Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 51

Praise God for the Reversal of Roe v. Wade, and Continue to Pray for Heart Change

The last week has been filled with many interactions about Roe v. Wade. Countless times over the decades I’ve been asked, “Do you think Roe v. Wade will ever be overturned?” My answer always was, “Given the trajectory of our culture, I would have to say no, but one thing is for sure: countless lives have been saved, are being saved, and will be saved just by people doing what they can for the sake of the unborn and their mothers.“

Only in the last few years has it even seemed plausible that Roe v. Wade could be overturned. I marvel at how the God of providence can do what He does, and it brings tears to my eyes to think that at last this nation’s highest court has reversed one of its most horrific decisions ever. It was comparable perhaps only to Dred Scott v. Stanford in 1857, in which the U.S. Supreme Court stated that enslaved people were not citizens of the United States and, therefore, could not expect any protection from the federal government or the courts. The Dred Scott decision was ultimately overturned in 1865 by the 13th amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery.   

Like Dred Scott v. Stanford, Roe v. Wade was effectively overturned Friday June 24, in Dobbs v. Jackson. The court held that the U.S. Constitution does not confer any right to abortion. Their decision overruled both Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). As a result of the Dobbs decision, abortion will become illegal or severely restricted in at least 22 states which have existing pro-life laws or ones poised to go into effect.

 
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While the spiritual and moral trajectory of America still seems downward, this decision will undoubtedly save many lives. It gives me hope that perhaps God may forestall judgment for the sake of the next generation, including Nanci’s and my grandchildren. These words come to mind: “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.” 

I praise God for His faithfulness through all these years, and I am so grateful for the millions of people who have served on behalf of innocent children and needy mothers, most of them behind the scenes. If you’ve watched the news, you obviously know that as great as this victory is, the battle for the hearts and minds of people is not over—not even close. Serving the unborn and their mothers and educating our neighbors about life will be all the more necessary and important now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned.

In states such as mine, Oregon, abortion continues to be fully legal, just as it was for years before Roe v. Wade. In other states, abortion on demand will no longer be legal, and new pro-life laws will be implemented, but there will be fierce debates and probably violence against pro-life groups. (The pregnancy resource center in my hometown of Gresham was badly burned a few weeks ago, and the Portland headquarters for the PRC group was vandalized this week. Time will tell if these incidents are unique, but I expect to see more of this as time goes on.)

Just as pro-lifers became more motivated when the law of the land was against the rights of the unborn, so now pro-abortion forces are and will be mobilized and motivated and will aggressively raise funds and recruit volunteers to fight to make abortion universally legal once again. Please pray for the cause of unborn children and be grateful for the change in law, while being alert to the fact that changing hearts and minds, not just laws, is imperative.

As I’ve thought about the events of the last week, I’ve tearfully remembered how from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s Nanci, week after week, offered sidewalk counseling, intervening for unborn children and their mothers at Portland’s Lovejoy abortion clinic—by far the largest in the state. It was one of the most difficult things she ever did, but she did it prayerfully, and God used her to touch lives and save them. She was an introvert—she avoided attention, and therefore, I believe her reward now is all the greater.

I’ve also really been struck with the parallels between the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the closure of the Lovejoy clinic last year. If you had asked me ten years ago what the chances of Roe v. Wade ever being overturned were, I might well have replied, “About the same chances of the Lovejoy clinic closing its doors.” I have never been so happy to be totally wrong about two things!

After Lovejoy’s closure, I recorded a video for a local pro-life gathering. Although it is not specifically about Roe v. Wade, I think you’ll find it  encouraging as I say thanks for all the different forms of pro-life activism, from educational to political, from PRCs to direct intervention in civil disobedience, that believers have engaged in over the decades and which have made a big and eternal difference.

An edited transcript is available here.

Finally, I encourage you to download (without cost) my short book Pro-Choice or Pro-Life: Examining 15 Pro-Choice Claims—What Do Facts & Common Sense Tell Us?  It will equip you in your conversations and also is a great book to share with those who are pro-choice or are on the fence.

The print version of the book is available from our ministry for just $1.50 per single copy; $1.35 per copy on orders of 72 or more; $1.25 per copy on orders of 1,000 or more, plus shipping. A single pro-life donor could purchase enough copies for their entire church—a small investment with potentially enormous returns. Our ministry’s goal is to spread this life-saving message as far as possible!

Photo by Maria Oswalt on Unsplash

An Introvert Can Have Great Impact in God’s Kingdom: Thoughts from Nanci’s Friends at Her Memorial

In early 2020, right at the beginning of COVID and the stay-at-home orders, Nanci wrote these reflections in her journal:

I am a closet introvert. Only a very few of my closest friends and family know this. Most everyone who has ever spent time with me would assume that I am an extrovert because I am very easy to have a conversation with; I appear to be interested in your life; I am friendly; I am funny; I talk a lot; I am loud; I laugh a lot; I smile a lot and make eye contact; I have traveled widely and have a huge collection of friends and acquaintances.

However, I am an introvert because personally interacting with people— even those I know and love—tires me. The less I know and appreciate someone, the more they exhaust me. Being in a crowd of people with whom I have no expectations of personal contact is great, like at Disneyland. Being in a crowd with whom I am expected to have personal contact registers somewhere between uncomfortable and terrifying (i.e., conferences where Randy is the main speaker). I recoil when the phone rings. I avoid making phone calls. My favorite days are when I stay at home with minimal personal contact. If I see someone I know in the grocery store, I avoid them unless they say hi to me (excluding close friends and family).

