Russell D. Moore's Blog, page 5

Same-Sex Marriage and the Future

The Bible tells us that the king of Israel once wanted to hear from the prophets, as to whether he would be victorious over his enemies. All the court prophets told him exactly what he wanted to hear. Yet the king of Judah, wisely, asked whether there might be another voice to hear from, and Israel’s king said that, yes, there was, but that he hated this prophet “because he never prophesies good concerning me” (1 Kings 22:8).

Once found, this prophet refused to speak the consensus word the king wanted to hear. “As the Lord lives, what the Lord says to me, that I will speak” (1 Kings 22:14). And, as it turned out, it was a hard word.

When it comes to what people want to hear, it seems to me that the church faces a similar situation as we look to the future of marriage in this country. Many want the sort of prophetic witness that will spin the situation to look favorable, regardless of whether that favor is from the Lord or in touch with reality.

Some people want a court of prophets who will take a surgeon’s scalpel to the Word of God. They want those who will say in light of what the Bible clearly calls immorality, “Has God really said?” Following the trajectory of every old liberalism of the past, they want to do with a Christian sexual ethic what the old liberals did with the virgin birth—claim that contemporary people just won’t have this, and if we want to rescue Christianity, this will have to go overboard. All the while they’ll tell us they’re doing it for the children (or for the Millennials).

This is infidelity to the gospel we’ve received. First of all, no one refusing to repent of sin—be it homosexuality or fornication or anything else—will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10). This strategy leaves people in condemnation before the Judgment Seat of Christ, without reconciliation and without hope.

Second, it doesn’t even work. Look at the empty cathedrals of the Episcopal Church, the vacated pews of the Presbyterian Church (USA), and right down the line. Let me be clear. Even if embracing same-sex marriage—or any other endorsement of what the Bible calls sexual immorality—“worked” in church-building, we still wouldn’t do it. If we have to choose between Jesus and Millennials, we choose Jesus. But history shows us that those who want a different Jesus—the one who says, “Do whatever you want with your body, it’s okay by me”—don’t want Christianity at all.

But there will be those who want prophets who will say that the gospel doesn’t call for repentance, or at least not repentance from this sin. These prophets will apply a selective universalism that denies that judgment is coming, or that the blood of Christ is needed. But these prophets don’t speak for God. And, quite frankly, we have no one to blame but ourselves since, for too long, too many of us have tolerated among us those who have substituted a cheap and easy false gospel for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Too many have been called gospel preachers who preach decision without faith, regeneration without repentance, justification without lordship, deliverance by walking an aisle but without carrying a cross. That gospel is different from the one Jesus and his apostles delivered to us. That gospel doesn’t save.

So when these prophets emerge to tell people they can stay in their sins and still be saved, we must thunder back with the old gospel that calls all of us to repentance and to cross-bearing, the gospel that calls sin what it is in order to call grace what it is. J. Gresham Machen warned us that our Lord Jesus himself never attempted to preach the gospel to the righteous but only to sinners. Those who follow him must start by acknowledging themselves to be in need of mercy, to be in need of grace that can pardon and cleanse within.

There’s also another form of court prophet of these times. This one has no problem identifying homosexuality as sin. He may do so with all sorts of bluster and outrage, but he still does what court prophets always do—he speaks a word that people want to hear. What some people want to hear is that sexual immorality is moral after all, and what other people want to hear is that same-sex marriage is simply a matter of some elites on the coasts of the country. This prophet implies that if we just sign checks to the right radio talk-show hosts, and have a good election cycle or two, we’ll be right back where we were, back when carpets were shag and marriages were strong.

I don’t know anyone in any advocacy organization in Washington DC—and there are many fighting the good fight on this one—that is saying that. As a matter of fact, the organizations closest to the ground know just how dark the hour is. The courts are hell-bent on redefining marriage, which is why state definitions of marriage, put in place by the citizens of those states, are being struck down. This isn’t happening simply in blue states but in the reddest of red states—Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Tennessee, and so on.

The Supreme Court said last year, in a shocking ruling, that essentially the only reason anyone could have for defining marriage the way every human civilization has for millennia is hostility toward gay and lesbian persons. The answer is not a simple constitutional amendment—though that would be optimal—because any constitutional amendment would require a super-majority in both houses, that, apart from a miracle, no one sees happening in the next several years, now that the Democratic Party is firmly behind same-sex marriage.

What several of us have been saying for quite a while is that, in some form or another, your church will have to address the marriage revolution. My friend Jeff Iorg, president of Golden Gate Seminary in California, has courageously called the church to see that everyone will soon have to be standing where he is standing now. He’s exactly right. The cultural trends are such that the red–blue divide will not ultimately isolate any congregation from this Sexual Revolution, and all it entails.

