Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 76

Strength & Shield

“The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him. The Lord is their strength, and he is the saving strength of his anointed. Save thy people, and bless thine inheritance: feed them also, and lift them up for ever.” (Ps. 28:7-9)

How do Christian people stand in troubling days? How do Christians stand firm when the days are dark, when our enemies gather around? How do we stand when we have failed? How do we stand when we feel so weak and powerless? The answer is here. The Lord is our strength and shield. Christians have no other strength, no other shield. The Lord is our strength and shield, and therefore our hearts greatly rejoice. And this strength is the saving strength of His Anointed, which is just another word for Christ. In other words, our safety or security or victory is exactly the same as Christ’s. It’s the same saving strength that held Jesus and raised Him from the dead that holds every child of God. This is our confidence, our boldness, our strength, our blessing: and the sign of that blessing is this table, this meal.

Jesus gave us this meal when He was about to go into the shadow of death for us and for our salvation, and this meal has been the sign ever since that just as God did not abandon Jesus in the grave, neither will He leave or forsake any of those who belong to Him. He feeds us here like a Good Shepherd, reminding you that He is the one who carried you this far. You didn’t get here by accident. It may have been difficult. It may have been very painful. But Jesus carried you all the way here today. And He is the one feeding you this morning, and therefore, you are invited to have every confidence that He will go with you from here.

He says this is the new covenant in His blood. You are renewing covenant, and this means that Jesus is showing you His blood right now which was shed for you, assuring you that He is your strength. He is your shield. Therefore, as you come, come with your hearts rejoicing. Come with songs of praise. The Lord is your shepherd. He feeds you and He carries you forever.

So, come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

 

Photo by Kyle Loftus on Unsplash

Lucky Ape-Dude, Tree Rings & Darwin

One of the central reasons Darwinism should be repugnant to all thinking Christians is the fact that it enshrines death as the primary method of progress. To posit millions of years of natural selection and survival of the fittest through the mechanism of death is to posit the fundamental usefulness and therefore goodness of death. But the Bible teaches very clearly that death entered the world through one man named Adam.

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned… Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come” (Rom. 5:12, 14).

If you try to limit this to the death of man, with millions of years of dying animal life mutating usefully (a massively problematic thesis given the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics) up through an interminable series of “hominids” and suddenly, voila! God chooses one of those upright apes to bear His image, you still completely undermine the gospel. First, the Bible clearly says that God made the first man out of the dust of the earth, not a lucky ape-dude with a slightly enlarged cerebellum. Related, you have to do a particularly gnarly looking bit of exegetical acrobatics to get Jesus to mean anything other than God created people at the beginning of creation when He said, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.'” (Mk. 10:6). But second, you cannot have millions of years of death and dying and violence and mutation and then have anything remotely approaching the picture given to us of the Garden of Eden. This is not a world full of death and violence and species dying out. You cannot cram that story into days of ages or a “Framework Hypothesis.” You are telling a story that contradicts the Biblical narrative entirely; it’s not just a different riff on the timeline.

But I also said it undermines the gospel, and what I mean is that the central point of the gospel is the fact that Adam brought death into this world by his sin. And Jesus is the new Adam. By His death, He breaks the power of death. By His resurrection the curse has been broken, and He has begun making all things new. Easter is the celebration of that event. To posit millions of years of death and decay and violence and extinction prior to the first “man” who is then offered endless life in the midst of a death-infested world is not the same story at all. It’s anticlimactic, and the so-called “Fall” is really not much of a Fall. It’s more like the “Bummer” – Bummer, I guess we just keep dying like everything else in this world has for millennia. Furthermore, the Bible is absolutely clear that the curse of death is what infected the world because of sin. Thorns and weeds began to grow at the Fall not before (Gen. 3:18). The whole creation groans in birth pangs for the redemption of the sons of men (Rom. 8:19-21). The created order was subjected to bondage at the Fall, and in some way creation remembers life before the Fall. It aches to return to that paradise. Evolution insists that there never really was a paradise that was lost. But the gospel teaches us to sing:

“No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found”

Two final points: First, all of this strongly suggests that micro-evolutionary mutations and adaptations did occur after the Fall, where many animal species likely developed various predatory instincts and bodily characteristics that matched those instincts. The vision of the reign of the root of Jesse pictures lions lying down with lambs and eating hay with them and a little child reaching his hand into a viper’s den unharmed (Is. 11). In other words, the reign of the Child King, Jesus, brings with it a healing of all of creation, restoring it to its pre-Fall state.