My favorite activity is a day at the beach in Maui either alone, or with close friends or family with minimal conversation. An activity I avoid at all costs is a reception line where I am expected to interact with many people I barely know. I have a fear of things unfamiliar.

Why have I, an introvert, functioned as an extrovert most of my life? Being private (antisocial in appearance) is not popular—only nerds are private. It does not appear to be kind or loving to prefer only the companionship of a few, close people. Being interested in people, more than deep concepts, is more widely accepted in society.

Biblically speaking, we are all called to reach out to people; to show and express love openly and often. I truly want to please God, so I have maintained contact and interaction with others at a level which could be much higher but has been higher than my comfort level. As part of the body of Christ, I have the responsibility and privilege to function alongside others to bring glory to God.

So, I am grateful for the “boundaries” God has placed in my life. It has been quite a public life, but not unbearably so. God has matured me in having a public and “fishbowl” life. I would be a very selfish and judgmental soul if left to my own preferences. I need people, and by God’s grace, I believe some of them have needed me in their lives as well.

Will the New Earth be filled with only extroverts? I believe that we introverts will maintain a great deal of our nature in eternity. After all, I have no desire to maintain a distance from God!

Nanci’s life illustrates how an ordinary, behind the scenes, hating-to-be-upfront follower of Jesus can have an eternal impact by making deliberate, careful choices to study God, daily contemplate His faithfulness, and love and invest in others, even when it wasn’t easy or comfortable for her. You don’t have to be big into speaking and sharing on social media to have a profound and eternal influence. You also don’t have to care about nothing but spiritual things. You can care about what’s ordinary, and you can see God in it—in animals, for example—and you don’t have to be disinterested in sports, movies and humor and much more, as these videos from Nanci’s friends (shown at her memorial service) demonstrate. They mention her impact on our church’s women’s Bible study; her discipleship and mentoring, both official and unofficial; her work in prolife and women’s ministry; and her contagious happiness and laughter.

Diane Meyer:

Kathy Norquist:

Diane Jones and Shelly Ekstrom:

Peri Layton:

Rakel Thurman:

Jenny Ivester:

Letter to a Young Man Desiring to Follow Jesus

I received this letter from a reader:

Dear Mr. Randy Alcorn,

My name is Aidan. I am a senior in high school. I am a student, a fellow writer, and a follower of God. For a religion assignment, I had to find a Christian online who practices the four non-negotiables of our faith: have private morality, practice social justice, have mellowness of heart and spirit, and attend church with vigor and a desire to learn from it.

The second part of our assignment was to write a letter to you asking how to be an exemplary Christian like you, preferably through living the four non-negotiables. If you could take time out of your life to give some advice to someone just starting on their path to God, I would deeply appreciate it.

Here was my response:

Dear Aidan,

Great to hear from you as a fellow writer, and most importantly, as a fellow follower of Jesus.

My best writing advice to you is to immerse yourself in God’s Word, and study sound doctrine and good theology. (One great book, for reference or to read all the way through, is Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, or his abridged version, called Bible Doctrine.)

If God’s Word is daily at home in your heart and mind, your writing will take on a perspective, and an air of solidity and permanence it won’t have otherwise. God promises His Word won’t return to Him empty, without accomplishing the purpose for which He sent it (Isaiah 55:11). He does not promise that about our words, but His. If we want our words to have lasting value and impact, they need to be touched and shaped by His words—and that won’t happen without a daily choice to expose our minds to Scripture.

You mentioned four nonnegotiables of the faith, and asked how to live those out. Here are my thoughts:

1. Have private morality.

I would rename this category as “character.” Image is how we look on the outside to people who don’t know us. Character is what we are in the dark when no one but God sees us. Character is what we really are.

Who you become will be the result of the daily choices you make. The key to spirituality is the development of little habits—Bible reading and memorization and prayer—which will develop into life disciplines. Through God’s Word, the Holy Spirit transforms our hearts and minds. However, don’t just read your Bible out of guilt; do it to find great joy in Jesus! David said of God’s words, “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb” (Psalm 19:10).  

God also chooses to use His people in each other’s lives as instruments of grace and truth.  We need each other! I came to Jesus in high school, and I had close friends who studied the Bible together, prayed together, and read great books together. We stayed away from the things that tempted us toward evil. We asked each other how we were doing in our walk with God. Find friends like that. They might not just naturally come your way. Look for them. Seek them. Hang on to them. 

Of course, it’s not just accountability to people that keeps us from sin. Our primary accountability is to the Lord whose judgment seat is the only one we will stand before. God that says “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3). He has given us in Christ all the resources we need to live lives of character, which includes moral purity. God alone can mold your character to the image of Christ, yet you yourself must make the choice to submit to His transforming work. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2).

2.  Practice social justice.

There are many definitions of “social justice” in the world today. We need to define this term according to what God says, understanding that when we follow Jesus, we will sometimes look like conservatives, sometimes liberals. But what we look like to people shouldn’t matter. What we look like to God, the Audience of One, should.

Micah 6:8 says, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” This verse lays out three requirements which our King will hold us accountable for: justice, mercy, and humility. The more we walk with God, the more we will be characterized by these attributes.

We should ask ourselves: are we dealing honestly and fairly with others, and caring and intervening for the weak, vulnerable and oppressed? (Or are we compromising in matters of morals and integrity, and passively accepting society’s mistreatment of those for whom God says we should speak up?)