Moreover, the situation isn’t as easy as just an election or two, given the vast cultural changes that have happened.  I—and my co-laborers in other organizations—are fighting every single week in court cases, in hearings, in state disputes for the most basic of conscience protections for those who dissent from the High Church of the Sexual Revolution. Look at the way Louie Giglio was deemed too toxic to pray at the President’s inauguration in 2013. Look at the way the CEO of Mozilla was hounded out of office simply for supporting a ballot measure defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Look at the way photographers and florists are being forced, under penalty of law, to participate in same-sex weddings. And look at the way that even the most base-level religious liberty provisions are deemed discriminatory.

If the church doesn’t read the signs of the times, we will be right where we evangelicals were after Roe v. Wade—caught flat-footed and unprepared. Thankfully, the Catholics were there to supply an ethical framework and a sense of justice until some evangelicals—such as Francis Schaeffer and Jerry Falwell—emerged to rally for the lives of the unborn and their mothers.

So what should we do? Well, precisely what we should have done before and after Roe. We should recognize where the courts and the culture are, and we should work for justice. That means not simply assuming that most people agree with us on marriage. We must articulate, both in and out of the church, why marriage matters, and why its definition isn’t infinitely elastic.

We must—like the pro-life movement has done—seek not only to engage our base, those who already agree with us, but to persuade others who don’t. That doesn’t mean less talk about marriage and sexuality but more—and not just in sound bytes and slogans but in a robust theology of why sexual complementarity and the one-flesh union are rooted in the mystery of the gospel (Eph. 5:22-33).

We must—also like the pro-life movement—understand the importance of a Supreme Court that won’t will into existence constitutional planks by force of its own will. That requires a persuasive public witness, and a long-term as well as a short-term strategy. That means fighting—as we are doing—for the Court not to invalidate state definitions of marriage and for the culture to recognize that a state that can force people to participate in what they believe to be sin is a state that is too big for the common good.

Above all, we must prepare people for what the future holds, when Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality aren’t part of the cultural consensus but are seen to be strange and freakish and even subversive. If our people assume that everything goes back to normal with the right President and a quick constitutional amendment, they are not being equipped for a world that views evangelical Protestants and traditional Roman Catholics and Orthodox Jews and others as bigots or freaks.

Jesus told us we would have hard times. He never promised us a prosperity gospel. He said we would face opposition, but he said he would be with us. If we are going to be faithful to his gospel, we must preach repentance—even when that repentance is culturally unwelcome. And we must preach that any sinner can be forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ. That means courage and that means kindness. Sexual revolutionaries will hate the repentance. Buffoonish heretics, who want only to vent paranoia and rally their troops, will hate the kindness. So be it.

Our churches must be ready to call out the revisionists who wish to do away with a Christian sexual ethic. And we must be ready to call out those who tell us that acknowledging the signs of the times is forbidden, and we should just keep doing what we’ve been doing. An issue this culturally powerful cannot be addressed by a halfway-gospel or by talk-radio sloganeering.

The marriage revolution around us means we must do a better job articulating a theology of marriage to our people, as well as a theology of suffering and marginalization. It means we must do a better job articulating to those on the outside why children need both a Mom and a Dad, not just “parents,” and why marriage isn’t simply a matter of court decree. It means we must start teaching our children about marriage “from the beginning” as male and female when they’re in Sunday school. It means we may have to decide if and when the day will come in which we will refuse to sign the state’s marriage licenses.

Because the stakes are so high, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission is hosting a conference this fall on marriage, homosexuality, and the church. Here we will assemble some of the leading thinkers and pastors on these issues to help you equip a new generation to stand for marriage in tough times, to prepare us to preach the whole gospel to hurting people. Sign up and join us. Bring your leadership, your small group leaders, your deacons, your elders, your Sunday school teachers. Long term the prospects for marriage are good. Sexual revolutions always disappoint, and God has designed marriage, biblically defined, to be resilient. But, short term, the culture of marriage is dark indeed. That’s why we have a gospel that is the power of God.

              Related StoriesThe King’s Gospel and The King’s CollegeOn World Vision and the GospelHobby Lobby and the Supreme Court: A Call to Prayer 

Liberty Convocation

              Related StoriesWhat Mariam Ibrahim MeansTullian’s ApologyWhat I’ve Learned in Twenty Years of Marriage 

The King’s Gospel and The King’s College

The King’s Gospel and The King’s College

An Address at the Inauguration of

Gregory Alan Thornbury as the

Sixth President of The King’s College

Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church

New York City

April 3, 2014

I first encountered Gregory Alan Thornbury not as a person and not even simply as a reputation, but as a kind of foreshadowing. He was, as Bob Dylan might put it, a slow train coming down the track toward my life. I was contemplating applying to the doctoral program of Southern Baptists’ mother seminary, a school that had endured a reformation back to its roots in doctrinal orthodoxy, but a reformation that, as far as the doctoral program was concerned, was still “already and not yet.” Many in the admissions office were not on board with the new conservative direction, and some even actively sough to dissuade me—and who knows how many others—from applying. But, at the 1995 Southern Baptist Convention in Atlanta, I spoke with one admissions counselor who told me, “You need to get to know Greg Thornbury.”

I say he told me that, but it is more accurate to say he whispered it. He kept looking over his shoulder as though he were Mr. Tumnus afraid to mention Aslan lest he be overheard by the trees, which might turn him over to the White Witch. He went on to say, “Seriously, remember that name. Greg Thornbury. He’s the smartest guy in every room, and he’s the real-deal, whole-package evangelical.”

When I arrived on campus as a new doctoral student in systematic theology, the first person I met was Greg Thornbury and, just as advertised, he was the smartest guy in every room—and he was the real-deal, whole-package evangelical. In a very short time, we were allies in doctoral colloquia and seminars, and working together in the President’s office, or, more usually, the President’s basement. And I found Greg Thornbury to be even more than I had heard. It was as though a scientific genius had engineered a way to mix the best of Carl F. H. Henry with the best of Elvis Costello.

And now, here we are, where, it seems to me, Greg Thornbury was always predestined to be: leading a great evangelical institution of learning in the heart of New York City. This is, personally, a thrilling time for me. It is also a sobering time, because what President Thornbury is undertaking represents a great charge and a great trust.

In Matthew 21:28-32, Jesus tells us a story—one of the parables we reflect on not nearly enough. The chief priests had challenged Jesus on the question of where he obtained his authority. Keeping with his usual practice, our Lord turned the questions back around on them, asking questions about John the Baptist he knew they wouldn’t want to answer. He then told a parable of two sons. The father asks the first son to work in the vineyard and he says “I won’t go,” but then, changes direction, and says he will. The second son immediately agrees to go, but then later turns and says, “I will not.” Which of these sons, Jesus asks, is faithful to the will of his father? This is precisely the question we should ask ourselves tonight.

When we were students, Greg once took our mutual hero, Carl F. H. Henry, to the Sunday service of a booming evangelical megachurch. After the service, Greg asked Dr. Henry, “So, what did you think?” Dr. Henry sat silently for a moment, before answering, “I think that service represents the success of the evangelical movement.” He then added, “We were so successful with our youth rallies that our teenagers grew up and want to repeat them, and call them worship services.” For those of you who don’t know, from Dr. Henry, that was not a good thing.

He knew that the very things that helped evangelicalism flourish—entrepreneurialism and freedom from longstanding institutions—could easily, when unmoored from doctrinal orthodoxy and ecclesial rootedness, become the undoing of the movement. Persistence itself is no sign of fidelity, if that persistence doesn’t persist in obedience. Jesus identified the religious establishment of the nation of Israel as persistent in observance and in structure. But they had so lost their way that they couldn’t recognize the kingdom of God, standing before them in flesh and bone.

Evangelicalism always faces the temptation to listen to the call of that old zombie Harry Emerson Fosdick, who never stays long in his crypt and often walks forward with Mr. Rockefeller’s money brimming from his pockets. Fosdick’s temple stands across the city from where we are tonight, a monument to what some would tell us that we need. The temptation is to barter away what the world around us finds embarrassing about the faith we have received. In a previous era, that was the miraculous—virgin births and empty tombs. In our era, it is usually a Christian sexual ethic. This never works, which is why, despite Mr. Jefferson’s predictions of the future, the Unitarians have not inherited the earth.

But, more importantly, this impulse, is an act of violence. It leaves people in sin and death. If there is no Judgment Seat, or if Jesus and his apostles are inaccurate in what we will give an account for there, then why concern ourselves with Christianity at all, much less Christian higher education? But if there is a Judgment Seat, a Lake of Fire, a New Jerusalem, then those that would mute the hard truths of the call to repentance are worse than merely unfaithful. They are the spiritual equivalent of human traffickers, promising guilty souls safe passage over the River Jordan, but leaving them to die in the desert.

The second son starts out with obedience—with the immediate response of “All to Jesus, I Surrender.” But when the cost is counted, he turns aside. Many have. And many will. Some turn aside to what J. Gresham Machen warned us is a different gospel altogether, liberalism, even when it knows how to sing our praise choruses. Some turn aside to the Canaanite fertility religion of the prosperity gospels, whether in their monetary or political forms. The King’s College much watch, ever diligently, that the college never becomes more important than the King.

But then there’s that first son.

Our response to the challenges around us should not be a dour, curmudgeonly evangelicalism. The gloominess and fretfulness so many evidence is more than defeatism, it is a sign of wavering belief in the promises of Jesus himself. Carl Henry reminded Greg Thornbury and me of that truth. We were lamenting the current state of evangelicalism, two young doctoral students to the greatest evangelical theologian of the twentieth century. We lamented the pragmatism, the hucksterism, the liberalizing tendencies, and we asked, “Does evangelical Christianity have a future at all.” Dr. Henry looked at us as though we were crazy.

“Of course gospel Christianity has a future,” Dr. Henry said. “But the gospel Christians who will lead it may well still be pagans right now.”

Dr. Henry told us that we were acting as though Christian leadership were a genetic dynasty, complete with ruling families. And yet, he told us, God never built his church that way. Saul of Tarsus was a murderer. Augustine of Hippo was a player. C.S. Lewis was an atheist. Chuck Colson was a hatchet man. The gospel not only saved these leaders, but God put them in the leadership of his church. They seemed to come out of nowhere, with shady pasts and uncertain futures. And none of us would be here, apart from their labors.

We had forgotten what Jesus told the chief priests. “Truly I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.” And why? It is because in the preaching of John, ‘the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him.” The difference is the gospel as the power of God unto salvation.

This is the burden of The King’s College, in a world of uneasy consciences. This college must exist to preserve and to engage a gospel for the sake of those who are not yet aware of it, or not yet interested in it, or perhaps even as of yet openly hostile to it.

The answer is not what some would prescribe, the sort of selective universalism that refuses to call to repentance in those areas of sin deemed untouchable by the ambient culture. The answer is not the angry warrior spirit that seeks to humiliate our opponents.

The church of Christ Jesus cannot be a gospel-free outrage machine. And the church of Christ Jesus cannot be a gospel-free affirmation machine.

That’s why The King’s College should never be merely a finishing school for the evangelical elite. Every classroom and every lecture should serve as a reminder that the next Augustine might be wasting away on heroin right now on the streets of Manhattan. The next Corrie Ten Boom might be a sex-worker in a darkened alley right now. The gospel can change, not just for their sake but  also for ours. The King’s College must exist for them.

That’s why The King’s College must fight for doctrinal orthodoxy. An almost gospel won’t do. And that’s why The King’s College must ever struggle to retain intellectual rigor. This academic prowess is an act of love, equipping these brilliant students to push back the arguments behind which guilt consciences hide, in order that they may hear the voice that calls “Adam, where are you?”

Yes, we face difficult times, every generation of the church does. But we also face unprecedented opportunities. People walking past on the streets outside us, many of them will be burned over by the unkept promises of the utopianism of the Sexual Revolution and of Faustian libertarianism. You must study, you must labor, to preserve something old, something ever new, not just for us, and not just for our children, but for our future brothers and sisters in Christ, many of whom may hate us right now. But many of them may one day lead us, by the power of the Spirit that calls to life that which was dead.

When we gather if, if the Lord keeps us that long, for President Thornbury’s retirement ceremony, what should we hope now that we will say? We should hope that the obedience we pledge now is kept. But we should also hope that through the witness of this place, the church is filled with those who were prostitutes, those who were tax collectors, those who were without hope and without God in the world. We should hope that the reputation of The King’s College goes forth, like Greg Thornbury’s, as a slow training coming. We should hope that we will say then, of this great college, “It’s the smartest place in the world, and it holds the gospel, the real-deal, whole-package gospel.”

 

              Related StoriesOn World Vision and the GospelHobby Lobby and the Supreme Court: A Call to PrayerAre Atheists Easy to Hate? 

On World Vision and the Gospel

World Vision, an evangelical relief organization, announced today that they would now hire persons who are in same-sex marriages. The organization said, further, that this was no capitulation, just a recognition that some groups supporting World Vision have differing views on sex and marriage.

 

This is no surprise, on one level. The constellation of parachurch evangelical ministries founded after World War II have been running headlong, with some notable exceptions, toward the very mainline liberalism to which they were founded as alternatives. Some think if we can just barter away Christian orthodoxy fast enough we can catch the wave of that Presbyterian Church (USA) church growth boom.

 

But here’s what’s at stake. This isn’t, as the World Vision statement (incredibly!) puts it, the equivalent of a big tent on baptism, church polity, and so forth.

 

At stake is the gospel of Jesus Christ. If sexual activity outside of a biblical definition of marriage is morally neutral, then, yes, we should avoid making an issue of it. If, though, what the Bible clearly teaches and what the church has held for 2000 years is true, then refusing to call for repentance is unspeakably cruel and, in fact, devilish.

 

The devil works in two ways: by deception, “You shall not surely die” (Gen. 3:4); and by accusation, “the accuser of the brethren” (Rev 12:10). For some people, the devil wishes to assure that there’s no need for repentance, for others that there’s no hope for mercy. Some people are deceived into thinking they are too good for the gospel while others are accused into thinking they’re too bad for the gospel.

 

The gospel of Jesus Christ tears down both strategies. The gospel clearly calls us to repentance, even when that repentance is hated by the outside world. And the gospel clearly calls us to mercy by faith in the blood of Christ, even when we can’t believe that we’d ever be received.

 

We empower darkness when we refuse to warn of judgment. We empower the darkness when we refuse to offer forgiveness through the blood of the cross.

 

We’re entering an era where we will see who the evangelicals really are, and by that I mean those who believe in the gospel itself, in all of its truth and all of its grace. And many will shrink back. There are no riots if the gospel you’re preaching doesn’t threaten the silversmiths of the Temple of Artemis. And there are no clucking tongues if the gospel you’re preaching isn’t offered to tax collectors and temple prostitutes. 

 

There’s an entire corps of people out there who make their living off of evangelicals but who are wanting to “evolve” on the sexuality issue without alienating their base. I don’t mind people switching sides and standing up for things that they believe in. But just be honest about what you want to do. Don’t say “Hath God said?” and then tell us you’re doing it to advance the gospel and the unity of the church.

 

Donor bases come and go. But the gospel of Jesus Christ stands forever. 

 

World Vision is a good thing to have, unless the world is all you can see.

               
Comments[…] Today The Gospel Coalition Moore to the Point World ... by World Vision Christian Charity Announces Gay Acceptance - Guardian Liberty Voice 2014[…] is an issue where you can read on, and on, and on, ... by What World Vision Says about Evangelical Priorities[…] 4. On World Vision and the Gospel: By Russell Moore. ... by World Vision and the Homosexual Question: Documenting Responses - Chosen in ChristBy: Flotsam and jetsam (3/26) | Everyday Theology by Flotsam and jetsam (3/26) | Everyday TheologyBy: The Judas Tradition | The American Catholic by The Judas Tradition | The American CatholicPlus 43 more...Related StoriesHobby Lobby and the Supreme Court: A Call to PrayerAre Atheists Easy to Hate?Should Churches Stop Performing Civil Marriages? 

Hobby Lobby and the Supreme Court: A Call to Prayer

This week, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear the most important religious liberty case in a generation, and it’s time for us to pray. The cases are Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood specialties versus the United States government’s mandate that employers provide insurance for contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs. Behind that is the larger question of what it means for the Constitution to guarantee the free exercise of religion.

And behind that is the even larger question of soul freedom for all.

We need to pray because this case isn’t about politics or culture wars. This case will set the tone for the next hundred years of church/state jurisprudence in this country. This case will tell us whether we’ve bartered away a birthright paid for with our forebears’ blood.

Richard John Neuhaus rightly argued years ago that it’s a mistake to see the two clauses of the First Amendment’s religious liberty guarantee—no establishment of a religion by the state and no restriction on free exercise of religion—as too sharply divided. They are two sides of the same coin. A government that sets up a religion is restricting free exercise, and a government that restricts free exercise is setting up some alternative church. He’s exactly right, and that’s what’s happening here.

As a Baptist Christian, I can say that we’ve seen this before. My Baptist forebears objected to the state licensing preachers to preach. This was, the government said, simply a matter of paperwork. The state license, though, was about more than a fee and a piece of paper. It was about a government that had overstepped its authority. My Baptist ancestors objected to paying taxes to support the Congregationalist established churches of New England.

Isaac Backus, a courageous preacher, was told that this was “only a contending about paying a little money.” Backus responded with fire, “It is absolutely a point of conscience with me; for I cannot give in the certificates they require without implicitly acknowledging that power in man which I believe belongs to God.”

That’s exactly what’s at stake here. The government is telling the Hobby Lobby owners, the Green family, that their free exercise rights aren’t relevant because they run a corporation. They’re telling these Anabaptist woodworkers and the Catholic Little Sisters of the Poor and ministries of all sorts all over the country that what’s at stake is just the signing of some papers, the payment of some money.

Our government has treated free exercise of religion as though it were a tattered house standing in the way of a government construction of a railroad; there to be bought off or plowed out of the way, in the name of progress.

The government wants us to sing from their hymn book, “Onward, Sexual Revolutionaries,” but we can’t do that. We love and respect our leaders, but when they set themselves up as overlords of the conscience, we must respectfully dissent.

We cannot accept the theology lesson the government has sought to teach us, that religion is simply a matter of what happens during the scheduled times of our services, and is left there in the foyer during the rest of the week.

Our religious convictions aren’t reduced to simply the opinions we hide in our hearts, or sing in our hymns. Our religious convictions inform the way we live.

We support freedom of conscience not only for ourselves, but also for all. One of the reasons we oppose this sort of incursion into free exercise is that we want neither to be oppressed nor to oppress others. We do not ask the government to bless our doctrinal convictions, or to impose them on others. We simply ask the government not to set itself up as lord of our consciences.

Many Americans will disagree with us heartily about the things we believe. But even Americans of no religious faith at all have an interest in the protection of these liberties. Do we really want the sort of civil society in which the consciences of the people are so easily swept aside by government action?

If the federal government can force organizations and businesses to pave over their own consciences, to choose between being believers and being citizens, what will stop the government from imposing its will on anyone’s conscience next?

As Christians, soul liberty is about more than political principle for us. We believe, as our Lord commands, that we should render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar. The conscience does not bear the image of Caesar, and cannot be swept into the federal treasury by government fiat.

So let’s pray that the Court listens to the case being made. Let’s pray for the justices. Let’s pray for the attorneys. Let’s pray, as the Apostle Paul commands us, for “all who are in high positions, that we may live a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Tim. 2:2).

Let’s pray that our court system would, like Jefferson and Madison in the founding era,  recognize that religious liberty and freedom of conscience aren’t government bailouts but inalienable rights granted by the Creator himself. This isn’t just about Hobby Lobby. It isn’t just about the HHS mandate. It’s about whether the government is “under God” or all-encompassing. Our politicians, on their best days, might aspire to Mount Rushmore, but they don’t reign from Mount Zion.

Let’s pray to the One who does.

              Related StoriesAre Atheists Easy to Hate?Should Churches Stop Performing Civil Marriages?Whither the Prosperity Gospel? 

Are Atheists Easy to Hate?

Atheists are easy to hate, until you can’t help but love one.

 

That’s largely because the highest profile atheists in your community or in our culture tend to be angry, obnoxious people. That’s because it still takes a certain sort of cultural courage to say, “I don’t believe in God.” That’s why the people willing to identify themselves as atheists tends to be the pamphleteers and the ridiculers.

 

But most of us learn to love atheists not by reading Richard Dawkins, but by talking to someone we love. Maybe it’s a son or daughter or a college roommate. We talk with someone who just can’t believe that a the nub of this swirling universe there’s a Father.

 

That’s why I’m excited about a short new book by Dan DeWitt: Jesus or Nothing. Dan was a student, sitting there on the second row of Norton Hall 202, in the first class I ever taught at Southern Seminary. he later served with me as Dean of Boyce College. He’s a bright Christian teacher, but this book isn’t a collection of arguments.

 

Most of us want to slay atheism with a set of “can’t argue with that” syllogisms. But that’s not how people leave atheism for Christ. I have yet to meet someone who says, “Oh! So there’s archeological evidence for the existence of the Hittites? The Bible must be true…what must I do to be saved?”

 

Instead, most people come to Christ the same way most of us did: by hearing in the gospel story a Voice calling our Name. “Adam, where are you?” “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

 

This book shows how the gospel upends everything the atheist wants to be true, and yet fears is true, about the universe. I love the book because it emerged out of what I watched in Dan’s life, a friendship with an atheist that taught him not to caricature, not to ridicule, but to love and to bear witness to the kingdom of God.

 

This book isn’t just for people with atheists in our lives (although if you don’t have any atheists in your life, you might should wonder why). The book awakens the wonder that the story we find ourselves in is really true. There really is a dynamically alive ex-corpse who is bending all of history to himself. You really are accepted and forgiven and welcome if you’re hidden in him. You have nothing to fear, from your past guilt or your future casket.

 

But it also will turn your heart toward those around you, those who just can’t find the old, old story to be good, good news.

 

What are some good resources you’ve used to talk to atheists and agnostics in your life?

              Related StoriesShould Churches Stop Performing Civil Marriages?Whither the Prosperity Gospel?Raising Boys, for Christian Dads 

Should Churches Stop Performing Civil Marriages?

In the April issue of First Things, I’m part of a symposium addressing the following question: “With the legal affirmation of same-sex marriage in some states, should churches, synagogues, and mosques stop performing civil marriages?” Below is my answer. Check out First Things to see the rest of the contributors’ thoughts. You can subscribe here.

No, not yet. Marriage is, of course, more than a matter of statecraft. That’s the reason we deny that the state can, for instance, call marriages into being without creational essentials such as sexual complementarity. Marriage is grounded in the natural order itself (Gen. 2:21–23) and points beyond nature to the Gospel mystery that stands behind and makes sense of the cosmos (Eph. 5:31–32).

 

Obviously, then, if the state ever forced congregations or religious institutions to solemnize unions that are not, in our view, marriages, we would be compelled to obey God and conscience and not the bureaucrats. Even with the audacity of recent religious liberty incursions, though, that moment will not be upon us any time soon.

 

Instead, what we see are governments affirming both those unions we would recognize as marriage and those that are something else. As citizens, we ought to oppose redefinition of marriage, but, should we lose across the board, what should we do as churches.

 

Churches should join together only those who meet the creational criteria for marriage. A church that accommodates itself to the sexual revolution is no longer a church of Jesus Christ.

 

Moreover, churches should only marry those who are accountable to the Church and to the gathered witnesses, and who are held to their vows.  The marrying parson who stands where the wedding coordinator tells him to, reads his script, and signs the paperwork for whatever couple shows up is a disgraceful hireling and ought to do an honest day’s work as a justice of the peace rather than as a steward of the mysteries of God.

 

When a congregation certifies a biblically married couple to be also civilly married, the congregation is not affirming the state’s definition of marriage. Instead, the Church is witnessing to the state’s role in recognizing marriage as something that stands before and is foundational to society. We are bearing witness to the fact that these unions are the business of the larger society in ways other unions aren’t.

 

We are witnessing that the state has no business in recreating marriage, but the state does have a responsibility to safeguard children, by holding mothers and fathers to their vows to each other and to the next generation.

 

In this sense, we are acting much as Jesus did when he was asked about the payment of the temple tax. Jesus believed himself and his disciples to be heirs of the kingdom and thus free from this obligation. Nonetheless, he paid the half-shekel “so as not to give offense to them” (Matt. 17:27).

 

If the state ever attempts to force us to call marriage that which is not marriage in our churches and ceremonies, let’s obey God, even if that means we sing our wedding hymns in the prison block. But, for now, by registering Gospel-qualified unions as civil marriages and not officiating at unions that not Gospel-qualified, we call the government to its responsibility even as we call attention to its limits.

 

We gladly render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but the image imprinted on the marriage union isn’t the union of Caesar and his court, but of Christ and his Church.

              Related StoriesWhither the Prosperity Gospel?Raising Boys, for Christian DadsDoes the Universe Make You Feel Small? 

Whither the Prosperity Gospel?

A few months ago, the American Scholar published a cover story on the collapse of Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral. The article, by Jim Hinch, used the Cathedral as a parable for evangelicalism itself.

I found myself just now shouting “Amen” to the comments of a letter-writer from Charlottesville, Virginia, responding to the piece in the latest issue of the journal. The writer, Tony Tian-Ren-Lin, takes the journal to task for not understanding the difference between Schuller’s “gospel” and, well, the Gospel.

The Crystal Cathedral wasn’t, he points, out, evangelical at all. Institutionally, it was part of the mainline Reformed Church in America (that’s how you say “Presbyterian Church (USA)” in Dutch), and Schuller’s mission was not to call people to repentance of sin but to higher self-esteem. “If anything, the fall of the Crystal Cathedral represents the decline of that branch of mainline Protestantism,” he writes.

So, the question remains, where are all the people who once thronged the Crystal Cathedral. The Charlottesville correspondent explains to the American scholars: “They are at home, having their self-esteem puffed up by a new breed of prosperity-Gospel preacher, including Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, and T.D. Jakes.”

This is exactly right. The prosperity gospel isn’t just another brand of evangelicalism. It isn’t “evangelical” at all because it’s rooted in a different gospel from the one preached and embodied by Jesus Christ. The prosperity gospel is far more akin to the ancient Canaanite fertility religions than it is to anything announced by Jesus, the prophets before him, or the apostles after him.

We shouldn’t be that hard on the secular world for failing to see the difference between the prosperity gospel and the Gospel, but we should certainly expect the church to know the difference, and to say so.

              Related StoriesRaising Boys, for Christian DadsDoes the Universe Make You Feel Small?Growing Up with the Moviegoer 

Raising Boys, for Christian Dads

Often when people ask how many kids I have, the response is predictable. “Five,” I’ll say. “Five!” they will respond. “You must have your hands full!” I go on to say, “Yes, five boys.” The response: “Five boys! Your poor wife!”

My wife and I really don’t think raising boys is all that tough, relative to raising girls. Maybe that’s because all we know is what we know, and we’ve never had daughters. One of the Christian men I’ve admired most when it comes to raising sons is Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. The Akins have four sons, all grown now, and all Christians. In fact, all four are in Christian ministry.

In this video, I sat down with Dr. Akin to talk about what we think Christian Dads ought to hear from a father of small sons (12 and under, in my case) and a father of grown sons. I learned a lot, was encouraged a lot, and I think you will be too.

For those of you with boys, what do you think are some of the special challenges of raising up young men in this age?

              Related StoriesDoes the Universe Make You Feel Small?Growing Up with the MoviegoerJim Crow vs. Jesus Christ 

Does the Universe Make You Feel Small?

The PBS documentary series Cosmos is back, retooled for a new era. A few days ago, host Neil deGrasse Tyson (the heir of Carl Sagan) talked with political commentator (and former Southern Baptist minister) Bill Moyers about the question of whether the universe ought to make us feel small. Tyson says no.

 

Moyers’ question is a good one, especially in light of the series’ attempt to show us (rightly, I might add) how much bigger the world around us is than previous generations of humanity could ever have imagined. If our little galaxy is just a pin-point in a vast, swirling universe, then why would I think that what happens on this microscopic rock matters all that much? In the sweep of cosmic space, why would my life have much purpose at all?

 

Tyson says the universe doesn’t make him feel small at all because he sees himself in continuity with the rest of it. Since his body is made up, ultimately, of the same matter that makes up the star systems, he feels a part of, not diminished, by the cosmos.

 

Of course, he’s partly right. The Scriptures tell us that we aren’t fashioned apart from the rest of the cosmos, but were built from the “dust of the ground” into which God breathed into us “the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7). But I don’t think that answers the bigger question here.

 

There’s a reason human beings have a tendency to feel small in light of the universe around us, and a more thorough-going materialism doesn’t answer it. After all, a material connection with stardust doesn’t a personal connection make. The universe doesn’t know I am here, and doesn’t care where I’m going, if the universe is just stuff.

 

In a Christian vision of the cosmos, the vastness of the universe around us isn’t incidental. God is designing the universe this way to reveal something (Rom. 1:20), something about himself, something about his gospel.

 

David, king of Israel, felt small when he looked into the expanse of the night sky, a reaction the Scripture considers to be reasonable (Ps. 8:3). The starry scene above made him wonder, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Ps. 8:4). And David didn’t even see a pinprick of what we now see is out there. Conversely, we see only a pinprick of what our descendants may know about what’s out there.

 

The universe is meant to prompt such a response precisely so that this can be met by a revealed word: that humanity is “crowned with glory and honor,” and that God has set all things “under your feet” (Ps.8:5-6).

 

That reality cannot be seen through the natural order alone. Sure, we can see the dignity of humanity over against the beasts and the birds. We recognize our intellect, our moral sense. But what about us seems “crowned with glory and honor” in light of the star systems and black holes light years away from us? We don’t yet see all things under our feet, the book of Hebrews tells us, and that’s the point.

 

“But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9).

 

The central point of the cosmos is Christology. All things are summed up in this man, Christ Jesus (Eph. 1:10). Even from the perspective of the territory of Israel, much less the Roman Empire, the background of this man was surprising. God chose the Light of the cosmos to dawn not out of Rome or Athens, or even Jerusalem, but from Galilee.

 

If the unveiling of Christ was met with a dismissed, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (Jn. 1:46), should we really be suprirsed that God, at even the cosmic level, chooses what seems insignificant and tiny to display the paradox of the wisdom and power of God in Christ (1 Cor. 1:20-31)?

 

The universe is meant to make us feel small, to stand in silenced awe. The gospel, though, tells us that we have purpose and meaning, not by our strength or our power, but because we’re hidden in the One who was dead, and is now alive forever, the One for whom every galaxy, seen and unseen, was made as an inheritance.

              Related StoriesGrowing Up with the MoviegoerJim Crow vs. Jesus ChristLessons from Riverside Church