Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 53

About a Quarter of the Way There

As we gather for worship this morning, I want to call you to worship by considering a couple of takeaways from the city council election this last week. And this really is an encouraging word. The lines were drawn fairly stark this time around. Three candidates thought it would be a good idea to campaign at a Drag Show, and three candidates did not. And the three Drag Show candidates won the election handily in a roughly 4 to 1 ratio.

But the big picture is that we should think of this whole thing as a really helpful progress report. How are we doing on our assignment from Jesus to disciple the city of Moscow? How far have we gotten? And, how many Christian communities get a really clear progress report like the one we got from their city? We are very blessed to be in a position to get such a progress report in the first place. And the numbers, if they are broadly representative of the total population, suggest that we are about a quarter of the way toward our goal. So our first response should be gratitude to be in such a position where people who represent our concerns and values showed up at all, and we got a public, fairly objective progress report. We clearly have plenty of work to do, but we should not miss the fact that God has brought us this far. 

And this leads to the second thing: this is farther than we’ve ever been. What we’ve been doing the last 50 some years is actually working. And what is that?  We’ve been starting and running businesses, loving and serving our neighbors, getting married, keeping our wedding vows, having children, raising them to love God with us, building and leaving an inheritance to our grandchildren, proclaiming Christ to the lost around us in word and in deed, and at the center of it all, worshiping the Triune God every Lord’s Day in spirit and in truth. 

This project is not something we dreamed up. It is the command of Jesus, to disciple the nations and teach them to obey everything He has commanded. That’s what we’re doing here in Moscow. Jesus purchased the ends of the earth with His blood, and that includes this place. And so we gather every Lord’s Day to march around this city, as we confess our sins, sing at the top of our lungs, hear His word, feast at His table, and go out with His blessing, until every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord. 

Photo by Fabien Wl on Unsplash

Dishonoring the Men Who Served

Introduction
Happy Veterans Day, and praise the Lord for the men who have given their lives so that we might continue to enjoy relative freedom to live and work and worship in this land. 

But if you’re paying any attention at all to the images and messages seeking to honor veterans today, you will no doubt notice the plethora of women being foisted into our collective imagination. And today, we are being commanded by our intersectional high priests that we put a pinch of incense on their high and lofty egalitarian altar. 

Will you capitulate? Will you honor the goddess?

Every time you hear the phrase “men and women who serve” or “service men and women” or other gender neutral, gender “inclusive” phrasing like “personnel,” know that you are being catechized in a false religion. 

But on this day, Veterans Day, originally marking the Armistice of World War I, the day after the birth day of the Marine Corps, a day on which we honor the men who gave their lives, a day on which I honor men from my own family, including my own grandfather, the self-appointed Pharisees of our land, right and left, collectively demand that we dishonor those men. 

Dishonor How?
What? But the flags and old pictures and the interviews of aged men in uniform? What could be dishonoring about that? The dishonoring thing is the insertion of elements into the celebration which were the very things our fathers and grandfathers died to prevent. Our men died so that our women might live. Our men died so that their mothers and sisters and daughters might be safe. And even more than that, our men died in order to defeat the underlying Marxist agenda that is driving the current egalitarian blitzkrieg. The current jackboot gestapo demanding that we use certain pronouns or else you will lose your job and livelihood is no less fascist or totalitarian in principle than what we faced in World War II. Give it a few weeks and there’ll be special yellow badges for the folks who won’t get in line. 

The driver behind all of this is a rejection of the Creator God and His Christ, and this necessitates a “new creation” dreamed up by man and a savior that is usually called by the name Democracy, but which in practice means secular elites telling the masses what to do. You must let sexually confused dudes shower with your high school and college girls or you are a bigot. You must bake cakes and photograph sodomite weddings, or you are basically a racist. And you must pretend that there is no appreciable difference between men and women. They are just interchangeable cogs in the great collective machine. And this is necessary because a humanist salvation is necessarily narrow and bland. Man cannot actually do anything approaching a real salvation from all our human misery, but man can attempt to pretend to save human cultures by flattening everything to a drab, monotonous drone. If all differences can be relatively suppressed, achievements relatively depressed, and progress reduced to a belly crawl, then the masses can sometimes be duped into thinking that the occasional lurch is a sign that things must be really humming along. 

So when you see the women in those cutsey-nice commercials Skyping to their families from their combat duty in Afghanistan, a righteous indignation should rise up in your chest. Our men did not die for that. In fact, they died so that she wouldn’t have to. That’s how you dishonor our veterans. You cheapen their sacrifice. You steal a central part of their glory.

Black-Face & Soldier-Face
I know the whole blackface thing is a seething intersectional mess, but if there ever was a wide spread “blackface” in our culture, it is the current soldier-face running every five minutes in commercials today. 

Think about the insanity and hypocrisy. Our culture throws a collective hissyfit at the thought of a white man making his face darker to play the part of a man with darker skin. This was done in minstrel shows early on in a way that was frequently full of racial malice and spite and mockery. And to Hell with that. But the fact of the matter is that it has also been done plenty of times with no spite intended, and in reality a small symbol of actual honor. To represent someone well, to honor who they were/are, an actor or actress sought to truly represent them. But the cries go up now that this is systemic white supremacy – no white man could ever pretend to know what the black experience has been, no one could ever truly represent that, and why couldn’t you find a person of color to play the person of color, you hater?

Notice this carefully: the high priests shriek and howl that you cannot ever, ever, ever pretend to have more pigment in your skin, because the lived experience of more pigment is so different than anything you have ever imagined, that it is necessarily a lie and therefore a hateful slander of all people who actually have more pigment than you. But then when Bruce Jenner comes along with fake boobs and a dress, the whole priesthood goes misty eyed and makes him Woman of the Year. They rise like Televangelists with quivering voices proclaiming the glories of diversity and inclusion. 

Wait. So we’ve all been scribbling furiously at our desks trying to keep up with the Lecture. And we were just told that you may not pretend to have more pigment in your skin and don’t ever think you could even imagine what it’s like, unless you have been given a special indulgence and you’re the Prime Minister of Canada, but if you pull on a pair of nylons and change your name to Caitlyn, you’re a hero? This is like two locomotives going 70 down the same tracks towards one another. There’s something sort of exciting about the prospect of this ideological collision. You cannot keep up this charade for long. You can’t dress up like a smart man and carry on like this, and besides, don’t you know that smart-face is an attack on all really smart people on the planet? Doesn’t anyone remember toxic masculinity? Doesn’t anyone remember the oppression of women? You’re seriously saying that men can understand the lived experiences of women? And not only that, but when they do it’s Heroic and Noble. All rise!

Sorry, I dropped my pencil. 

The Glory of War
Every Bruce Jenner, every trans-athlete, every woman in a military or police uniform is a standing dishonor to all women everywhere. What kind of honor is it to say that some dude can just become a woman? The genetics, the chromosomes, the hormones, the “lived experience” is vastly more complex and intricate and foundational than skin pigment. But the dishonor goes the other way as well. Those women pretending to play men in combat are dishonoring men. No ma’am, you are not a man, and you can’t just put on military fatigues and hold a weapon and demand we go along with the game. They are pretending to be what they are not, and what they cannot be. A woman was made to give life not take it. A woman was made to nurture life not be put on the front lines of battle. A woman is to be treasured and protected. And men were made to protect, to defend, to lay their lives down. To put it very precisely, the existence of the fairer sex is what has historically made men willing to fight and die. And it was for the glory of home, family, a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, that our fathers and grandfathers laid their lives down. This is central to the glory of war. We do not glorify the violence or the bloodshed, but it is a true glory to defend your home, your family, and in particular, women and children.

So no, I do not honor our “service women” or our “women in uniform.” Our men did not die so that our women might be put in harm’s way as some kind of egalitarian virtue signal. Our men died so that our women might be safe, free to be homemakers and mothers, free to build cultures of life and festivity. You cannot “honor” the dishonor of women without simultaneously destroying the very foundation of what makes dying worth it. And every commercial you see today that pictures a woman in a man’s uniform is a direct assault on what our forefathers actually bled and died for. 