And lastly, while some theistic evolutionists seem to be greatly bothered by God creating a world in which there is an appearance of great age, this really shouldn’t be a problem at all. Adam and Eve were created fully mature, not as newborn infants. They appeared to have lived for perhaps 20 or 30 years, but they hadn’t. They appeared to have sloughed off millions and millions of dead skin cells, but they hadn’t. They were created mature. Likewise, I have no doubt that the fully grown trees in the garden had many rings, the dirt in the garden was probably full of the sorts of minerals that would indicate organic decay. The same point is made in the fact that Adam could look up into the sky and see many of the stars God had created three days earlier millions of light years away. This means that God created the stars, and He created their light already reaching earth. In some cases, He also created light in motion with stars that had already apparently gone out of existence. Eden was on a mountain (a river flowed out of it), and no doubt that mountain was made by the appearance of great age, with many rocks piled up in various layers, composed of different minerals, etc. Ditto for all the moon craters and moon dust. None of this is a problem at all. And actually if you think about it for a moment it’s all very glorious.

The universe is one of God’s books – it speaks to us, it tells us about our Maker. So it makes tons of sense for God to create the world with an apparent history pre-loaded. This is like buying a brand new computer that already has tons of software pre-loaded on to it. You do not look at the date of manufacture on the computer, say January 2018, and conclude that Apple lied to you since all that software could not have been developed in one month. How much more so is the infinite God free to preload the universe with evidence of His work in an instant? This is not God lying to us because He told us explicitly that the world was made in six days. It’s not lying if you tell someone the truth explicitly. So God told Adam and told all the generations following that He made the world around 4000 B.C., such that if we look up into the night sky or dig down into the world and see the evidence of ages beyond that point, we would know that God put it all there for us to understand more clearly how the world works, how decay occurs, how time works, how light works. God buried gold down one of the rivers running out of Eden and told Adam to go find it, and all of these apparent age-markers are just more of that treasure, like history books pre-published, science textbooks buried in the ground, flung into the sky for us to find, for us to read, so that we would worship our Maker.

 

Photo by Joel & Jasmin Førestbird on Unsplash

God Will Bring Us Out

You know how Noah was put into the Ark — certainly he knew there was much affliction in the Ark, with all kinds of creatures shut up with him for twelve months together — it was a mighty thing, yet God having shut him up, even though the waters were assuaged, Noah was not to come out of the ark till God bid him. So though we be shut up in great afflictions, and we may think of this and that and the other means to come out of that affliction, yet till God opens the door, we should be willing to stay; God has put us in, and God will bring us out.

Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment

A Joy No One Can Take

“A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you” (Jn. 16:21-22).

Jesus says here that His death and resurrection is like a woman in labor and giving birth. In the labor there is great sorrow, but when she gives birth, she doesn’t remember the anguish anymore. Joy floods her as she holds her newborn in her arms and that joy overwhelms all the previous sorrow. Jesus says that His disciples will be in great sorrow and anguish at His crucifixion, but that at His resurrection, their hearts will rejoice, and they will be given a joy that no one can take away from them.

This is what it means to know the resurrected Jesus. Christian joy does not mean that there is no sorrow, no anguish. But Christian joy is the sort of thing that throbs beneath the greatest pain. Christians feel the ache of sin, the sharpness of death, the shocks of hard news and terrible tragedy and hardship, but to know Jesus is to know the One who has gone down into it all. He went down into betrayal. He went down into intense suffering and pain. He went down into mockery and rejection. He went down into public ridicule and shame. He went down into death itself. And He went down there for us. Not only that, He went down there to get us.

If you look closely with the eyes of faith, when you see the Lord risen in victory over sin and death and the devil, You see that He’s carrying spoils with Him. His arms are full of people He’s brought back with Him. And if you look with the eyes of faith, you can see that you’re among them. He’s carrying you. He’s holding you. And therefore, because He is holding you, your heart rejoices and you have a joy that can never be taken away from you.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

A Talk on Abortion

Introduction

Abortion is the intentional termination of a pregnancy, by the removal or expulsion of a baby from its mother’s womb, resulting in or caused by the death of the baby. According to the World Health Organization, there are 40-50 million abortions worldwide every year, that’s around 125,000 abortions a day. 10 million abortions have been performed in the world this year already. In the US, there are over 3,000 abortions per day, 22% of all pregnancies end in abortion. Nearly 60 million babies have been aborted since the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade in 1973.

A Case for Criminalization

Biblical: God created man in His image (Gen. 1:27). The Bible clearly teaches that God knits people together in their mother’s womb, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:13-14). Human life belongs to God. He is Lord of life. Abortion is not evil because babies are cute. All unlawful taking of human life is an attack on God and grasping to be God.

“When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Ex. 21:22-25). God’s law requires the protection of unborn human life.

Theological: We see the full dignity of unborn life when Mary went to stay with Elizabeth. “And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Lk. 1:41-43) When was Jesus Elizabeth’s Lord? When Mary conceived Jesus by the Holy Spirit.

Scientific: The American College of Pediatricians state: “The predominance of human biological research confirms that human life begins at conception—fertilization.  At fertilization, the human being emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated zygotic living human organism, a member of the species Homo sapiens, needing only the proper environment in order to grow and develop. The difference between the individual in its adult stage and in its zygotic stage is one of form, not nature.”

A Case for the Death Penalty

Many unbelievers have taunted Christians asking how they can be “pro-life” and believe in the death penalty, and over the years, Christians have gone soft on this issue. But Christians will not have a moral backbone on the issue of life in general until they recover a fully biblical embrace of the death penalty for the intentional taking of human life. The basic standard of biblical justice is eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. This means that damages must be repaid up to and including the execution of the one who has intentionally taken someone’s life. In the case of theft, the Bible requires restitution. In the case of human life, the Bible is clear: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Gen. 9:6). We should note that the Bible makes a difference between murder and manslaughter (cf. Dt. 19:4ff, Num. 35:15ff), and this is therefore the broad basis for the degrees of murder recognized in our modern law code. We have much ground to make up in studying what the Bible teaches and how it should be applied with wisdom, especially as it applies to abortion, but we should begin my stating this clear teaching of the Bible. When we state this clearly we are stating the value of human life and deterring those who might be tempted to take it.

The Religious Component

Biblically speaking, we also need to recognize that murder on a massive scale is a holocaust. But the word literally means “whole burnt,” and it was originally used to describe some of the sacrificial offerings in the Bible. But the pagans around Israel often burned their own children in fires to their gods. “You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods” (Dt. 12:31). So since ancient times, rebellious men have worshipped false gods by burning their children in fire. And at times, God’s people joined in these detestable things: “For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the Lord. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind” (Jer. 7:31-32, cf. 19:4-5).

Abortion is a holocaust. But what I mean is that it is not only mass-murder and genocide, but it is also fundamentally religious. Mass murders are always driven by deeply held beliefs. They are wicked and evil beliefs, but they are religious beliefs all the same. The new gods are called “choice” and “freedom” and “my body,” but they are still false gods for all that. And this is why rational arguments and evidence are not the most important thing those who support abortion need. You can’t reason people from blindness to sight, from death to life. The reason they can’t see or hear or understand the truth is because their hearts won’t let them. Blind men can’t see; dead men can’t live.

What can we do?

