A Response To Lecrae, Jemar Tisby, Thabiti Anyabwile And Anyone Else Who Cares To Listen

As pretty much everyone knows, evangelicalism and especially conservative evangelicalism is a mostly White thing. Apparently that is a negative.

According to this fairly baffling post from John Piper, 116 Been Real, Lecare Moore, who simply goes by Lecrae, kind of like Cher and Madonna, is distancing himself from "white evangelicalism". I don't know much about Lecrae and I don't listen to his stuff but he has a fairly large following among white evangelicals, especially of the Reformed type.

Based what Piper is saying, he listened to the interview and I just don't have the time, Lecrae is distancing himself in part based on three "experiences", as listed below from Piper's article.

- First, Lecrae’s friend, Tyree Boyd-Pates, the Curator of History for the California African American Museum, told him, “You have said some things that were poignant and provocative for black people, but the phenotype of your music was not black . . . sonically it wasn’t resonating with our soul. . . . It’s like [the] ‘I have a dream’ speech over a rock record.”

- Second, the Washington Post called him an “evangelical mascot.”

- Third, he went public with his dismay over the Michael Brown shooting, and woke up to the reality that this “white evangelical” world did not feel what he felt. “The visceral attacks that came my way were like a shock to my system. That did some identity work.”

Based on this, Mr. Moore is going to "turn (his) back on white evangelicalism"

If I turn my back on white evangelicalism, who am I? If we disagree on . . . Black Lives and social justice, and I’m not getting pats on the back from John Piper, then who am I now? . . . For years that had been what was shaping my identity. . . . If I’m not the evangelical darling, who is Lecrae? . . . 

Getting  a pat on the back from John Piper? How patronizing and insulting. Maybe Piper helped expand Mr. Moore's audience because he appreciated his music and what he had to say but to then reduce it to Piper humoring Lecrae and giving him a "pat on the back" is nothing less than spitting in Piper's face. Then Piper goes on to say this:

Do you see yet why I respond to Lecrae’s “identity development work” with thankfulness? I know young men whose disillusionment with “white evangelicalism” was not as painful as Lecrae’s, and yet they threw the brown baby of Bethlehem out with the white bathwater. They’re done with Christianity. Done with the Bible. Done with Jesus — except the one they create to fit their present political mood. That could have been Lecrae. It could be you. 

Um, so I guess we are supposed to be glad Lecrae has embraced his black identity, something Piper would no doubt condemn in a white person publicly embracing their white identity, because at least he didn't leave the faith totally. Would Piper say the same about a white singer who espoused kinism after the shooting up of a church by a black man in Tennessee a few weeks ago? Piper doesn't seem excited about a lot of what Lecrae says in his interview but he also seems overly focused on "White evangelicalism" being synonymous with support of Trump and opposition to the neo-Marxist Black Lives Matter movement. I sort of don't think Piper understands the subject he is talking about here, either Lecrae and his dismissal and distancing himself from white evangelicalism or what exactly it is that white evangelicals care about or why we do what we do. I might go further and say that Piper seems a lot more concerned with "creating space" and "extending grace" to Lecrae than he is to his fellow white evangelicals and that to me is problematic.

The main problem I have though are with Lecrae's three "experiences" and why those are leading him to distance himself and create barriers between himself and white evangelicals.

Like a fine Beretta double gun I am going to let loose with both barrels.

Disclaimer: I don't listen to rap of any sort and haven't since a brief flirtation with Ice-T and N.W.A. back in high school in the 80's and I generally don't listen to "Christian" music at all so you might think I don't have a dog in this fight, with apologies to Michael Vick. However I do like John Piper and I also happen to be one of those lame, awful White evangelicals (although not one that voted for Trump) and it turns out I am sorta tired of being hectored, harangued, scolded, finger-wagged. I am endlessly told I need to feel guilty, that I need to apologize for my phantom "White privilege" and that I am a part of the group that somehow is collectively to blame for every ill, even the obviously self-inflicted ills, of an entire race of people that I have had very little interaction with of any kind in my life. So yeah, this article was like a matador waving a cape in front of me and I freely admit it made me pretty grumpy.

On the first "experience"... 

Lecrae being told his music isn't "black": "You have said some things that were poignant and provocative for black people, but the phenotype of your music was not black". So I guess his rap was too white? And that makes it therefore illegitimate?

Lecrae seems to have fallen victim to the cult of “authentic blackness” where some blacks get to determine for all other blacks what they are allowed to think, say, sing, wear and believe in order to qualify as authentic. I am not black so I don't understand it but it seems unaccountably powerful. Step outside of orthodoxy and the cult leaders rain down on you like the wrath of God, you become an Uncle Tom, are accused of trying to be white, etc. Like I said, I don't get this. No one says to me that if I don't like Polka music that I am not authentically Polish and I have never heard anyone say that the phenotype of any Polish musician, whatever that means, was not white. It is a very strange cultural phenomenon and if I may be so bold it seems to be a control mechanism for those who want to keep blacks from straying from black racial orthodoxy.

On the second "experience"....

The far left Amazon.com/Washington Post which hates all things Christian called him an "evangelical mascot".

That is a pretty cheap and clumsy and obvious shot and Lecrae seems to have swallowed it hook, line and sinker. If I may be super un-PC, if you are a prominent black man and you are going to leave the PC plantation, you better expect to get some backlash. Nothing is less permitted by our culture overlords than a black man who doesn't parrot leftist orthodoxy (see: Thomas, Clarence).

Pardon my French but how much of a fool do you have to be to get so easily sucked in by such an obvious and blatant cheap shot? I don't know much about Lecrae but I would think he would have more wisdom and discernment than to be led around by the nose by the WaPo. Standing for the truth means some slings and arrows and if you aren't wise enough and man enough to stand up to that, well that says a great deal about your character I am afraid.

On the third "experience"....

Lecrae expressed his opinion on the Michael Brown shooting, an unfortunate event but a justifiable shooting, but was apparently shocked when not everyone and especially not his white audience agreed with him. Wow, I hate it when I say something and not everyone agrees with me. According to the interview this caused "some identity work". So let me get this straight. A fairly complex case that got a lot of attention but it was a pretty clear case of justifiable use of force, caused Lecrae to do some "identity work", a phrase that smacks of some pretty heavy racial identitarianism. Even Jonathan Capehart, a member of the leftist Washington Post editorial board and a contributor for similarly left-wing MSNBC wrote: "(The Justice Department report) also forced me to deal with two uncomfortable truths: Brown never surrendered with his hands up, and Wilson was justified in shooting Brown." (emphasis mine).

I don't get why the Michael Brown case has become the bellwether for alleged police brutality. What exactly is it about a huge, probably very strong guy attacking a cop and getting shot for it that is a racially dividing issue? As I recall, Michael Brown was 6' 4" tall and weighed around 292 pounds. That is about the size of a college or even pro football offensive or defensive lineman. During my year of college at Ohio State, my roommate had a class with a center for the football team and one day his classmate stopped by our dorm room. He was enormous but he was probably not quite as big as Michael Brown. Sure Brown was not "armed" but believe me a 6'4", almost 300 pound adult (he was 18) is plenty dangerous especially when he apparently is attacking a cop and going for his gun.

As a relative nobody that has made a career out of going against the grain, you kind of have to have a little spine and thick skin. If people don't agree with you, taking your ball and going home is not going to do a darn thing to change anything and done on a large scale in this context it simply increases racial polarization. If that is the goal, and while I don't think it is for Lecrae it certainly is for many in BLM and similar groups, then at least be open about it.

That raises a question and comment for me. Why is it OK for Lecrae to self-identify within the church based on his race and openly choose to identify himself with that racial subset and reject or at least “distance” himself from people of other races but if I do the same thing I would be labeled a bigot and racist? Or do we operate under two sets of rules in the church when it comes to race, whites have to reach out and seek to be more "diverse" but blacks can self-segregate and that is OK?

If you think this is OK from Lecrae but the Alt-Right and White nationalism is a problem you are either naive or ignorant or both.

That is why the post from Piper seems so confused and schizophrenic and I don't understand it so I am chalking it up to the general disconnect when we talk about race. I don't think Piper would tolerate this coming from a white evangelical but he seems to sort of tolerate it coming from a black evangelical. Piper seems sincere and he has a track record to back up what he is saying. I just hope he doesn't stumble down the Russell Moore path where virtue signaling engulfs his public ministry because Piper has an important voice and I would hate to see it lost in political correctness like Moore.

We are seemingly as far away from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream of a nation where men are judged by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin as we were in August of 1963 when he gave his speech but ironically many people who claim the contemporary mantle of King are the ones who judge others on their skin color. This is only exacerbated by the Trump Presidency. Jemar Tisby, Thabiti Anyabwile and others seem bent on flogging white evangelicals for the sins of Trump in a way that I don't recall anyone doing the reverse of during the Obama presidency. Thabiti openly expressed that he supported Hillary Clinton over Trump and no one is more a fan of seeing dead black babies than Hillary. Many black evangelicals seem to be doing what so many accuse white evangelicals of, putting their racial self-interest, misplaced though I think it is, over their Kingdom allegiance.

There has never been a time when black Christians are more in need of the words of Paul in his second letter to the church in Corinth where he wrote:

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:14-18)

Black Lives Matter is a pagan, ungodly, anti-Christian organization that thrives on causing racial discord. Those who choose to associate with and show affinity toward it rather than "white evangelicalism" are absolutely no different from those who espouse kinism and white separatism in the church. If white evangelicals making common cause with the GOP and Trump is unequal yoking, how much more so is it when black evangelicals make common cause with BLM?

If you want to associate with me in the church because of our shared redemption in Christ, then cool. I welcome that. If you don't want to associate with me in spite of our shared redemption in Christ because of my skin color and my affiliation with "White evangelicalism" and you prefer to elevate your racial identity above your Kingdom identity, then I can't help that and if I am being totally honest I really don't care or have any interest in working up much concern. Just don't act like your racial separatism is somehow noble and principled while that of Richard Spencer or Jared Taylor is evil.

Piper On God's Sovereignty

Speaking on Isaiah 46:9-10

Great stuff!

The Gospel Is Declaration, Not Deeds

Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.

- Attributed to Francis of Assisi (incorrectly as it turns out)

There are few hokey quotes that I despise more than that one. Maybe the only one I dislike more is the Gandhi quote about liking Jesus but not Christians that I see all the time, mostly from progressives virtue signaling how terrible their fellow Christians are (I addressed that nonsense here). The reason I don't like that quote, besides it being pompous and demeaning to the work of evangelism, is that it is anti-Biblical. Notice that I say anti-Biblical. It is not just something that is not directly found in Scripture, it is directly contrary to what the Bible teaches by way of command and example. The implication of that false quote is a direction contradiction of the Bible.

The Gospel is Good News, not Good Deeds. Our good works are a critical demonstration of our changed lives and evidence of such and often our good works are a way of opening hearts to hear the Gospel but unless we actually tell people the Good News, it isn't Gospel proclamation at all. For example, in Acts 3:1-10 we read the account of Peter and John and the healing of a man lame from birth. How wonderful! But what happens next is the true miracle. Having performed this wonderful work of healing and mercy which attracts a lot of attention, Peter then takes the opportunity to preach the Gospel, just as he did after the miraculous manifestation of the speaking of foreign tongues a chapter earlier at the day of Pentecost. From Acts 3:12-26 we see Peter preaching the unadulterated Gospel and even though they were arrested for it, we see the fruit of his preaching:

But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand. (Acts 4:4)

Healing a man lame from birth is pretty incredible. Seeing 5000 men, absolutely dead in their sins, being brought to new life by the power of the Gospel working with the Holy Spirit? That is the true miracle. Here is the kicker. If Peter had simply healed the lame man and then he and John had left, they would not have been arrested and not a single person would have been saved that day, apart perhaps from the lame man who was told to walk in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 3:6).

You can do all sorts of wonderful works and that is great and we should be doing more works of mercy but if you never get to the point of telling people the Good News of Jesus Christ, you really are only making their life more comfortable until they land in hell. Soup kitchens, food pantries, medical clinics, crisis pregnancy centers, orphanages. Those are all marvelous but if they are not accompanied by the Gospel they are empty, dead works. Check out this short video from John Piper where he addresses this topic and got me fired up this morning, also includes a bonus "The Holy Spirit As An Airplane" impersonation. Vintage Piper.

The Word Became Flesh

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. - John 1:14

I love this video from John Piper, one of his best sermons I have watched and the reason I say that is that he does such a great job of pulling the pieces together, all of the pieces we so often read as if they were unrelated little moral stories instead of a seamless story that covers the entirety of human history that culminated in the resurrection of Christ but that also continues to unfold today as we wait for the coming of eternity.



It might seem odd to look at the Gospel according to John for the "Christmas story" since it pretty much is covered in one verse, John 1:14, but as beautiful and important as the recounting of the events surrounding the birth of Christ are for the church I can say, with not a little trepidation and trembling at the suggestion, that the why of the Incarnation is more crucial than the how of the Incarnation.

I weep at how we need this sort of thinking in the church, the pulling together all of these threads to show the entire tapestry of the covenant fulfillment of the God who is glorified. Oh how desperately we need to move past the theology of the felt animals of Noah's Ark from the children's room at church and get into the deep and weighty questions of God. One of the great needs of the church in the days to come is to encourage and teach the church to think. To really think for ourselves. A dangerous pitfall in church leadership is that it is far easier to tell people what to think instead of helping people learn to think. It is especially dangerous because it is not only easier because so many people seem to want that but it appeals deeply to the ego of leaders who are supposed to be equipping the saints, not telling them what to think.

The manger leads to the cross. If it did not, then it was meaningless. A baby born to a virgin is a historical novelty but a baby who grows into the Son of Man who dies for the sins of His people and rose again changes history forever. Jesus is the innocent babe who would one day walk into Jerusalem in order to suffer and then be cast out to be murdered on a cross. The way His life ended and miraculously was resurrected is the real "reason for the season". Enjoy your Christmas season with family and friends but ponder what it all means while you drink your eggnog. Nothing makes the season more rich than to see the Incarnation in light of the totality of redemptive history.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." - Matthew 1:21

The Many Faces Of John Piper

I was watching John Piper and needed to pause the video and this was the face he was making. I might just leave the video paused indefinitely, the man has more facial expressions than Jim Carrey.

Free People > Free Will

This is a great although brief treatment of the idea of "free will" from John Piper, Is God Sovereign Over My Free Will?. The key paragraph in his podcast comes here:

So instead of speaking of the will as free or not, I prefer to speak of people as free or not, because that is the way the Bible does. “For freedom Christ has set us free,” Paul says in Galatians 5:1. Christians are free from the bondage to sin and from the oppressive demand of having to perform our own salvation.

A lot of people get all in a twist over the idea of God messing with "mai free will!" but I have long felt that the truer description is not "free will" but "free people". The sovereign grace of God frees people from slavery to sin (Romans 6:17-18), meaning not that He overrides their "free will" but rather than He frees them from sin so that they have a true free will. Someone who is a slave to sin, dead in sin and trespass cannot have a "free will" because they are bound by sin. It is only when God supernaturally frees them from sin that they are free people who are free to follow Christ. Here is the link to the podcast, and you can read the transcript in the link above.

Post tenebras lux

The words Post Tenebras Lux form the Latin phrase which is roughly translated "After darkness, light". The phrase is often considered to be the "motto of the Reformation", a recognition that after centuries of the light of the Gospel being shrouded in religious darkness it at long last burst forth once more as the Reformation took hold of Europe. The Reformation may have "officially" started this day in 1517 but it didn't end there and I would say is just as relevant today as it has ever been since the 16th century. Watch this brief video from John Piper in Geneva, home of John Calvin and one of the centers of the Reformation.

1 John 2 and Regeneration

I have been deeply and profoundly drawn to how important and yet how neglected the doctrine of regeneration is to the church. I think a lot of the confusion over eternal security or the preservation of the saints has to do with not correctly understanding what happens in regeneration and this in turn skews our understanding of the church. Being born-again or regenerate is not something that we drift in and out of depending on the day. When one is born-again, you become a new creation in Christ:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 2 Corinthians 5:17

A new creation. Not a change in attitude but a change in nature, in substance. Where once there was a dead in sins and trespasses enemy of God with a heart of stone there is now after regeneration a new creature, a brand new creation just as the universe was once a new creation, a living, breathing child of God with a heart of flesh with the law of God written upon it. I don't want to get too deeply into this question because it is too complex for a quick note like this. However I was watching John Piper's take on 1 John 2:18-19 and I thought it was worth watching and passing on to others. As a reminder the verses in question say this:

Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. 1 John 2:18-19

As Piper points out, one can be part of the visible church and yet leave but that is not because their regeneration has been undone but rather because they were never one of us to begin with. Taken together with John's Gospel account I think John (the apostle, not Piper) paints a picture of the perseverance of the saints that answers the question of how we are held safe by Christ (being a new creation after being born-again, held in the omnipotent power of God, ex. John 10:28) as well as why it seems sometimes that people we thought were Christians turned out to not have been truly born-again in the first place. Here is the video, give it a watch because I think this sort of deep diving on a verse and drawing from it the doctrines that it portrays is very important to understanding the bigger picture...

The Importance Of Precision

We live in a day of imprecision, an age of ambiguity and sloppiness. From the way we dress to how we communicate, everything we do is marked by a lack of precision and even worse an utter lack of concern. A large percentage of our population is utterly unable to express even a simple thought coherently and many people don't know the difference and don't care about simple things like their, there and they're. Conversations are littered with "like" and "um" because many people don't know what they want to say and even if they do they don't know how to say it. Like so many other ills of our general culture the church suffers from this same lack of precision. The difference is that while lack of precision and indifference to accuracy might make for a frustrating experience ordering a meal at a restaurant, it can mean the difference between a true expression of the Gospel or a incorrect and damning expression of the Gospel.

I have been watching some of the presentations from the recent Together For The Gospel conference and I can't say I am all that excited by the couple I have been watching. It seems a little forced even though the topic is such am important one, a topic (the necessity for and basis of the Protestant Reformation) that is central to so much of what T4G and other groups focus on. I was able to watch one speaker via live-stream, John Piper, and his was the best talk so far. He also said something, sort of an aside that I don't think was part of his prepared comments but when he said it early in the talk I got perked up pretty quickly and I have been waiting for the videos to come out so I can share it. Here is the video:


"The Bondage of the Will, the Sovereignty of Grace, and the Glory of God" — John Piper (T4G 2016) from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

Watch from about the five minute mark to around the 5:30 mark. Really you should watch the whole thing but for purposes of this post watch those 30 seconds because what Piper says is a clarion call that the whole church needs to understand and to heed. I want to highlight a couple of things he says, parsing them down for emphasis.

Every word counts.

Oh yes. This is an age of the disposable. Nothing has value. We toss words out without a thought and with no concern for how they are received. Many of us don't care much for what we say because we assume (rightly) that no one is paying much attention because they are focused on their phone.

My policy has always been simple: Say what you mean and mean what you say. The words we use and how we use them matter and again this is true nowhere more so than in the church. Some might say "Just love Jesus and love people and it will all work out!" but we see in the New Testament, especially in Galatians, how quickly people seeking another Gospel and attempt to add to or take away from the saving truth of Jesus Christ.

I love precision.

Me too! People who are alleged theologians or elders who are sloppy in their study are a huge liability for the church thanks to our subcontracting system of ministry and teaching. I am not talking about locking yourself away in your study to wrangle out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin but Christians should know what they believe and those who teach doubly so and those called to lead as elders triply so. The source material of the Bible is absolutely the most critical information and revelation one will ever encounter, if you are sloppy in handling it what does that say about your concern for the oracles of God?

The abandonment of precision and definition is the gateway to liberalism.

Yes and again I say YES. It seems to me that a lot of people read through the Bible and just sort of skim it until they find something that they like, or worse yet thanks to our myriad methods of directly searching for what you want they just skip reading the Bible as a whole and use it to pick and choose. Errors like universalism, rejecting substituionary atonement, women elders which often leads to embracing homosexual behavior, adopting a modified evolutionary worldview, etc.

Let me reiterate and restate what Piper said. Imprecision in handling the Word of God is the gateway, and not only the gateway but I would say the expressway, to liberalism which to put it simply and succinctly has meant grievous error in every manifestation past and present. 

It takes a long time to be precise, it is hard work.

Exactly, and if there is anything people hate today it is taking their time and working hard. Our world is a world of emojis and memes and twitter and abbreviations because spelling stuff out is so,,like...um....like....HARD, you know? We like our religion in convenient, easy to hear and promptly ignore, sound-bytes. No one wants to read hard books or study the deep questions of the faith or wrestle with the tough parts of Scripture, especially when the Scriptures seem inconvenient to daily life. There is an old saying, anything worth doing is worth doing right.

We are talking about the eternal destiny of the souls of billions of people. We have been given a comprehensive and sufficient Word from God. At the very least we should take the time to know what we are talking about and drink deeply from the well God has provided.

Give Piper's talk a listen. As usual he doesn't fail to deliver. Especially ponder what he says about precision in handling the Word of God, a task for every Christian, because it is the very voice of God preserved for us.

Approaching The Piper - Guns Kerfuffle From A Different Perspective

While the initial firestorm of often strident and sometimes angry rebuttals of John Piper's post on Christians arming themselves for self-defense (see my post here) has died down, there is still conversation happening on the issue and that is a good thing. In the broader conservative evangelical world Piper and Preston Sprinkle seem to be the lone stalwarts holding what is an unpopular position re: Christian non-resistance.  Sure I am defending Piper was well but no one cares what I think.

In evangelical circles talk of practical peacemaking and non-resistance is a relatively new topic but among the Anabaptists it has been the position since the earliest days of the Radical Reformation. Unfortunately there has been little conversation on this topic between Anabaptists and evangelicals on this topic or any other for that matter (thus the impetus for writing a book on what Anabaptists and the Reformed can learn by conversation with one another, a book that seems to be no closer to getting done now than when I first announced it ). I was glad to see Dwight Gingrich interacting with Tim Challies on this topic and Dwight has since written a lengthy post on the topic of conservative Anabaptists and non-resistance titled Peacemaking: The Quiet In The Land Speak Up. As someone grounded in the Reformed tradition and with a growing affinity for Anabaptism I jotted down some not terribly brief thoughts reproduced below. You should check out Dwight's post, he raises a lot of interesting questions.

-------------------------------

Excellent summary of the issue. As someone more deeply anchored in the Reformed tradition I can say unequivocally that Piper is really the lone voice in the contemporary Reformed world that is even the least bit open to non-resistance. The virtual firestorm response he has gotten is pretty typical for those in the Reformed tradition and in American evangelicalism alike. Among the Reformed more broadly there are three reasons why non-resistance has gotten little traction:

1) A general hermeneutic of covenant theology which tends to blur the distinction between the Old and the New, making the Old Testament written and lived out under the Old Covenant, to be as authoritative and more spherically as applicable to the church as the New Testament. This is the source of so many of Piper's detractors turning to Old Covenant civil laws for their Scriptural sources to reject what Piper is saying.

2) A broad acceptance of Just War theory with more than a little theonomy thrown in for good measure. Given Augustine's position as the father of Christian just war theory and the very high regard most Reformed give to Augustine, his teaching on just war is given broad, and in my opinion, uncritical acceptance by most prominent Reformed teachers.

3) There is a startling absence of any voices in the Reformed tradition that hold to any sort of non-resistance or if there are they are not well known. The Reformed lean heavily on scholastic writings of the forefathers in the tradition (Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Edwards,  etc.) and upon their historic confessions. When there are no contemporary or historic voices affirming a position, it is going to get little thought or attention.

Of course one overarching factor needs to be stated. In America non-resistance = pacifism and pacifism=liberalism. No good red blooded American Reformed Christian is going to stand for being called a liberal. This has led to a unilateral surrender of this issue to the religious left. That complete abdication of this topic to, for want of a better term, the liberal wings of the church. That is why I was likewise so pleased to find Preston Spinkle's book. I was familiar with Preston for his work with Francis Chan on a defense of the traditional understanding of Hell in the book Erasing Hell, so seeing him taking on this topic was encouraging. The only other book I have run across that deals as deeply with this issue is Guy Hershberger's "War, Peace and Nonresistance" but given that he is a Mennonite his writings have a very narrow audience (as proof the only review on Amazon for this book is mine).

Ironically, on almost any other topic, the same Reformed who are flogging Piper would agree with him over Jerry Falwell, Jr. and yet these same brothers have exploded with negative responses to Piper including some pretty over the top, frothing at the mouth replies from less thoughtful brethren.

You also touch on some broader themes and one of them has to do with the relative lack rigorous scholasticism in Anabaptism. Simon Fry touched on this in his recent post. I have seen some examples of "this is what we believe because this is what we believe" with no attempt or interest in engaging him contrary voices. As someone  who is an interested outside observer I can see that there is trouble coming down the road for the young adult generation in conservative Anabaptism as they tap into non-Anabaptist sources and see arguments that they have never heard before.  Lots of interesting things to ponder on this topic.

(as a side note for those unfamiliar with Tim Challies, he is a Canadian and that in part explains why he hasn't given this topic much thought because even owning a gun in Canada is a difficult task) 

He Will Never Forsake You

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." So we can confidently say, "The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?" Hebrews 13:5-6

This is more like what I turn to Desiring God for. John Piper breaks down Hebrews 13:5-6 in this video message. Check it out.

Not A Compliment To Complementarians

Desiring God almost always posts articles that are useful and edifying. A recent post on the new female mixed martial arts champion, Holly Holm, who defeated the oft vulgar former champ and media darling Ronda Rousey was decidedly neither. Adam Viramontes, who apparently knows Ms. Holm, writes a glowing article for Desiring God, A New Kind Of Champion, extolling her virtues and comparing her to Jesus Christ at the end of his article. It was obviously a questionable article given the disclaimer reproduced below:

Editor’s note: Christians disagree about whether men and women should engage in sports whose aim is to wound or hurt the other person. This is true for both men’s and women’s sports. When women are involved, the issues are compounded by the question of how God has designed for women to express their womanhood. We affirm the humility praised in this article, but would want our readers to think deeply, carefully, and biblically about the wider moral issues of the sport of ultimate fighting.

I have to question the wisdom of publishing a piece that has to make that sort of disclaimer. Desiring God is a resource I heartily recommend to anyone, wherever they may be in their Christian walk and John Piper is one of my favorite teachers but an article singing  the praises of a sporting event one step removed from mud wrestling makes me question who is running the show there. Especially since Desiring God and Piper are some of the very best apologists for Biblical gender roles. It is jarring and unhelpful. I can't imagine John Piper sitting around with some dudes and cheering on two women battering each other.

I pull no punches (pun intended) when it comes to my revulsion for mixed martial arts. It is less a sport than it is a glorified bar fight. A "sport" where the entire point is to hurt someone is a bloodsport more akin to gladiatorial games than it is to an actual sport. People get hurt in football, hockey and baseball, and the violence inherent in hockey and football is a large part of why I don't follow sports anymore, but the people getting hurt is for the most part secondary to a primary objective; scoring a goal or keeping someone else from scoring a goal, moving the ball forward toward the other team's goal line or stopping the other team from advancing toward your goal line. In MMA hurting someone else is the entire point, hurting them enough that they are forced to submit or cannot get back up. It takes the already brutal sport of boxing to the next level by adding kicks and grappling and like boxing usually features the victor standing bruised and bloodied after pummeling his or her opponent.

I am not terribly shocked by the popularity of MMA fighting. After all our entire culture is circling the drain and it only makes sense to provide ever more violent forms of entertainment to distract the masses. What is troubling is the number of Christians who are devout fans of this bloodshed. Stemming from the confused "manliness" of the Mark Driscoll variety that reflects the culture rather than the Gospel, there is something that is just wrong that Christians who were singing praises to the Prince of Peace and being thankful for His shed blood on Sunday morning are the same as those who were screaming for blood to be shed for their entertainment on Friday night. Should Christians be so enamored of these forms of stylized combat? I think that question is clear enough to answer itself. I have written before and plan to continue to do so regarding the cultural obsession so many Christians have with sports. When you combine that Kingdom smothering obsession with a gladiatorial bloodsport you have very little room left for the Gospel.

Now, when you add the fact that this article from Desiring God is about two women beating each other up to sate the blood thirstiness of men? That takes it to a whole new, perverse and disgusting level. I contend that a man hitting a woman is one of the most cowardly acts that any man can do as most men are bigger and stronger than women. Right behind that has to be men who take deviant pleasure from women beating each other up. It isn't about athletics just like Playboy was never really about the articles. There is a reason no one wants to watch women engaged in Olympic style wrestling, it isn't nearly exciting enough because the excitement is derived from the violence. I am of course not drawing a moral equivalence between a man beating a woman or suggesting that all male fans of female mixed martial arts are closet abusers of women. I am however saying that the impulse for a man to watch two women fighting each other for his entertainment, the bloodier the better, is drawn from the most base elements of unregenerate human nature, the same nature that caused Cain to rise up and slay his brother.

Another element at play here is the juxtaposition of female athletes and exploitative sexuality. It is just a given that women athletes have to show a little skin to get interest from male viewers. The Rousey-Holm fight featured two women in the equivalent of sports bras and skin tight shorts pummeling each other. Beach volleyball, an Olympic sport, apparently can't be played unless the women are wearing next to nothing. Even at the high school level teen girls must wear tiny shorts or they can't set, serve and spike. Women track stars run in very little as well. On and on. In an effort to overcome the huge differential in popularity between women's sports and men's, women including some of the very youngest, are exploited for their sexuality as well as for their athleticism. If you put the women playing beach volleyball in the Olympics in baggy shorts and t-shirts, what do you think happens to viewership? Even Sports Illustrated, an icon in sports journalism, feels the need to publish the hugely popular swimsuit edition even though last time I checked posing in a swimsuit so tiny that you couldn't perform even the most rudimentary athletic act doesn't qualify as a sport. This is true of all entertainment. Young female singers often vamp it up trying to make their mark. If Miley Cyrus wasn't constantly committing ever more depraved acts, would anyone care about her? How many young female actresses with great careers are convinced that they have to go topless in a movie to show how "grown up" and "serious" they are, making many women who are fine actresses into little more than highly paid strippers?

Christians, especially Christian men, need to be very cautious about their entertainment choices and choosing to watch women trying to hurt each other to assuage your own dark desires is not markedly safer than watching soft core pornography. I am sure that analogy will rub some the wrong way but so be it. I find women's MMA to be vulgar, degrading to women and counter-Kingdom. Many disagree and that is fine but we ought to take seriously the caution raised by the editors and think through the choice of entertainment that glorifies women doing to each other what a man doing the same would lead to his arrest. I think that Desiring God should have taken their own advice and not published this essay in the first place. 

Two Critical Points To Understand In Interpreting The New Testament: Paul Was An Apostle. You Are Not.

I have seen a spate of comments on social media that boil down to this: "I accept what Jesus taught but what Paul taught is subject to change". Not many come right out and say this, although some do, but it is clear that is what they mean. Paul is looked at with a very suspicious eye by many in the church due to constant clamoring about him being misogynistic or "homophobic".  It is pretty easy to airily claim that while the words of Jesus (at least the ones about love and caring for the poor) are to be taken literally, Paul must be examined in light of current opinion and where he clashes with that opinion, Paul must be set aside or explained away. In Paul's teaching on gender relations or on sexual immorality, a lot of people go through some serious exegetical gymnastics to explain whey he didn't really mean it or if he did it was because he was a meanie. It reminds me of the gymnastics some conservatives go through to explain why "just war" is OK and Jesus didn't really take that whole "love your enemies" thing all that seriously.

Paul certainly thought of himself as an apostle and he wrote authoritatively. His contemporaries did as well. So has the church since the letters were written up until relatively recently. Taken in context it is pretty clear that when he wrote...

Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Cor 15:8)

...he was laying claim to having witnessed the Living Christ in person after some fashion. So it seems to me that we should default to listening to what Paul has to say rather than finding ways to ignore him.

In fact, as an ironic twist, everything that we know with any authority and confidence about Jesus comes from the pen of Paul or other men who considered Paul an apostle and authority in the church. What this means is that Paul knows more than me or you or your favorite author/blogger/conference speaker on topics such as:

• The Kingdom
• Marriage
• Gender
• Heaven
• Hell
• Justification
• Sexuality
• Sanctification
• The Church
• The person and work of Jesus
• Church Discipline
• Christian ethics and morality.
• Pretty much any other related topic you can think of

Paul doesn't have to answer to us and he doesn't have to tolerate having us sit in judgment of him. Paul also didn't teach anything different from what Jesus taught because he was called by Christ and taught by Christ Himself and was acknowledged by the apostles as one of their own. What Paul transmitted to the church is what Paul received from Jesus Himself.

John Piper, speaking at Together for the Gospel in 2010, addressed the common misconception that Jesus preached one Gospel and Paul another in his talk: Did Jesus Preach Paul’s Gospel?. Seeing as how Paul got his Gospel from Jesus directly, it is kind of foolish to assume that he just arbitrarily changed it when Jesus already struck the dude blind once. Check the video below out when you have an hour to spare, it is worth your time.

Back to my point. If you hear someone denying what Paul taught or diminishing him as an apostle and authoritative source, you need to be very cautious about anything else they say because that attitude betrays a lot about their general approach to Scripture. Paul wrote so much and so powerfully and so vividly that he is, when read with the aid of the Holy Spirit, the very best source we have to interpret what Jesus taught apart from Jesus Himself. Indeed on many topics he takes what Christ taught pre-cross and make it make sense post-cross for the benefit of the church.

Paul is not a 1st century Archie Bunker, an anachronism that needs to be kept under glass in a museum. God specially and powerfully chose Paul to be the chief author of the Epsitles. If you think that God is so incompetent that He allowed Paul to preach and proclaim a different message from His Son and that those false teachings were preserved for time immemorial in the Bible, you have to wonder what sort of God you think He is. 

Read Paul as you read Jesus. Read him deeply and read him with confidence. Jesus knew what He was doing when He interrupted Saul on that dusty road to Damascus so it seems to me that we owe it to Jesus to take what His chosen vessel has to say with the greatest of seriousness and sobriety. 

Married White Male Seeking Another Male Or Three To Share A Hotel Room Next April For Together For The Gospel

Advertising on my blog that I am looking for other dudes to share a hotel room in a somewhat unfamiliar city. How could this go wrong?

Eight years after I went to Together for the Gospel I am planning on going again next April. The venue has changed and one prominent voice, C.J. Mahaney, is absent and some new voices are in his place. I am curious to see what the atmosphere is like. When I was there it was laced with a lot of triumphalism, all the cool kids were there and knew stuff that the rest of the church didn't. There was a top secret resource for attendees so we could network together. It all seemed kind of cliquish in retrospect.

As we head for 2016 the Reformed movement has taken some prominent hits and the fervor seems to have cooled a bit. With prominent names getting some bad press, from founder C.J. Mahaney stepping away amidst legal troubles to Mark Driscoll (never a speaker at T4G, to the credit of the conference organizers) stepping down and seeing "his" ministry implode to Tullian Tchividjian stepping down from Coral Ridge after a short and controversial stay as pastor amid revelations of marital infidelity. Much of the Reformed world seems to be victims of their own success, sniping and backbiting becoming prominent. Some perhaps some humility is in place. We will see. The main guys are still there, Mohler, Dever, Duncan, Piper, Anyabwile, MacArthur and that plus the fellowship and "free" books makes it worthwhile. As a bonus I very likely will be able to take some Amish to southern Indiana to help defray the cost of driving.

So anyway, if you are thinking of or definitely going to Together For The Gospel next April and need to split some of the costs, give me a holler. I am willing to split with as many as 3 other guys assuming we can find a couple of air mattresses.

I haven't gone to T4G since the first time I went, partly for monetary and health reasons and largely as a protest against the notion of a "conference for pastors and church leaders" which seemed to be intended to exclude "lay members", although an awful lot of the guys there in 2008 were not clergy. The speakers are generally all defenders of the institutional church status quo and that rubs me the wrong way. None of that has changed but I am secure enough in where I stand in regards to ecclesiology that I can go and just enjoy the teaching, the singing and the fellowship without feeling the need to make some sort of protest statement (like the nutjob charismatic that crashed the stage last weekend while John MacArthur was speaking). I am more hungry and thirsty for solid teaching and comradeship around a common understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ than I am for a protest against a deeply flawed church system. When they are talking about issues of the Gospel rather than church specifics or baptism I am in complete agreement with everything they are saying and I am in agreement with the T4G affirmations and denials (with the exception of article V on the centrality of expository preaching but even there I would prefer expository sermons over any other kind).

So there you go, hit me up if you wanna shack up in Kentucky.

Why Do Christians Not Like Other Christians?

An interesting and brief video from John Piper on that question. His answer is to ask two more questions in response. First, does the person actually know any Christians? I like the disdainful way he separates Christians from "churchgoers". The second is to ask what it means if we get more joy from people who in turn get their joy from something other than what Christians ought to get their joy from, i.e. God. You have to watch the last bit more than once but it is an interesting question.


I think there might be a lot of reasons why many Christians prefer to hang around with non-Christians. First, a lot of Christians are just not pleasant to be around. I am probably Exhibit A for this as I am generally more argumentative than I need to be and am one of those people that in a conversation isn't listening so much as I am waiting for the other person to stop talking so I can. Another more troubling reason is something my wife said after we watched the video. She said that she feels more relaxed around non-Christians because it often seems like other Christians are constantly judging their brothers and, just being honest, their sisters. Is your house neat enough, are your kids well behaved enough? The subculture around Christianity in America is often more of a suburban, upper middle-class country club atmosphere than one of genuine care and acceptance of one another. That is not true everywhere or with everyone but it happens often enough that a lot of Christians feel very on the defensive when around other "Christians". I generally don't mind because I have enough religious trivia and can whip up decent verses to deal with most issues so I can impress people. For my wife and a lot of other women in the church this seems to be less common. Don't get me wrong, people love my wife. When someone I know meets her for the first time they always say later how nice she is although it is rather irritating that they sound so surprised that a kind and decent woman would marry me and bear me 8 children. There is also the very real way that we have cordoned off "church" into a once or twice weekly set aside time to get our fix and check the "went to church" box on our religious checklist. I spend time with Christians on Sunday and Wednesday night because I am supposed to, the rest of the week I spent time with people I actually like being around. This is not true for everyone but it is true for a lot of people.

We better start to check ourselves and ask why what Piper is talking about is so common. I think it bodes ill for the church if we can't start to take more pleasure in other people who share with us a common love and joy for our God.

Digging Deeply Into The Text

When I say I love this new teaching series from John Piper, I don't mean I kinda like it. I mean I love it. A lot. Not just because it is currently dealing with some of the most powerful teaching in all of the Bible but because Piper gets beyond the superficial level reading of a text and breaks it down. We need so much of this. His analysis for Romans 9:22-23 is powerful. To quote Piper: 

“In all the Bible, there are no more weighty, or ultimate, or difficult words than Romans 9:22–23.”

Yep. 

These are some of the most disturbing, troubling, disquieting verses in all the Bible, especially the New Testament and they receive the treatment you would expect which is to generally avoid them. Problem is, you can't avoid them just like you can't avoid verses about enemy love and gender relations and judgement. They are in there and there are in there for a reason, namely preserved by the sovereign decree of God the Father and the unquenchable fire of the Holy Spirit to testify and teach the followers of the Son. We know nothing authoritatively about Christ that is not found in Scripture. Nothing. It is little shock that so many people are confused and teaching error so enthusiastically because they are more concerned about what they think than what God says. 

Watch this video with a humble heart and an open Bible. Drink deeply my brothers and sisters.

The Distortion Of Dominance And Prosperity

Watch this from John Piper. I mean like watch it now.



To the Church in America Today from Desiring God on Vimeo.

That is some good stuff. I mean some really good stuff. I love how we describes how dominance and prosperity in America has distorted the church and how we understand not just the church but our very understanding of the Gospel.

Some keys things he said:

- The idea of Christianity in America implying a sense of "At home-ness in the world"

That is so true and also why the collapse of civic religion is so frightening and devastating to so many. Christianity, or at least what we call Christianity, in America is the opposite of what we see in Scripture and in history in virtually every way. Rather than calling us to come out from the world, our version of Christianity promises that you will be more at home, more successful if you become a Christian.

- The call to Christianity is the call to be a respected citizens in the community.

When the Anabaptists preached the unadulterated Gospel they did so to an audience that knew that following Jesus in that way was going to get them killed. People left behind Christendom in favor of Christ anyway. Not a lot but enough and this has never been a numbers game anyway. We can preach the Gospel as it should be preached and they will still come. Even if they don't it doesn't matter, it is better to be seen as unsuccessful by the world but faithful by God than to be successful in the eyes of the world by watering down what God has declared.

- “I don’t want to be a comfort-seeking, entertainment-addicted, security-craving, approval-desiring Christian.”

Yet that is precisely what American Christianity is all about. Our message is so inoffensive, so based on being moral people and meeting your felt needs that it has no danger, no cross bearing at all.

Piper nails it in this video. Hopefully he will keep walking down that road and looking at ways that Desiring God and Bethlehem Baptist are, in some ways, more reflective of American Christianity than Biblical Christianity than he might realize.

John Piper Is Coming: A Response To Piper and Game of Thrones

I was going to title this post "You Know Nothing John Piper" as an homage to Game of Thrones but I thought that was disrespectful and he has some legit points.

About a week ago John Piper posted 12 Questions to Ask Before You Watch ‘Game of Thrones’ in response to the enormous popularity of the HBO series that is an adaptation of the George R.R. Martin book series. As you would expect, John Piper isn't a fan of the series (although I am quite sure he hasn't seen any of the episodes) and he is pretty concerned that a lot of Christians are watching something he assumes is unhealthy. A lot of my fellow believers have been reposting his article with varying degrees of commentary including one that assumed that every single person who watched the TV series was lost, a breathtakingly arrogant and theologically ignorant statement.

Full disclosure. I own all of the published books and have read them all at least twice, as has my wife. We own the released seasons on DVD and have watched them. They are full of violence and gore and sex because they depict a world that is not a neat and tidy, black and white world but one that is full of violence and gore and sex, rather like how things probably were in a similar era in our world and ironically much like the world described in the Bible that likewise describes sex, extra-marital sex, incest, rape, war, murder, etc. No Game of Thrones is not on par with the Bible. That is silly to even say but hey this is the internet and sure enough some knucklehead would suggest I was saying that. What I am saying is that the presence of sex or violence in a book is not in and of itself a disqualifier, indeed cannot be for Christians. People have sex. War and rape go hand in hand, not just in Game of Thrones, but in World War II and Vietnam and even today. People kill and torture and maim one another. The world depicted in the storyline of GoT is a dark one but not all books can have settings like Rivendell and the Shire.

There are legitimate concerns about GoT. Like I said, Game of Thrones, both the books and the TV adaptation, are full of violence, sex and atrocious language. I understand that. I don't let my kids read the books. I especially don't let them watch the show or even be around when we are. I fully understand that this is a pastime that requires some discernment. I do wish Martin had left some of this stuff out of the books and that the producers of the show on HBO did the same. I think that the violence and sex is integral to the story even though the story is not about them, if that makes sense. In other words these aren't books about sex and violence, they are books about complicated people who live in a world full of sex and violence, kind of like our world. For a people of the Book who revere flawed men like Noah and Abraham and David and Paul and Peter, you would think that

However I reject the notion proposed by John that people watch because we want to be "hip, cool, savvy, culturally aware". I read the first book in the series long before HBO started filming the series. I don't read them because of the coolness factor nor for the titillation factor. I read them because they are incredibly compelling. The storylines, the characters (until Martin kills them off), the vivid imagery. They are some of the best written books I have read and the TV series is a pretty decent adaptation with incredible acting on a limited budget. Unlike the horrific CGI heavy The Hobbit adaptation, Game of Thrones relies on characters for the story rather than characters being props in the latest CGI excess. I would read the books whether they were "hip" or not.

I do wonder how many of the people jumping on the "Game of Thrones is evil" bandwagon would say the same thing about other cultural entertainment? It is easy for those who don't watch GoT to stand afar and cast stones. What about movies and TV shows that glamorize and glorify warfare? Christians love those. A lot of Christians love the TV show 24 where hero Jack Bauer tortures people and violates their civil rights for our entertainment. How about entertainment that subtly or not reinforces greed and envy? We certainly have a more widespread problem with that in the church than we do Christians beheading each other. Then of course there are sports which certainly rise to the level of idolatry for many a Christian and especially so with football which not only is idolatrous for many Christians but is a sport based on violence and one in which many players, from children to adults, are injured every year for our entertainment. Christian men flock to TVs to spend hours watching modern gladiators slam into one another while women in provocative "clothing" gyrate in high definition to....well to titillate because no one at an NFL game can hear them "cheer". Of course these televised games are interspersed with many advertisements extolling the virtues of alcohol or others that appeal to the insatiable need for the latest pick-up truck or car or the latest, greatest smart phone or an erectile dysfunction medication. That stuff is apparently OK. After all America is specially blessed by God with material wealth so why shouldn't I have the latest smartphone or a brand new car?

So here is my point. I think John Piper raises some legitimate concerns, some that I share and my wife and I have talked about. On the other hand I think a lot of Christians wagging their fingers at their fellow Christians might be a touch hypocritical. I absolutely think their are some cautions about Game of Thrones but I think that the writing is compelling enough to warrant reading. It is not for everyone. It is not for children. I will keep watching Game of Thrones, even if it stops being "hip, cool, savvy, culturally aware" and I will continue to exercise discernment on the issue. I appreciate John Piper asking hard questions and I have given them thought. I just don't agree on this one. Perhaps I will change my mind later on. Perhaps not. It wouldn't be the first time and won't be the last.

John Piper on leaders and vision

Watch this very brief message from John Piper...


The Work of a Christian Leader from Desiring God on Vimeo.

Do you agree with that, the idea that reinforcing a "vision" is a primary function of a Christian leader? I kind of worry about this because it is so common. When a pastor comes to a new church, it is assumed that he will have a "vision" for that church. Lots of churches spend lots of time creating vision statements or mission statements, reevaluating and revising their statement of belief. Just being the people of God engaged in the mission of God is not sexy enough, we need a vision!

If the "vision" becomes the main thing, then the real main thing gets lost, i.e. Jesus. I am very susceptible to this and I see it happen all the time. When a Christian catches the majesty of God's sovereignty in salvation, it is easy for the vision of seeing Reformed theology sweeping the church take over and become the main thing. All for the glory of Christ of course but pretty soon you find yourself becoming an evangelist for Reformed theology instead of Christ, more concerned with telling Christians why their theology is wrong than telling the lost about Jesus. This is replicated in lots of movements where the vision starts to take over: homeschooling, house church, Reformed theology, family integrated church, egalitarianism, complementarianism. Many of these things are good and positive and started with the right heart but when we focus too much on these visions we can lose our way very easily. The last thing we need is to spend a bunch of time focusing on our particular vision. The vision for the church has already been decided by someone far more authoritative than my or even John Piper.

Who would Jesus appear in a YouTube video with?

So I tweeted this pithy message this morning.....
What exactly is it about so many Christians, including me too often, that we seem to define ourselves by who we agree with and perhaps more so by who we disagree with in the church. I am not talking about confronting actual heresy or false belief systems. I talking about the kind of mindset where conversations like this: "I love John Piper but he likes Rick Warren and I don't like Rick Warren so now I don't like John Piper" are not considered irrational.

I guess I would rather see John Piper have an honest, civil conversation with a brother in Christ, even one I disagree with on many levels, than listen to those men who hide themselves away in their self-defined doctrinal bunkers where they snipe at men they don't like. The internet has made this even worse. Which ministries do you "like" on Facebook. Who do you retweet on a regular basis? Which blogs are in your blogroll? The church has taken on the look and feel of a high school lunchroom. Who is in the "in crowd"? Who is on the outs with the cool kids?

It doesn't really matter who I "like" or who I friend on Facebook or follow on Twitter. What matters is who Jesus has chosen and each and every person that He has chosen is my brother or sister in Christ.