Conclusion
All of this is central to the Christian gospel and it is not a distraction or a side show. The women pictured in combat roles are icons of a false Savior, a false god, a false gospel – it is the false good news of leveling all differences (except the ones that are still convenient for manipulating people with white guilt). It is a humanistic gospel that proclaims salvation in uniformity, complete totalitarian blend. If everyone is exactly the same, then they can pretend to be making peace. But all of this is the plotting of stupid men. God sits in Heaven and laughs at their schemes. He holds all of this in complete derision, and so should we. But meanwhile, the salvation of the world has already been accomplished. Jesus Christ became a man, not a woman, not a eunuch, but a man, for us men and for our salvation, for the salvation of all men, women, and children, black, white, and brown. And that man, Jesus Christ, was God’s only-begotten Son, the only innocent man, the only righteous man, and He laid His life down freely, gladly for His Bride, the Christian Church, all those who believe. 

Humanism insists that we must save ourselves, and so they send their brides into battle. But Christianity insists that we cannot save ourselves, and God in Christ has accomplished it for us. He went and fought the dragon for us. He spoiled the Strongman and took his armor. He took our sins on Himself and took the death we all deserved. And having conquered sin and death and Satan, He rose up victorious in order to make all things new, including new men and new women, new creatures in Christ with sexual glory, sexual assignments in this world. We are Christians and so we honor that reality, that gospel, that Savior, and the men who have served and loved and died in order that we might continue to honor Him in all that we do.  

Photo by Suzy Brooks on Unsplash

The Gay Greenhouse

Introduction
It’s no secret that I’m a critic of the whole gay-but-celibate Christian movement. But I’m simultaneously a critic of much of modern conservative evangelicalism. And the two are not at all unrelated. The same cultural current that keeps Beth Moore undisciplined in the SBC is the same that keeps Greg Johnson undisciplined in the PCA. In the PCA we have men who identify as gay but claim they are not actually sodomites. In the SBC we have women who identify as preachers but claim they are not actually pastors. It’s a very similar identity problem. In fact, the conservative church created this space where the gay-celibate Christians and technically-non-ordained women preachers have set up shop, and we are subsidizing the whole mess by our anemic view of masculinity. The foundational issue is our straightforward disobedience to God’s Word, but the proximate cause is our collective insistence that men be soft. Let me explain.

Soft Men & Soft Churches
As Ann Douglas has helpfully chronicled, starting sometime in the 19th century, the American church decided that instead of militant, masculine men as preachers, it wanted cultured men of letters who were relatable, entertaining, and winsome. In those days they didn’t use the word “winsome,” but they were after the same thing. They wanted men who used poetry and jokes and stories to disarm and persuade, rather than the blunt Pauline style of days of yore. And so it is that we’ve been collectively demanding Tim Kellers for going on two centuries, and that’s exactly what we’ve been given. But of course what this has really meant is that we wanted feminine preachers, and while this is likely a hate crime in certain countries, I will go out on a limb and point out that women are better at being feminine than men. And so it cannot have been that big of a surprise when American churches started actually ordaining women as a pastors. They are a lot better at being feminine and relating to people and being winsome than men. 

Meanwhile, Margaret Sanger came along with her chemical thugs and began popularizing birth control. In the earliest days it was a straight up eugenics project, targeting unwanted populations in an often explicitly racist agenda. But it was not long before certain members of the radical left saw the potential in severing childrearing from sexual union. And it wasn’t long before, gullible Christians were popping birth control pills like the pagans. And the point here is particularly the gullibility and thoughtlessness. The Christian Church largely embraced a completely pagan understanding of childbearing, as a “choice” or an “option.” And when we accepted children as an optional accessory or amenity to marriage, we accepted in principle homosexual unions. Ok, there’s more to it than that, and I grant that a purposefully childless heterosexual couple is in a lot less confusion than two dudes shacking up, but we gave a large portion of the farm away when we surrendered the normative expectation of children. We surrendered fruitfulness as normal.

The play all along was the so-called “liberation” of women, which was always code for slavery to corporate masters and sexual promiscuity. If sex can be semi-sundered from childbearing, then sexual promiscuity can appear far less consequential. And men, like their father Adam, went along with it. We went limp, fearful, and refused to fight. We refused to defend our families, our churches, and our land. And the central place where the Church (with rare exceptions) failed to fight was in its refusal to discipline its members or leaders. And we did not require elders and pastors to have faithful, believing children. And we failed here because we did not believe the gospel. We did not believe that Jesus died for all of these sins, that His grace could actually take away our guilt and shame, and that He would bless us if we obeyed Him. Instead, we went with our own wisdom and dug our pits deeper by the decade. 

So review our situation quickly: We insisted that childlessness was an option for Christian marriage, making marriage a souped-up roommate situation, something it was never meant to be. In addition to all the other Adamic lusts and sins we are at war with, separating children from the ordinary equation of marriage, set us up for lots more confusion, bitterness, slavery, abuse, and aimlessness. Why does God call a man to be the head of the household if we’re functionally just roommates? Why does he get to be in charge? Turns out obedience is a path that gets lighter and lighter, but disobedience is an icy path that only gets darker. And some sins are the inevitable result of previous sins. So here we are with “Christians” insisting that singleness and effeminate/butch lifestyles are perfectly normal options, since the conservative Christian church taught us long ago that that marriage is just a shapeless ‘complementary’ relationship. Well, why can’t two dudes have a celibate, complementary relationship too? Sure, we don’t have to call it marriage. We’ll call it “spiritual friendship.”

But the thing to point out is that all of this should be laid at the feet of the conservative Church. We have failed to biblically love those tempted to homosexuality, particularly the men, by the massively unbiblical culture of effeminacy we have cultivated in the Church. What does biblical manhood look like in most conservative Reformed/evangelical churches? It’s effeminate. It’s nice, friendly, studious, nice, winsome, relatable, funny, nice, clean cut, sophisticated, cultured, team player, chatty, hip and trendy, and of course, above all else, nice. “Spiritual friendship” is a nice gay description of the modern evangelical church. We flatter and nuance and share and mince words over lattes. Many churches still wouldn’t fly the rainbow flag, but they’re most certainly already flying the white flag of surrender. In other words, we have created a greenhouse that grows effeminate, cowardly men, and then we are shocked when the Greg Johnsons and Wes Hills and Nate Collins rise up in our midst.

But wait, there’s more. 

Purity Culture with Spikes
Now, in general, I’m not really sure what people are talking about when they use the phrase “purity culture,” but I certainly get the distinct impression that it’s bad and ugly and oppressive. And so, given the days we live in, I’m instinctively inclined to think purity culture is probably a good thing. But having spent a goodish number of years in conservative Christian circles, I can also imagine a number of ways in which people can take good, biblical principles and turn them into bludgeons to beat people with and nooses to hang them with. And maybe, just maybe “purity culture” is nothing more than people abusing good principles with their folly and lusts. So, in an attempt to get my boomer virtue signal on, let me launch forthwith into a diatribe about the evils of purity culture, or, well, at least one way we could get purity really, really wrong. 

Imagine your average Christian high school boy and girl, all red-blooded and excited and full of hormones to the bursting. One of the worst things you could do is encourage them to date, to form emotional attachments and spend time alone together. This is like playing with matches and kerosene and firecrackers at a gas station, while hosing everyone and everything down with the Supreme blend. But imagine, and I know this sounds crazy, but imagine Christian families and communities where it was expected, maybe even encouraged, that nice Christian boys and girls in the youth group ought to pair off and form strong emotional attachments, always with the reminder and warning, but save your virginity for marriage!

This is what we would have called in saner days, psychotic. But in our world, we call it healthy, and it’s considered normal and mundane, and we are the idiots still scratching our heads about why our churches are so full of sexual sin. 

But let me push the whole thing one step further. What if it was not merely expected or mildly encouraged, but what if it was insisted upon? What if all the sermons and Bible studies were about how 16 year old boys need to take 16 year old girls out and find some secluded dark place to park the car and sit alone together? What if the clear message was: you’re not really being holy unless you are cuddling with a girl, alone in the dark. This is what all the Christian kids do. This is true piety. This is true godliness. AND DON’T YOU DARE HAVE SEX. AND IF YOU DO, SHAME ON YOU FOREVER. 