Remember, murder begins in the heart, and so does life. Remember that Jesus says that if you hate your brother in your heart you have committed the sin of murder. Not only that, the wages of all sin is death. We all deserve the death penalty for our sin, and Jesus took the death penalty to take away our sins. Apart from faith in Jesus, your heart is dead. We cannot build a culture of life apart from living hearts. Confess your sins; cry out to God. You need a living heart to build a culture of life.
Honor the marriage bed and love the fruitfulness of children. You need to recognize that abortion is the sacrament of the modern religion of sexual perversion. The deeply held belief at its core is that a person should be able to satisfy their lust in any way they want. The cost of this is the blood of millions of babies. This is why the Bible says that marriage is to be honored and defended. When it isn’t, the weakest are crushed. Pornography is also related. Plan to get married and welcome children. Modern birth control was invented by Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in America.
In Ephesians 4 Paul says that Christians should not steal but rather work hard so they are ready to help those in need. Some of those people in need are orphans; some are single moms; some have had abortions. Think about your schooling and vocational training now as working toward having a stable home with extra to give (hospitality, shelter, counsel, love, etc.).
Finally, give yourself in every way to speaking up for the unborn, speaking up for those who do not have a voice, and working to end abortion in our generation (prayer, marching, voting, serving). This means not simply voting for politicians who say they are pro-life but asking hard questions, requiring them to explain how they plan to actually work for the complete abolition of abortion. A majority pro-life congress with a pro-life president just recently passed and signed a bill that continues funding Planned Parenthood.

[These are the notes from my Logos School assembly presentation this morning.]

Photo by Suhyeon Choi on Unsplash

The Grandest Office Upon the Earth

Our commission is still that which was given by our Lord himself to Paul: “To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith.” Nothing less than that is the great objective of the preacher, as given to him by the Lord of Glory himself. It is this aim and purpose which makes the preacher’s office the grandest upon the earth and bestows upon him honors and laurels incorruptible, undefiled, and that fade not away, compared with which the laurels of a Caesar or a Napoleon are but withered weeds.

-Clarence Macartney, Preaching without Notes, 9-10.

Choosing Confusion

Sin is always willful confusion. Ultimately, sin pretends that God is not God, that God cannot see, that God does not know, and we substitute our own desires, our own wills, or the claims or promises of something or someone else – in place of God. This is confusion. This happens in knee jerk reactions: anger, lust, fear, covetousness, envy, lies – in that moment people choose confusion, pretending that God is not God, pretending that their circumstances justify their sin. I had to lie. I couldn’t help being fearful. Of course I got angry. But confusion breeds confusion. You cannot allow a little confusion to fester because it always metastasizes. It always grows. Confusion by definition is not reasonable. You cannot tell confusion to be good. You cannot tell confusion to stay there in that one little corner of your life. Confusion is a cancer, a mold, a rot in your soul, and it always brings trouble. A home full of strife and striving is a home full of confusion. A heart full of guilt and shame is constantly confused.

This is where the great abominations come from. Why do people kill their children? Why do people turn to homosexuality? Why do people embrace these great confusions, these perversions? The answer is that God gives people over to these confusions. “The Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me” (Dt. 28:20). Paul says, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened… Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to dishonoring their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie…” (Rom. 1:21-25).

So what shall we do? Whether you are trying to hide little sins in secret or whether you know that you are neck deep in trouble, the answer to all of the confusion is to tell the truth. Stop lying, stop blaming other people, stop blaming your circumstances, stop accusing God, and tell the truth. Admit that you have sinned. You have chosen confusion. And call on the Lord to deliver you from all confusion. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

 

Photo by Ehimetalor Unuabona on Unsplash

Preferred Shape Orientation

So, in case you missed it, a few nights ago, the high priests of our culture met for one of their great covenant renewal services, known popularly as The Oscars. Among other things, these high priests awarded honors to one movie glorifying bestiality and another movie celebrating the seduction of a young man by an older man. After the fact, I saw one article from Slate explaining somewhat apologetically to their constituents that The Shape of Water (i.e. woman having sex with fish-man) was the “safe” choice this time around. And then just this morning, I saw a headline proclaiming that Richard Dawkins would like to eat human flesh in order to overcome the taboo of cannibalism.

