves of. So for example they avoid confronting people with the need to repent of their sins and receive Christ and speaking up against social sin in society – rather simply trying to ‘build relationships’ in the hope that someone somehow will decide that Christians are nice and they want to join them. Maybe this will lead to some superficial peace between the church and the world, but such an approach leads to very few if any conversions – and thus the masses live in unreconciled relationship with God – not knowing what to do to reconcile with God. Furthermore, sin in society, when not confronted grows and spreads, wreaking relational damage in the individuals and families it affects.
Eighth, we as Christians have a corporate as well as an individual relationship with God. In other words, God deals with us not just as individuals, but also judges and blesses us as nations (Romans 11) and churches (Revelation 2-3). As individuals we are affected by God’s corporate judgments and sin in our church and society will indirectly affect how God treats us. Thus we need to use our influence to persuade the group of which we are a part to obey God and live according to his standards. We have a corporate responsibility to ensure correct church discipline especially where there is scandalous leadership behaviour. We must speak up for righteousness lest we be judged ourselves as part of the group. Postmodernists, however baulk at the whole idea of God judging groups for their sins. How politically incorrect can you get? But it is Biblical. Where a group rebels against God, one of the common judgements is that God causes conflict within that group (Zechariah 8:10). Thus while Postmodernism may deliver temporary smooth relationships, God’s judgment on the sin of the group will ultimately do more harm to relationships.
CONCLUSION
Thus the Postmodern promise of better relationships is false and a lie. Hopefully, eventually society will wake up and realise this, just as after the Cold War they woke up to realise that the Communist promise of helping the poor was a lie. But until they do that, we as Christians need to confront and change this muddled thinking in the church and recover Biblical Christian thinking on relationships. We need to prioritise our relationships according to the Bible; base or relationship with God on the truth of the scriptures; use the absolute standards of right and wrong in the scriptures to settle disputes; reject evil unbiblical relationships; distinguish between categories of standards of right and wrong so we don’t fight about the wrong things; follow biblical due process to settle disputes; be prepared to suffer persecution for righteousness to help reconcile others with God and do our part to encourage holiness and corporate relationship with God. All of this is contrary to Postmodernist ethics. But it is the Biblical way of better relationships – and unlike Postmodernism it does deliver better relationships.
Yes, postmodern ‘tolerance’ and ‘sensitivity to feelings’ may result in temporary superficial smooth relationships, but overall it does more harm than good.
Since the promise better relationships is the main argument being used to push Postmodernism in the church and attack Biblical Christianity – we need to not just respond to the need for truth, but also warn other Christians how Postmodern thinking actually hurts rather than helps relationships.
SHOULD WE USE COURT ROOM LANGUAGE? REVERSING THE EVANGELICAL MEGA-SHIFT
SHOULD WE USE COURT ROOM LANGUAGE? REVERSING THE EVANGELICAL MEGA-SHIFT
The way we evangelicals present the gospel has shifted radically in the last 30 years. Before the gospel presentation always included judicial/legal language such as: judgment, law, covenant, truth, justification, vindication, truth, evidence, forgiveness, redemption, confession, punishment, witnesses and testimony. Today, the language tends to be exclusively relational for example: love, reconciliation and becoming part of God’s family. One could summarise the shift from a ‘court room model’ to a ‘family living room model’. Is this good or bad? Well, surely, given the choice, most of use would prefer a ‘family living room’ to a ‘court room’. Why does this matter to the average Christian? Firstly, because it is affecting the way we present the message of salvation and secondly the way we engage with worldly society.
Which of the two models is Biblical? There is plenty of evidence for both in the Bible. The problem is the shift in emphasis – and in many cases the shift is so big that judicial language, which was formerly the main way of explaining the gospel is avoided as ‘politically incorrect’. What is unbiblical is the neglect of the court room model. Why am I, a Christian social activist writing on this subject? Because a new generation is growing up which has not grasped many of the basic building blocks of truth, essential to engage with sin in society. Such people have a hard time understanding why we should do anything that may offend non-Christians, such as picketing abortion clinics or sex shops.
Abandonment or neglect of the court room model is a feature of Postmodern/Emergent reinterpretation of Christianity, but the shift was underway long before Postmodernism became popular. The problem thus cannot be solved just by attacking Postmodernism. The court room model is also unpopular with many of those who focus on self-image & psychology, health and wealth, political correctness – some who believe the ‘court room model’ is not ‘seeker sensitive’. Our culture hates the judicial model. To get a hearing, we need to a certain extent to adapt our message to the culture of our times, but some things we cannot give up. Why?
Because the central message of the cross cannot be properly explained without the model of a court room. Without it, Jesus death and resurrection are a bit meaningless. We, the human race sinned and broke God’s law and deserved everlasting punishment in hell. Jesus, God’s perfect substitute, died in our place, which is why we qualify for God’s grace and mercy. On another level, both the Jewish and Gentile human government authorities condemned Jesus to death for his claim to be King/Messiah, but God’s higher court over-ruled this wrong judgement and vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead – thus proving his innocence. We who tell this truth that Jesus is alive and Lord are called ‘witnesses’ who ‘testify’ – both terms borrowed from the court room. So many people have died telling this truth that our English word ‘martyr’ is derived from the Greek word for ‘witness’. The way every human being on earth will be judged in eternity is all tied up with what they believe and confess in this one massive cosmic court case.
Apart from court room language, one can maybe talk about aspects of the cross such as Jesus reconciliation with us or Jesus good example of love for his enemies demonstrated from the cross for us to follow. Most preachers who neglect court room language do understand these truths. But will the next generation understand? And will they understand well enough to be willing to be ‘witnesses’ who will die for the truth? On a smaller scale to risk unpopularity and share the shame and disgrace of being a witness for Jesus in a generation that hates the truth? Will they have the courage to accuse our government and society of murder in their slaughter of the unborn innocents, as did the apostles when they accused the Roman and Jewish authorities of murdering Jesus (Acts 3:15; 5:28)? Are we going to preach God’s wrath against sin to a Postmodern generation that doesn’t understand the concept of sin? Will we pursue holiness as we treasure the price paid for us by Christ (1 Peter 1:18-19), or will we view grace instead as meaning that God doesn’t think sin is a big deal. Neglecting judicial language is going to affect our holiness, our courage, our view of Christ and God, our understanding of grace, our gospel presentation to unbelievers, our worldview, our social activism and our motivation to reach the lost. Please lets help restore judicial language to our teaching and gospel presentation.
The new mega-shifted evangelical gospel, hopes that its ‘kinder, gentler, more loving’ view of God will be more attractive and thus win more to Christ. It will improve the bad image that the worldly media has given Christianity. But will it really do so? Didn’t Jesus say the world would hate us (John 15:19) and praise false prophets (Luke 6:26). Such people struggle with a ‘self-image problem’ about Christianity. They have a ‘court room model’, but in their view, the world (or the secular media) or public opinion is the judge instead of God the ultimate judge. Which ‘court room’ will we worry about? Will we fear God and his judgement against unrepentant individuals in eternity in hell or on this earth against a society that rebels against God, by for example murdering unborn babies – or will we worry about trying to help Christianity win the media contest to become the most popular religion?
Is a ‘kinder, gentler’ mega-shifted gospel more compassionate to help hurting people? In some senses, maybe. Maybe in the short term some people will avoid getting annoyed by the truth. But sin still brings God’s judgement, whether hell for eternity or in society now. Fewer people may be offended by the message, but those same people will still be hurt by consequences of sin. And in any case, regardless of the results of each, the gospel is not meant to be pragmatic – we are called to proclaim truth (Ezekiel 3:17). In Old Testament times, the false prophets were also preaching ‘peace’ and neglecting the message of judgment on sin (Jeremiah 6:14).
We need a balance of gentleness and toughness and wisdom to know what is appropriate in what situation. God’s self revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai included his compassion and his judgment of sin (Exodus 34:6-7). His revelation on the cross included his wrath against sin by the punishment of crucifixion and his mercy to us in substituting Jesus in our place. The judicial court room model perfectly explains this paradox.
WHAT EVIDENCE DO WE HAVE FOR THIS MEGA-SHIFT?
A popular example of this mega-shifted unbalanced gospel presentation is found in the poem ‘The father’s Love Letter’. http://www.fathersloveletter.com/text.html . It seems orthodox, because it is made up almost entirely of paraphrased Bible verses and full of references. It sounds beautiful. What is wrong? Firstly, if you look up the scripture quotations and read them in context, you will see the paraphrases are often inaccurate and the context doesn’t match the message of the poem. If you read on in the references, you will also see references to God’s judgment – but not in the poem. The second problem is that the statements paraphrased in the poem are made in the Bible to believers, who have already received Christ and become children of God (and thus part of God’s family). But the poem blurs the distinction between believers and unbelievers, giving the impression the same statement apply to both. Most of the promises quoted from the Bible are conditional on receiving Jesus on the basis of his dying in our place as a substitute (the courtroom model). While the poem may give some comfort to believers, it may also give false comfort to those who have not repented of their sins.
WHY COURT ROOM LANGUAGE NEEDS TO COME BACK TO THE CENTRE OF THE THEOLOGICAL DEBATE
For those who want to study the history of the intellectual debate in more detail, the following links may be helpful:
In 1990, theologian Robert Brow published an article in Christianity Today, describing the Mega-Shift away from the ‘Court Room/judicial’ model http://www.brow.on.ca/Articles/Megashift.html towards the ‘family/relational model’. The article was phrased to sound a neutral description of a trend, but Brow showed by his other publications that he strongly supported this new trend. Soon other scholars responded for and against the new trend. Donald Carson, Michael Horton and David Wells strongly opposed it, and defended the historic court room model. John McArthur responded to the undermining of the atonement at http://www.ondoctrine.com/2mac0103.htm A surprise for many was when Clark Pinnock, a previous champion of conservative orthodoxy against liberalism came to Brow’s support. Robert Brow and Clark Pinnock worked together to develop their new theories further. Eventually, their theorizing led them to the conclusion that God doesn’t exhaustively know the future, but rather can only take a good guess at what is going to happen on the basis of the balance of probabilities. They called their new theory ‘Open theism’ and together they published a book ‘Unbounded Love’ available online at http://www.brow.on.ca/Books/ULove/ULIntro.htm . Pinnock was interviewed by Michael Horton about his shift in views in an opposing publication at http://www.modernreformation.org/default.php?page=issuedisplay&var1=IssRead&var2=26
Later writer, Philip Yancey promoted a similar view in a less intellectual, but more popular style.
The most heavyweight intellectuals in Evangelicalism have historically been Reformed/Calvinists, since this tradition tends to emphasise truth. These men focused their counter-attack on this undermining of the Sovereignty of God. Together they replied with a book ‘Beyond the bounds’ with John Piper as the main editor, and a list of respected other authors each contributing a chapter, which is also available online at http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/OnlineBooks/ByTitle/2397_Beyond_the_Bounds/
Piper et al, argued that Open Theism was heresy and that the boundaries of evangelicalism needed to be redrawn to exclude it. There was an attempt to remove Open Theists from the Evangelical Theological Society, but this failed. Piper, Carson and similar reformed thinkers later formed the ‘Gospel Coalition’, whose Statement of Faith specifically excluded Open Theism. In the book, Wayne Grudem argues that Open Theism is pastorally dangerous because a weak view of God undermines people’s faith.
A bunch of world-class Bible scholars have written a 400 page book – for sale in many Christian bookshops and available for free download. Robert Brow has died. So is the debate closed? Not at all. I argue the primary debate has been side-tracked. The trend away from ‘Courtroom language’ that Robert Brow was the first to spot and write about has become mainstream and now dominates most of Evangelicalism. Brow, Pinnock and their followers took their vision of a ‘kinder, gentler’ gospel to an extreme that ended up with a denial of God’s sovereign control and foreknowledge of the future. But millions of evangelicals have not gone to that extreme, but they do squirm and evade the Courtroom model and terminology in presenting the gospel – the place where Brow and Pinnock started. And so what is considered normal evangelicalism is very different to what it was 50 years ago.
I argue that the original debate of whether the gospel should be presented using the ‘Court room/judicial’ model needs to come back to the centre. It is an issue that faces every church. I argue both Court Room language and Family language are biblical, but that the Court Room/judicial model should be central because without it we cannot properly understand why Christ died for us on the cross. This understanding then impacts how we view just about everything else. The neglect of the Court Room model I believe explains much of the weakness and confusion in contemporary evangelicalism.
The way we evangelicals present the gospel has shifted radically in the last 30 years. Before the gospel presentation always included judicial/legal language such as: judgment, law, covenant, truth, justification, vindication, truth, evidence, forgiveness, redemption, confession, punishment, witnesses and testimony. Today, the language tends to be exclusively relational for example: love, reconciliation and becoming part of God’s family. One could summarise the shift from a ‘court room model’ to a ‘family living room model’. Is this good or bad? Well, surely, given the choice, most of use would prefer a ‘family living room’ to a ‘court room’. Why does this matter to the average Christian? Firstly, because it is affecting the way we present the message of salvation and secondly the way we engage with worldly society.
Which of the two models is Biblical? There is plenty of evidence for both in the Bible. The problem is the shift in emphasis – and in many cases the shift is so big that judicial language, which was formerly the main way of explaining the gospel is avoided as ‘politically incorrect’. What is unbiblical is the neglect of the court room model. Why am I, a Christian social activist writing on this subject? Because a new generation is growing up which has not grasped many of the basic building blocks of truth, essential to engage with sin in society. Such people have a hard time understanding why we should do anything that may offend non-Christians, such as picketing abortion clinics or sex shops.
Abandonment or neglect of the court room model is a feature of Postmodern/Emergent reinterpretation of Christianity, but the shift was underway long before Postmodernism became popular. The problem thus cannot be solved just by attacking Postmodernism. The court room model is also unpopular with many of those who focus on self-image & psychology, health and wealth, political correctness – some who believe the ‘court room model’ is not ‘seeker sensitive’. Our culture hates the judicial model. To get a hearing, we need to a certain extent to adapt our message to the culture of our times, but some things we cannot give up. Why?