And imagine that any time somebody came home with that sheepish, defeated look and confessed that they had “crossed a line” and sinned sexually, we beat them over the head with their sin and shame, and then demanded that they take that girl out the very next night and try again, this time with the heater on. This is the only way to holiness and godliness, it is explained with the deeply furrowed brows of discernment.

Now, as I noted before, I’m honestly not sure what “purity culture” is, but I would call that a purity culture with spikes, poisonous purity culture, and I can also easily imagine a whole bunch of kids being scarred from that kind of insanity. This is like requiring boys struggling with lust to hang out at the local pool, insisting that all the truly pure, really Christian boys do ministry down at the beach with the bikini babes or at the strip club. After a while, some of the boys get tired of the whole insane charade, and they leave the crazy house for what seems relatively more sane, the world, where you take girls out and you sleep with them because that’s what you’re “supposed” to do. It’s what everything in their biology is screaming at them to do.

Just in case I’ve lost you, repentance here means the Church and Christian families need to repent of the whole dating/hookup culture. It means telling our children that courtship is for seeking romance and sexual fulfillment and children under God’s blessing in the covenant of marriage. And until someone is ready for that, they are not ready to ask any one out or accept such an invitation. Period. Full stop. Don’t start the car, if you’re not ready to drive. Don’t try the dress on, if you’re not ready to buy. Don’t point the gun at anything you’re not prepared to shoot. As John MacArthur would say, ‘Go home.’

Connecting the Dots
Now some of you are wondering what my purity with spikes example has to do with anything. Of course we shouldn’t send couples out to park in cars alone, of course teenage boys should not be on the front lines of strip club ministry, who would do something so ridiculous? Well, actually, we would. The Christian Church would. We would, and we have done so, particularly with men tempted to homosexuality.

Here in the conservative church, for over a century, we have held up effeminacy, niceness, chattiness, friendliness as the chief masculine virtues, and while many masculine men have simply left the church, many others have been slowly discipled into the soft-gay evangelical Christian culture. But it’s the same insanity as purity with spikes. We insist that they act gay, dress gay, talk gay, walk gay, and then when one of them has the audacity to actually suggest that they are gay, we blow into a paper bag for an hour wondering how this could happen to nice little Johnny. But how could it not happen? You spent two and half decades training him to be gay. That’s what most seminaries require. 

We are the cause of this. We are the gay greenhouse. We insist that our worship songs must be emotional and orgasmic. If you haven’t cried, you haven’t really become a Christian. We insist that our buildings be slick and stylish and manicured and pedicured just like our men. We insist that our men be polished and fastidious and cultured and nice. And our entire paradigm of holiness is accountability groups, where men gaze into one another’s eyes and confess their deepest feelings and fears and lusts. What could go wrong? Evangelical masculine piety is basically a spiritual jerk off circle: share your feelings, undress your feelings, etc.

Now the whole boat is about to capsize in evangelicalism, apart from the intervening grace of God. The conservative Presbyterians are already on their way over into the water, and the Southern Baptists are just a little bit behind, preferring to be dragged into the perversion pond by their racial guilt and Beth Moore, rather than straight up flamer boys. 

And while it’s a crying shame, it’s hard to blame the guys who finally throw up their hands in exasperation at the insanity of the conservative church and just walk away, coming out of the closet, loud and proud, and leave congregations and marriages and families behind. Why stay in a schizophrenic church? Why continue cultivating gayness while pretending not to be gay? Why continue lusting after the approval of men, when we can’t close the deal when we finally get it? Does anybody know how to spell hypocrisy?

Conclusion
This is why the church must see the task before us as much larger than merely saying no to homosexuality in the church or lady preachers. Because as it stands, we are schizophrenic (and so am I). We demand purity, while insisting on effeminacy. We demand heterosexuality, while disciplining and frowning upon any actual masculinity that might show up in the church. We demand sharing and caring and nurturing and tears, while scorning every expression of testosterone. We cultivate the lust for the favor of men, and then we wonder why our men are so strongly tempted.  

Repentance is always a two-fold action: turning away from sin and turning toward Christ and new obedience. And while there are no doubt slanderous lies surrounding much of the ‘pray the gay away’ programs, I do not doubt that to the extent that they have failed, it is because we have insisted that they not practice homosexuality while simultaneously requiring them to sit in the hot house of emasculation. We heap up the shame of sodomy while demanding that they go right back into the evangelical bathhouse and cozy up to some seminary studs. We are the insane ones.

Therefore, the call of repentance that must be issued is the call to return to a full-orbed biblical masculinity. The center of that is the call to embrace the hard work of marriage and childrearing. But in order for this to actually be a blessing, it must also include a call to men to actually lead their families, to take up the true authority and responsibility that God gives each man in his home, to rule their wives and children in the fear of God. We must insist that our men rule. We must insist that they take dominion. We must say this boldly without flinching, without a million qualifications. And both saying it and doing it requires courage, sacrifice, strength, wisdom, and it means fighting, warfare, militance, hatred – against all evil, beginning with the evil remaining inside each man’s own chest, and then spreading out in fatherly boldness to their families and communities.

We must recover the glory of this conflict against all sin, evil, the flesh, the devil, and the world. We must recover the glory and the joy of that holy ruckus. There will be riots. There will be op-eds. There will be fines and imprisonment. There will be persecution. People will be fired for refusing to use the damn pronouns. Businesses will be unjustly shut down. Churches will be harassed. And there will be protests. We will be called bigots and haters and white supremacists. There will be lawsuits and snubs and slanders and smears and slurs. But the godly Christian men will smile and laugh and sing because we were made for this. The world will scream and shriek and lay down in the cookie aisle and kick their legs, and we won’t care because we have better things to do. We’re building houses and schools and churches and businesses and nations.

Men were not for ‘tie-breaking’, and yes, I’m looking at you, Tim Keller. We were made to fight. We were made to rule. We were made to build. We were made to lead. We were made to die. We were made to take responsibility, to lay our lives down for Christ, for His kingdom, for the truth, for our families, for our people. And so, by the grace of God, we will.

The clear command from God is to take dominion and to be fruitful and multiply. A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. That’s the norm. That’s the usual. That’s the plan, unless God intervenes and clearly gives you a different assignment. The sin of homosexuality is forsaking the natural use of the opposite sex (Rom. 1). And therefore, those who have forsaken the opposite sex are called to return. Come home, not home to all the evangelical clowns and cowards, come home to Jesus, to the true man, to the man who never relinquished his authority and always used his power for good, the man who laid his life down for all of us, weak and evil men, in order to build a Kingdom that would grow and fill the world. God made men strong. And by the power of the gospel, He restores that strength to us for the good of the world. That is our glory. And the Church will be blessed when she is lead and guarded by those kind of men once again.

Photo by Brunel Johnson on Unsplash

The Politics of the Family

Authority, Fruitfulness, and Freedom: Eph. 6:1-4
Here’s the audio for this message.

Introduction
The Bible teaches that justification by faith alone is the foundation of all social and political freedom and flourishing (Rom. 5:18, Jn. 8:36). But one of the first fruits of that salvation is the restoration of the family: “And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse” (Mal. 4:6). This is the restoration of the blessings that flow from keeping the fifth commandment. All of the commandments describe the path of freedom for a free people (Ex. 20:1, Gal. 5), but the fifth commandment is the one with the specific promise of prosperity in the land and public square.  

The Text: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise: that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth. And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:1-4).

Summary of the Text: Paul here addresses children in particular (Eph. 6:1), and this is a reminder that children are welcome in the assembly of the saints because Jesus welcomes them as citizens of His kingdom (Mt. 19:14). If the Lord is building the house and the city, children are arrows in the hand of mighty men and speak with enemies in the gate (Ps. 127). But the command is clear: children must obey their parents in the Lord. Obedience is right away, all the way, and cheerfully. This obedience is owed to both father and mother (Prov. 1:8). This means that God has given parents true authority, and therefore obedience to parents is a righteous and just thing. But this obedience is in the Lord, under the authority and checked by the authority of Christ Himself, as all earthly authority is. Paul reviews the fifth commandment, specifically drawing attention to the promise of land and long life (Eph. 6:2-3). This is significant since Paul is writing Ephesian Christians, which would have included gentile converts, indicating that the Abrahamic promises now apply to Gentile children. Paul is taking the promise of Canaan to Israel and expanding it to include all the nations in all the lands throughout the whole world, as was always in view (e.g. Gen. 22:18, 26:3-4). Finally, Paul addresses fathers, making it clear that it is their particular responsibility to see that their children are brought up obeying and understanding this promise (Eph. 6:4). The warning for fathers is that they not use their authority to provoke their children to wrath, but rather to use their authority to feed/nourish their children with the culture and counsel of Jesus (Eph. 6:4, cf. Eph. 5:29). 

The Goodness of Hierarchy & Inequality
Going back to the garden of Eden, we know that dominion and rule and authority are good things (Gen. 1:26-28). Biblically speaking, rule and dominion are the means to fruitfulness. To rule well is to serve and guard (Gen. 2:15). If Adam had served and guarded the garden well, it would have flourished and matured into greater glory. When God took dominion of what He had made, He worked it and re-worked it and filled it and blessed it (Gen. 1). So too, when God took dominion of the man-all-alone, God cut him open and then fashioned the woman out of his rib and brought a glorious woman to Adam (Gen. 2:21-23). God’s authority in this was good. Adam’s submission to God in this was good. And Eve’s difference from Adam was very good. This is what biblical dominion does.This isn’t a cloning process (as evidenced by the creation of the woman), but a unity with diversity, a family resemblance with new glory. This is the goodness of hierarchy and the goodness of difference and inequality. We have been trained to think that inequality is a bad thing, but inequality is the basis for all fruitfulness.

The Bible requires equality before the law, and the promise of salvation is equal for all who trust in Jesus (Dt. 1:17, Gal. 3:28). But most inequality simply means we are different and better at different things and therefore responsible for different things. A race of clones or robots would act and think in the exact same ways and progress would be absolutely grinding. This is one of the great ironies of “progressives” who claim that the way to progress is absolute equality. No, absolute equality is the way to certain stagnation and regress. It is gratitude for difference and inequality, and those resulting gifts and responsibilities that are the path of biblical progress, fruitfulness, and therefore, freedom. Biblical dominion studies the differences, rejoices in the inequalities, and then serves and guards what God has made, seeking to maximize every creature’s greatest potential, and this is true freedom. True authority sets men free. Fathers and mothers exercise godly dominion over their children as they study them, feed them, teach them, train them, feed them, challenge them, correct them, and feed them. Fathers tend to exasperate and provoke their children by neglecting them or by demanding what they have not been prepared to give. 

A Race of Immortals
C.S. Lewis says somewhere that we have never had dealings with “a mere mortal.” Every person in this world is immortal, destined for eternal horror or eternal glory. Every person we come in contact with will one day be a creature that will cause us to recoil in disgust or tempt us to fall down and worship. The human race was created to be a race of kings and queens, a race of lords and ladies, imaging the Living God who is infinite intelligence, wisdom, creativity, ingenuity, hilarity, power, beauty, and love. People are the most valuable resource in the universe. This is why the stakes are so high in marriage and parenting. This is the center of making these vastly powerful, valuable creatures. Moderns balk at adultery being punished by the death penalty (Lev. 20:10) or the death penalty for a rebellious son (Dt. 21:18-21), but this is because we have such a low view of marriage and family. When the Old Testament closed with the promise of salvation, the promise was summarized as turning hearts of children to their fathers, and hearts of fathers to their children, lest the land be cursed (Mal. 4:6). This is much of the curse that is on our land: the curse of broken marriage vows, sexual immorality, and fatherlessness. But the reverse is clearly implied: where children obey their parents, and where parents invest in the task of training up children in the Lord, the land is blessed. This means thinking of the family more like a small business organization. And this tends to answer a number of questions like why God assigns responsibility for the enterprise to the husband/father or what work a woman does. 

Conclusion
Freedom is doing what you were made for to your greatest potential. Sin is not merely like slavery and death; it is slavery and death. This is the first and greatest freedom: freedom from guilt and sin and death. Has Jesus set you free? If not, get free. Call on the name of the Lord. 

If Christ has set you free, then you are free indeed. And the first application of that freedom is wherever you are today: your marriage, your parents, your family, your land, your work. That is your place of authority and dominion, and he who is faithful in little will be faithful in much. Give authority/submission a good name. Make the world love hierarchy, inequality, authority, and obedience by how you lead and submit. Make them wish they had your Lord. Make them wish they were free.

Photo by Frédéric Paulussen on Unsplash

Rosaria & Revoice in a 48hr. Petri Dish

Introduction
So apparently I struck a nerve last week – well not me, actually, but a quote from Rosaria Butterfield that I tweeted, struck a nerve.

In a recent interview, she said, “Gay Christianity is a different religion. I’m not standing in the same forest with Greg Johnson and Wes Hill and Nate Collins looking at different angels of the trees, I’m in a different forest altogether.” 

To which I added my own commentary: “This is what love looks like. It tells the truth.”

The initial pushback was expected. People who are personal friends of Greg Johnson, Wes Hill, and Nate Collins or fans or followers of the Revoice/Spiritual Friendship movement, came out of the woodwork insisting that they love the same Jesus, believe the same gospel, and they are committed to mortifying their sins and lusts. How is it charitable to claim that Gay Christianity is a different religion? The gospel is not at stake, they claim; this is a secondary issue at best, but not a creedal, doctrinal matter. There’s just a small, semantic disagreement over whether a Christian can call himself “gay” in any helpful way. This, by the way, is the essence of the Missouri Presbytery’s Report (PCA) on homosexuality from 2017: this is merely a semantic disagreement and not a substantive difference, and good, orthodox people may come down on either side of this debate. The moniker “gay” attached to Christian need not be considered any downgrade or compromise.

48 Hour Petri Dish
But the next 48 hours served as a small, non-scientific microcosm of the problem. It was like my tweet was one of those petri dish experiments you did in elementary school, where you swab various and sundry surfaces in the classroom and see who can grown the most gnarly fungus in three weeks’ time. I’m pretty sure I got the winner. My swab came from the Revoice desk, and that thang went viral. I mean, seriously, it got all funky. The first responders were the bleeding heart believers who no doubt mean well and believe they are preserving unity and peace and really do love Jesus but are blind to reality.

But the way this Twitter thing works, when those people began interacting with my tweet, their friends took notice, and the second wave of interactions was decidedly a step further away from orthodoxy. These ‘second wave’ responders were less emotional, but had relegated these sexuality issues completely to secondary issues. “Good Christians disagree about these issues,” was the refrain, but what became very clear was that under “these issues” was no longer merely the celibate, non-practicing “side-B” Gay Christians, but now the so-called “side-A”, practicing homosexuals were welcome under some of these sweeping “it’s not a gospel issue” statements. Most of these did not personally approve of Christians practicing homosexuality, but left room for others to disagree while still agreeing about gospel essentials.

But Twitter did it’s little dance, and about 24 hours into my petri dish experiment I was interacting with full-fledged, out and proud homosexuals. Some had left heterosexual marriages, some were single and looking for a “partner,” but they were openly homosexual “Christians,” explaining Scripture away as cultural, naïve, and banking on God’s grace if they were wrong. Finally, and beware, it’s about to get a little crass in here, I came smack-dab into contact with a Twitter handle called “pornyshit,” which based on a brief glance at said person’s account is a person who is a former Christian, now dedicated to drawing pornographic pictures that have apparently been banned from Instagram (and thank God). 

Said obscene Twitter account then proceeded to ask me, with apparently no irony at all, what I could possibly mean by associating sexuality with violence of any kind. It was actually at this point that I clicked on the avatar of this account — perhaps foolishly, I admit — and was greeted by a cartoon-ish drawing of a not-really clad female in a dog collar with needles and various pieces of metal in her body and face, which I suppose someone could go hunt down even now on the twitters, should they doubt me. What hath sexuality to do with violence, you ask? What harm could effeminacy, sodomy, or other perversions cause? Um, well, maybe the one drawing girls in dog collars should tell us? On second thought, no, please don’t.

But this is the kind of blind insanity we are up against.

Now, I take Scripture’s warnings about our language very seriously, and I do not share these details to be lurid or unnecessarily vulgar, but I believe the conservative Church is in the process of wading into a sewer of confusion and I know of no other way at this point to sound the alarm than to point out the feces floating just a few feet out from where we are currently standing. And as it turns out they are very open about it. They even name their Twitter handles conveniently to identify what it is they are up to. The Missouri Presbytery Report insists that there is no significant difference between Rosaria Butterfield’s take and Wes Hill’s take, but I suggest you take a water sample of their respective pools and see how it looks.

Within 48 hours of sharing Rosaria’s quote, the “out and proud and open and affirming” crowd was out in full force, explaining the Bible away like a swarm of flies on a warm cow patty. 

The Degrees of Separation Game
Now I know full well that the come back to all of this is that the degrees of separation game is hardly conclusive and two can play at that. Have conservatives like myself never attracted bull-headed men who think headship means abusing their wives and children in the name of Ephesians 5? Have conservatives like myself never attracted people who actually wanted the American South to rise up and reinstate race-based chattel slavery? In other words, don’t all leaders and teachers and movements sometimes attract the wrong sorts? Yes, they almost always do, but the key question is: and then what? What do the leaders do? What I do, if/when the racists or misogynists show up on my front porch, is fire a couple of warning shots in the air and tell them they are not welcome. If I love the truth, I must guard the truth from every threat, including those who pretend to be my friends. We practice church discipline on men who treat their wives poorly, and we have no use for racial vainglory or pride. To Hell with all of that. 

In other words, there will always be freeloaders attracted to the church, but the question is: what do you do about the freeloaders? Paul had to write the Thessalonians and warn them about keeping company with people who would not work to support themselves because the Church was (rightly) known for its generosity and care for the poor. So we must all be aware of those who are attracted to our churches for all the wrong reasons, and the decisive thing is not presence of unwanted roadies, but whether the roadies are being shown the door or not, whether the problem people are being addressed or not. And so that is my point here: the funky oranges and purples that emerged in my 48hr. Gay Christian Twitter petri dish were not so much the vulgar twitter handles themselves – trolls gonna troll, sinners gonna sin. But where were the Wes Hill and Nate Collins defenders then? Where were the “celibate-Gays” when their “friends” came out of the woodwork all open and affirming? As far as I know, they were silent and absent.

And so my point is not merely that Nate Collins and Greg Johnson and Wes Hill are attracting the whole LGBT+ sewer system, but that they do not have anything like a filtration system that can handle the sewage coming down their pipes. Rosaria sees what’s going on, and she is warning all of us. She is loving Nate and Wes and Greg like almost no one in the conservative evangelical world is willing to. She is sounding the alarm, and the Revoicers sit placidly in their fecal tidepool insisting that they believe the gospel so they are safe. No, you are not safe. The tide is coming in, and the tide is full of gunk. 

“Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (Jas. 4:4).

Conclusion
What would it take for me to think the Revoice project has any chance of being healthy or helpful? They need to drop all the alphabet soup of letters and monikers — and just be “Christian.” Full stop. Period. Stop identifying with the sin that Jesus died for. Drop all the semi-marxist language of affirming and empowering and minorities and victims, and repent of ever suggesting that “Queer treasure” might be brought into the New Jerusalem. They also need to begin leading with what the Bible actually says about homosexuality and not nervously tip-toeing around it and burying it in footnotes. Stop saying “same-sex attraction” and “disordered” and start saying “vile affections” and “degrading passions” and “unnatural” and “perversion” and “abomination.” This would also mean repenting of all effeminacy and butchness and drop all the “goodness of singleness” nonsense and call men to biblical masculinity and women to biblical femininity, which will ordinarily, in the vast majority of cases include marriage and childrearing, under God’s blessing. Repentance is always two-fold: turning away from sin and putting on new obedience. I believe that the church has significantly failed in this latter task. The reason “pray the gay away” has not really worked is because the church has not had much of a positive vision of manhood, womanhood, or sexuality. And more on that soon.

Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash

Real King & Kingdom

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,20 “teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age”  (Matt. 28:18-20).

These are the marching orders of the Church. Because Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth, we go and we make disciples of all the nations. We do this by word and sacrament. We proclaim the gospel, we baptize those who surrender to Christ, and we teach them to obey everything Jesus has commanded, including eating and drinking at His table. And the promise is that as we obey Jesus in these marching orders, He will be with us to the end of the world. 

Many Jews rejected Jesus and still reject Jesus because they read in the Old Testament that the Messiah would come to be a king and establish a kingdom that would grow and fill the world and all the nations would stream to it. But Jesus did not contradict these promises of the Old Testament, He merely insisted that He would reign differently then they envisioned, and that the Kingdom would grow differently than they thought. Many Christians faithlessly and functionally agree with the Jews and assume that all those Old Testament promises must have been figurative and spiritual, just talking about heaven or something. 

But Jesus sent us into the world to make disciples of all the nations. He gave us a mission of world conquest. The weapons of our warfare are the word and sacrament, His presence and His Spirit, but Jesus is our King, and His Kingdom is filling the world.

Here we are 2000 years later, on the other side of the world from that mountain top in Israel. How did we get here? How did we hear the gospel? The kingdom has come this far. The King has triumphed this far. It all belongs to Him. He bought it with His blood. And the victory has been proclaimed to us, and we believe and we are the nations streaming into the Kingdom. 

So don’t slow down, do not grow discouraged. Christ has won the victory. We have heard His word, we have been baptized in His name, and here he feeds us with bread and wine. He is here with us. 

So Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ.

Photo by Ricardo Cruz on Unsplash

The Center of All Political Freedom

We rightly celebrate the doctrine of justification by faith alone championed by Martin Luther and the spark that ignited the flames of the Protestant Reformation that spread all over Europe in the 16thcentury. But we need to remember again why this truth was so flammable. 

Justification by faith alone is the doctrine of Christian freedom – a freedom that permeates every part of life. Apart from God justifying sinners freely by His grace, everything else is some form of slavery. How will you justify yourself? How will you prove that you and your labors are worth something? That your failures will not be the thing that everyone remembers? How can you claim to be a good person, a good father, a good mother, a good son or daughter or brother or sister or friend or businessman or employer or scientist or scholar? The truth of the matter is that no one is good, no, not one person. 

The central claim of justification by faith alone is that simply by trusting in Christ alone, God gives bad people a completely new start. He takes our file folder full of failure, our file full of envy and lust and drunkenness and malice and bitterness – past, present, and future, and He puts it in the file of Christ who went to the cross for it all, where every single page has huge bloody, red stamp that reads “Paid in Full”, and then in our file, there is page after page that reads: perfectly obedient, perfect son, perfect daughter, perfect father, perfect mother, perfect brother, perfect sister, perfect friend, perfect man, perfect woman. And the promise of the gospel is that this is not merely a legal fiction, not merely God saying things that sound nice but are not actually true. No, because by faith, by this grace, this new life takes root and begins to grow and produce that very same fruit with the promise that it will come to pass – the perfection declared is a perfection that will be accomplished. 

And this means that by God’s grace, through faith, we cannot ultimately fail, we cannot ultimately lose. The world is ours; our debts are paid; we are free to live, to explore, to invent, to invest, to buy, to sell, to create, to build, to bake, and to love. What will you fear? No man, no wicked rules, no unjust taxation, no tyrant’s threats, no sin in your life, no brokenness in your family, no harm, no evil, no danger, no death. Christ has set us free. This is a message of political, economic, social, and cosmic freedom. If Christ has set us free, then we are free indeed. 

Photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash

What’s the Difference?

It’s easy to look back and say you would have been on the right side of history. It’s easy to say you would not have complained in the wilderness; you would have been with Joshua and Caleb. It’s easy to say that you would not have fled when Jesus was arrested; you would have been with John and Mary at the foot of the cross. It’s easy to say that you would have stood with Athanasius or Luther or Bonhoeffer. 

But Jesus warns that hero worship is often a sign that you would have hated the same people if you actually lived when they were alive:47 “Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.48 “In fact, you bear witness that you approve the deeds of your fathers; for they indeed killed them, and you build their tombs” (Lk. 11:47-48). Of course the Bible remembers faithful saints and encourages us to do the same, but that remembering should drive us to action, obedience, faithful risk taking. 

Of course there are plenty of fools and jerks and charlatans in the pages of history as well. They were confident in their causes and left trails of trouble behind them. And maybe they claimed to have their verses, like – I’m just being persecuted for righteousness sake, like the prophets. 

So how do you tell the difference? How do you tell if you are actually stepping out in faith, taking risks for Jesus, and standing against the world for the truth? Or how do you tell if you’re just being headstrong, naïve, unteachable, foolish, an ungodly troublemaker? The answer is the Word of God. Know your Bible. Read your Bible: Genesis to Revelation. It is your food, your sword, your wisdom, your light, your power. 

As our culture descends further into the pit we have dug for ourselves, you can be sure to hear otherwise nice and sane people, who claim to know and love Jesus, say things that are in complete odds with Scripture. That’s mean, that’s unkind, that’s unloving, that’s harsh, that’s disrespectful, that’s unjust, and the only safe place will be hiding in the Word of God. God’s Word is true. It does not change. It does not vary. It abides forever. Just because sinful men sometimes read their Bibles wrong doesn’t mean that God’s Word has become less true.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Beth Moore, John MacArthur, and Clobbering Girls in Football

Introduction
So amid all the other circus events, this last weekend, Christian Twitter erupted with shrieks of horror when Pastor John MacArthur told a conference audience that his thoughts on Beth Moore could be best summarized as “Go home.” 

In response, the current SBC President JD Greear assured Mrs. Moore that she was most welcome at his home any time. And various feminists and egalitarians clutched their pearls, while a number of conservatives who don’t think Mrs. Moore should actually be preaching made various throat clearing noises about Christian love and kindness, and how sad they were about how mean some “leaders” can be, and while they had their differences, they were still thankful for her ministry. And others warned breathlessly that this is how evangelicalism will continue to lose the next generation. 

Meanwhile, NPR tweeted out some idiocy about “people” menstruating.

A Preliminary, But Related Rabbit Trail
Now in order to address this business, I’d like to draw upon a matter of considerable concern and discussion in my community, a matter that faces most communities in these dark days of ours, and that is the matter of girls showing up to play contact sports with our sons. From wrestling to lacrosse to football to hockey, it’s a real issue since we are committed to teaching our sons to honor all women as sisters and mothers, and the culture we live in is committed to the opposite. In some instances, the honorable choice is clear and obvious: our sons will not wrestle a girl. It’s immodest, dishonorable, and shameful. Period. Full stop. So our boys who wrestle forfeit any match with a girl. But when it comes to lacrosse and football there are a number of complicating factors, and there are real wisdom calls to be made. The first principle remains in place: our boys are instructed not to tackle or body check girls. Of course in these confused days, it is not always possible to know if there is a girl on the field. But to the best of our ability, we will avoid any and all roughness with girls.

Depending on the circumstances, what position a girl is playing against our boys, this is sometimes fairly easy to accomplish (like if the girl is a goalie or kicker), and sometimes it is nearly impossible (like when she’s playing running back). Our general commitment is to play hard and play as much as we can without compromising our Lord’s requirement to honor all women. At times, this has proved impossible, and we have cheerfully forfeited games or pulled off teams where we could not function within our principles. On occasion, our boys are having to learn how to push a girl out of bounds as gently as possible. And some parents have given their boys slightly varying instructions depending on the situation, and we’re committed to supporting one another as we navigate this minefield with our sons. At the same time, we have determined in general not to merely roll over and quit the field. Our coaches and athletic directors are fairly vocal about our principles with other coaches and league officials, and our longterm hope is to win others to our convictions. But these problems are certainly not going away any time soon, and we (and our sons) need to learn how to fight, sometimes how to fight with one arm tied behind our back, and how to fight as honorable Christian men.

All of this is a rather lengthy preliminary rabbit trail to my cheerful and robust support of Pastor MacArthur’s comments regarding Beth Moore. But I hope they prove a helpful rabbit trail. My support of MacArthur’s comments do not come from any sort of animus to women, any delight in dishonoring women (and certainly not Mrs. Moore), but from my commitment (which I assume Pastor MacArthur shares) to honor all women and to fight honorably for the cause of Christ. I take Pastor MacArthur’s comment as the unfortunate but necessary push out of bounds that a Christian gentleman is sometimes duty bound to give when a woman has gotten out of her lane. [Let the shrieks begin!] But your complaint is not with me or with Pastor MacArthur. Your complaint is with God and His clear word.

I’m not even addressing the content of Mrs. Moore’s preaching. I am merely speaking of the fact that she openly and defiantly claims to preach. This is shameful. She ought to be ashamed of herself. Her husband ought to be ashamed of himself. Her pastor and elders ought to be ashamed of themselves. But apparently none of them are. They openly flout the word of God. When the Bible says that a woman must not have authority over men or instruct them in the Word but to be silent in church – Beth Moore sneers at the God of Heaven and says she knows better. But what is worse are all the cowardly men around her who have flattered her and refused to actually love her in the truth. Pastor MacArthur said out loud in public what her husband and Christian brothers closest to her should have been saying for years, “Go home.” And yes, this is Christian love because love is treating others lawfully from the heart, and God’s law is clear at this point.  

Our Problem
Much of our problem in this area is related to the fact that modern Christians have become accustomed to soft men and soft preaching and viscerally trained to hate and despise all masculine preaching. For example, if John the Baptist showed up one day in modern America he would no doubt be burned at the stake by noon with several PCA and SBC pastors leading the proceedings. But it is a shameful fact that many women, no doubt Mrs. Moore included, would give more hearty sermons than your average seminary graduate these days, as seminaries, with very rare exceptions, are places where men go to get neutered. And if you’re going to have a biological man stand up in the pulpit and mince his words and lisp and share his feelings for an hour and try to relate to everyone in the room with stories and illustrations and clever jokes, you might as well get a real woman to do it. She’s a lot better at all of that, and plus she’s a whole lot easier on the eyes.

The reason NPR has the audacity to talk about “people” menstruating without fear of getting laughed out of existence (as it should) is because the evangelical Church has been led by menstruating people for a long while. What I mean is that we flouted God’s word a long time ago when we insisted on having therapists instead of preachers, life coaches instead of preachers, politicians instead of preachers, relatable stand-up comedians instead of preachers, anything but men declaring God’s word authoritatively. We insisted we knew better, sneering at God’s requirement that preachers and pastors be men who ruled their own households well with believing children. We wanted CEOs and TED talks and pep rallies and rock concerts, various and sundry, generic people, but absolutely no authority, no masculinity, no plain speaking about the holiness of God, the reality of Hell, the substitutionary atonement, and the necessity of repentance unto life and church discipline to that end. Of course none of that is popular work among the masses, and it doesn’t make a pastor particularly relatable or approachable, especially to a certain class of ambitious woman – as it most certainly shouldn’t. But God insists on male preachers and pastors because the Church, and the Pulpit in particular, is a battlefield.

The reason God calls men to preach is the same reason he requires that only men engage in military combat. And the reason is at least twofold. First, he requires men to go to war because he made them physically strong. Women have many glorious strengths, but God made men to be naturally physically strong. This is our glory, and it takes considerable physical strength to preach faithfully, to pastor consistently, and to rule your household all while ruling the people of God. If that seems strange and unlikely, welcome to the impotent modern church and witness the many pastors who struggle with depression and suicide — most of them should have been weeded out in basic training. Second, God requires men to go to war because He requires men to lay their lives down first. This is the oldest code of honor, as it began in the garden of Eden when God pictured that code of honor in the creation of the first woman from Adam’s bloody side. The same standard of honor was codified in Israel’s law, and it was ultimately accomplished in the gospel when Jesus died for His bride. But it is for all of these reasons and more that God has commanded His Church to be led by men. Men are to be heralds of the gospel. Men are to lose their lives by dying for their flocks, their families, their nations. Jesus calls that love. And yes, the Lord is free to raise up the occasional Deborah in the face of masculine cowardice, but that will always be to our shame and never to our glory, just as Deborah herself said. 

Toxic Scripture
And speaking of things you can find in the Bible, I’m a little concerned about what will happen if the evangelical Twitterverse actually reads the Bible sometime. I mean, they might come across Isaiah talking about the wanton daughters of Israel, and that might, uh, what do they call it? Oh right, it might trigger them. Or what about when Jeremiah describes armies fleeing in fear as becoming fearful like women? Did that get deleted from the ESV yet? I’m sure someone is doing a Hebrew word study on it presently. Or what about Jesus Himself? I mean, he had the audacity to nearly say the same thing to the Samaritan woman as Pastor MacArthur said to Beth Moore – Go and get your husband? I mean, seriously, what kind of heteronormative, patriarchal toxicity is that? Did he even have authority to do that since he wasn’t her local pastor? And then there’s Titus 2 [gasp], and even Peter got in on the misogyny in his first letter — submitting to disobedient husbands, quiet and gentle spirit, calling a husband lord?! What was God thinking? Well, Peter always was a hothead. And then all that Jezebel whoredoms business in Revelation. Hopefully, they just stick to their Twitter bites of Bible, all the happy verses that stroke their egos and self-deceptions. Otherwise, they might find themselves agreeing with that recent British court’s ruling that the Bible is “incompatible with human dignity.”

Real Glory
But the real tragedy in all of this is Mrs. Moore’s abandonment of her real glory – the glory waiting for her at home. She and her husband and pastors scorn the glory of womanhood, of homemaking, but her own home, not JD Greear’s home, or anyone else’s home, is where her glory waits. And one day she will stand before the Lord of the Universe, and all the baubles of human glory and all the Greek word studies and clever arguments will flee away, and the Lord will ask what she did with the glory of her home that He gave her. I don’t know the answer to that question, but John MacArthur’s two word response was one of the best I could imagine. He blessed her even as he gave her a brotherly shove. Get off the field, Mrs. Moore. You are a lady. Your calling is higher. You have a different glory. You deserve better. 

No one but God knows all the hearts of the folks in the congregation listening to Pastor MacArthur’s answer. Was the laughter mere scorn? Was the laughter mere malice? I supposed such fleshly impulses were no doubt scattered about the room, and perhaps even some of the godly laughter could be tinged with such mixed motives. But I have much higher regard for Pastor MacArthur and Phil Johnson. And when you parade yourself out on to a field of battle, demanding that you be treated as a pastoral equal, you’ll have to pardon us if we laugh at the silliness of the thought. No, ma’am, not a chance. Go home. And if you take that as demeaning and rude that is only because you have already demeaned your Maker and His Word and the calling of preaching. 

Her Christian Brothers
It wasn’t too long ago, maybe a year or two ago, when Beth Moore published some kind of open letter to her Christian brothers recounting how she has been the butt of jokes, sexually objectified and harassed, and perhaps worse, throughout the course of her ministry. I have no objection to those sins actually being addressed, and in fact, my objection to that open letter was the vagueness, the fact that it didn’t really address the problems she outlines. Where were the names of the men who acted so shamefully? Where were the names of the churches, the dates of the incidents? Where is your husband? Your pastor? Have they offered to confront those men for you? Let me say this clearly: Mrs. Moore’s sin does not justify any other sin. Her refusal to submit to God’s Word and her insistence that she be allowed out on the field of battle to “preach” is high handed rebellion, but it does not justify any dishonorable conduct toward her at all. But I will say that she is a seething stumbling block to her Christian brothers and if she really cared about seeing her Christian brothers growing in holiness rather than just manipulating them to fawn all over her, she would repent of her insolence and go home. 

Mark the Men
And to my three readers who are still reading, wondering what my next offensive remark might be, let me urge you to mark the men, the pastors in particular, who are standing around flattering Mrs. Moore right now and in various ways distancing themselves from Pastor MacArthur. Mark those so-called “conservative” “complementarian” men. They are not to be trusted as pastors or leaders in the church. I’m saying nothing about eternal destinies here, only that leaders must be trusted to lead. And when you have something this clear, this black and white, you have men who can see clearly on the one hand and you have men who are blinded by greed and envy and ambition and lust on the other. The days are dark and are not likely to lighten any time soon, and the need of the hour is men who will fix their eyes on Jesus heedless of the fallout, heedless of the complaints and shrieks of offense, willing to lay their lives down for their sheep, not able to be bought by any distraction, any fear tactic, full of joy in the glory of the cross.

Conclusion
Ok, last thing. Maybe this is all a bit confusing or convoluted, and you’re not sure what to think or who to believe. Let me suggest this little litmus test: of the parties involved in this little spat, which would give you the most biblical answer regarding boys and girls in contact sports or women in the military? Would Mrs. Moore and her supporters tell you in no uncertain terms that girls should not be playing contact sports and boys should not be clobbering girls on a football field, and certainly not manhandling them on a wrestling mat? Would you get a clear, straightforward answer or would you get caveats and exceptions and relativistic blather? Should women be mustered for combat service or not? Who are you most likely to get a clear, biblical answer from? And if Mrs. Moore and her supporters insist that girls can too get clobbered on a football field, and they can too get blown to bits on a battlefield, then what is everyone up in arms about? Why are the very same people objecting to what Pastor MacArthur said? By their standards, Pastor MacArthur might as well be Mr. Rogers.

Long Live Inequality

“If the doctrine of equality be true, ‘we must consider envy to be as sound a guide in politics as reverence by religious men is considered to be in religion’.” – W.H. Mallock, cited by Russell Kirk in The Conservative Mind, 403

“Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities” (Jude 8).

Introduction
As I (finally) turn the last bend in my nearly year long walk through Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, easily one of the biggest takeaways is the historic conservative commitment to the goodness of hierarchy. Some conservatives have known this more clearly and fought for it more explicitly than others, and sure, some (if not many) were muddled and retreating from the point even as they instinctively knew there was something good from the past that they couldn’t quite put their finger on. 

But I would boil it all down to the goodness of hierarchy, or if we want to put it a bit more flamboyantly, the goodness of inequality, or perhaps even more defiantly, the goodness of authority and dominion. This authority and dominion is the foundation of freedom, safety, and provision because dominion insists upon responsibility, ownership, and therefore true, Christian love. There can be no love where there is no responsibility, and there is no responsibility where there is no authority. And apart from this kind of responsible love, there can be no long term flourishing, fruitfulness, creativity, or dare I say it, progress.  

Our Radical Rebellion
The root of our radical rebellion goes back to the Garden of Eden. Adam despised the authority of God to command his obedience without clear reasons given. God had the right to command Adam’s obedience because He was God, Adam’s Maker, the Lord of All. He owed Adam nothing, no explanations, no reasons, no promises. Adam’s existence itself was pure grace, an undeserved gift. Breath in his lungs, a beating heart, the sights and sounds and smells and tastes and textures of the world were a pile of Christmas presents that would take forever to unwrap. Adam owed God perfect obedience. But Adam, the original John Lennon, imagined a world without heaven and hell, a world without God, the original filthy dream, and so he defiled his own flesh and the flesh of all his descendants. He rejected God’s authority and in so doing, abdicated his own authority and rejected fruitfulness for the barrenness of envious equality.

That is the core of our human condition, our rebellion, and all so-called political and social radicalism. It is the hatred of God’s authority every instance of His authority revealed in the created order. God has spoken this world into existence with certain hard edges, definitions, identities, including the fixed nature of male and female, the image of God in human beings from conception to natural death, basic logic, gravity, and the meaningfulness of human language. All of this is deeply offensive to natural man as it reminds him day after day of the authority of his Maker, that we did not make ourselves, that He made us and so defines everything about us and the world around us. All of creation proclaims His Lordship, His Dominion, His Name that is above every name. And man naturally hates that.

Multiplicity of Hierarchies & A Word Study
But there is more. His authority and lordship have established multitudes of hierarchies in the world and in history: hierarchies in the animal kingdom, hierarchies in the mineral world, hierarchies in human society. No created hierarchy is absolute. Only God’s authority and hierarchy is absolute, unchanging, utterly fixed, which is why created hierarchies may be better termed inequalities – glorious inequalities, created inequalities, the goodness of difference. But we are not talking about bland, meaningless, random differences. We are talking about intentional, meaningful differences — differences that are better for some things than others. A hammer is different from a tea cup, and those differences are strengths and weaknesses depending on the use. We are talking about different abilities and therefore different authorities and different possibilities, gifts, blessings. A tea cup has authority to carry tea; a hammer has authority to knock a nail into place. These are their respective domains, spheres of authority and dominion and therefore, spheres of flourishing and fruitfulness. 

The word “dominion” is from the Latin word dominus, which means “lord” or “master,” and it is where we get the verb “dominate,” which has taken on various negative connotations except in the realm of sports where an athlete may still be said to perform gloriously by “dominating” the opposition. In that athletic context, everyone knows that what is being is said is that the winning team/athlete played with prowess, expertise, passion, and won (presumably) within the rules/limits of the game, but it need not mean that anything demeaning or abusive occurred to the losing athletes/team. A hammer dominates in the task of driving nails. A teacup dominates in the task of drinking tea. It is glorious, awe-inspiring, astonishing to see a Simone Biles dominate in her floor routine, to see what God made her capable of.

The Greek word for “lord/master” is kurios and a verb form of that word is katakureiuo which is used in the Septuagint for God’s assignment to man and woman made in His image to “take dominion” – (Gen. 1:28, repeated in the Septuagint in Gen. 9:1). The same word is used to describe Israel conquering Sihon the Amorite and taking possession of his land at the beginning of the conquest of Canaan (Num. 21:24, cf. 32:22). Likewise, David prays that presumptuous sins would not “have dominion” over him (Ps. 19:13, cf. 119:33). David sings that the Messianic king shall have “dominion” from the River to the ends of the earth (Ps. 72:8, 110:2), and foresees that the upright will have “dominion” over their enemies (Ps. 48:15). It’s striking that the same word is used in Jeremiah 3:14 to describe God’s call to His people to return to Him so that He can “marry” them. To be their “lord” is to be their husband, their redeemer. Adam and Eve would take dominion of the world together, but that would begin by Adam learning to take dominion of His wife first, causing her to flourish and be fruitful, maximizing the glory she was made for. Yes, Jesus warns His disciples not to “lord” their authority like the gentiles (Mt. 20:25, Mk. 10:42), and Peter echoes the same point admonishing elders not to rule selfishly but to exercise their authority as examples to the flock (1 Pet. 5:1-4). But we know that Peter is not dismissing godly dominion of elders since only a couple chapters previously, he lifts up Sarah as a godly example for all wives to imitate in her submission to Abraham, calling him “lord” (1 Pet. 3:6). All of this is to simply make the case that dominion is good thing – long live godly dominion. Even though it certainly can be sinfully misused, it is the means by which God intends for the world, families, churches, societies to be well loved, cared for, protected, and caused to flourish to their greatest potential.

He Made It This Way But We Despise Authority
God is the Lord, the Master of the Universe. He has commanded the worlds to come into existence, and He upholds them all by the Word of His power. All things exist in obedience to Him. This lordship and dominion is good and very good and glorious, even though it has been infected by sin and death in this world. Nevertheless, God has established many echoes and reflections of His glory and authority. And these go together. The glory of a created thing is its authority, it’s lordship, wherever it may be said to dominate, flourish, displaying its prowess – doing what it was made for – for the good of the world and the glory of its Maker. Certain created things “dominate” with their colors, their sounds, their beauty, their majesty, their strength, their intricacies, and so on. They dominate and rule by their inequalities, by their differences, by a multiplicity of hierarchies. And along with these abilities and gifts and inequalities come various assignments authoritatively established by God.

“For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him” (Col. 1:16). 

But sinners hate the thrones and dominions and principalities and powers. Sinners hate the inequalities and hierarchies. They “walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority. They are presumptuous, self-willed. They are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries” (2 Pet. 2:10). They despise authority. Listen to that. Read it again. They despise authority. They speak evil of the “glorious ones,” great ones, masters, dominions, powers. They hate all inequality. They hate that some are smarter, some are stronger, some are richer, some are faster, some are better at some things than others. But these are powers given by God. These are authorities given by the Lord. They are not fixed, they are not ultimate, but they are given and they are given for our good. We ought to rejoice in them. Why take more money from the one who is better with money? Why take away the leadership from the one with more wisdom? Why penalize people for their God-given powers? This is like refusing to use your right hand because you’re better with it and it makes your left hand feel bad or dumping trash in the Appalachians because they make people from Wyoming feel bad. This is the barrenness of equality.  

Conservative Messaging
And to bring this all right down to a simple point: I don’t believe conservativism is likely to make significant headway in our modern culture until the common man on the street understands that conservativism is centrally the celebration of biblical hierarchy and inequality and difference. The message we need to get out is the glory of inequality and hierarchy and difference. Liberalism worships equality, a pan-sexual goddess of envy, lust, and eternal enmity and petty rivalries. But true conservativism worships the Creator God, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, and long live His dominion, His Kingdom, and His power. And long live all the kings and priests in His dominion. Long live the lordship of gracious husbands, the lordship of faithful pastors, the lordship of godly magistrates, the lordship of mighty motherhood, the lordship of craft competence, scientific ingenuity, athletic prowess, and all other created and God-given inequalities, responsibilities, and differences.

God requires impartiality before the law. The image of God must be honored and defended in all people. And in Christ, all are sons in the Son, all are heirs of the promises to Abraham. But we are not interested in the mass-leveling, power-wealth redistributing, socially-suffocating equality of the Left. Our message has been unclear. And if we are all proclaiming a message of equality, the Left has the better message. But what they are offering is a dead end, stagnation, an eternal hemorrhaging of joy and creativity.  

Biblical lordship is not at all by flat fiat, by barking orders, by capricious domineering – that is the way of Darwinian destruction; biblical lordship is rather by exercising wise dominion. Biblical authority bleeds. Biblical dominion lays its life down to bring glory from the ashes, light from the darkness, form to the formless. This is done by studying God’s Word and the world as God has actually made it, remembering its frame, rejoicing in its differences, glories, and variety of abilities, understanding more and more what things are for, and glorifying those giftings and differences.

Conclusion
Understood rightly, biblical dominion begets dominion. If we may steal a word from the Marxists, biblical dominion empowers. The deep irony is that the worship of equality can never empower anyone or anything. The whole point is to flatten, penalize, and despise every form of difference and inequality. Only dominion can beget dominion. Only authority can beget authority. Taking dominion of an uncultivated space of land causes it to flourish and dominate with its beauty and fruitfulness. Wise rule lifts up what/whom has been entrusted to its care causing them to rule their domains wisely as well. This is the way of love, innovation, creativity, prosperity, and blessing. Insistence on equality is insistence on fear, envy, gridlock, hatred, and barrenness.

Yes, in a fallen world, all human authority is exercised with a mixture of sin and evil. And so perhaps the most difficult commands in the Bible are the ones that require obedience to fallen authorities. Wives submit to your own husbands. Children obey your parents. Slaves obey your masters. Citizens be subject to your rulers. Obey those elders who rule over you. Obey the kind and just and wise authorities, as well as the evil and unjust and foolish authorities. Why? Because God said so. Let that sink in. Let it prick your pride. Let it make you flourish. 

And yes, in the Lord, qualifies all of it. He is the One who gives it, and He stands behind it all. And He is the One who delivers His people from all oppression and abuse of power, but He does this by raising up new authorities, new powers. He has not come to obliterate authority and power. He has come to redeem it. Long live inequality.

Photo by Jorge Illich-Gejo on Unsplash