And in other news: the Supreme Court, in a six to three decision, has handed down a ruling that requires all fifty states to grant all squares the right to be recognized and treated by their preferred shape-orientation: circles, triangles, hexagons, or whatever. In the majority opinion written by Justice Sotomayor, she explained that “since we all come from the water, and water has no fixed shape, and The Shape of Water just won an oscar for Best Picture, and Guillermo del Toro is so haut, therefore, hence, and henceforth, hic est hoc, muy bueno burrito es mi amor, Taco Bell.” And in a separate but related ruling, from now on gravity is illegal in all fifty states. Ok, these last two might be exaggerations, but not by much.

But what I actually wanted to point out is that given all of this (and lots more) Christians have every reason to be hopeful. This is for two basic reasons. First, because the lines of belief and unbelief are being drawn up and collision between these two utterly opposed worldviews is becoming more and more unavoidable. When Peter and John had been beaten and charged not to speak in the name of Jesus, the apostles left, “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name… Now in those days when the disciples were increasing in number… ” (Acts 5:41, 6:1). For far too long unbelief has masqueraded under the guise of moralism, like Mormons insisting that they are no different than Christianity. But now we have the lines of battle being drawn up more and more clearly every day. Will you support bestiality? Do you support the murder of the unborn? Do you celebrate older men preying on young men for the purpose of sodomizing them? Do you support the Federal government foisting it’s irrational, unjust, and wicked laws on our states?

This is wonderful. Rejoice. We are being given opportunities to be dishonored for the name of Jesus, and this is how Jesus grows His church. All the fussers and whiners about el culture war haven’t even seen a culture war yet. All this cultural insanity is wonderful because we might actually get a culture war if God is kind. And I don’t mean shooting in the streets — though there will likely be more of that sort of thing coming before its all over — I mean preachers of the gospel with backbones, proclaiming with authority: Thus says the Lord… who do not apologize for anything in the Bible, who will not mumble or dissemble or flatter, who will speak clearly into the microphone commanding the world to repent of their sins and believe and obey Jesus, men who will make no deals, who care nothing for the praise of man, for book deals, for conference invitations, for seminary positions, and have their eyes fixed on the glory of a crown laid up for them in heaven. I mean Christians denying the pleasures of this world for the glory of the Kingdom of God. I mean men repenting of abdicating their responsibilities, confessing their sins, and unapologetically embracing their God-given callings to be patriarchs — being faithful to one woman and hating all sexual deviance, taking responsibility for their households, raising their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, teaching them to love the Lord with all their heart and obey His commands, and putting the good work of worship every Lord’s Day — singing the Psalms, hearing the Word proclaimed, feasting at His table — at the top of their list of duties before the Lord. This is all it takes for there to be a collision. No, we will not go along with your insanity. No, we will not lie about the truth. No, we will not participate in your dissipation. Why? Because of Jesus Christ. Because Jesus washed away our sins. The Just One suffered for our injustice, and He has set us free.

And the second reason we have to be hopeful is because Jesus rose from the dead and really has changed the course of history. He has made all things new in principle. Though we do not yet see all things put beneath His feet, that is precisely what has been accomplished by His death and resurrection. It is unalterable. It is fixed. There is nothing to be done to change this reality. There really is only Christ or nothing. The old paganism really has been crushed and gutted. All of this madness is as far as it goes. Jesus conquered the old gods, the demons have fled. Sure, there are remnants of the old paganism out there in the jungles, but Jesus ascended into heaven and cast Satan down. He sits at the Father’s right hand. All of this nonsense we see all around us, for all its barbarity and vulgarity and bloodlust, it all amounts to a massive cultural tantrum. The feminists, the homosexualists, the socialists, the power-grasping politicos — these are just middle schoolers taunting our Lord Jesus Christ who reigns at the Father’s right hand. And what is the Father’s response when the nations rage? How does the Father respond when the people lay on the floor screaming and kicking their legs in the toy aisle of the cosmic Walmart? The Father laughs. He has set His Son on His holy hill and given Him the nations as His inheritance.

When the kid screams and throws a fit, the first rule of parenting is don’t give in. When the kid screams and kicks his legs, the first rule of parenting is you must win this battle. But you say, that’s a whole lot easier when the toddler is two and his mom is still stronger than him. They have the Supreme Court, they have the media, they have the power, they have the money, and they have been beating us like a drum for so many decades now. Sure, all of that’s true, but we have Jesus Christ with us. If we have Christ with us, the numbers don’t matter. “One man of you puts to flight a thousand, since it is the Lord your God who fights for you, just as he promised you” (Josh. 23:10). Decades ago we had the vast majority in terms of numbers, and a tiny number of pagans chased us to this place where we seem to be pinned down in our cultural Dunkirk. And so, many Christians have begun lining up waiting for some evacuation plan. But if we just turned around for a minute and stopped running, we might realize that they are just throwing fits. They are just toddlers with red faces. These appalling movies and court rulings and political middle school games are nothing. They are literally built on nothing. There is no other truth, no other reality, no other power, no other authority. They have nothing — all power and authority has been given to our Jesus.

It’s Christ or nothing. Christ is king and there is no other. God has set Him on His throne, and He will reign until all of His enemies have been put beneath His feet (1 Cor. 15:25). These fits are the final stages of death panic. Christ is King. The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure, one little word shall fell him.

What we need right now are bunch of Jonathans who see all the Philistines in the land and say to their buddies, “Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few” (1 Sam. 14:6).

Come, let us go over to the garrison.

Pink Hair, Liturgy, and Kevin Spacey

Liturgy and manners go together.

Liturgy is our order of worship. God requires His people to worship Him in an orderly way (1 Cor. 14). This order should not and must not preclude or exclude Christian joy and enthusiasm, but God requires His people to be thoughtful and to worship Him with reverence and awe (Heb. 12). Paul says that gathering before God in the New Covenant is not less glorious than the Old Covenant but more glorious, more terrible, more wonderful (Heb. 12). While we do not offer the bloody sacrifices of the Old Covenant system, that system nevertheless was a shadow of our true sacrificial worship in the New Covenant, in which we offer sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, the sacrifices of broken and contrite hearts, the sacrifices of tithes and offerings, the sacrifice of peace in fellowship with God and one another — we do all of this in order to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, and this is our reasonable service, our spiritual priestly ministry (Rom. 12:1).

Part of this is the practical result of determining to do something together: like an army going to war, we plan before hand what our good order will be (1 Cor. 14:40, Col. 2:5). When we gather to worship God together, we have to agree ahead of time about what time we will meet, where we will meet, and then, if we want to sing together, we will need to agree on the tune and the words. Whether a church prints the words in a bulletin, uses a hymnal, or some form of projection, they are agreeing together to pray those words together. Hymns and psalms are just prayers set to music. Many churches pray the Lord’s prayer together, recite the Creed together, and greet one another with prescribed words of blessing and encouragement from Scripture. As at any other event of high significance, the planning involved is meant to be a way to love one another and bestow glory and honor, in this case chiefly to the living God. A well planned party is an enormous blessing to all who attend. It has just the right amount of freedom mixed with organization, a plan, and this is just thoughtfulness about the details, about the purpose of the event, about how to make it special and memorable. It’s no different when it comes to the worship of God; in fact, how much more should the worship of God be planned, thought through carefully, for the glory of Christ and the building up of His body?

And this is what manners are in general. They are agreed upon signs and signals of honor and respect and love. Dressing appropriately for an event signals respect. Waiting for everyone to be served dinner before beginning is an expression of thoughtfulness and love. Handshakes, standing when a woman enters a room, holding doors, and so forth are agreed upon liturgies of love and kindness and honor. Even birthday greetings, anniversaries, flowers, gifts, and decorations can play into various ways we show honor, love, and kindness. And the thing to get is that they happen largely through thinking through things ahead of time, talking about them, and giving thought to what God thinks and what will be more useful for building up of the saints, and calling the world to life in Christ.

Now in a world gone mad with sin and rebellion, the main game plan is anarchy. Rearrange all the signs and symbols until they are meaningless, until personal expression is king. But don’t you see that this is to destroy language and ultimately an attempt at destroying love and honor? Love and honor require language, signs and symbols of kindness, thoughtfulness, concern, and respect. This includes both what certain things mean objectively and how various gifts and customs may be more or less appropriate or appreciated in particular contexts. We’ve all heard stories of attempts at good manners that were just awkward and out of place, sometimes especially in cross-cultural contexts. Nevertheless, Christians having been loved by our Lord with such lavish love should be at the forefront of rebuilding forms and liturgies of kindness, rebuilding language with which to communicate honor, gratitude, thoughtfulness, friendship, and hospitality because these are vehicles of grace.

But when someone shows up randomly with bright pink hair, and it wasn’t Halloween last night, what is being communicated? When someone uses very dark mascara and eye liner, what is being communicated? When someone dresses eccentrically, what is being communicated? What does it mean? Christians are obligated to do everything to the glory of God, offering their bodies as living sacrifices, laying their lives down in love for one another as Christ has laid His life down for us. At best, eccentric and odd presentations are like speaking in tongues. Maybe you are a specialist in make-up history, and you can trace your thick eye-liner to the pious prayers of St. Augustine’s mom. But if no one else knows that, you’re speaking in a foreign language: “There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning, but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me” (1 Cor. 14:10-11). And if you speak in the tongues of men and angels and have not love, you are a noisy gong or a clanging symbol (1 Cor. 13:1). But that’s at best — at worst, you’re actually adopting some of the anarchy and relativism of the world. They are saying that anything can mean anything. They are destroying love by their actions. They insist that a man sodomizing another man may be defined as love. They insist that a woman having her breasts removed (for psychological reasons, e.g. she thinks she is a man) can be defined as kindness. They insist that a woman having a boy’s hair cut can mean beautiful. And they insist that telling the truth about any of these things is actually hate speech. And they are busy offering this anarchic worldview up in their clothing catalogues, their fashion shows, their movies, and music. Be yourself. You can be anything you want. Choose your own destiny. Follow your heart. Except of course, if you are Harvey Weinstein or Donald Trump or Kevin Spacey. Then you might not want to follow your heart so much or be yourself because… um… well, we don’t really know why, but… the Russians!

So here’s the point: we are always called to serve one another, love one another, including our enemies, including those who persecute us, returning blessing for cursing. But all of this depends upon a vocabulary, a language of words, signs, and symbols that allow for love and kindness and honor to be communicated. In the classic missionary account Peace Child, Don Richardson recounts the custom of certain savage natives of befriending members of another tribe, inviting them for meals, sharing holidays, a custom they called “fattening with friendship,” the goal of which was to eventually (and suddenly) kill and eat the person. This is what paganism always does, and this is one of the great problems with Black Panther (but that’s for another blog post). Paganism, unbelief, rejection of the Triune God always cuts at the heart of love and friendship and hospitality and honor. But God in His mercy has come to bring us back to the truth, to tell the truth about our lies and sin and rebellion, and to truly deal with it all. This is the path of Christian sincerity, love, and hospitality — it isn’t flattery, it isn’t hatred masked as friendship, it isn’t pretending.

Christian worship should be the center of this sincerity because God only receives worship in spirit and in truth. But the good news is that this is what salvation is. When God gives sinners new hearts, He gives them the desire to worship, and this is principally given in the gift of the Holy Spirit who also gives the ability to worship. This Spirit is in the process of reversing the curse of Babel, so that we might offer sincere worship together, with one voice, one heart, and one mind. And if this is the center of our lives together in Christ, surely other signs of friendship, hospitality, and thoughtfulness flow from this too. It’s not legalism to say that all that metal in your face is barbaric — literally, it communicates confusion, like those ancient European savages that seemed to the Romans to be saying bar-bar-bar. It’s not legalism to say all those tattoos make you look like a cannibal. That kind linguistic violence is cannibalistic. And I’m not talking about some dumb little heart you have on your ankle. I’m talking about the culture of ink, the lust for cutting, the self-loathing and self-mutilation that necessarily accompanies the rejection of the peace of Christ. But don’t fool yourself, saying that when you go into that temple, to get that sweet Hebrew tat on your neck, you’re not worshiping their gods.

It’s not legalism to say that your clownish-colored hair is like a clanging cymbal. Lots of sophisticated words without love is a noisy gong. Manners are love in these little things, communicating kindness, care, thoughtfulness for others in the back and forth of community life. And yes, all of us are learning this a little bit at a time. And all of us have habits and customs that still need refining. All of us are still rather savage, but when we have already died and our lives are hidden with Christ in God, our identities are not in any of those things. We may happily lay anything down for the glory of Christ and the building up of His body. And all those old scars and pictures and memories become monuments to His grace.

Dear Mr. Pastor Apostle Paul

Dear Mr. Pastor Apostle Paul,

It has come to my attention that a situation has arisen in your congregation in Corinth. A portion of your letter was passed along, which greatly troubled me. As you may know, I am a professional consultant with APCG (Abuse Prevention Counselors of Greece), and your recent letter indicates that you are grossly undertrained for the situations you are facing there. Remember, you are only a pastor and not a trained and professional counselor like me, which is clearly demonstrated by the number of framed papyrus certificates hanging in my office.

One of the more egregious examples of your pastoral blundering can be seen for example, where you wrote, “Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.) For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men. So brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God” (1 Cor. 7:21-24).

“Do not be concerned about it?” Holy Herodotus! My dear brother, this is heinous, vile, disgusting, evil, and wicked. Under no circumstances should victims be told not to be concerned about their abuse. Sadly, your rhetoric here is what I’ve come to expect from Christian pastors who lack the requisite training in these highly complex matters, but suffice it to say that you’re running counter to all of the latest studies and best practices known in the Hellenistic world today. What you have written may have been considered “reasonable” advice centuries ago, but we now know that slaves are victims of exploitation, manipulation, violence, angry outbursts, and low self-esteem.

The first rule of abuse prevention is that you must always side with anyone who claims to be a victim over against anyone accused of abuse. Trained and professional abuse prevention counselors like myself don’t need outmoded methods of investigation, witnesses, or due process, and therefore my rule of thumb is to immediately assume the worst based on the testimony of anybody, and then you can always pick up the pieces later. Suspected abusers should be immediately and explicitly condemned, rebuked, and in no uncertain terms consigned to the lowest pit of Hades. Let’s face it: they probably did it and if they didn’t, they probably did something else bad at some point. Original sin and all that. There’s no need to give second thought to this. Take the knives away and due process later, that’s what I always say.

The second rule is that you must never (under any circumstances) say or write anything that might give anyone who claims to be a victim the impression that their situation is tolerable. When you wrote, “a slave is the freedman of the Lord” and “in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God,” you were (unwittingly, no doubt) feeding the psychosis of slavery and confusing victims of slavery about whether they should seek freedom or not. This is absolutely disgusting, Mr. Pastor Apostle Paul. Not only this, your careless rhetoric leaves room for slave owners to believe that they have the right to own other human beings and control them. This is pure evil. What were you thinking? I suspect that you weren’t thinking at all about the ramifications of your rhetoric. How could you? Do you even have letters after your name like I do? What if by some masterpiece of disaster, your letter were to be read by future generations of Christians? What kind of poison have you unleashed on the Church? Can’t you see how unqualified and untrained you are for this work?

I urge you to immediately and publicly apologize and write a complete retraction of your letter to the Corinthians (citing me and my ministry in order to demonstrate your true repentance) or else I will be forced to conclude that you are determined to harbor abusers in your midst and I will start sending passive aggressive smoke signals to all my colleagues around the Mediterranean about your so-called “ministry.” From now on, I would urge you to run all of your “letters” by me or at least some random Roman journalist before sending them, as you are clearly way out of your league. In all honesty, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that slave owners in Corinth are some of your biggest financial supporters. You must be under tremendous pressure to keep them happy with you. This is a common challenge in the churches of God, but this is why I started APCG to harm help people like you.

I offer this professional advice free of charge. First consultations are always free. But let me know if I can be of further help. I would be glad to come to Corinth to clean up your mess and sort through everything for you. Again, I’m a professional. Did I mention that I was certified by Little Caesar’s Counseling Accreditors of the Aegean? My fees are very reasonable.

Most humbly and sincerely,

Lamoz Bigwigian, VCPAC* APCG**

*Very Certified Professional Abuse Consultant

**Abuse Prevention Counselors of Greece

 

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash