Words mean things

I spent the last post focusing on a proclamation of the biblical definition of love and a proclamation of the Gospel.  Today, that will serve as a foundation for responding to someone making yet another claim that homosexuality is something Christians should not simply tolerate, but accept and celebrate.  This, of course, is not a new claim, as anyone who has spent more than five minutes on the Internet will quickly ascertain.

There have been many attempts made to make the case for homosexuality in Christianity, but probably the most well-known in popular culture at this time is the Matthew Vines video, as he gives his testimony of sorts and makes various claims about what the Bible "really says" about homosexuality.  Naturally, this apologetic mashup resulted in him making conflicting defenses, and was roundly shredded, most notably by Dr. James White, who dissected the video almost down to the syllabic level in exposing Vines' chicanery.  Vines now spends his days secluded from anyone who might possibly challenge his worldview.

But that dead horse will rest for the moment, as a new contender enters the ring and brings what is at least a somewhat novel argument for why Christians should welcome the new order of things: namely, that Jesus was just wrong, and Christians shouldn't just take His word for it.  Brandon Ambrosino has today's example of blatant eisegesis on the Pacific Standard website.  In an article titled "The Best Christian Argument for Marriage Equality is that the Bible Got it Wrong," Ambrosino proceeds to suggest that Christians can remain Christians, while simultaneously jettisoning entire foundational aspects of their faith, and thus proves the Apostle Paul true in 1 Corinthians 1:

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.--1 Corinthians 1:22-25

There are a host of problems with Ambrosino's claims in this article, many of which are refuted by similar responses to revisionism like Dr. White's above.  I will focus on my response on his most blatant claim: namely, that Jesus basically didn't know what he was talking about.

Though referring to the Torah with the shorthand “Moses” is hardly proof positive that Jesus was wrong about the books' provenance (many scholars refer to the books metonymically), it’s safe to say that Jesus probably assumed Moses wrote the Pentateuch.
And if he did think that, then he was wrong.
This is a point the Evangelical bible scholar Peter Enns makes in a footnote in his book The Evolution of Adam: “Jesus here reflects the tradition that he himself inherited as a first-century Jew and that his hearers assumed to be the case.”

Calling Peter Enns "evangelical" is, to put it lightly, inaccurate.  "Evangelical" implies a belief in an "evangel," in the Gospel.  Enns has long since left any semblance of a belief in the sufficiency, clarity, or inerrancy of Scripture that would testify to this Gospel, and if you can't hold to those one wonders exactly why you would bother being considered a Christian at all if you reject the foundation of its fundamental beliefs.  Dr. Michael Kruger shredded his most recent work in an article a few months back, and which I highly recommend.

But I digress.  Ambrosino makes it clear that he does not look to the text as having any measure of truth in it, and he is free to declare that Jesus, the incarnation of the Son of God, has no idea about the true authorship of the Pentateuch.  This is exactly the sort of historical bias so common to modern popular scholarship, epitomized by the likes of Bart Ehrman and others who pursue the (long refuted) Bauer hypothesis, that takes Scripture and reduces it into a pile of disconnected phrases that can be pulled apart and set against one another in the pursuit of human autonomy.

Therefore, Ambrosino is under no obligation, in the eyes of the modern scholar, to recognize that by declaring Jesus as an ignorant no-nothing who assumes that things are how he's always been told rather than being the One who tells, he is completely ignoring the multitude of texts in which Jesus identifies Himself with Yahweh and sets out the idea that the Scriptures are not simply true because Moses wrote them.  They are true because they are about Him.

And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.--John 5:37-40

Jesus speaks to the Pharisees, people who believe that they have righteousness within themselves and within their own acts and are offended by Jesus' statements that they are, in fact, sinners in need of repentance.  And like Ambrosino, they use the Scriptures however they wish in order to prop up their own desires, rather than submit to the full testimony of the Scriptures which point unyieldingly to Jesus Christ.

The bottom line error of Ambrosino's hermeneutic is the same error found in the works of Ehrman, Enns and the like: it rejects any idea of God actually being able to reveal His will to His creation.  God, if there is a God, becomes an unfathomable mystery, and we all get to stand around looking smart as we stroke our chins and ponder the universe.  All the while, we scoff at the thought that God actually is fully capable of speaking into creation and has done so clearly.