One caution: if your life is centered on being against evils as abortion, pornography, sex trafficking, and racial injustice, that single issue isn’t enough. To endure in a cause, make sure it’s really about Jesus. And then keep reminding yourself it’s about Him, lest you end up really making it about you and your feelings of self-righteousness as you congratulate yourself for being spiritually impressive and better than those smug conservatives or foolish liberals:  “The King will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, as you did it for one of the least of these brothers, you did it to me’” (Matthew 25:40).

My family and I have stood against abortionists, and I have confronted adulterers, not because we hate them, but because we love God and the people He has created. Certainly, we should hate abuse in all its forms—God calls upon us to defend the poor and needy. But some people hate evil more than they love good. While love strengthens you for the long haul, hatred has a way of embittering you and burning you out.  

3. Have mellowness of heart and spirit.

I’m guessing that you might have meant “meekness,” which is another word for “gentleness”? Either way, God is clear how He wants His children to act: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:21-22). Our need today is for Christ-followers who bear the fruit of the Spirit and love our neighbors in doing so. 

In his marvelous book Gentle and Lowly, Dane Ortland says,

In the one place in the Bible (Matthew 11:28-30) where the Son of God pulls back the veil and lets us peer way down into the core of who he is, we are not told that he is “austere and demanding in heart.” We are not told that he is “exalted and dignified in heart.” We are not even told that he is “joyful and generous in heart.” Letting Jesus set the terms, his surprising claim is that he is “gentle and lowly in heart.”

Jesus came full of grace and truth (John 1:14). Not either instead of the other, but both together. We need to be bold enough to speak up and tell the truth even when it’s unpopular. But that doesn’t mean we have to be mean-spirited and graceless when we do it! Jesus told the truth, but He wasn’t malicious or ill-tempered, the way many professing Christians behave online and sometimes in real life as well. 

David Powlison writes, “Jesus dealt gently with the ignorant and misguided, even when he suffered at their hands. Such meekness is incalculably powerful. …It’s unfortunate that ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ has become a picture of someone weak and ineffectual, a sentimental, pablum savior, good for children, but not good enough for grown-ups. May the God of the Lord Jesus Christ give us his true gentleness. Such strength is a royal attribute.”

People are attracted to Jesus when they see His attributes in others’ lives. They observe kindness, graciousness, and happiness, and as a result, they want to know the source of those qualities.

J. C. Ryle said something as true today as when he wrote it in the 1800s: “A cheerful, kindly spirit is a great recommendation to a believer. It is a positive misfortune to Christianity when a Christian cannot smile. A merry heart, and a readiness to take part in all innocent mirth, are gifts of inestimable value. They go far to soften prejudices, to take stumbling-blocks out of the way, and to make way for Christ and the Gospel.”

4. Attend church, embrace it despite its flaws, and seek to learn from it.

The local church is a key component of God’s eternal plan. Jesus calls the church His bride. He died for her and says that ultimately the gates of hell won’t prevail against her (Matthew 16:18). Yes, local churches can fail to honor Jesus. But knowing that full well, Jesus made churches a major part of His plan. I believe that more than ever, God’s people must prioritize being part of a local church, even though the best one they can find will be imperfect, and once they join it, they will be part of its imperfection.

Our church, which I been part of since it began in 1977 as one of the two original pastors, is very imperfect. In other words, it’s like us. But there is a sincere desire in the leaders to follow Jesus, obey Him, share the gospel, support missions, and help the needy locally and around the world. There really ARE churches like that, all over the country. Some people look for a church, maybe give two or three a try, and then conclude, “Church is shallow and insincere and hypocritical.” And they wash their hands of the church, passing on to their children at worst a legacy of disdain and bitterness toward churches, or at best indifference and disinterest.

Since the church is Jesus’s beloved bride, when we disparage the church, we insult Jesus. He doesn’t give us the option of hating her and loving him. If you wanted to be close to me but said you didn’t want anything to do with my wife, I would have said, “No, that’s not an option. My bride and I are one. We come as a package deal.” I encourage you to get deeply involved in your church, serving and praying and giving and believing the best of imperfect people even as you would want them to believe the best of you.

Ray Ortlund offers this advice: “…be the kind of person who can be counted on in your own church. Join your church, pray for your church, tithe to your church, throw yourself into the life of your church with wholehearted passion.”

May you follow Jesus with all your heart, Aidan.

Photo by Jeremy McKnight on Unsplash

Josef Tson: What His Suffering for Christ in Communist Romania Taught Him, and Can Teach Us

Richard Wurmbrand’s Tortured for Christ influenced me profoundly as a young Christian. In Romania, guards tied prisoners to crosses and smeared them with human excrement. From our perspective, the perpetrators might have seemed beyond redemption; yet some of the guards who did these unspeakable acts saw the inexplicable love, devotion, and faith of the Christians they tortured.

Wurmbrand wrote, “I have seen Christians in Communist prisons with fifty pounds of chains on their feet, tortured with red-hot iron pokers, in whose throats spoonfuls of salt had been forced, being kept afterward from water, starving, whipped, suffering from cold—and praying with fervor for the Communists.”

Josef Tson, once the best-known pastor in Romania, was one such suffering saint. At a time when the Christian faith had become virtually illegal, he openly preached the gospel. Police threatened him repeatedly with imprisonment and arrest. In his sixties he studied at Oxford for his doctorate, writing a dissertation that became a book titled Suffering, Martyrdom, and Rewards in Heaven.

I opened the Scriptures with Josef in 1988, with a group of theologians discussing eternal rewards. Twenty years later, writing my book If God Is Good, I remembered his stories and insights and called him again, in order to share his insights with others. Josef explained to me how the belief that God doesn’t want His people to suffer once corrupted the Romanian church. In the interests of self-preservation, he said, they failed to speak out against injustice, tyranny, and the idolatry of turning men into gods. He recalls joining the crowd on the streets and crying, “Glory to Stalin.”

God convicted Josef. As a pastor he refused to glorify communist leaders and started to speak out boldly for Christ. Interrogators threatened him with death every day for six months. Finally he told them, “Your supreme weapon is killing. My supreme weapon is dying. My preaching will speak ten times louder after you kill me.”

Josef said, “During the time I was expecting to be crushed by the Romanian secret police interrogators, God became more real to me than ever before or after in my life. It is difficult to put into words the experience I had with God at that time. It was like a rapture into a sweet and total communion with the Beloved. God’s test for me then became the pathway to a special knowledge of the reality of God.”

Finally, in 1981, the Romanian government exiled him.

After facing much evil and nearly being martyred in Ceauşescu’s Romania, Josef told me, “This world, with all its evil, is God’s deliberately chosen environment for people to grow in their characters. The character and trustworthiness we form here, we take with us there, to Heaven. Romans and 1 Peter 3:19 make clear that suffering is a grace from God. It is a grace given us now to prepare us for living forever.”

He also told me he believed that 95 percent of Christians pass the test of adver­sity, while 95 percent fail the test of prosperity.

In the West, with our conspicuous prosperity and ease, Christianity’s popularity continues to shrink. In Africa, Asia, and South America, with much greater adversity and suffering, it continues to grow.

Josef Tson believes, “The gospel will never be spread without someone suffering.” He said our first question in suffering should not be, “Why?” but, “God, what do you want to do in the world through my suffering?”

Josef continues, “God achieves great things in the world through the one who accepts His way of suffering and self-sacrifice. In the end, however, it turns out that the greatest things are achieved in the sufferer himself. The one who sacrificially expects to be a blessing for others discovers that, in the final analysis, he is the one who has harvested the greatest blessings.”

Suffering can help us know God and prepare us to trade a shallow life not worth keeping for a deeper life we’ll never lose.

When interrogators worked Josef into exhaustion for ten hours a day, one of his persecutors made a strange statement: “Pastor Tson, when I interrogate people I am used to feeling their hatred for me. But you do not hate me. It has become a delight for me to be with you.”

Jesus saw our suffering as an opportunity to bring the gospel: “They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This will be your opportunity to bear witness” (Luke 21:12–13, ESV).

Josef viewed his suffering as God’s means to accomplish God’s purpose. He told of guards coming to Christ while beating Christian prisoners, then confessing their faith and being imprisoned and tortured themselves. As a result, the gospel his persecutors tried to dismiss touched them instead.

Learn more about Josef, and watch this sermon clip to hear him speak about “The Holy Spirit's One Business for Believers”:

Her Children Rise Up and Call Her Blessed: Thoughts from Nanci’s Family at Her Memorial

One of the more unique things at Nanci’s service was that she had requested her family be given the opportunity to record some thoughts on video about her rather than having to stand up and speak live. She didn’t want them to be nervous or self-conscious on that weighty day.

I want to share these videos not only to celebrate and remember Nanci (many of you who follow me online didn’t know her personally) but also to learn from how she lived faithfully over her lifetime, and especially in her last four years. People talk about finishing well, but she really did finish SO WELL.

Still, it was hard for Nanci to think of being separated (though temporarily) from her beloved family. In 2019, she wrote in her journal, “My greatest ‘fear’ is not being here for my family: Randy living alone; my grandsons not having me to cheer them on. I fear that resentment toward God might grow in their hearts—or that they will question the efficacy of prayer. I don’t want people to be sad or discouraged because of my death. I really want to stay around and be here for my loved ones. Deep in my heart I really feel that it is not my time to go. I am not afraid of dying. I sometimes get excited about entering Paradise and seeing Jesus and my loved ones and meeting the saints! But of course, God has everything planned. He knows, and I trust Him. Really.”

And for the next years God gave her, she truly did model trusting Him. And then, a week before Jesus took her home, she was surrounded by the other ten of us and spoke into our lives.

I loved what her sister and each of our kids and grandkids had to share about Nanci. The video of our youngest grandson, David, might make you laugh and cry, like it did many of us. But each of them are precious in their own special ways, and you’ll see that too.

Proverbs 31:28 describes Nanci perfectly: “Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also praises her.”

Sister Donna Schneider:

Daughter Karina Franklin:

Son-in-law Dan Franklin:

Grandsons Matt, Jack, and David Franklin:

Daughter Angela Stump:

Grandsons Jake and Ty Stump:

Diagnosing Deconstruction: Four Root Causes

Note from Randy: I love this article by Joshua Ryan Butler, lead pastor of Redemption Tempe, a thriving church near Arizona State University. What he wrote has the ring of truth—in all four causes for what is popularly called deconstruction, and which used to be called “loss of faith.”  

I have seen a number of people fall into sin and then change their worldview to make the sin seem more enjoyable or tolerable. I've seen others whose first priority in life is not believing and living according to the truth, but appearing to be cool, relevant, and on the cutting edge, which inevitably includes hedging on and outright denying some of what the Bible says to be true.