Because the central message of the cross cannot be properly explained without the model of a court room. Without it, Jesus death and resurrection are a bit meaningless. We, the human race sinned and broke God’s law and deserved everlasting punishment in hell. Jesus, God’s perfect substitute, died in our place, which is why we qualify for God’s grace and mercy. On another level, both the Jewish and Gentile human government authorities condemned Jesus to death for his claim to be King/Messiah, but God’s higher court over-ruled this wrong judgement and vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead – thus proving his innocence. We who tell this truth that Jesus is alive and Lord are called ‘witnesses’ who ‘testify’ – both terms borrowed from the court room. So many people have died telling this truth that our English word ‘martyr’ is derived from the Greek word for ‘witness’. The way every human being on earth will be judged in eternity is all tied up with what they believe and confess in this one massive cosmic court case.
Apart from court room language, one can maybe talk about aspects of the cross such as Jesus reconciliation with us or Jesus good example of love for his enemies demonstrated from the cross for us to follow. Most preachers who neglect court room language do understand these truths. But will the next generation understand? And will they understand well enough to be willing to be ‘witnesses’ who will die for the truth? On a smaller scale to risk unpopularity and share the shame and disgrace of being a witness for Jesus in a generation that hates the truth? Will they have the courage to accuse our government and society of murder in their slaughter of the unborn innocents, as did the apostles when they accused the Roman and Jewish authorities of murdering Jesus (Acts 3:15; 5:28)? Are we going to preach God’s wrath against sin to a Postmodern generation that doesn’t understand the concept of sin? Will we pursue holiness as we treasure the price paid for us by Christ (1 Peter 1:18-19), or will we view grace instead as meaning that God doesn’t think sin is a big deal. Neglecting judicial language is going to affect our holiness, our courage, our view of Christ and God, our understanding of grace, our gospel presentation to unbelievers, our worldview, our social activism and our motivation to reach the lost. Please lets help restore judicial language to our teaching and gospel presentation.
The new mega-shifted evangelical gospel, hopes that its ‘kinder, gentler, more loving’ view of God will be more attractive and thus win more to Christ. It will improve the bad image that the worldly media has given Christianity. But will it really do so? Didn’t Jesus say the world would hate us (John 15:19) and praise false prophets (Luke 6:26). Such people struggle with a ‘self-image problem’ about Christianity. They have a ‘court room model’, but in their view, the world (or the secular media) or public opinion is the judge instead of God the ultimate judge. Which ‘court room’ will we worry about? Will we fear God and his judgement against unrepentant individuals in eternity in hell or on this earth against a society that rebels against God, by for example murdering unborn babies – or will we worry about trying to help Christianity win the media contest to become the most popular religion?
Is a ‘kinder, gentler’ mega-shifted gospel more compassionate to help hurting people? In some senses, maybe. Maybe in the short term some people will avoid getting annoyed by the truth. But sin still brings God’s judgement, whether hell for eternity or in society now. Fewer people may be offended by the message, but those same people will still be hurt by consequences of sin. And in any case, regardless of the results of each, the gospel is not meant to be pragmatic – we are called to proclaim truth (Ezekiel 3:17). In Old Testament times, the false prophets were also preaching ‘peace’ and neglecting the message of judgment on sin (Jeremiah 6:14).
We need a balance of gentleness and toughness and wisdom to know what is appropriate in what situation. God’s self revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai included his compassion and his judgment of sin (Exodus 34:6-7). His revelation on the cross included his wrath against sin by the punishment of crucifixion and his mercy to us in substituting Jesus in our place. The judicial court room model perfectly explains this paradox.
WHAT EVIDENCE DO WE HAVE FOR THIS MEGA-SHIFT?
A popular example of this mega-shifted unbalanced gospel presentation is found in the poem ‘The father’s Love Letter’. http://www.fathersloveletter.com/text.html . It seems orthodox, because it is made up almost entirely of paraphrased Bible verses and full of references. It sounds beautiful. What is wrong? Firstly, if you look up the scripture quotations and read them in context, you will see the paraphrases are often inaccurate and the context doesn’t match the message of the poem. If you read on in the references, you will also see references to God’s judgment – but not in the poem. The second problem is that the statements paraphrased in the poem are made in the Bible to believers, who have already received Christ and become children of God (and thus part of God’s family). But the poem blurs the distinction between believers and unbelievers, giving the impression the same statement apply to both. Most of the promises quoted from the Bible are conditional on receiving Jesus on the basis of his dying in our place as a substitute (the courtroom model). While the poem may give some comfort to believers, it may also give false comfort to those who have not repented of their sins.
WHY COURT ROOM LANGUAGE NEEDS TO COME BACK TO THE CENTRE OF THE THEOLOGICAL DEBATE
For those who want to study the history of the intellectual debate in more detail, the following links may be helpful:
In 1990, theologian Robert Brow published an article in Christianity Today, describing the Mega-Shift away from the ‘Court Room/judicial’ model http://www.brow.on.ca/Articles/Megashift.html towards the ‘family/relational model’. The article was phrased to sound a neutral description of a trend, but Brow showed by his other publications that he strongly supported this new trend. Soon other scholars responded for and against the new trend. Donald Carson, Michael Horton and David Wells strongly opposed it, and defended the historic court room model. John McArthur responded to the undermining of the atonement at http://www.ondoctrine.com/2mac0103.htm A surprise for many was when Clark Pinnock, a previous champion of conservative orthodoxy against liberalism came to Brow’s support. Robert Brow and Clark Pinnock worked together to develop their new theories further. Eventually, their theorizing led them to the conclusion that God doesn’t exhaustively know the future, but rather can only take a good guess at what is going to happen on the basis of the balance of probabilities. They called their new theory ‘Open theism’ and together they published a book ‘Unbounded Love’ available online at http://www.brow.on.ca/Books/ULove/ULIntro.htm . Pinnock was interviewed by Michael Horton about his shift in views in an opposing publication at http://www.modernreformation.org/default.php?page=issuedisplay&var1=IssRead&var2=26
Later writer, Philip Yancey promoted a similar view in a less intellectual, but more popular style.
The most heavyweight intellectuals in Evangelicalism have historically been Reformed/Calvinists, since this tradition tends to emphasise truth. These men focused their counter-attack on this undermining of the Sovereignty of God. Together they replied with a book ‘Beyond the bounds’ with John Piper as the main editor, and a list of respected other authors each contributing a chapter, which is also available online at http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/OnlineBooks/ByTitle/2397_Beyond_the_Bounds/
Piper et al, argued that Open Theism was heresy and that the boundaries of evangelicalism needed to be redrawn to exclude it. There was an attempt to remove Open Theists from the Evangelical Theological Society, but this failed. Piper, Carson and similar reformed thinkers later formed the ‘Gospel Coalition’, whose Statement of Faith specifically excluded Open Theism. In the book, Wayne Grudem argues that Open Theism is pastorally dangerous because a weak view of God undermines people’s faith.
A bunch of world-class Bible scholars have written a 400 page book – for sale in many Christian bookshops and available for free download. Robert Brow has died. So is the debate closed? Not at all. I argue the primary debate has been side-tracked. The trend away from ‘Courtroom language’ that Robert Brow was the first to spot and write about has become mainstream and now dominates most of Evangelicalism. Brow, Pinnock and their followers took their vision of a ‘kinder, gentler’ gospel to an extreme that ended up with a denial of God’s sovereign control and foreknowledge of the future. But millions of evangelicals have not gone to that extreme, but they do squirm and evade the Courtroom model and terminology in presenting the gospel – the place where Brow and Pinnock started. And so what is considered normal evangelicalism is very different to what it was 50 years ago.
I argue that the original debate of whether the gospel should be presented using the ‘Court room/judicial’ model needs to come back to the centre. It is an issue that faces every church. I argue both Court Room language and Family language are biblical, but that the Court Room/judicial model should be central because without it we cannot properly understand why Christ died for us on the cross. This understanding then impacts how we view just about everything else. The neglect of the Court Room model I believe explains much of the weakness and confusion in contemporary evangelicalism.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
SHOULD WE EVER JUDGE OR CONDEMN?
SHOULD WE EVER JUDGE OR CONDEMN?
Have you heard a someone quote “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” (Matthew 7:1) or “If any one of you is without sin, let him throw the first stone.” (John 8:7) to argue that we should not speak up against evils like abortion, pornography or homosexuality? Quoted out of context, these are the two favourite verses of those trying to change Christianity to fit in with Post-modernist culture. If you haven’t heard these quoted to advance Postmodernist ‘tolerance’ of evil, you will soon, and Biblical Christian leaders need to equip their followers to counter Post-modern interpretation of these verses.
WHAT DOES “DO NOT JUDGE, OR YOU TOO WILL BE JUDGED” MEAN?
Did Jesus mean these words as an absolute? Did he mean we should never ever judge or condemn anything or speak up against the sins of our society? How about reading a bit further in the same passage. Lets start with the Sermon on the Mount. In the same paragraph as the first quote we find another saying of Jesus: Mt 7:6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs.” Okay so now Jesus is calling some people ‘pigs’ and ‘dogs’ and he is calling other things ‘pearls’. So now how are we supposed to tell what are the pearls and who are the pigs? We are supposed to use our judgment. In other words, use our minds educated by the scriptures to judge. So now Jesus cannot be asking us never to judge, because otherwise Jesus would be contradicting himself. Both of these statements by Jesus are proverbs. Proverbs are pity sayings containing a lot of wisdom. They are not on their own and outside of the context of the rest of scripture meant to be absolute laws for all time and every situation. Apparently contradictory proverbs like these two are often put together to help people avoid interpreting the other wrongly. Together they complement each other in wisdom to help us avoid extremes. The Bible is full of instructions for us to judge one thing or another such as: the case of in Church discipline (1 Corinthians 6:1-5). Jesus commends the Ephesian church for discerning false apostles (Revelation 2:2); Peter challenges the Pharisees to ‘judge for yourself’ (Acts 4:19). Looking at Matthew 7:1 in context around it and with other similar verses in scripture (e.g. Romans 2:1) Jesus is attacking the attitude of moral superiority, hypocrisy and pettiness by some religious people based on judging those they consider religiously worse than them – and their failure to repent of their own sins by focusing on the sins of others. But we cannot use this verse outside the context of the rest of scripture to silence protests against evil as the Postmodernists would like us to.
DOES THE STORY OF THE WOMAN CAUGHT IN ADULTERY MEAN WE CAN’T CONDEMN SIN?
What about the quote “If any one of you is without sin, let him throw the first stone” (John 8:7)? If Matthew 7:1 is the favourite saying of the Postmoderns, probably John 8 is the favourite story of the Postmoderns. How do we respond? Firstly one should not derive absolutes out of stories. You find absolutes first in other places in the Bible and the stories should illustrate these. Secondly, we can’t extend ‘stoning’ as a metaphor meaning ‘speaking’ against evil. Thirdly, what is the context? The Jewish religious leaders catch a woman in adultery and take her to Jesus asking him if she should be stoned? Now like the time they asked him about whether he should pay taxes (Matthew 22:17), the Pharisees they are trying to trap Jesus into getting into trouble either with the religious Jews or the Roman authorities.
The point is that they are under Roman law, for which there is no capital offence for adultery and Jesus has no status as a civil magistrate. This is an illegal kangaroo court with no civil authority, into which certain Jewish fanatics are trying to involve Jesus. Only the Roman government had the right to execute a person (John 18:31). Jesus skilfully dodges their manipulative trap and teaches them a moral lesson at the same time. His response is similar when someone tries to get him to arbitrate an inheritance dispute (Luke 12:13). One could go into much more detail on the true meaning of this story, but the point here is that the Postmodernists completely misuse these scriptures to try to silence speaking up against evil.
SHOULD WE EVER CONDEMN?
On the same theme Postmoderns say that we should ‘not condemn’ to argue that we shouldn’t speak up against culturally accepted sins like fornication, pornography and homosexuality and abortion. Sounds a bit Biblical, but where exactly is that in the Bible? We could quote Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…”. In context that means that God does not condemn us when we are ‘in Christ’, namely we have been united with Christ in his death and resurrection as explained in Romans 6. But earlier in Romans, the aPostle Paul has just condemned a long list of sinful behaviours (Romans 1:18-32). And his condemnation of this list of sins (and a following list of religious sins in Romans 2) is the first thing he explains when he introduces the gospel in Romans 1:17, before he explains salvation from God’s wrath (Romans 3:23). So essentially, condemning sin and the consequent wrath of God is essential to bringing people to true salvation.
Most Postmoderns hardly have an idea what sin is, let alone the fact that God is angry with sin and will punish people forever in hell unless they repent. It is not loving to leave out this essential truth of the gospel. So reaching Postmoderns with the true gospel includes teaching them the essential concept of sin and God’s condemnation of it. Postmodern Christians argue we should leave out this nasty stuff and just concentrate on building relationships. There is a place for relationships in evangelism, but if the truth about sin and God’s wrath against it is never explained then it is not true evangelism. Most so-called Postmodern outreach is nothing but relationship building and trying to market a good image of Christianity. It might build some relationships and do some good public relations, but doesn’t save people from God’s wrath and eternity in hell.
What is the favourite verse of Evangelical Christians? Probably John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” But what does the next verse say? John 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” Okay so maybe are the Postmodernists right? Does this confirm we shouldn’t condemn? Lets read one more verse? John 3:18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. “ Ouch! Painful, politically incorrect stuff! How come John 3:18 isn’t quoted to non-Christians as much as John 3:16? Do we lack the guts to say it? Might it result in some anger and lead to some persecution? And maybe some more salvations too?
WHAT DID GREAT LEADERS OF THE PAST PREACH?
The great revival leaders of history, such as Charles Finney, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards regularly preached the Law and Wrath of God before they preached the Grace and Mercy of God – exactly as the apostle Paul does in the book of Romans. In fact, taking the Bible as a whole, God revealed the Law of Moses before he revealed grace in Christ. In Bible times and today, the righteous standards of God and his wrath against sin point to the redemption in Christ, which we cannot earn by our own efforts Gal 3:24 “So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith”. But simply because we cannot achieve salvation or righteousness through law does not mean we dispense with law and God’s wrath against sin altogether. Explaining the anger of God against sin is the context in which we explain the grace of God which saves us from this. Now today, many postmodern Christians make jokes about Jonathan Edward’s famous sermon ‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God’ http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/sinners.htm
and style him as some sort of fanatic. But the point is that Jonathan Edwards was a leader of the Great Awakening. Postmodern Christians have never had any revival or awakening anywhere in the world and never will because God doesn’t bless a false truncated distorted Postmodern gospel. The Postmodern gospel doesn’t condemn sin and so doesn’t convict of sin and doesn’t lead men to repentance.
WHAT DID THE APOSTLES PREACH IN ACTS?
What was the example of the apostles? Implicit in their arguing that Jesus was the Messiah was the allegation that the Jewish leaders had committed murder in executing Jesus and innocent man. That was why they were persecuted! Not just because they were some new Jewish sect. Peter repeatedly accuses those who killed Jesus: Acts 2:36 “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”; “Acts 3:15 You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. “This was not lost on the authorities Acts 5:28 “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.” Peter and the apostles did not preach a nice politically correct gospel and neither should we.
Condemning sin in society is also one of the ways we awake the social conscience to stop the murdering of unborn babies and the tearing apart of families as a result of sexual immorality. To fail to do so is not being ‘loving’ or ‘showing grace’. It is to abandon these victims to the forces of evil. Yes the apostles teaching was full of grace, but it was grace in the context of condemning sin. The two are not mutually exclusive. Grace without explaining God’s anger against sin is meaningless. The Cross of Christ perfectly unites the two concepts, in displaying both how much God hates sin what he suffered in our place and how much God loves sinners in being willing to give his son in our place. Preaching the cross includes condemning sin.
WHY MUST WE WARN PEOPLE AGAINST SIN?
Ezekiel 3:18 says “When I say to a wicked man, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood.” God isn’t neutral in the matter. It is not optional for us to speak up against serious social evil. We must not be discouraged by the Postmodern political correctors who seek to silence the Christian voice against evil in society. We must continue to speak up for truth and righteousness and correct those Postmoderns who are trying to change the gospel and remove the bits that offend our culture.
If you are a pastor or home group leader, why not consider teaching on these often quoted scriptures, but this time tackle the challenge of postmodernism head-on and equip your people to stand for the truth. If you aren’t why not forward this email to your pastor or home group leader and encourage him to do so.
Have you heard a someone quote “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” (Matthew 7:1) or “If any one of you is without sin, let him throw the first stone.” (John 8:7) to argue that we should not speak up against evils like abortion, pornography or homosexuality? Quoted out of context, these are the two favourite verses of those trying to change Christianity to fit in with Post-modernist culture. If you haven’t heard these quoted to advance Postmodernist ‘tolerance’ of evil, you will soon, and Biblical Christian leaders need to equip their followers to counter Post-modern interpretation of these verses.
WHAT DOES “DO NOT JUDGE, OR YOU TOO WILL BE JUDGED” MEAN?
Did Jesus mean these words as an absolute? Did he mean we should never ever judge or condemn anything or speak up against the sins of our society? How about reading a bit further in the same passage. Lets start with the Sermon on the Mount. In the same paragraph as the first quote we find another saying of Jesus: Mt 7:6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs.” Okay so now Jesus is calling some people ‘pigs’ and ‘dogs’ and he is calling other things ‘pearls’. So now how are we supposed to tell what are the pearls and who are the pigs? We are supposed to use our judgment. In other words, use our minds educated by the scriptures to judge. So now Jesus cannot be asking us never to judge, because otherwise Jesus would be contradicting himself. Both of these statements by Jesus are proverbs. Proverbs are pity sayings containing a lot of wisdom. They are not on their own and outside of the context of the rest of scripture meant to be absolute laws for all time and every situation. Apparently contradictory proverbs like these two are often put together to help people avoid interpreting the other wrongly. Together they complement each other in wisdom to help us avoid extremes. The Bible is full of instructions for us to judge one thing or another such as: the case of in Church discipline (1 Corinthians 6:1-5). Jesus commends the Ephesian church for discerning false apostles (Revelation 2:2); Peter challenges the Pharisees to ‘judge for yourself’ (Acts 4:19). Looking at Matthew 7:1 in context around it and with other similar verses in scripture (e.g. Romans 2:1) Jesus is attacking the attitude of moral superiority, hypocrisy and pettiness by some religious people based on judging those they consider religiously worse than them – and their failure to repent of their own sins by focusing on the sins of others. But we cannot use this verse outside the context of the rest of scripture to silence protests against evil as the Postmodernists would like us to.
DOES THE STORY OF THE WOMAN CAUGHT IN ADULTERY MEAN WE CAN’T CONDEMN SIN?
What about the quote “If any one of you is without sin, let him throw the first stone” (John 8:7)? If Matthew 7:1 is the favourite saying of the Postmoderns, probably John 8 is the favourite story of the Postmoderns. How do we respond? Firstly one should not derive absolutes out of stories. You find absolutes first in other places in the Bible and the stories should illustrate these. Secondly, we can’t extend ‘stoning’ as a metaphor meaning ‘speaking’ against evil. Thirdly, what is the context? The Jewish religious leaders catch a woman in adultery and take her to Jesus asking him if she should be stoned? Now like the time they asked him about whether he should pay taxes (Matthew 22:17), the Pharisees they are trying to trap Jesus into getting into trouble either with the religious Jews or the Roman authorities.
The point is that they are under Roman law, for which there is no capital offence for adultery and Jesus has no status as a civil magistrate. This is an illegal kangaroo court with no civil authority, into which certain Jewish fanatics are trying to involve Jesus. Only the Roman government had the right to execute a person (John 18:31). Jesus skilfully dodges their manipulative trap and teaches them a moral lesson at the same time. His response is similar when someone tries to get him to arbitrate an inheritance dispute (Luke 12:13). One could go into much more detail on the true meaning of this story, but the point here is that the Postmodernists completely misuse these scriptures to try to silence speaking up against evil.
SHOULD WE EVER CONDEMN?
On the same theme Postmoderns say that we should ‘not condemn’ to argue that we shouldn’t speak up against culturally accepted sins like fornication, pornography and homosexuality and abortion. Sounds a bit Biblical, but where exactly is that in the Bible? We could quote Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…”. In context that means that God does not condemn us when we are ‘in Christ’, namely we have been united with Christ in his death and resurrection as explained in Romans 6. But earlier in Romans, the aPostle Paul has just condemned a long list of sinful behaviours (Romans 1:18-32). And his condemnation of this list of sins (and a following list of religious sins in Romans 2) is the first thing he explains when he introduces the gospel in Romans 1:17, before he explains salvation from God’s wrath (Romans 3:23). So essentially, condemning sin and the consequent wrath of God is essential to bringing people to true salvation.
Most Postmoderns hardly have an idea what sin is, let alone the fact that God is angry with sin and will punish people forever in hell unless they repent. It is not loving to leave out this essential truth of the gospel. So reaching Postmoderns with the true gospel includes teaching them the essential concept of sin and God’s condemnation of it. Postmodern Christians argue we should leave out this nasty stuff and just concentrate on building relationships. There is a place for relationships in evangelism, but if the truth about sin and God’s wrath against it is never explained then it is not true evangelism. Most so-called Postmodern outreach is nothing but relationship building and trying to market a good image of Christianity. It might build some relationships and do some good public relations, but doesn’t save people from God’s wrath and eternity in hell.
What is the favourite verse of Evangelical Christians? Probably John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” But what does the next verse say? John 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” Okay so maybe are the Postmodernists right? Does this confirm we shouldn’t condemn? Lets read one more verse? John 3:18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. “ Ouch! Painful, politically incorrect stuff! How come John 3:18 isn’t quoted to non-Christians as much as John 3:16? Do we lack the guts to say it? Might it result in some anger and lead to some persecution? And maybe some more salvations too?
WHAT DID GREAT LEADERS OF THE PAST PREACH?
The great revival leaders of history, such as Charles Finney, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards regularly preached the Law and Wrath of God before they preached the Grace and Mercy of God – exactly as the apostle Paul does in the book of Romans. In fact, taking the Bible as a whole, God revealed the Law of Moses before he revealed grace in Christ. In Bible times and today, the righteous standards of God and his wrath against sin point to the redemption in Christ, which we cannot earn by our own efforts Gal 3:24 “So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith”. But simply because we cannot achieve salvation or righteousness through law does not mean we dispense with law and God’s wrath against sin altogether. Explaining the anger of God against sin is the context in which we explain the grace of God which saves us from this. Now today, many postmodern Christians make jokes about Jonathan Edward’s famous sermon ‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God’ http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/sinners.htm
and style him as some sort of fanatic. But the point is that Jonathan Edwards was a leader of the Great Awakening. Postmodern Christians have never had any revival or awakening anywhere in the world and never will because God doesn’t bless a false truncated distorted Postmodern gospel. The Postmodern gospel doesn’t condemn sin and so doesn’t convict of sin and doesn’t lead men to repentance.
WHAT DID THE APOSTLES PREACH IN ACTS?
What was the example of the apostles? Implicit in their arguing that Jesus was the Messiah was the allegation that the Jewish leaders had committed murder in executing Jesus and innocent man. That was why they were persecuted! Not just because they were some new Jewish sect. Peter repeatedly accuses those who killed Jesus: Acts 2:36 “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”; “Acts 3:15 You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. “This was not lost on the authorities Acts 5:28 “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.” Peter and the apostles did not preach a nice politically correct gospel and neither should we.
Condemning sin in society is also one of the ways we awake the social conscience to stop the murdering of unborn babies and the tearing apart of families as a result of sexual immorality. To fail to do so is not being ‘loving’ or ‘showing grace’. It is to abandon these victims to the forces of evil. Yes the apostles teaching was full of grace, but it was grace in the context of condemning sin. The two are not mutually exclusive. Grace without explaining God’s anger against sin is meaningless. The Cross of Christ perfectly unites the two concepts, in displaying both how much God hates sin what he suffered in our place and how much God loves sinners in being willing to give his son in our place. Preaching the cross includes condemning sin.
WHY MUST WE WARN PEOPLE AGAINST SIN?
Ezekiel 3:18 says “When I say to a wicked man, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood.” God isn’t neutral in the matter. It is not optional for us to speak up against serious social evil. We must not be discouraged by the Postmodern political correctors who seek to silence the Christian voice against evil in society. We must continue to speak up for truth and righteousness and correct those Postmoderns who are trying to change the gospel and remove the bits that offend our culture.
If you are a pastor or home group leader, why not consider teaching on these often quoted scriptures, but this time tackle the challenge of postmodernism head-on and equip your people to stand for the truth. If you aren’t why not forward this email to your pastor or home group leader and encourage him to do so.
Friday, July 24, 2009
CELEBRATING AND DEFENDING THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE TODAY
CELEBRATING AND DEFENDING THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE TODAY
Conservative evangelicals are often accused of being reactionary. i.e. always being ‘anti-‘ something. What are we for? What do we celebrate in the midst of our battles? One thing we can celebrate and thank God for is the authority of scripture above all man-made philosophies. But defending the authority scripture today is not the same as it was centuries ago or even in our parents generation. Most of the creeds and confessions Christian organisations profess are out of date – not because they are wrong, but because they don’t answer the challenging questions being posed by our culture. Many Christians have adopted the worldview of our culture and then try to use it to interpret scripture. The result is confusion in ethics and belief. On most issues scripture contradicts our popular worldly culture – and on many issues a church culture which has tried to accommodate that worldly culture. The consequence is that the authority is subordinated to the culture rather than used as the ‘Sword of the spirit’ to destroy worldly ideas and transform that culture. The first question Satan asked mankind was ‘Did God really say’? If he can sow confusion on that issue, then he can lead us into sin on a lot of other issues.
WHAT ARE SOME WORLDLY IDEAS UNDERMING SCRIPTURES AUTHORITY?
Have you heard anyone promoting these ideas? Have you or your organisation been affected by them.
MODERNIST LIBERALISM: Disbelieving the TRUTH of scripture. This ideology which began in the 1850s in Germany assumes that scripture must be subordinate to the findings of modern academic thinking. Thus, for example, Biblical miracles are disbelieved. Modernism gutted most of the mainline Protestant denominations in the 1920s and 30s, but is losing popularity.
NEO-ORTHODOXY: Believing the Bible is SPIRITUALLY TRUE but not necessarily true in other respects. Popularised by the theologian Karl Barth. When asked whether he believed that God created the world, he replied ‘This world does not matter’. When asked whether a newspaper reporter would have had anything to photograph had he witnessed the resurrection, he dodged the question. Adopted to varying degrees by many evangelical groups, many of which had rejected modernism.
POSTMODERNIST LIBERALISM: The belief that the Bible has personal authority for me, but not absolute authority over those who don’t believe it or interpret it differently. A belief that the meaning of scripture is NOT CLEAR and thus no one can impose their views on anyone else. This uncertainty on the meaning of scripture turns the clear teaching of scripture on issues like homosexuality into just someone’s opinion. Also a belief that feelings and relationships are important, while truth and right behaviour are not. Closely linked to this is the view of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, where one should avoid mentioning anything in the Bible that might offend someone of another cultural belief. Also closely linked to this is the FEELINGS FOCUS, a belief that we should avoid telling anyone anything in the Bible that might offend their feelings. Needless to say, the authority of scripture is drastically undermined by gagging of expressing scriptural truth. Such a belief results in a weak view of scripture which has no authority in society.
PIETISM: A belief that scripture has authority in my personal devotional and church life, but has nothing to say about how we should govern society for example in terms of politics, commerce or interpret the study of history. The result is the authority of scripture is limited to the individual and the church, but one cannot for example tell the government not to legalise abortion.
POPULAR PSYCHOLOGY: A belief in the ‘non-directional counselling’ approach where everyone must decide in ethics what to do for themselves. Thus one must never tell anyone what the scripture says they should do in their situation or that in terms of the scripture they have done anything wrong. Scripture is then just ‘good advice’ but never binding or prescriptive. The concepts of ‘guilt’ and ‘sin’ are taboo and should never be mentioned lest people are offended. Closely linked to this is the view that we should NEVER JUDGE someone’s actions. While the scripture does teach caution in judging, it does not prohibit saying that something is wrong or sinful.
THE EVANGELICAL MEGASHIFT: A belief that we should only talk about those doctrines in scripture which don’t offend our culture, but still profess to believe in them. So for example, such Christians would avoid mentioning hell, judgement, the wrath of God, sin, the fear of God and rather talk only about relationships, feelings, God’s love and mercy. The result of this firstly that scripture loses its binding authority as God is portrayed as someone who will not do anyone any harm if they disobey it. Secondly, doctrines that are underemphasised in the next generation end up being denied. That was the pattern with early C20 modernist liberalism, and is already starting to happen in C21 evangelicalism.
NEW AGE/ANIMIST: ‘New Age Christians’ put the Bible on a similar level of authority to other religions and human philosophies. Thus the Bible can’t be used to judge the truth claims of other religions. Rather they mix in whatever bits they like e.g. Belief in astral bodies. Western Christians who do this are called New Age, while black Africans tend to mix in their ancestral beliefs.
PRAGMATISM/UTILITARIANISM: A belief that we should do what works best for the ‘greater good’, rather than to follow the detailed instructions of scripture. Scripture was written in a different context, but not really practical to follow in our culture today. For example, such people may argue promoting condoms rather than abstinence will help stop HIV-AIDS. Such people won’t speak up against sin if they don’t think people will listen to them. Contrary to this is the example of the Bible prophets who spoke truth even though most did not listen. Closely linked to this is IDEALISM, the idea that scripture is just an ideal we should try to live up to and not really practical to follow for example on standards for sexual holiness.
EMOTIONALISM: Such people may say ‘Follow your heart and not your head’. There is a bit of truth in that because the heart has an important role in the Christian life, but it cannot be used as an authority above scripture. This is sometimes applied as HEDONISM: A view that God wants us to be happy, even if this means disobeying the scripture. Thus for example, someone questions the scriptural prohibition on homosexuality because a homosexual couple he knows are so happy together. On the other hand, divorce is condoned when it is believed an unhappily married couple would be happier apart.
With the INSPIRATIONAL/HOROSCOPE method of Bible interpretation, people open the Bible randomly or where they know the nice bits are and look for scriptures that will give them encouragement while ignoring the rest. There is then no compulsion to try to understand or obey the bits we don’t like. We can just skim over them and move on. Thus the Bible’s authority is subordinated to our preferences.
ANTINOMIANISM (or ANTI-LAW): A view that because we are under grace that we are no longer bound to follow the moral instructions of scripture, so long as we do things out of a motivation of love. This idea has been around since New Testament times and alongside passages such as Colossians 3 attack it.
DIRECT REVELATION ABOVE SCRIPTURE: A belief that what one feels God has spoken into our own heart is above what he has written in his word. Examples of this error include a pastor saying that God had told him to divorce his wife and marry another woman. On another occasion, an unmarried couple knelt down to pray together about whether or not God wanted them to sleep together and concluded after prayer that he did. Another lady believed after prayer that God wanted her to have an abortion. Any ‘direct revelation’ which contradicts scripture is from the devil and not from God.
EXPERIENCE ABOVE SCRIPTURE: A belief that if our experience does not match a scripture we know, then we can disbelieve that scripture. For example, such a person may say ‘I know the Bible says God heals, but I don’t believe that because I know a good Christian who was sick and she died’. In such situations, we should not question scripture, but rather whether we have understood its meaning correctly – and study it further to understand it better.
HYPER-AUTHORITARIANISM: A belief in some churches that only senior church authorities can accurately interpret the Bible and that no one has a right to challenge them on the basis of scripture. Thus if anyone in an organisation is unsure of the ethics of a matter, they consult the senior authority. If they condone it – then it is okay. Such hyper-authoritarian authorities will often not want to be accountable to the historic accepted interpretations of scripture agreed with the wider body of Christ, but wish to make their own interpretations on an ad-hoc basis. The result is that the senior authorities often make exceptions and decide to ‘show grace’, bending the rules of scripture for themselves and their friends – leading to multiple scandals in the church.
MAN FEARING: Man fearing can take many forms. It includes for example, DEMOCRACY – often the reluctance of a spiritual shepherd to enforce the teaching of scripture for example in a church discipline case, where this might be unpopular with the sheep. In countries where there is overt state persecution, believers brave the threat of arrest to speak the Word of God, but in our culture we have the much milder persecution of simple unpopularity and social disapproval when we do so – even sometimes from other believers. We must recognise this for what it is PERSECUTION, count the cost and risk the consequences.
DISMISSING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT: Because many parts of the Old Testament have been superseded or differently fulfilled in the New Testament, many find it easier to simply dismiss the whole of the Old Testament rather than learning to interpret it correctly through the lens of the New Testament. Thus one then cannot appeal to the authority of the Old Testament scriptures. Contrary to this approach, Jesus and the New Testament writers quoted heavily from the Old Testament.
CHALLENGES POSED BY THESE IDEAS
The above ideas challenge: The reliability of scripture, the right to speak scripture, the clarify of scripture, the practicality of scripture, the authority of scripture over human authorities and the question of who has the right to interpret scripture.
So we must demolish all of these cultural human ideologies with our glorious Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God and look for opportunities to speak it in defiance of our cultural norms and pressure. Unlike these human ideas, scripture is the WORD OF GOD. It is true and contains commands applicable to everyone for all time – Christian or not. It is the basis on which all will one day be judged and the authority on which we can challenge any other human authority.
Gently but firmly we must point out to people when they use these methods with authority above the word of God.
We trust that it is clear and practically applicable in our situation. Combating the worldly ideas of our culture is a big job. Fortunately we don’t need to do it alone. Word of God itself is what will defeat them. We must just keep speaking it, regardless of the consequences.
Conservative evangelicals are often accused of being reactionary. i.e. always being ‘anti-‘ something. What are we for? What do we celebrate in the midst of our battles? One thing we can celebrate and thank God for is the authority of scripture above all man-made philosophies. But defending the authority scripture today is not the same as it was centuries ago or even in our parents generation. Most of the creeds and confessions Christian organisations profess are out of date – not because they are wrong, but because they don’t answer the challenging questions being posed by our culture. Many Christians have adopted the worldview of our culture and then try to use it to interpret scripture. The result is confusion in ethics and belief. On most issues scripture contradicts our popular worldly culture – and on many issues a church culture which has tried to accommodate that worldly culture. The consequence is that the authority is subordinated to the culture rather than used as the ‘Sword of the spirit’ to destroy worldly ideas and transform that culture. The first question Satan asked mankind was ‘Did God really say’? If he can sow confusion on that issue, then he can lead us into sin on a lot of other issues.
WHAT ARE SOME WORLDLY IDEAS UNDERMING SCRIPTURES AUTHORITY?
Have you heard anyone promoting these ideas? Have you or your organisation been affected by them.
MODERNIST LIBERALISM: Disbelieving the TRUTH of scripture. This ideology which began in the 1850s in Germany assumes that scripture must be subordinate to the findings of modern academic thinking. Thus, for example, Biblical miracles are disbelieved. Modernism gutted most of the mainline Protestant denominations in the 1920s and 30s, but is losing popularity.
NEO-ORTHODOXY: Believing the Bible is SPIRITUALLY TRUE but not necessarily true in other respects. Popularised by the theologian Karl Barth. When asked whether he believed that God created the world, he replied ‘This world does not matter’. When asked whether a newspaper reporter would have had anything to photograph had he witnessed the resurrection, he dodged the question. Adopted to varying degrees by many evangelical groups, many of which had rejected modernism.
POSTMODERNIST LIBERALISM: The belief that the Bible has personal authority for me, but not absolute authority over those who don’t believe it or interpret it differently. A belief that the meaning of scripture is NOT CLEAR and thus no one can impose their views on anyone else. This uncertainty on the meaning of scripture turns the clear teaching of scripture on issues like homosexuality into just someone’s opinion. Also a belief that feelings and relationships are important, while truth and right behaviour are not. Closely linked to this is the view of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, where one should avoid mentioning anything in the Bible that might offend someone of another cultural belief. Also closely linked to this is the FEELINGS FOCUS, a belief that we should avoid telling anyone anything in the Bible that might offend their feelings. Needless to say, the authority of scripture is drastically undermined by gagging of expressing scriptural truth. Such a belief results in a weak view of scripture which has no authority in society.
PIETISM: A belief that scripture has authority in my personal devotional and church life, but has nothing to say about how we should govern society for example in terms of politics, commerce or interpret the study of history. The result is the authority of scripture is limited to the individual and the church, but one cannot for example tell the government not to legalise abortion.
POPULAR PSYCHOLOGY: A belief in the ‘non-directional counselling’ approach where everyone must decide in ethics what to do for themselves. Thus one must never tell anyone what the scripture says they should do in their situation or that in terms of the scripture they have done anything wrong. Scripture is then just ‘good advice’ but never binding or prescriptive. The concepts of ‘guilt’ and ‘sin’ are taboo and should never be mentioned lest people are offended. Closely linked to this is the view that we should NEVER JUDGE someone’s actions. While the scripture does teach caution in judging, it does not prohibit saying that something is wrong or sinful.
THE EVANGELICAL MEGASHIFT: A belief that we should only talk about those doctrines in scripture which don’t offend our culture, but still profess to believe in them. So for example, such Christians would avoid mentioning hell, judgement, the wrath of God, sin, the fear of God and rather talk only about relationships, feelings, God’s love and mercy. The result of this firstly that scripture loses its binding authority as God is portrayed as someone who will not do anyone any harm if they disobey it. Secondly, doctrines that are underemphasised in the next generation end up being denied. That was the pattern with early C20 modernist liberalism, and is already starting to happen in C21 evangelicalism.
NEW AGE/ANIMIST: ‘New Age Christians’ put the Bible on a similar level of authority to other religions and human philosophies. Thus the Bible can’t be used to judge the truth claims of other religions. Rather they mix in whatever bits they like e.g. Belief in astral bodies. Western Christians who do this are called New Age, while black Africans tend to mix in their ancestral beliefs.
PRAGMATISM/UTILITARIANISM: A belief that we should do what works best for the ‘greater good’, rather than to follow the detailed instructions of scripture. Scripture was written in a different context, but not really practical to follow in our culture today. For example, such people may argue promoting condoms rather than abstinence will help stop HIV-AIDS. Such people won’t speak up against sin if they don’t think people will listen to them. Contrary to this is the example of the Bible prophets who spoke truth even though most did not listen. Closely linked to this is IDEALISM, the idea that scripture is just an ideal we should try to live up to and not really practical to follow for example on standards for sexual holiness.
EMOTIONALISM: Such people may say ‘Follow your heart and not your head’. There is a bit of truth in that because the heart has an important role in the Christian life, but it cannot be used as an authority above scripture. This is sometimes applied as HEDONISM: A view that God wants us to be happy, even if this means disobeying the scripture. Thus for example, someone questions the scriptural prohibition on homosexuality because a homosexual couple he knows are so happy together. On the other hand, divorce is condoned when it is believed an unhappily married couple would be happier apart.
With the INSPIRATIONAL/HOROSCOPE method of Bible interpretation, people open the Bible randomly or where they know the nice bits are and look for scriptures that will give them encouragement while ignoring the rest. There is then no compulsion to try to understand or obey the bits we don’t like. We can just skim over them and move on. Thus the Bible’s authority is subordinated to our preferences.
ANTINOMIANISM (or ANTI-LAW): A view that because we are under grace that we are no longer bound to follow the moral instructions of scripture, so long as we do things out of a motivation of love. This idea has been around since New Testament times and alongside passages such as Colossians 3 attack it.
DIRECT REVELATION ABOVE SCRIPTURE: A belief that what one feels God has spoken into our own heart is above what he has written in his word. Examples of this error include a pastor saying that God had told him to divorce his wife and marry another woman. On another occasion, an unmarried couple knelt down to pray together about whether or not God wanted them to sleep together and concluded after prayer that he did. Another lady believed after prayer that God wanted her to have an abortion. Any ‘direct revelation’ which contradicts scripture is from the devil and not from God.
EXPERIENCE ABOVE SCRIPTURE: A belief that if our experience does not match a scripture we know, then we can disbelieve that scripture. For example, such a person may say ‘I know the Bible says God heals, but I don’t believe that because I know a good Christian who was sick and she died’. In such situations, we should not question scripture, but rather whether we have understood its meaning correctly – and study it further to understand it better.
HYPER-AUTHORITARIANISM: A belief in some churches that only senior church authorities can accurately interpret the Bible and that no one has a right to challenge them on the basis of scripture. Thus if anyone in an organisation is unsure of the ethics of a matter, they consult the senior authority. If they condone it – then it is okay. Such hyper-authoritarian authorities will often not want to be accountable to the historic accepted interpretations of scripture agreed with the wider body of Christ, but wish to make their own interpretations on an ad-hoc basis. The result is that the senior authorities often make exceptions and decide to ‘show grace’, bending the rules of scripture for themselves and their friends – leading to multiple scandals in the church.
MAN FEARING: Man fearing can take many forms. It includes for example, DEMOCRACY – often the reluctance of a spiritual shepherd to enforce the teaching of scripture for example in a church discipline case, where this might be unpopular with the sheep. In countries where there is overt state persecution, believers brave the threat of arrest to speak the Word of God, but in our culture we have the much milder persecution of simple unpopularity and social disapproval when we do so – even sometimes from other believers. We must recognise this for what it is PERSECUTION, count the cost and risk the consequences.
DISMISSING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT: Because many parts of the Old Testament have been superseded or differently fulfilled in the New Testament, many find it easier to simply dismiss the whole of the Old Testament rather than learning to interpret it correctly through the lens of the New Testament. Thus one then cannot appeal to the authority of the Old Testament scriptures. Contrary to this approach, Jesus and the New Testament writers quoted heavily from the Old Testament.
CHALLENGES POSED BY THESE IDEAS
The above ideas challenge: The reliability of scripture, the right to speak scripture, the clarify of scripture, the practicality of scripture, the authority of scripture over human authorities and the question of who has the right to interpret scripture.
So we must demolish all of these cultural human ideologies with our glorious Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God and look for opportunities to speak it in defiance of our cultural norms and pressure. Unlike these human ideas, scripture is the WORD OF GOD. It is true and contains commands applicable to everyone for all time – Christian or not. It is the basis on which all will one day be judged and the authority on which we can challenge any other human authority.
Gently but firmly we must point out to people when they use these methods with authority above the word of God.
We trust that it is clear and practically applicable in our situation. Combating the worldly ideas of our culture is a big job. Fortunately we don’t need to do it alone. Word of God itself is what will defeat them. We must just keep speaking it, regardless of the consequences.
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