And so, having begun with the rejection of the supernatural, we then get to take God's revelation and reduce it down into a million pieces, which we can take apart and reconstruct as we will.  Ambrosino is not doing anything new, he's just being a lot more blunt about it: don't like what the Bible says about a topic?  Well, clearly the writer just wasn't as progressive as you are, so you can reject it.  Sin?  So offensive.  Just look to the nice parts about loving people (without making any effort to understand the full argument being made or any definitions) and we have reduced the text to a mishmash of words that, at this point, mean virtually nothing.

Of course, even as we post-moderns live by this idea that we get to define our own reality, we would never treat our own words like that.  I suspect very much that if I were to take Ambrosino's column and read it the way he reads the Bible--ignoring what I don't like, "reimagining" concepts to fit my framework, and completely ignoring contexts for my own benefit--I daresay he would take issue with that.

I want to close by taking a look at a couple sections that display exactly why this style of cafeteria Christianity is utterly untenable:

What the bible most decidedly is not is some type of handbook for navigating the 21st century. It is not God, nor should it be awarded godlike status. (To treat it as such is to break the second commandment.)

Of course, exactly how we can know what the second commandment is, or why we should listen to any of God's commandments given that Ambrosino's contention is "well, the Bible is just wrong some places" is left unexplained.

Are there universal truths contained with the pages of the bible? Absolutely! Are many of those truths relevant in every age and culture, and binding to Christians everywhere? Definitely—loving your neighbor, forgiving your enemies, and looking out for the weak are obligations that Christ has put upon each person who that claims to follow him. Are there passages of Scripture that should be read as if they are describing historical events that actually transpired in this world? Of course—the physical resurrection of Jesus is a non-negotiable tenet of the Christian faith.

The inconsistencies abound: if Jesus is not who He says he is, on what grounds exactly does He have the right or ability to make anything binding to anyone.  Furthermore, why did Jesus die, and rise again?  I've heard pastors in mainline liberal churches that had little other interest in a solid, grammatically and historically accurate exegesis of the text that could stand up and say "I believe Jesus was a real person, that he died on the cross, and that he rose again."  But that statement had precisely zero impact on anything else they did, on the way they lived their lives, or on the theology that informed any other preaching to their congregations.  As far as anyone can tell, Jesus rose again because He was just such a nice guy, and you can't keep a good guy down.

I would simply ask Brandon: who exactly does he believe Jesus is?  He's an ignorant peasant walking around just parroting the Torah...and He rose from the dead?  There is no consistency, no real desire to see Jesus as a real person here, let alone as who He said that He was.  The consistent and harmonious testimony of Scripture is rejected, and instead the text is pitted against itself as passages, stripped of context and any meaning beyond the surface, are set at odds the original writers would never have agreed with.

So quite simply, the idea that this would be a "Christian argument" is a non-starter.  To embrace it requires rejecting Scripture's clear testimony about Jesus as the monogenes huios, the one and unique Son of God.  If you do that, there is no foundation to believe in anything Scripture says about Jesus, which renders Ambrosino's statements about Christ's resurrection head-scratchingly odd.  Just as John made it clear that those who denied Christ's having come in the flesh (as opposed to the docetists who believed that Jesus only appeared to be human but was really spirit) were not true Christians but in fact were deceivers and false teachers, likewise you cannot claim that Christ was merely a man who said silly baseless things without abandoning your bona fides of the faith.

But this is why the Bible says that "salvation belongs to the Lord."  Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit no one would believe, because on our own we do not look for God but instead we seek after our own selfish desires.  But thanks be to God for His mercy, in calling His people to Himself in the person and work of Christ.  His mercy is everlasting and His grace is to be desired by all men.  I would say to Brandon Ambrosino: repent of your unbelief, and turn to the real Jesus, the one to which Scripture testifies, not your imagined one who can provide no atonement, cannot testify to the truth of the living God, and certainly cannot bring conviction of or repentance from sin.  Your Jesus cannot heal, cannot find the lost (because he is lost himself), and has utterly no value.  This is not the Christ of Scripture or history.  I would call you to repent, and to know Him as Lord and Savior.

Book review: The Heresy of Orthodoxy

Recently I linked a review of Peter Enns' book by Michael Kruger of Reformed Theological Seminary.  Well, recent by this blog's standards, which is "roughly within the last six months."  I have been meaning to get around to reviewing a book that he and Andreas Kostenburg wrote, The Heresy of Orthodoxy.  I can't recommend this book enough for anyone wanting to deal with the common secular claims about Scripture.  Whether you're dealing with someone who just got done reading a Bart Ehrman book or watching the latest horrible CNN "documentary" attempting to undermine the testimony of Scripture, this book will be an excellent and helpful work to go through because it exposes and examines the root of all those writings: the Bauer hypothesis which is essentially a rejection of any idea of a supernatural establishment of the church, and instead proposes warring groups of Christians with different beliefs that were eventually all subdued under one "orthodoxy" through the power of one of those groups. (You may recognize this as the plot to The DaVinci Code, except with fewer church ninjas.  Not none...just fewer.)

In all seriousness, there are three main reasons this book is a great investment for a believer wanting to understand the history of the church and defend the faith from these sort of attacks:

1. It discusses at length not just the evidence, but the presuppositions that drive the way all evidence is examined by those who follow in the footsteps of Walter Bauer.  The general method of attacking Christianity and establishing a notion of society as a religion-less, secular entity is rooted in the ideas discussed here, that Scripture did not come from men inspired by God and the church does not teach what it does because those men taught the consistent revelation given to them, but rather they just happened to be "the winners" in a battle of differing beliefs.  However, their claims are rooted not in an unbiased examination of historical data, but rather filtering all that data through a worldview that says "there is nothing beyond immediate physical human experience, therefore, it couldn't have happened in the way claimed."  In doing so, those promoting this position make a series of assumptions that reveal that they are not "doing unbiased history," but rather are in fact making theological claims of their own.  
2. It examines the evidence given in support of these claims, and as noted above, shows how the conclusions drawn from their evidential claims require one to start from a position not actually drawn from that evidence, but from a presupposition of secular humanism.  
3. It is written in a way that a lay believer will be able to engage with and understand without having to gain a scholastic vocabulary, and it also has extensive notation allowing those wanting to dig deeper to find many resources to learn more about the subjects being discussed.  

Easter weekend is a time that media outlets love to trot out the latest attempt to undermine the truth of the Gospel, whether it's the latest "Tomb of Jesus" or "Did Jesus really exist?" or "FOUND: The Gospel of ____" nonsense.  This is a time that can be trying for us as we try to evangelize those around us as well as engage in worship with our brothers and sisters: how do we respond to this while still displaying our love for God and our fellow man?  How can we defeat lies with the truth without becoming angry jerks?  Preparing ourselves with what is true, being in Scripture consistently is key, and a book like this only helps to buttress a well-laid foundation with further context.

This is also an excellent opportunity for believers to brush up on their church history, a subject about which many of us are woefully ignorant, which exposes us to this sort of attack.  This book exposes the Christian to and prepares the Christian for that attack with the knowledge needed to engage the thinking behind it, and most importantly, to preach the Gospel meaningfully in response to it.  Not in the "You're a liar and you need Jesus" way I see used so often and so pointlessly on the Internet, but in a way that shows we are listening to what our opponents are saying, and we do have a real response that continues to focus on our need for Christ.  There is another book that focuses on the other common point of attack during this time, but I will review that later...

Some Saturday reading

Yes, I'm still alive.  No, I've not been hiding, but it has been a very busy fall without much down time.  I would like to report that the classes I've been taking through church have been excellent, and so a lot of my writing time has been focused on that.  I will be reposting some of my work from there, for whatever small edification it may offer.

I did want to post up and recommend reading this review of Peter Enns' new book, The Bible Tells Me So.  The review is by Dr. Michael J. Kruger, a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary, and coauthor of a book I'm currently reading and also highly recommend, The Heresy of Orthodoxy.  I'll post up a review when I'm done, though certainly I am far less qualified to speak to this subject than he is.  What this review and that book both testify to, however, is the fact that there is an active war against the idea that God has revealed Himself and that He is knowable at all.  Enns doesn't present an atheist perspective or even a Bart Ehrman-like agnostic one.  But like those perspectives, Enns' book basically echoes the tempter's question of "Did God really say...?"  Kruger strongly demonstrates: yes, he did, and the grounds Enns gives for doubting is weak at best.

More later.  Go read!

Freedom in Christ; or, yes, it's okay to have a cold one

Over at the Reformed Pub someone posted a link to this article on a website for a church called Crossroads Christian Church.  The article asks the question, "can a Christian drink alcohol?"  Now, in the interest of fairness, I am going to get all the sarcasm out of me right now: The short answer, is yes.  The long answer, is yeeeeeeeeees.  Also, in the interests of full disclosure, this post (like others) is written with a stein of beer next to me; in this case, St. Arnold's Summer Pilsner.  Highly recommended for that "I've just finished mowing the lawn" time of day.

Okay, silliness aside, I'd like to provide a response to their claims.  Now, if I was a member of this church I would be under their authority and would have no interest in stirring up trouble.  However, my church does not make any such claims and I do have an interest in promoting the full truth of Scripture over and above man's traditions.

On Monday night, news broke that Olympic gold medalist snowboarder, Shaun White, had been charged with vandalism and public intoxication. On my Facebook wall, I posted the following comment: “This just in . . . and the gold medal for character enhancement, once again, goes to alcohol.”

I see this quite a bit in writings by Christians promoting abstinence from alcohol: no longer is man's sin at the center of his depravity, but an inanimate substance that by itself does nothing.  It's not that Shaun White acted like a fool, it's that alcohol destroyed his brain and removed his ability to think for himself.  Let's be clear: Shaun White didn't do anything that was not in his heart already.  Alcohol may have lowered the gate, but what roared out into the night was Shaun White Uncensored and Unfiltered.

For years, well-meaning, sincere Christians have debated the subject of drinking. Let me be clear by saying there isn’t a single verse in the Bible that says a Christian cannot have a drink; although the Bible clearly warns about the destructive and addictive nature of alcohol (Proverbs 20:1; 21:17; 23:29-35; Ephesians 5:18) and is very clear that drunkenness is always wrong (Romans 13:13; Galatians 5:19-21; 1 Peter 4:3; Habakkuk 2:15; 1 Corinthians 5:11).
The Bible is also clear that mature Christians should avoid causing others to stumble by drinking (Romans 14:21), and that leaders ought to avoid drinking alcohol (Proverbs 31:4-7) and cannot be given to drunkenness (1 Timothy 3:3, 8 Titus 1:7.)

 The "destructive nature of alcohol" is not simply about alcohol; the Bible warns over and over and over again about the sinfulness of idolatry: putting anything as preeminent in our lives above God.  And yes, for many people alcohol becomes that idol; a man who knows this is wise to avoid it.  But what about for the Christian for whom something the average person might consider innocuous or even good is an idol?  We've appended "-aholic" to words like "work" to demonstrate how someone is allowing an overriding desire to rule their lives in a similar (and similarly destructive) fashion, but no one calls for Christians to give up work.  The fear of alcohol as more dangerous or inherently evil does not benefit the believer who doesn't struggle with the idol of alcoholism, but has another issue in its place, nor does it honor the Scripture which also uses wine as a picture of blessing, commands for wine to be used in Jewish offerings to God and as a reward of obedience, and so forth.

And of course, I haven't even gotten into issues like Jesus turning water into wine. The idea that we can derive some kind of support for the last century and a half or so of American temperance from Scripture just make no sense.  But it's not my desire to play "dueling prooftexts," but to point to one undeniable truth: alcohol, and the methods by which we come by it, were established by God on purpose and for our benefit.  The author of this piece apparently believes the opposite:

I have yet to hear from anyone who drinks how alcohol enhances anything or blesses anyone. Max Lucado said, “One thing for sure, I have never heard anyone say, ‘A beer makes me feel more Christlike . . . Fact of the matter is this: People don’t associate beer with Christian behavior.”¹ I’ve yet to see how it improves someone’s testimony or makes anyone a more effective witness for Christ. Quite the contrary, like Shaun White mentioned above, or Richard Roberts, Oral Roberts’ son, who was arrested in Tulsa, Oklahoma, driving under the influence, the result doesn’t enhance your testimony. Rather, it takes away from what testimony you had.

Then hear from me, now.  Some of the most inspiring and moving moments of conversation with my brothers have come over beer.  I have been blessed by going up to the Ginger Man in Dallas with two godly men who desired to raise a glass to the King, and watched as one turned to an Indian couple next to them, engaged them in conversation, and bore witness to them of what Christ had done for him.  They never once said "Well, that's nice and all...but you're drinking!  How can you say you love Jesus when you're drinking alcohol?"  It's irrelevant, and the argument has no grounds to stand on.  Once again, alcohol did not create anything in these men that was not there to begin with:

And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain the parable to us.” And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”--Matthew 15:10-20

Let's continue, to what I consider the real crux of the problem with this article:

Recently, a friend of mine, former mega-church Pastor, John Caldwell, wrote an article in Christian Standard magazine called To Drink or Not to Drink? Here’s the link to his article. John’s article explained why he has personally abstained from drinking alcohol and dealt with the bigger issue of the contemporary church becoming more and more like the world.
Not surprisingly, a number of people responded to John’s article and some called him to task for taking such a strong stand against drinking. In response to the responses, my good friend, Ken Idleman, former President of Ozark Christian College and now Pastor of Crossroads Christian Church in Evansville, IN, wrote these words, which are among the very best I’ve ever read on this issue. I asked Ken for his permission to share them here.
“Okay, I am conscience bound to weigh in on this one…. For a minute, forget about making a definitive case for or against ‘drinking’ from the Bible. Here’s the truth from logic and real life. No one starts out to be an alcoholic. Everyone begins with a defensive attitude saying, ‘I’m just a social drinker and there is nothing wrong with it!’ no one says, ‘It is my ambition that someday I want to lose my job, my health, my self-respect, my marriage and my family. Someday I want to be dependent on alcohol to get through my day.’ yet, this is the destination at which several millions of people have arrived. Why do you suppose that is? It is because alcohol is promoted and elevated as a normal/sophisticated activity in life…. It is also expensive, addictive and enslaving. People get hooked by America’s number one legal drug. And just like all illegal drugs, alcohol finds it way into the body, the bloodstream and the brain of the user/abuser.

 The bolded part in particular is troubling to me, if this church is also preaching on any level the truth of man's depravity and inherent sinfulness.  Man absolutely starts out intending to be, if not an alcoholic, then a rebel sinner of some kind.  "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"  We have taken alcoholism out as some kind of uber-sin, but I would like to ask the pastors of this church a question: how many people in your church have families falling apart because the husband is obsessed with his job, to the detriment of his marriage and his children?  How many have women obsessed with, say, the desire to have and raise children, beyond the actual desire to be content and obedient to God's will for their lives?  How many kids in your congregation wile away hour after hour wasted in the great god Entertainment?  "Well, none of those things kill people!" is the common response.  On the contrary, a man who dies enthralled with any god other than the one true God is just as dead.  But we don't tell our people to quit their jobs, to avoid having children, to reject all forms of entertainment.  I would argue that you could say all this and a good deal more about one of the most destructive forces and addictions in our culture today: sex.  But we would certainly say that sex is something created by God, for His glory, and is properly enjoyed within the bounds He established for it. 

Scripture calls us to worship God in all things; the joy we find in the world is not for its own sake, but rather is to point to the Author of that joy.  God has established the boundaries for all things, and in all things we are supposed to worship Him.  Happiness and pleasure in this world is bittersweet in a way; because it is wonderful, it is fleeting, yet it also is a taste of the eternal joy of being in Christ's presence.  When anything--including alcohol--becomes central, when we try to take something intended to give only a shadow of true joy and instead make it ultimate, we are worshiping an idol and not the true God.  On this, I think there would be no disagreement.  Where there is going to be disagreement is on this idea that alcohol is this cursed thing, irredeemable, serving no good purpose.  American evangelicalism with its roots in the traditions of the temperance movement of the late 1800s/early 1900s, has found a hobgoblin in "the bottle," but I reject that claim, and raise my glass to the Creator of the grape and grain and hops and the fermentation process and the true King of all things.

Cheers! and Amen!

Beer. Bacon. Battlestar Galactica

Theology Matters: Eulogy for a dead man

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.--Matthew 7:15-20

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.--Galatians 5:16-24

I have mentioned it a couple other times here, but I can recall a line in one of C.S. Lewis' books to the effect of people having two equally wrong ways to deal with sin: we either take it too harshly and become legalistic jerks, or we take it far too lightly and begin thinking we can do whatever we wish.  In both cases we cease to recognize both the effect and the gravity of Christ crucified: Jesus died on the cross because our sins are deadly serious, and because He has died and risen again we are able to walk in freedom and grace--away from our sin, into God-glorifying lives of sanctification.

Unless you've lived under a rock for the past decade or so, you have probably seen the antics and nonsense from the so-called "Westboro Baptist Church."  I say "so-called" because they are not a church, and they are certainly not Baptist.  They have done everything from give incredibly foolish and nonsense-filled interviews on TV to protesting funerals, to proclaim that the death being mourned has been brought about by a vengeful God because of America's sins, in particular its tolerance of homosexuality.  There is precisely zero understanding of the Gospel, no desire whatsoever to submit to the full counsel of Scripture, and a complete lack of regeneration evident in their words and deeds.  In short, this is what happens when Category A Self-Righteous Hypocrite goes on steroids: you have someone who can see what's wrong but believes, foolishly, that because they aren't engaged in such and such sin that they are clean.  Believing the Gospel does not produce this wicked fruit.

But likewise, the answer is not "You can do anything you want to do, because God made you and therefore anything you want is okay!"  And those are the two sides we find engaged in a battle of "who can be more wrong," amplified by the recent death of Westboro's founder, Fred Phelps.  The fruit of his life is on display for all to see, and one can argue he has been one of the biggest allies of the pro-homosexuality movement: his behavior and words have provoked such a dramatic response that it's hard for anyone with even an ounce of compassion for another human to find a way to make an argument against the normalization of homosexuality.  And so the diseased, thistley, dried-up fruit of his tree is seen before the whole world, many of whom turn and...eat the diseased, thistley, dried-up fruit of unashamed sinfulness.

Phelps was a man dead in his heart reading from a book that could not possibly have any meaning to him.  "How can you say that?" you ask.  "I thought Christians weren't supposed to judge."  Oh, but I can--by what the man produces.  And we know what the life of a man transformed by the power of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit looks like; read it again:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

 So why write all this?  I'm sure that few would begrudge this if I said I simply was in a mood and wanted to kick the man while he was (literally) down, but that could not be farther from the truth.  On the contrary, I'm writing this as a follow-up to my last post, as a demonstration of why, exactly, theology does matter.  When we view the God of the Bible as nothing more than pure, unadulterated judgment of God and do not preach the Gospel, do not believe in God's power to save (in spite of their claimed "Calvinist" position) and do not believe in God's ultimate goal of restoring His creation but rather simply see Him showing up on the scene at some point to damn everyone except...well, them.  When we do not seek to line theology up with what the Bible actually says--the whole Bible--there is almost no end to the foolishness that can result.  Fred Phelps was perhaps one of the most obvious and blatant examples of it, but the danger always exists and we must be vigilant to sit in the Word, to sit in prayer and to celebrate with gratitude and great joy the mercy God has shown us in the person and work of Jesus--for if we don't, we tread very dangerous ground.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.--Galatians 1:6-9

Let's try this again

Well, the last post certainly brought one of the more heated responses this blog has ever gotten.  Not on the post itself, but on Twitter it certainly brought on some discussions as well as some rather uncalled-for responses, which I will not get into here.  The author of the piece I was responding to, Micah J. Murray, did in fact reply to me on Twitter.  In the process we learned several things:

1. Micah does, in fact, believe that one can be walking in something the Bible calls sin unrepentantly and still be saved. 
2. He was unwilling to directly answer the question of who, exactly, was saying that gay people were worse sinners than other sinners; his first response was a vague comment about "conservative churches," when pressed for specifics he did not reply. 
3. Those who agreed with him continued to argue a point I specifically disagreed with, preferring to set up a "hater" straw man to actually engaging my arguments.  They operated on the assumption that I was setting gay people apart from others, rather than insisting that they be counted as part of the population that makes up the world: rebel sinners in need of God's grace.
4. Where Micah did attempt to engage my actual arguments, his position was Scripturally deficient, rooted in his opinion rather than anything biblical.  Where Scripture did enter into it, issues of definition abound. 

Now, let me say that I believe I understand the driving force behind where he is right now.  I've walked with many men and women who have felt burned by the church, felt like they came into a body of believers with struggles and pain and needing someone to listen and help them, and came away feeling rejected and lost.  And this is a compassion that I share, and that ought to be shared by every believer; like him, I want people to know Jesus not as a condemner but as a savior, one who sets people free from their slavery to sin.  I want people to rejoice at the name of Christ, to have the ability to trust him wholly and freely.

But the problem, and the place where we are going to part ways, is that I cannot see biblically how any argument can be made that one can be unrepentantly in any sin and still be saved.  Furthermore, the modern cultural redefinition of sin to "if it doesn't hurt anyone else, it's okay" is not an allowance Scripture provides for.  Not that Jesus cannot save anyone the Father gives to Him, because we know that He will do so.  But with he and his followers unwilling to even acquiesce to the idea that homosexuality is a sin, the struggle here is with presuppositions.  So let's start from the foundation, from the beginning of understanding our relationship with God and why Christ came.

The uncensored Gospel: Responding to Micah J. Murray

This is a long one, folks.  Stay with me.

I have struggled over how exactly to approach this subject; I've probably started and deleted at least three previous posts on this over the last couple weeks.  I think, perhaps, that it's a good thing that I typically don't get around to writing about current event type stuff until it's somewhat settled and done, because it means I've had time to consider and digest information, to see how things have shaken out a bit.  There was a time, after all, where rushing to be the first to respond to and report on an event was not the primary goal, but rather, thoughtful discourse was the word of the day.  It is my hope to provide that, here, on the subject of homosexuality as it is working itself out as an issue in our country today and in the public sphere.

Of course, this is not a new topic, but the latest fire set on this issue came when Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame gave an interview to GQ.  Robertson is a believer and a long-time member of the Church of Christ, and while there are some soteriological issues such as baptismal regeneration that we would disagree over, from his words and actions I have no doubt that he is a brother in Christ.  I wouldn't want him to be my lead pastor, but I'll pray with and for the man with no fear of rebuke.  If you aren't familiar with his story, you should check it out.

However, I'm not wanting to talk about reality TV, the Robertson clan, or freedom of speech issues as they relate to employment, but rather the visceral reaction that came as a result of his quoting scripture that names, among other sins, homosexuality explicitly as sinful and rejected by God.  We've had posts saying that it is "morally irresponsible" to speak to the issue of sin as it relates to homosexuality, but what I want to respond to here is a post from the HuffPo called, "Why I Can't Say 'Love the Sinner/Hate the Sin' Anymore," by Micah J. Murray.  It's been a while since I've done what's known in the blogosphere as a "fisking," and I don't feel like that's exactly what I'm doing; my desire is to discuss, in love and rooted in Scripture, why I disagree with this author and believe his argument to be based, not in truth, but in emotionalism and a desire to avoid confronting others in their sin.  But I want to break this down and examine his argument; if Christians are going to truly understand why God rejects sin and why He sent His Son to die to atone for it, if we are going to understand the magnificent gift that He has given and be able to preach the Gospel to everyone, not just the people who will hear it without anger, then his position demands refutation.

Picking tulips

It was my occasion today to engage in conversation with some fellow believers on Facebook, over the subject of limited atonement. My brothers and sisters were incensed at the idea and, like many people brought up in our tradition-bound churches, believed that it was opposed to the message of salvation as being a message of hope for all people.

I have seen a lot of different reactions from people in these sorts of conversations: in a couple instances I had people who just switched to full emotional outburst mode, not wanting to even discuss the topic and calling the idea of Calvinism "satanic." In such cases while I often press them to explain more, typically it's something ingrained deeply and it's beyond my purview to dislodge such thoughts. In other cases it's just because they have certain understandings about what the Bible says, and while we have had respectful conversations it's simply a matter of disagreement. And in some instances people have applied terms such as "four point Calvinist" to themselves, meaning that they believe in some of the less controversial doctrines that descend from the famous TULIP acronym, but limited atonement or unconditional election are sticking points for them, usually for the same reason as the second group but with less reticence over the term "Calvinist."

My desire here is to expound on why I believe in the doctrines of grace, and to explain my contention that, as Charles Spurgeon put it, "Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else." I want to say first and foremost that I'm not here to defend John Calvin as a perfect man, and if your response to this involves wrongs committed by Calvin then quite frankly I'm not interested. John Calvin was just a man, and like myself, a sinner. But he provided a thorough, deep, and accurate understanding of what the Bible teaches about God, about us, and about God's role in bringing about salvation for our sakes.