Pain inflicted in church communities is so rampant that I have used it as a segue into evangelism, saying, “I’ll bet you have been really hurt by church people, haven’t you?” When they ask, “How did you know?” I say, “Because I’m a Christian, and I’ve been hurt by church people. And you know what? I’ve hurt people too.”

This article sparked a two-hour conversation with one of my family members. I hope you find it helpful and thought-provoking and useful to share with others.

Thanks, Joshua!

4 Causes of Deconstruction

By Joshua Ryan Butler

Deconstruction is a symptom, not the root cause.

A proper diagnosis is important because—to continue the medical analogy—each underlying condition has a different cure.

I’ve walked as a pastor with many wrestling with deconstruction. While not exhaustive, these are the four most common root causes I’ve seen. Let’s look at the gospel’s treatment plan for each.

1. Church Hurt

Many who deconstruct have been wounded by abusive or manipulative church leaders, or generally unhealthy church cultures. Often these relationships were intimate and formative: the pastor you grew up with, the mentor you trusted. For others, the relationships are more distant. You grew up under the influence of leaders like Ravi Zacharias, Carl Lentz, or Mark Driscoll—whose teaching and charisma powerfully inspired you and formatively shaped you—but then the curtain got pulled back. The betrayal can make the whole thing look like a sham. The pain can be excruciating and disorienting.

It’s easier to throw the baby out with the bathwater when you feel like you’ve been drowning.

Church hurt is real. But deconstruction is a false cure.

The gospel’s remedy is lament. The psalms often protest mistreatment at the hands of God’s people and petition for his justice. David—who wrote a majority of the psalms—experienced abusive leadership firsthand from King Saul. Yet he sought the Righteous Judge with lament, groans, and tears.

You don’t need to ignore the church’s problems to protect its reputation. Instead, bring the problems boldly to God—like David did—and encounter a deeper intimacy with him as you’re honest about your wounds. Deconstruction bypasses this deeper healing. It’s a shortcut that internalizes grief rather than bringing it before God.

We’re not good at grief today. Much of deconstruction exists because it’s easier to move on than to be sad. But the only true and eternal cure for these deeper wounds is Christ.

The solution to bad community isn’t abandoning community; it’s good community. A healthy treatment plan will eventually involve rebuilding a good church community with good boundaries and good leaders. No community’s perfect, but trust can be rebuilt on the other side of lament, in healthy relationships centered on Jesus and life together as his people.

Diagnosis: church hurt

Cure: grief and lament

2. Poor Teaching

Some Christians have been led to believe they must choose between faith and science, because of poor teaching on Genesis 1. Others have been led to believe God is a vindictive sadist, from a popular caricature of hell. Best abandon Christian faith entirely on account of some dubious or sloppy teaching, right?

But if the problem is bad teaching, the solution is good teaching. There are great resources out there (such as TGC’s recent book, Before You Lose Your Faith, and video series “Gen Z’s Questions About Christianity”) and many wise pastors are walking patiently with those who wrestle with hard questions. Good teaching and good teachers exist.

Jesus is the best model of replacing bad teaching with good teaching. I love his refrain in the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard it said . . . but I say” (Matt. 5–7). Jesus deconstructs bad teaching in order to reconstruct good teaching. Not all deconstruction is bad.

The bad form of deconstruction, as my friend Seth Troutt pointed out, is epitomized by the serpent’s question in the Garden: Did God really say? (Gen. 3). The enemy wants us to break trust with God and distance ourselves from him and his people. This is the way of most deconstruction today.

Jesus shows us a better way. In contrast to the serpent’s question, Jesus proclaims: You have heard it said . . . but I say. The serpent’s goal is to break trust; Jesus’s goal is to build trust. The serpent’s goal is to distance us from God; Jesus’s goal is to draw us closer to God.

Some mistakenly think Jesus is critiquing the Old Testament when he says “You have heard it said.” But Jesus loves his Hebrew Bible. He’s constantly saying things like, “It is written,” “Have you not read?” and “I have come not to abolish the Scriptures but to fulfill them.” Jesus has a higher view of the Old Testament than most of us do.

Jesus is critiquing not the Scriptures, but faulty traditions and insufficient interpretations. Not much has changed. Inaccurate caricatures and misreadings of Scripture are everywhere today, even promoted within some churches. 

We need to take good teaching seriously. Our refrain should be, You have heard it said, but Jesus says. . . . I’ve written books on hell, judgment, holy war, sacrifice, wrath, and atonement, and I’m writing one on sex and gender. I’m often trying to confront popular caricatures of the Christian faith and replace them with a healthy, biblical, historic understanding. That’s one of TGC’s goals, too.

Today’s deconstruction allows bad teaching to have the last word. It rejects a distorted vision and misses an encounter with the real thing: the living God. Such a “remedy” kills the very patients it seeks to cure, distancing them from the pure medicine (in Christ) that alone can truly heal. The gospel’s treatment plan, meanwhile, does not simply ditch bad teaching, but replaces it with good teaching.

Diagnosis: bad teaching

Cure: good teaching

3. Desire to Sin

Some deconstruct out of a desire to justify their sin. Many friends in ministry have suddenly had “big questions about God”—then proceeded to quickly deconstruct their faith. So many times, it later comes out they’d been having an affair that started well before their deconstruction began.

I minister in a college town (go ASU Sun Devils) where students regularly deconstruct when they’ve started sleeping with their girlfriend or boyfriend. Convenient timing. Others deconstruct while harboring an addiction (drugs, alcohol, porn), to release their guilt.

Deconstruction here is usually presented as an anguishing process of honest wrestling (“I just don’t understand why God won’t show up and answer me”). It casts the questioner as the hero grappling authentically with a God too distant to trust or too difficult to believe.

This masks what’s really going on. “What the heart wants, the mind justifies,” the old quip wisely observes. God allows us to think we are “judging” him, when really it’s a form of God’s judgment on us. It exposes how far we’re willing to go to justify our sin. God hands us over to the depravity of our mind, that we might attain the corrupted desires of our heart.

If the problem is a desire to sin, the solution is confession and repentance. Jesus invites all to “open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18).

Deconstruction is poison, not medicine. It supplements the sin that’s killing you, rather than healing it. It allows you to save face, to look virtuous in your departure from God (“He’s the problem, not me”), while distracting you from squarely facing your true motivations.

Deconstruction is playing with fire; grace is real and can heal. James offers wise advice: “Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded.” Yet he also gives a hope-filled promise for those who would deconstruct: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (James 4:7–8).

Diagnosis: desire to sin

Cure: confession and repentance

4. Street Cred

Doubt is hip. The desire to fit in with the cultural ethos of our moment is strong. That’s why so many deconversion stories sound like everyone’s reading off the same script—its well-worn clichés signaling conformity to accepted norms.

Celebrities are leading the charge. There’s influence to be had, platforms to be built, and money to be made. It gets Rob Bell on Oprah, bolsters Glennon Doyle’s book sales, and lets Rhett & Link host Nacho Libre and Harry Potter on their popular YouTube channel.

A wave of #exvangelical podcasters and TikTok stars are following in the wake, with a whole cottage industry to welcome and cheer them on. There’s clout in distancing oneself from “outdated” views of sex and gender, an “obscure” Bible with talking snakes and forbidden shellfish, and “offensive” doctrines like wrath and hell.

I’m not claiming to know the heart of such influencers. Motivations other than street cred can be powerfully at play. I’m simply observing that social pressure is a powerful carrot on the stick—and not just for celebrities.

The cultural hostility is real. Whether in progressive urban centers (like my hometown of Portland), or university environments (like where I currently live), Christians are decidedly not the cool kids. It’s hard to be the awkward one sitting alone at lunch. Many of us feel the social pressure—and the release valve is a simple Instagram post away.

The “cure” here is the crucifixion of your image. The gospel calls you to mortify your love of influence and prestige—put it to death. Jesus warns of those who love “the glory that comes from man” more than “the glory that comes from God” (John 12:43). It’s not wrong to want love and affirmation; it’s just wrong to want it more from your fickle friends than your faithful God.

John warns, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). The world here refers not to God’s good creation, but sinful patterns that have been normalized in society through our rebellion against God. At the heart of these patterns is our desire for autonomy from God—the very desire championed by deconstruction today.

Deconstruction can fuel vanity. It can feed on your insecurity, your desire for acceptance, by puffing you up with the hot air of the world. The gospel, in contrast, calls you to “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you” (1 Pet. 5:6). God humbles you in the eyes of the world, in order to ultimately lift you up with him.

Mortify your desire for street cred in order to experience union with God.

Diagnosis: street cred

Cure: crucifixion of image

Diagnosis and Cure

As a pastor, I’ve found understanding these root causes helpful when walking with people through deconstruction. A proper diagnosis helps administer the right cure.

It’s a bummer if someone’s dealing with church hurt and you hand him a stack of apologetics books to read. Those same books will be useless if, beneath the surface, he really just wants to justify his sin.

It’s also worth recognizing: people’s real motives will often be different from their stated motives. I’ve had people come to me “with big questions about God,” only to later discover they were feeling social pressure at school or having an affair at the office.

Also, people can have multiple motives. Some lingering theology questions, a bad church experience, and a desire for street cred can all stew together in the heart’s cauldron. Being a good pastor, mentor, or friend will require attention to the uniqueness of each situation.

This all implies a challenge: it takes time. Ministering in the age of deconstruction will likely involve attentiveness in conversation, sensitivity to the Spirit, and the risk of investment—knowing the person might end up bailing anyway. Good doctors take time with their patients, and as ministers of the gospel we must too. Yet while wisdom may prescribe distinct treatment plans, there’s ultimately one source of healing we’re seeking to administer: the remedy found in Jesus Christ.

This article originally appeared on The Gospel Coalition, and is used with permission of the author.

Photo by Josue Michel on Unsplash

Care for the Lambs: Reaching Children with the Love of Jesus

Jesus said in Matthew 19:14, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” The disciples might have been telling people, “Keep the children to the side. They’re just distracting. The Lord is here to teach the multitudes, but children get in the way.” But Jesus said, “No. Let them come to me.” He held them in His arms and elevated their status when He said, “The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.” God puts great value in the loving, trusting heart of a child.

There’s another intriguing (and often overlooked) verse related to God’s special love for children. In Matthew 18:10 Jesus says, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” At first glance, we might think Jesus is saying that children have guardian angels. That may very well be true, but guardian angels would be here on earth around us, engaged in spiritual battle. There are some passages that imply their presence in our lives, but these particular angels Jesus refers to in Matthew 18:10 are not engaged in spiritual warfare on Earth. Instead, they are in Heaven, continuously beholding the face of the Father.

What does that mean? I think it means God has appointed angels in Heaven who bring the cause of the children constantly before Him. It’s not like God doesn’t know or care what’s happening in their lives, but He often chooses to use secondary agents (like His followers) to do His work. He’s sovereign and all-knowing and doesn’t need angels to do that, any more than He needs us. But He chooses to have angels representing the cause of children and being a voice for them before Him. That’s a staggering thought. God also has special rewards for those who help children (and conversely, special judgment for those who harm them).

Several months ago, Nanci read this to me from her Charles Spurgeon devotional. I found it very touching, and applicable to the subject of children and teaching them to follow Christ:

You Christians, don’t despise anybody, but specially do not despise any in whom you see even a little love to Christ. But do more—look after them, look after the little ones. I think I have heard of a shepherd who had a remarkably fine flock of sheep, and he had a secret about them. He was often asked how it was that his flocks seemed so much to excel all others. At last he told the secret—“I give my principal attention to the lambs.” Now you elders of the church, and you my matronly sisters, you that know the Lord, and have known him for years, look up the lambs, search them out, and take a special care of them; and if they are well nurtured in their early days they will get a strength of spiritual constitution that will make them the joy of the Good Shepherd during the rest of their days.

Photo by Tonia Kraakman on Unsplash

Ordinary Faithfulness Has Great Eternal Impact: My Message at Nanci’s Memorial Service

I had the honor of speaking at Nanci’s memorial service last month and sharing my heart and perspectives. During my message I read several of her journal entries. The service was long (2 hours, 40 minutes) but many have said it held their interest. However, I want to give people the opportunity to see it in smaller chunks if they want to. In this blog we are posting just my message. In other blogs we’ll hear from our family, Nanci’s friends, and our pastors and their wives.

One of the things I’ve been contemplating is that Nanci was in so many ways not like Amy Carmichael, Elisabeth Elliot, or Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, who had or have very public ministries and are widely known. Yet she lived a faithful life by being more normal and accessible in ordinary ways. She was “down to earth” while furthering the agenda of Heaven. One example is the couple she brought to Christ and our church by talking with them when she was out walking our dogs.

I’ve told people not to view Nanci or me as extraordinary or heroic. We are ordinary people of faith, and your lives life matters every bit much as ours. Some of us have a larger platform, and it may give the illusion that we are better and that we have access to divine blessings others don’t. But that’s a lie. We each have our own unique sphere of influence that God calls us to be faithful in. Nanci and I are normal people with sin and struggles. The point is not to put Nanci on a pedestal, but through her, to see Jesus on the throne of the universe.

The single greatest thing about Nanci Noren Alcorn is that she had an incredibly big view of her Lord and Savior, and sought to serve and know and love Him every day. And that big view of God is also yours for the taking. So reach out and take it. Hope this 41-minute message encourages you to do so:

Our Mission: Make More Disciples and Fewer Performers

The one indispensable requirement for producing godly, mature Christians is godly, mature Christians.” —Kevin DeYoung

“All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer” (Acts 2:42, NLT).

A 1977 movie, Capricorn One, depicted NASA’s long process of targeting a mission to Mars. Because the program had become increasingly unpopular due to several failures, this mission would make or break the U.S. space program.

Everything was in place. The astronauts were ready. Then suddenly, just before takeoff, they were secreted away to an undisclosed location. Meanwhile the capsule was launched into outer space. From the point of view of those on Earth, it appeared to be a complete success.

But why was the launch made without astronauts? Because the scientists discovered a flaw in the capsule’s life support system. The oxygen wouldn’t last. The astronauts would die.

Then why not reschedule the departure? Because it would be an admission of failure on the part of the space program, and they could not stand one more failure. People would no longer believe in NASA or support spending millions of tax dollars to explore outer space.

So to further public confidence in the space program, the astronauts were told they now must become actors. An isolated site was set up as a shooting location, made to look like the surface of Mars. They were told to drive around in their little Mars rover, send their reports, and greet their families, while those on Earth would be none the wiser.

How the movie ends actually doesn’t matter, but I see the plot as analogous to what happens in some churches. According to current thinking, churches must chase success. And success is defined by numbers: how many worshippers and how much wealth. The number of Facebook followers becomes more important than the number of Jesus-followers.

Many churches exist solely to seek God and share Him with their communities. They may use technology and programs as tools to reach as many people for Christ as they can. Good for them!

My concern is with churches that use God as a tool to launch programs and meet benchmarks of success. Instead of sharing the true gospel, which is what people really need, they compromise on the nature of the gospel and adopt the world’s message and methodology. What these churches produce ends up essentially mirroring what NASA did in Capricorn One. They focus on performance over process. On stagecraft over sanctification. Pastors-turned-performers act as if the Spirit of God were doing great and wonderful things, when in fact nothing supernatural has happened.

This breeds attendees who become like the astronauts-turned-actors. They are exposed to the world throughout the week and come to church for entertainment packaged as a religious and transcendent experience. They want the best of this world and the next without the sacrifice—and they want it now.

Our tendency is to believe that those who act like us, since we are converts, are true converts. But the point of conversion is a transformed life, the kind of life that re-centers itself around Christ. If you and your fellow church goers exhibit the characteristic fruit of the Spirit, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:23, ESV), then you are on the right track. When Jesus is the center of gravity—not pleasure, success, wealth, and health—the church body becomes truly healthy and wealthy in all the right ways.

When the world offers those things, it does so as substitutes for Christ. This means the lives of actor-converts are not Christ-centered, no matter how Christian their vocabulary may sound. Jesus Himself expected radical obedience from His followers: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” (Luke 6:46).

Pretend actors-for-Jesus can quote Scripture, but their desires haven’t changed. They merely feel good that they now have religion, too. Their faith is not a central transforming reality; it’s an add-on to enhance their lives. They believe in a god made in their own image, not the true God of the Bible. They worship a cosmic genie who meets their needs and gives them what they want. They may call themselves servants of Christ. But in fact, they are masters, calling the shots, claiming what they want to claim and believing what they want to believe and expecting God to come through for them. And when He doesn’t, they either blame Him for not being good or blame themselves and others for not having enough faith to get their way.

How different from the biblical description of us as slaves of Jesus Christ! Yes, the original word is best translated slaves, not servants, and describes those who are sold out to His ownership and committed to do whatever He calls them to do, including dying on His behalf should He so desire. “Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves” (1 Peter 2:16, NIV).

We are also called children of the King, and there is a time when we will enjoy all the privileges of royalty. But now is not that time! Presently we experience some royal kingdom privileges, including constant and unhindered access to the One who sits on the throne. We can “come boldly before the throne of grace,” as Hebrews says. God’s Holy Spirit dwells within us. He has promised to provide what we need to serve Him (Matthew 6:25-32). But when it comes to enjoying all the material provisions living in the King’s mansion provides, we are not yet there.

We are still on foreign soil—hostile soil—where people are fighting against God’s kingdom. We are not just tourists or palace-dwellers; we are “strangers and exiles on the earth,” who are “seeking a homeland” (Hebrews 11:13-14), and longing for “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16).

What we need in our churches today are fewer actors and more sold-out followers of Jesus—converted people living lives centered on Jesus, the King of kings.  

And the good news is, there truly are many such people in our churches. Our goal should be to cultivate more and more of them. “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20, NIV).

We don’t need makeovers and airbrushing; we need transformation. We need a miracle that God alone can perform in our hearts. And we need to stand together, arm in arm, loving one another and showing the world the marvelous truth about Jesus. Some will misunderstand and even hate that. But others will be drawn to Jesus and His good news, and forever changed.

If we’re going to act, let’s act like Jesus, and watch what happens.

“The Kingdom of God is not going to be advanced by our churches becoming filled with men, but by men in our churches becoming filled with God.” —Duncan Campbell

Photo by Jean-Philippe Delberghe on Unsplash

Albert Wolters’s Creation Regained, and the Vast Redemptive Scope of the Gospel

While researching online about the New Earth for my book Heaven, I stumbled upon Creation Regained. I ordered it based on its title alone (which often proves to be a big mistake). From its opening chapter on worldview, I knew I had discovered a treasure. As I read what Albert Wolters had to say about creation, the fall, and redemption, I found myself repeatedly exclaiming “Yes!”

Until then, I had read only a few other books that resonated with the vast redemptive scope of Matthew 19:28, Acts 3:21, Romans 8:18-23, and other Scriptures. Regrettably, I have seen few since. For too long we have reduced and distorted the gospel to the snatching of souls from Earth to a distant and intangible realm suitable for angels, not people. Yet the Bible shows that in His unfolding drama of redemption, God is at work to reclaim not just our souls, but also our bodies, and not just our bodies, but also the earth from which that first human body was made, and over which God purposed us to reign.

Al Wolters concisely and persuasively demonstrates that God’s plan for righteous humanity to live on and reign over an uncursed earth was not thwarted by Satan or by man’s sin. (How small He would be if that were the case.) God never revoked or abandoned His original great commission for us to rule a good earth to His glory. The last chapters of the Bible promise that His original design—as revealed in the first chapters and greatly enhanced and magnified through Christ’s work—will indeed be fulfilled on the New Earth. Having fallen on mankind’s coat-tails, Earth will rise on our coat-tails—resurrected humanity will occupy and rule a resurrected earth. This is the full gospel of the Kingdom, and it is vital to a biblical worldview, which alone explains the Bible’s description of Christians as those who are “looking forward to a new heaven and new earth.”

Creation Regained is biblically and philosophically sound, and offers depictions that are both refreshing and satisfying. It offers a paradigm shifting perspective—one desperately needed by today’s churches and families and one that has become tragically obscure: God has no more given up on the rest of His creation than He has given up on us.

Al Wolters writes, “[God] hangs on to his fallen original creation and salvages it. He refuses to abandon the work of his hands—in fact, he sacrifices his own Son to save his original project. Humankind, which has botched its original mandate and the whole creation along with it, is given another chance in Christ; we are reinstated as God’s managers on earth. The original good creation is to be restored.”

A few pages later he writes, “[It] is particularly striking that all of Jesus’ miracles (with the one exception of the cursing of the fig tree) are miracles of restoration—restoration to health, restoration to life, restoration to freedom from demonic possession. Jesus’ miracles provide us with a sample of the meaning of redemption: a freeing of creation from the shackles of sin and evil and a reinstatement of creaturely living as intended by God.”

These and Al’s other penetrating insights help us to stop redefining the gospel in narrow and shallow and individualistic terminology and assumptions which discredit the breadth and depth of God’s redemptive plan.

Regardless of theological leanings, anyone reading this great book will undoubtedly find it a treasure trove, as I did. Enjoy!

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash